The question we are pursuing is, does social media it work for you?  By "work" what we are trying to determine is, does it make you money?

In part one of our social media blog series we surveyed users to establish base line figures about the benefits and perceptions of using social media a revenue tool for tour and activity operators.  Below is the generalized summary:

• As a tour operator has social media been an effective tool for your business? 71% Yes
• What do find to be the best social media application for marketing your business? facebook 80%
• Have you ever posted or shared something via social media that specifically resulted in "new business?" 85% Yes
• How much "business specific" time per week do you spend on social media? 50% spend 4-8 hours weekly.
• When asked to define their social media strategy most responses could be summed up with the following statement: "Regular news shared with links back to my website..."

It is clear that the majority of responders feel that Facebook is the preferred social media vessel.  And, utilizing Facebook to post regular updates with return web links is actively producing new business...more importantly...new revenue.

What's next?

We need to continue to dig deeper into the methods we are use to evaluate "success" as it pertains to the use of social media.

Please take 1 minute  to answer our second survey (multiple choice only) to help us define what "success" is relative to social media usage.

 

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Sources:

• http://www.inkthemes.com/30-reasons-to-market-your-business-on-pinterest-in-2014/03/
• https://twitter.com/TwitterIR/status/431175668122935297
• https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how
• http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/
• http://instagram.com/press/
• http://50.nitrogr.am
• http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/technology/the-plus-in-google-plus-its-mostly-for-google.html
• http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/02/06/linkedins-q4-2013-earnings/
• https://www.quantcast.com/linkedin.com
• http://mashable.com/2014/04/18/linkedin-300-million-users