Philadelphia Tourism Agency Gets High Marks For Social Media Usage
By social media editor Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A new report by a global travel industry intelligence and marketing firm ranks Philadelphia as one of the world's leaders when it comes to social media for September 2014.
Coming in fifth on the list created by Skift, "Visit Philly" was the highest ranked US destination marketing organization -- following Tourism and Events Queensland, Walt Disney World Resorts, Tourism Australia, and Travel Alberta.
"We definitely wouldn't be able to do as good of a job if we didn't have an always changing, always interesting city and region to promote," says Caroline Bean, director of social media for Visit Philly. "We really invest a lot in amazing content about Philadelphia -- words and pictures, and we have great stories on our web site. We are very cognizant of what our fans and followers want to know to help them plan a trip to Philadelphia," she said.
To come up with the rankings, Skift quantifies social media effectiveness by examining "performance on an absolute basis, as well as relative to within a company's specific industry."
Visit Philly has more than one million combined "followers," "likes," and "views" across various social media platforms.
"We're not using these social media platforms as a megaphone," Bean says. "We're using them more as a telephone and really making sure that we are responding to visitor or resident inquiries and having an ongoing conversation."
