Social media monitoring and social media listing help to analyze data to obtain vital information. These processes, with reference to tourism marketing are as follows.

Social media is teeming with discussions about products, companies and brands. On these platforms, opinions, praises and complaints are expressed and experiences exchanged. Through them, one can gain valuable insights and help identify new trends, thus improving social media strategy. Social media monitoring and social media listing help to analyze data to obtain vital information. These processes, with reference to tourism marketing are as follows.

Definitions

Social media monitoring involves the passive observation of discussions and conversations on specific topics, brands and product types. Text, photos and videos are tapped off various social media platforms as well as from blogs and forums. A list of appropriate keywords is generated in order to locate relevant content. Social media monitoring tools are used to scan contributions matching these keywords on all social media platforms. Collected data is then evaluated and qualitatively analysed, in a process known as social media listening. This serves various purposes: to improve social media strategies and enhance existing products and services, or for communicating with (potential) clients.

Social media monitoring and social media listening should not be confused with social media analytics or digital and web analytics. The former represents the aggregated behavioural data resulting from user interactions via postings and profiles. Such data might include: likes, shares, outreach or number of views. Digital analytics, on the other hand, collates and evaluates visitors’ behavior vis-à-vis specific websites. This can be used, for example, to obtain information showing which social media platforms users originate from and how long they remain on a particular website.

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Goals and fields of application

As already mentioned, the objectives and application of social media listening are rather varied. The collected data can be used for marketing and sales, product management and customer support. Goals include optimizing communication, assessing client loss, identifying influencers or finding the appropriate channels for contacting a certain target group. Social media listening serves to:

• Monitor the Competition, with the overall amount of attention garnered by a company or brand on a particular subject determined by a share of voice analysis.
• Assess Sentiment, where positive, negative or neutral reactions to specific types of content are identified.
• Analyse Topics, in an elaborate survey comprising a spectrum of opinions, desires and queries around a particular subject.
• Identify Potential Influencers via social media listening and reaching out to opinion leaders with a large media footprint.
• Analyse Relevance in terms of which social media platforms, blogs or forums are key to specific topics.
• Analyse Trends, to identify the latest tendencies and dynamic trends on specific topics.

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Data Collection and Analysis

This forms the basis for social media monitoring and social media listening. But first of all, there must be clarity as to the goals of the analysis and requisite data. Besides the selection of sources, keywords and languages, it also depends on whether the social media listening is a one-off, or if it needs to be repeated at regular intervals.

Depending on the above, a suitable social media monitoring tool must be selected to provide the content needed. Such tools might be used to determine the number of contributions or postings and to identify the respective social media platforms. Some of these tools provide an initial sentiment coding to create Word Clouds, (i.e. a list/s of keywords in which the most frequently used terms on a specific topic are visually highlighted). When it comes to speech analysis, these automated programs have their limitations, requiring manual operations such as data filtering and analysis. This involves reading through contributions, categorising the data, interpreting the sentiments expressed and noting recommended actions.

While social media monitoring tools are an important aid in the collection and analysis of data, they cannot produce insights or draw conclusions. Thus, the amount of time needed for processing and reviewing content should always be considered in advance.

2016 Social Media Monitoring Tourism Report: winter tourism in Switzerland

“Previon Plus AG” is a Swiss company specialising in digital platforms and services. After collating and analysing data on winter tourism in Switzerland, it presented its "Social Media Monitoring Tourism Report" in 2016. Together with its partners, the Previon+ project focused on the three largest Swiss winter sports regions of Graubünden, Wallis and Bernese Oberland. Both “Owned Media” (the in-house channels) and “Earned Media” (channels on which brand-related content is distributed by users) were subjected to analysis.

These are the main conclusions derived from social media monitoring and listening:

• The main criteria for all three regions were: hotels, weather and pricing.
• Despite its excellent hotel ratings, the town of Scuol is relatively marginal on social media platforms and is therefore something of an insider tip.
• Prices in the winter sports regions represent a greater topic of discussion than in other tourist areas. Interactions around pricing are most accentuated at the most expensive winter resorts.
• Three highly successful Swiss tourism influencers, with several thousand followers each, were identified on Twitter for enlisting as brand ambassadors.
• Sites with the greatest increase in followers were identified in the “Owned Media” segment and reasons for this were postulated. For example, Gstaad's Facebook page attracted many followers, with its promotions and snowfall reports.
• In Bernese Oberland, the number of English-language contributions was the highest, reaffirming the need to use English for communicating with clients.

The analysis pinpointed relevant topics and potential target groups, while identifying primary influencers. Valuable information was gleaned, for incorporation into future social media strategies and communications optimization on these platforms.

Hilton Worldwide’s Social Media Listening Strategy

One of the world's leading hotel chains, Hilton Worldwide uses social media listening to communicate more efficiently with its clients. Many Hilton hotel guests use social media channels to ask questions, provide ratings and make contributions. In order to immediately react to its online users, the hotel chain developed its own social listening strategy. This is primarily focused on Twitter, which is the most effective social media platform for this purpose. According to AWARIO, “Hilton” is mentioned around 1,500 times per day and its social media monitoring software concludes the following:

• Though many users express themselves positively about their experiences at Hilton hotels, commenting on the excellent hotel service, such content doesn’t necessarily demand a response. But Hilton always replies, demonstrating that customer feedback doesn’t go unnoticed, which in turn feeds positively into customer loyalty.
• Similarly, Hilton reacts promptly to negative feedback. In such cases, they need to respond as quickly as possible in order to avoid reputational damage. The Hilton WW social media team constantly scans relevant Twitter postings with a turn-around time of 30 minutes from tweets being posted.
• Tweets and contributions, in which the official Hilton account was not directly tagged, are readily identifiable thanks to social media monitoring. Thus, complaints or other content without specific @-naming can also be detected, allowing Hilton WW to reply.
• Hilton Worldwide also came up with an innovative strategy to communicate with potential clients using the @HiltonSuggests platform. This was created mainly to provide users with insider tips and advice. Social media listening collates enquiries from users in more than 115 cities around the world, without them having to interact with @HiltonSuggests. Hilton staff respond to user enquiries with information of probable interest as well as insider tips. This innovative campaign uses authentic content to stimulate curiosity, while at the same time strengthening the Hilton brand. Such users are likely to become future Hilton hotel clients.

Hilton WW makes effective use of social media listening to engage with guest contributions, enquiries and opinions. It is also an innovative way of offering added value to potential guests, while strengthening their brand.