‘Technically Curious’ Agent Urges Others to Jump on Social Media Bandwagon

New Paltz Travel owner Colleen Gillette describes herself as technically curious.

When her New Paltz, N.Y., TRAVELSAVERS agency got its first real computer (not a dumb terminal) back in the mid-’90s, and a tech guy introduced Gillette to email, right away she set up an email account and joined some forums.

Email was new enough that when she asked her customers for their email addresses, most returned her requests with blank stares: What’s an email address?

“It took years before people began saying, ‘Oh, yeah. I have an email address.’”

Gillette was ahead of the email curve, but she has been slower to jump on the social media bandwagon. Here’s her experience so far.

The Early Days: I joined Facebook and Twitter from the very beginning. but I didn’t do anything. I followed a couple of people and I got a couple of friends on Facebook – people that I knew. But I really let it sit for the longest time. I kept thinking I don’t know what I want to say, I don’t know what my voice is. Eventually I learned about the business page. I began to really work on it, develop it and engage.

Strategy: I think social media helps with raising you to top of mind, just being out there. You can structure your advertising to appear in front of a certain audience. And even if people don’t click on the ad, the impression is there in front of them. So, subliminally, your brand becomes recognizable.

Setting It Up: I have two sides to my Facebook use, a personal page and a business page. My personal page tends to have customers of mine who are also friends. It’s also got a lot of travel agents on it, and we chat and network. On my business page, I put up Cairo stuff from a recent trip, including a National Geographic link about the pyramids. One post, after 13 hours, had five comments, including one from me, and a couple of ‘likes.’

Facebook Ads: I put up an ad for five days in January, which was relatively inexpensive; it was about something that could be bought right away. I narrowed down who would see it to the town of New Paltz and people between the ages of 35 and 50. I used two different photos for the ad, one was my logo and one was a photo of a cruise ship deck. I received 270,000 impressions on the logo ad and 86,000 on the cruise ship ad, which simply means the ad appeared more times in the logo form than in the cruise ship photo form. I also picked up 10 or 15 fans.

Twitter: Any time I post on the New Paltz Travel Facebook page, I have it also post on Twitter; I don’t do it the other way around. Twitter I use mostly to read what other people are saying, to see what’s going on locally. I do post sometimes – I threw a few photos from Egypt up there. Twitter helps me find articles and opinions that I ordinarily wouldn’t know about.

Not Everyone Comments: Initially I was worried because I wasn’t picking up comments, but I realized that people actually were looking at the pages. They’d call me on the phone and say ‘I saw your India pictures on Facebook.’ Yet none of those people commented. A lot of people look and think ‘I really like that,’ but they don’t like to write that stuff in public.

Return on Investment (ROI): I think ROI is difficult to figure out. This thing is still very much in its infancy. People are still guessing how to do it. When they talk about running a social media campaign, I think they’re using their best guesses.

Success Story: I did end up booking a Kenya safari for a party of two. It was for an existing customer, for whom I’d only ever done air. Though I had been talking about a safari with him for a while, it wasn’t until I posted safari stuff on Facebook that he came into the office and said, ‘I’m seeing those safari posts you did, and we really want to do something like that.’ That’s when we really started working on it.

Insight and Advice: If you have any interest at all, jump in and start a page. Just search for other travel agents on Facebook or Twitter, follow them, ‘like’ their page, start a dialogue: ‘You can email me, write something on Facebook and I’ll write back to you and friend your page.’ The only way to get started is to jump in.