Tour Operators, Businesses urged to Embrace Social Media

Georgetown: Close to 30 participants benefitted from the Social Media Marketing Workshop, conducted yesterday, at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC), Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.

This event was organized by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) as part of the Tourism Awareness Month activities and featured the expert advice from Stacy Dos Santos- Rahaman, from Social Media Guyana , who pointed to the advantages of Social Media Marketing and the benefits to be had from interacting and build relationships using this tool.

 “When products or companies join those sites, people can interact with the product or company. That interaction feels personal to users because of their previous experiences with social networking site interactions. This networking allows individual followers to “retweet” or “repost” comments made by the product being promoted. By repeating the message, all of the users connections are able to see the message, therefore reaching more people,” Ms. Dos Santos- Rahaman explained.

In addition, she emphasized that Social networking sites also acts as ‘word of mouth’; as the information about the product is being put out there, more traffic is brought to the product/company.

More importantly, using Social Media as a marketing tool will enable businesses to reach a very narrow target audience.

Through social networking sites, products/companies can have conversations and interactions with individual followers. This personal interaction can instill a feeling of loyalty into followers and potential customers. Also, by choosing whom to follow on these sites, products can reach a very narrow target audience.

As to the advantages of this, she said, “Social networking sites also include a vast amount of information about what products and services prospective clients might be interested in. You can detect buying signals, such as content shared by people and questions posted online. Understanding of buying signals can help sales people target relevant prospects and marketers run micro-targeted campaigns.”

Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns, the facilitator added