With TravelMuse approaching 3,000 followers on Twitter (@TravelMuse) I was interested to read the results of a new survey “Travel Insights 100 Survey Reveals How Twitter is Being Used by the Travel Industry” published by UpTake and conducted by Travel Insights 100, a newly launched travel industry panel led by Uptake, Tips from the T-List and BootsnAll.
After surveying online travel industry experts and bloggers they conclude:
• 52 percent just started using Twitter in the past twelve months.
• 31 percent claim to be Twitter addicts (where they use Twitter ten or more times a day).
• The top three subjects to tweet about are blog posts (93 percent), travel industry news (70 percent) and travel information (82 percent).
• Consumers could use Twitter to help plan a trip by looking for insider tips and recommendations (75 percent), connecting with local Twitterati (69 percent), and finding a deal (63 percent).
See full survey results.
Elliott Ng, co-founder, UpTake said “…we are still very much in the experimental phase of how these social media tools can be best used.” I agree and as I discussed with a research analyst yesterday, I think sharing best practice is one of the most valuable ways to learn how we can leverage these new tools. The Travel Insights 100 panel seems positioned to do that, and I look forward to reading more in the future.
Although Twitter may face a rocky road ahead as it figures out the challenges of monetization, spam, relevancy etc., I also agree that micro-blogging is here to stay, especially as we see greater adoption of the mobile Web. While penetration of smartphone users is still fairly low (17 percent in Q2, 2009, source Nielsen), it shows significant growth potential and offers a platform particularly suited to micro-blogging.
I would like to ask this panel some other questions such as:
• Do you measure the ROI on Twitter, what metrics do you regularly track?
• How much time do you actually spend on Twitter everyday? I find myself distracted some days managing multiple social media sites while trying to get other work done. It brings a new meaning to multi-tasking!