Is your product or brand experience shareworthy?
You’re lying on your favourite beach, great book in hand, waves crashing gently, calming the corporate soul with your significant other beside you. In a word, bliss. The book is great. What do you do next? You take out your mobile phone and take photos of this “perfect” moment in time. Why? Well because you want to “share” with the world that you are having the time of your life! This is something that as a traveller I often do, and as a consultant for the travel and tourism industry we see as an integral part of the holiday experience. This does not stop at holidays. People naturally want to share their experiences with the world whether it is their train trip to work each day or the designs on top of their latte (Instagram hosted #latteart day not so long ago) or their experiences as a mother and businesswoman. People want to share. The beautiful thing about social media in 2014 is that sharing your life with your friends, family and the rest of the world has never been easier. We are a connected society, who not only love to share, but also love to learn about others’ experiences and make decisions based on recommendations from our friends, family and even that random stranger who happens to recommend the place that serves the best coffee two blocks from your work.
The world is connected, and we as businesswomen need to be aware of what experience we are offering our clients. Are we making our experiences “shareworthy”?
In the travel and tourism industry the holiday experience that a guest has on our tour, in our hotel, at our attraction or at our event is critical. We want guests to share and ideally we want what they share to be positive. Most of our population has a mobile phone ready to create content, take photos, create videos, have an opinion, be heard, and share.
5 things to consider when using social networks to create user-generated content:
- Identify the experience your customers (current and potential) could share, and offer exceptional products and customer service.
- Make your customers and your staff aware of your chosen social networks: verbally, through your website, e-newsletters and all communication e.g. Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, Pinterest.
- Offer rewards and incentives (and entertainment where possible).
- Always have a presence on your social networks to offer encouragement, answer questions and respond to feedback.
- A picture paints a thousand words!
