A great social media monitoring snapshot from Experian Hitwise shows how the top travel brands are engaged in social media.
According to Hitwise, Expedia leads the pack in terms of Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers, followed by VisitBritain.
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It demonstrates nicely how VisitBritain has been successful in building its brand across multiple social channels, using competitions and other content initiatives.
According to Experian Hitwise research boss Robin Goad, the UK national tourism organisation gets about 1,000 responses to every post on Facebook.
On YouTube, meanwhile, British Airways is the most successful travel brand.
Goad points out that if time on the internet is equated to an hour, then time spent on travel is a minute, while time on social media is 14 minutes.
He adds that while many companies are successfully using social media, especially Facebook, they should also be thinking of some niche networks as well such as the parenting service Mumsnet.
Goads believes the next step is for companies to move beyond exploiting social media for free build brand to really using the data available via tools such as Facebook Connect.
NB:Read more from Goad on his Hitwise blog.
NB2: The data was first unveiled during a Hitwise webinar in September and shown again today at the Travolution Summit in London.