While the monetary value of Twitter is up for debate, there’s no denying the social tool’s growing power and influence. Last month, Sean shined the spotlight on CNN, because they clearly understand the best practice use of Twitter for business is to use the service to connect with a widespread audience. Broadcasting brief headline-teasers on Twitter works for CNN, because providing news and information is their business. One-way, authoritative communication is a natural fit. For product or service based businesses, however, using Twitter in this way only serves as yet another news stream of information for the intended consumer. Service-based businesses need to consider harnessing Twitter’s ability to provide a new-age avenue of customer service.

Last week, AT&T put Twitter to work as more than just a promotional news service and used it to connect with Hawaii customers who were out of service. As reported by the Hawaii Blog, customers were the first to approach AT&T to request help and information about the situation. They wanted and expected the company to engage with them – to serve them through Twitter. AT&T adapted smartly to the situation by tweeting updates about the outage and requesting feedback from their customers.

As of November 24^th, news tweets have returned to the AT&T Twitter account. Whether or not engaging customers through social media will become a standard practice for the company in the near future is unclear, but the power is definitely there.

At Wednesday’s AZ travel and social media conference, marketing, tourism and hospitality professionals came together in the beautiful Scottsdale Plaza Resort to discuss the importance of implementing search and social media tactics in online marketing campaigns.  Elixir CEO Fionn Downhill captured the crowd with pertinent data that underlined the impact of user-generated content and reviews in influencing travel seekers in their destination selections.

The expert panel consisted of Evo Terra, “New Media Evangelist” and influential podcaster; Troy Thompson, Interactive Marketing Manager for the Arizona Office of Tourism; and Josh Kenzer, Online Marketing Manager for the Scottsdale Convention and Visitors Bureau. Discussion topics included the necessity of authenticity and the profound power of listening in online communication programs. Understanding audience sentiment and responding with sincerity to customer reviews is a strong way to build trust between your company and its customers.

“What is best for our audience?” asks Thompson when exploring the relevance of particular social sites for the AZ Office of Tourism. Blogs, Twitter and TripAdvisor are a few of the main platforms where the tourism office engages Internet users. Thompson is quick to note that out of the dozens of social sites available, not every blog, social network or content forum attracts the target market for the AZ Office of Tourism, so it is a waste of time and money to attempt to saturate every social media venue on the web.

Kenzer agrees that it’s essential to understand which social computing spaces are best for your brand. The SCVB views their blog as the focal point in their social media strategy. Kenzer takes advantage of the online journal’s capability of being constantly updated with new information; Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are utilized as avenues to drive traffic to the blog. Photos have especially drawn users to the Scottsdale site.

Terra, who’s social media prowess is evident by the 60+ social sites for which he’s active, believes that blogger engagement trumps the word-spreading power of journalists. In fact, prominent bloggers are taking over the role of traditional journalism, according to Terra, and provide invaluable link juice for brand web sites.

Shared among our panel was the belief that effective search engine optimization is essential for the success of any web site, as search still accounts for the largest percentage of web visitors. The three Internet media experts recommend hiring a reputable SEO company to drive rankings and manage analytics. To companies considering outside SEO services, Kenzer suggests that they establish the metrics they seek to improve upon beforehand: “You’re not paying money to keep static; you’re paying money to achieve your goals.”

Email marketing is a tactic conjuring up more debate. Thompson finds that Twitter has eclipsed his need for email messaging. “We’re pounding the Arizona message into them four times a day,” says Thompson, whose multiple, daily tweets are more relevant touch points in the company’s marketing strategy than weekly emails. In contrast, the other two panelists believe that email is an incredibly efficient and effective way to directly connect with consumers. This demonstrates the variability of campaign strategies depending upon the profile of a target market.

Interested in learning search and social best practices, conference attendees sought strategy ideas for ways in which to reach their online marketing goals. Jill Personius from BJ Communications took a variety of pointers from the idea exchange and will apply what she learned to a property launch she’s working on with a popular hotel chain. Personius says that the conference helped her to consider “where to get the most bang for your buck” in interactive marketing. With a greater understanding of the bigger picture, the communications associate hopes to spearhead social media efforts for the hotel development, and transfer the insights she gained from the conference to corporate decision-makers.

Elixir is thrilled with the success of the conference; seeing audience members interact, share and learn from each others’ experiences was a powerful indicator of the value it brought to participants.

Scottsdale-based digital marketing agency, Elixir Interactive, invites Arizona destination-marketers and interactive marketing experts to participate in an idea exchange about promoting Arizona as a travel destination of choice in tough economic times.

As a result of the recent economic downturn, the travel and hospitality industry faces stiff competition in reaching a market of travelers that continues to decline. To promote Arizona as a prime destination selection for online travel seekers, Elixir Interactive is hosting an interactive marketing workshop that explores the benefits of implementing social media strategies in digital marketing campaigns.

Elixir invites Arizona destination-marketers and interactive marketing experts to partake in the idea exchange and discuss the latest research about what factors influence online destination selection.

The event will provide best practice examples of the tactics and strategies for leveraging social computing and other interactive marketing techniques to reach and engage those online travel customers during these tough economic times. A panel of experts will facilitate discussions that include tips on using interactive marketing and social computing to advance common business goals. The workshop is an opportunity for Arizona tourism and marketing professionals to connect with peers.

The event will be held Wednesday, November 19, 2008 from 8 to 11 a.m., and will be located in the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. $25.00 minimum donation requested, benefiting the St. Mary’s Food Bank. For more information, visit http://www.elixir-st-marys.eventbrite.com/

Social media may be the next wave in marketing, but how do you know if your company is well-equipped to jump into the interactive pool without drowning? Before touching your toes to the water, survey your brand’s assets, audience and breadth of ability to participate on social sites in order to gauge your social media readiness.

According to a recent article on iMediaconnection.com, there are four critical questions to ask that outline a brand’s social media potential.

1) Do you have inventory? Is it valuable to your audience?

To Elixir, this question means: What kinds of content do you have on your site that can be leveraged? Each quality media component is valuable for usage in a social campaign. Articles, images and videos can be spread across the social web and used to engage your audience. Inventory can be overlooked from a company perspective, but often the assets that are most successful in building a brand identity are sitting right in front of you. Tweet your video of the week or point fingers to an arresting image. Streaming pre-existing content into the web is the best approach to initiate presence.

2) What way does your audience use technology?

Use technology in the ways that best fit your consumers’ needs. At Elixir we explore where and how your audience interacts online: Does your target market connect with friends and family using Picasso, or do they prefer Facebook? Expand your consideration outside social media: What ways in the real world do your customers use technology to make their lives easier? Incorporate social media methods into their common technology needs.

3) Are you ready for help to be its own reward?

For help to be its own reward, revenue can’t be a priority. That can be hard to grasp for many brands. ROI is reaped by actively facilitating the needs and wants of your customers in regards to the product or services you offer. The benefits of social media campaigns aren’t always immediately apparent; the long term return will be seen in improved awareness of customer opinion, translating into a better brand.

4) Are you willing to apply people to the solution?

As commonsensical as it may sound, you do actually have to spend time understanding the social media spaces your customers are active on in order to put in to action a successful campaign. This means that you should NOT simply prop your brand within social networks or strategically place ads to fake your presence. Rather than representing the brand as a static corporate entity within a massively active space, you need to converse as individuals of the company with your consumers to accurately observe their responses and build upon your brand.

Resulting from the economic downturn, the travel and hospitality industry face stiff competition to reach increasingly fewer travelers. Online travel consumers increasingly rely on social media to influence their destination selection. Noted Travel 2.0 blogger, Troy Thompson, recently reported a major finding in Forrester’s second quarter consumer poll showing that 75% of Internet users are engaging in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Another Forrester poll showed that 57% of destination marketing organization website visitors read traveler written reviews: consumers are the most trusted voice. Moreover, nearly 40% of online travel consumers visit travel-related social networking sites to influence their destination selection. If travelers are turning to social media, then travel marketing professionals cannot afford to completely ignore it. The question is, “How do travel marketing professionals get started with social computing?”

Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst and writer, has codified a process she calls the POST process in her book co-written by Josh Bernoff, Groundswell. The POST process (acronym for people, objective, strategy, technology), informs marketers on the who, where, why and how of engaging online consumers through social media. Like any other engagement in social media, the main goal should be to change a relationship, ideally for the better. Successful social media participation can increase sales and brand equity by facilitating trusted relationships with social communities that influence search and purchase behaviors.

Travel marketing professionals that do open the social media doors, must be willing to hand over some control of their brand messaging (as if they really had control) to prepare to address and sometimes simply deal with negative feedback. Controlling the conversations is not the goal — listening and reacting to capture new opportunities is. Every conversation is a potential opportunity. The enabling connectivity of social media has given consumers control of brand messaging: your brand is what people say about it online. The increased transparency achieved by engaging online travel consumers through social media provides immeasurable credibility and can invigorate your brand loyalists to influence others, thus diminishing the relevance of a few negative reviews. Since Google seems to love to rank blogs, the link juice from these online conversations will also provide your CMO with the ROI he or she demands. As travel marketing professionals compete to reach increasing fewer travelers, engaging travel-related social communities can expose opportunities for improving brand messaging and achieving business objectives.

The Internet has been the catalyst for voter engagement in the 2008 election. The following are the Top 8 reasons why Obama wins on the social web.

8. Obama found common ground with voters on the Internet. 40 percent of all Americans, especially Democrats, received news and information about the primary campaigns from the web, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project developed in June — a dramatic increase since the 2004 election.

7. Celebrities promoted the Obama platform, YouTube top candidate. “Yes We Can”, the star-clad Obama music video drew 10 million views on YouTube. Obama-related content exceeds McCain in the total number of views and subscribers on YouTube and its election channels.

6. SEO helped Obama sites receive 5 times more traffic than McCain. AdGooRoo recently found that Obama-related sites received 22 million visitors versus McCain’s 3.5 million.

5. Social networks reached the pulse of young, engaged voters. On Facebook, Obama has about 2,250,000 supporters; McCain has 579,000. On Twitter, Obama has over 100,000 followers; McCain has a little over 3,000.

4. Facebook founder Chris Hughes is on Obama’s campaign team. Hughes helped develop My.BarackObama.com — an attractive, user-friendly network with 850,000+ members that have already planned 50,000+ events for his campaign.

3. New media marketing spread Obama messages. The senator incorporated an iPhone application and video in-game ads. He text messaged voters when choosing Biden as his running mate.

2. Video attracted 1.3 million viewers to his official site. On the official Obama site, video streaming increased 155 percent from July to August, according to Nielsen Online. The site also saw a 173 percent increase in unique video viewers in the same time frame. The same metrics for the McCain site shows increases by merely 16 and 5 percent, respectively.

1. Obama fundraised $600 million, much from small donors over the Internet. ‘Nuff said.