How social can London be?

22 June 2012

The Wall has recently published an interesting blog by Jonny Rosemont, titled "How social is London?" which takes a look at how individual tourist destinations and attractions in London are using social media.

A sample of 50 destinations was taken which showed an "encouraging use of social media" and Jonny says: "Overall London attractions seem to understand and implement the community management aspects of social media with splendid conviction."

Sadly though there is a "however" and apparently the bigger picture is not so good.

"VisitBritain forecast 30.7 million overseas visitors will visit the UK this year. When added to the UK's own social media audiences of 32 million Facebook users and 10 million Twitter users, it becomes apparent there's a lot of untapped opportunity for famous London attractions to widen their net and engage with even larger audiences. So London is not 'doing badly', as such; but it could be doing a lot better."

So how can turist attractions improve their interation with potential visitors on social media?  My suggestion would be  to think like a publisher and regularly add some engaging content about the unique points of interest to their website, links to which could then be published via social media networks. The choice of which social network will depend on the demographic of the target audience but Facebook and Twitter would seem to be a sensible starting point for most. 

The key is providing content that has been optimised for use online so that it can attract those vital visitors, firstly on the web and then in reality! 

Andrew

andrew@the-flashbulb.com