Why travel companies should be live streaming
There is absolutely no doubt that the rise of online marketing has played right into the hands of the travel industry. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and travel-writing blogs are a perfect ready-made platforms for vintage-filtered images of exotic destinations, with matching enticingly imaginative prose posted directly into the hands of those who have asked for it. If you’re on top of your technology game, or at least have someone in your marketing team who is, then your opportunities to reel in a significantly large cache of customers is no longer about who has the biggest budget, but rather who has the bigger imagination.
Mobile streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope leveraged the social media scene up a good few notches when they arrived on the online scene at about the same time this year, and have been aggressively elbowing each other out of the way to be the number one app for video streaming.
For travel companies, they both offer a unique real time storytelling opportunity.
Imagine being able to offer a live feed of the some of the best festivals in the world. Or take millions of people on a quiet early-morning game drive (like the guys over at WildSafariLive) or in a hot air balloon above the Great Serengeti Migration. It’s the next level of online video watching, but with live interactive commentary. Videos are great additions to a social media engagement but live streaming could be the key to conversion. It’s the real thing, in real time, not a potentially edited version. You’re telling clients that what they are seeing is exactly what they’ll get and they can interact in real time too.
The opportunities are endless, and if you have a strong enough social media following then use these to your advantage, and create an invitation to view an event in real time.
If you think you are ruining the element of surprise by showing people something you are trying to get them to see for themselves, then perhaps you need to follow in the bright social media footsteps of singer Katy Perry, who live streamed a concert to her 50k+ Twitter followers in order to promote her documentary. She added a hashtag and encouraged fans to watch, tweet and hashtag. That’s good marketing. First off, she wasn’t really losing money – it was more of a nod to fans who a) were on the other side of the world at the time of the concert, and/or b) couldn’t afford the tickets. The act created such huge hype that even if you weren’t one of the 50k followers, you couldn’t miss what was happening through the Retweets and hashtags flying around and filling everyone’s social media feeds.
As Southwest Airlines proved, live streaming a product launch promotes the level of transparency that consumers these days look for in a brand. The airline carrier unveiled its new Boeing 737 jet, the Missouri One, on Periscope, which included an interview with the chief pilot who could answer questions via the app in real time as an expert in that particular industry.
As with all social media forums, be careful. Plan a strategy with extreme care – stick to your brand’s voice and be aware that because it’s a real time live feed, unexpected things can happen. Be well prepared in order to minimise the risk of any reputation crushing surprises.
Apps like Meerkat and Periscope offer so many opportunities to engage with your audience and build your following by showing that your brand is fresh and current.
