Tourism Ireland has grown its Facebook fanbase from nothing at the start of 2010 to 250,000 fans, making Ireland a top five tourism destination on Facebook. We are there because word of mouth about this island plays a huge role in our visitor's decision to holiday here. At Tourism Ireland, our role has developed into stimulating and participating in the conversation about the country. We launched the plans two years ago with three principles to underpin our social media strategy. These are that social media is big and here to stay, that it is important for Tourism Ireland and that we must adopt a long-term perspective of our consumer relationships using it.

Social media marketing is people intensive. Our aim has been to provide a structure that allows our overseas market teams to own the objective, tone and themes of their social activity, but to be supported centrally through content and app development and customer service.

A quarter of a million Facebook fans provide us with over 3.5 million 'post impressions' a month, a similar number to our monthly website page views. A validation of consumer affinity with our activity and brand is that our churn rates are low. This is due to targeted recruitment advertising and finding the content, tone and frequency of interaction that suits each of our audiences.

Facebook plays a lead role. It creates awareness, evolves interest, considers product alternatives and shares post-visit experiences. It complements our Twitter streams where we post updates of interest and provide customer service; our blog, where we tell more 3D stories; YouTube channels, where video creates a rich experience and our website, which is more goal oriented.

Tourism Ireland: Facebook Market Breakdown

The beauty of the Facebook platform is the network effect – interaction begets further interaction. A key advantage for us is the cumulative layering effect of fan acquisition: each campaign automatically extends the reach of the next one we run. It reduces the requirement for media spend on getting 'reach' and allows more investment in engagement. We see this migration from reach to engagement increasing over time as the fan acquisition phase eases.

Facebook is also 'playing nice' with our other platforms such as our blog and discoverireland.com. There is a viral effect with our blog by posting Facebook links to each new article. Last October, one article, in its different social forms and without any spend, earned 210,000 opportunities to view, something that is being routinely achieving with two to three blog articles a week.

In Twitter, we have 18,000 followers, with some useful activity happening. Our British office ran a campaign with the hashtag #MakesmeIrish last year where Sir Alan Sugar retweeted the campaign message, of his own volition, to his 200,000 followers. The real action on Twitter for us is behind the scenes. Contact centres search for relevant phrases like 'Ireland vacation' and respond directly to consumers. Our customer service was changed from being a passive recipient of calls, email and web chat to one proactively providing 'projected customer service'.

Measurement and evaluation is earning a lot of attention. We have an untypical business in that we do not carry out any transactions. Our job is to create desire and assist in moving the consumer through purchase to become a qualified lead for our tourism provider colleagues. Our outcomes are represented by different forms of website and contact centre engagement.

The measurement challenge is now bigger than this. Interaction on Facebook and Twitter has a value. But how should we assess that? We are creating a custom measure, labelled 'social equivalent advertising value' which, borrowing a line from PR, seeks to identify what it would cost to achieve the same exposure through media spend. It will provide a benchmark for our activity and allow us to rate social against other activity and help investment decision-making.

Clearly this is an exciting space in a commercial environment facing significant challenges. The next phase of our development will continue to see fan acquisition, more engagement and richer data to inform our activities. We will take social into the DNA of our website and expand our monitoring to service customer needs on the wider social web. With word of mouth at the heart of everything, our task is to develop our use of social media, getting the story of Ireland out and stimulating conversation in a way that translates to business for our industry.

bharte@tourismireland.com

mhenry@tourismireland.com

With visitor numbers to Ireland from Britain halved in the past three years and with tourist numbers from all destinations down by a third losing over two million tourists annually and €1.6 billion in revenue, Tourism Ireland, the agency responsible for promoting overseas visits to the island of Ireland, is facing a big challenge. A five-year plan, expects a return to low growth this year, followed by a recovery that may exceed 2007 when eight million visitors came to Ireland.

Tourism Ireland launched its 2011 marketing drive in Germany with a €2.5 million TV campaign that is intended to “drive home the message of friendliness, humour, inspirational landscapes and music”. A €1 million radio campaign is also part of the plan. Overseas tourism business accounts for 63 per cent, or about €3bn, of all tourism revenue and is said to deliver even more for Ireland as part of an export-led economic renewal. But what strategies need to be put in place this year?

Rebranding efforts is seen as essential, helped by Irish embassies, State agencies and the use of prominent Irish personalities. But the biggest driver of visitors to Ireland is expected to be the use of online media, particularly social media (see article on opposite page). Ireland is still recovering from years of tourism interests pricing themselves too high. In 2007, when visitor numbers were still growing, tourists coming to Ireland complained about high prices and bad value.

For years, tourism representatives claimed that Ireland should not become a ‘cheap' destination, rather the emphasis should be on affordable and enjoyable experiences. More recently, there has been an official acceptance that Ireland suffered from high prices and a perception overseas that it was an expensive destination. But research has shown that Ireland's economic difficulties have increased foreign tourists' belief that they will now be able to get better for money.

Tourism Ireland has embarked on a major TV advertising campaign in Britain to halt the slide in visitors to Ireland. At the launch in the Irish Embassy in London, Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons said it was hoped that numbers from Britain will be up by four per cent this year. Gibbons said results of focus group studies showed that months of negative publicity about Ireland's economic woes have not had a detrimental effect on the brand internationally.

GREEN GIANTS World landmarks like the London Eye, Table Mountain in Cape Town and the Empire State Building in New York are among the famed landmarks ‘going green' this year to mark St Patrick's Day as part of a €28 million spring promotional drive by Tourism Ireland. Other attractions going green for Ireland include the fountains at the White House in Washington, Auckland's Sky Tower, the Chicago river and the San Antonio river in Texas.

Gibbons said that if anything, there was some consumer sympathy and a perception that Ireland may be better value for money now. Interest in ensuring value for money was up by ten per cent. Recent shows on BBC television, like Terry Wogan's Ireland and Fergal Keane's Story of Ireland series, is expected to help keep Ireland high in the people's minds as they make their holiday plans. Despite the downturn, marketing spend in the UK is up by 30 per cent this year.

The ‘going green' illumination of famous world landmarks for St Patrick's Day involves a spend of €28m which is the biggest spring promotion ever undertaken by Tourism Ireland. CSO figures for 2010 show that visitor numbers were down by 12.9 per cent to just over six million tourists. While there was a 2.2 per cent drop to just over 1.4m in the last quarter of 2010, the good news is that there was a 14 per cent increase in visitors from North America, a key market.

A coalition of tourism interests said its plan could see the creation of up to 20,000 jobs by 2015. The Tourism Opportunity – Driving Economic Renewal plan by the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, the Irish Hotels Federation and bodies such as the IFA, IBEC and Chambers Ireland proposes harnessing the diaspora to promote Ireland abroad and recommends appointing 1,000 ‘goodwill f