Social media proves successful for JoburgTourism

Johannesburg Tourism is enjoying the results of a highly successful social media campaign on the travel and lifestyle social networking community website WAYN.com (Where Are You Now) which has helped change perceptions and create endorsement for the City as a major international traveller destination.

The campaign which launched on November 17 had the multiple objectives of engaging travellers, addressing negative perceptions, building user generated content, driving site traffic and promoting brand awareness.

Using the strapline “Joburg - a world class African city”, the campaign celebrates the South African capital hosting Miss World and forthcoming international events like the Confederation Cup, Lions Tour and FIFA World Cup. In a first for both parties, Johannesburg Tourism and WAYN devised an all embracing strategy to reach and engage members and visitors. Key elements included member’s surveys; a holiday prize competition; newsfeeds about Miss World, banner ads; a newsletter and internal communications promoting the JoburgTourism profile to WAYN’s 14 million members across 193 countries.

Results to date have been highly impressive. Over seven weeks from November 17 the pre and post survey showed a significant change to highly positive perceptions of the City and it becoming a top destination of choice.

Mean while the increase in site traffic resulted in JoburgTourism.com jumping 150,000 places*; advertising generated 9.5 m. impressions and nearly half a million WAYN members acquired the JoburgTourism skin to their profile and generated 650 new traveller reviews and opinions.

Lindiwe Mahlangu, CEO of Johannesburg Tourism said: “These results have been outstanding and exceeded our very best expectations. We wanted to exploit and integrate the unique range of tools that the social media environment offers and deliver a real and tangible ROI. We set WAYN some tough objectives and I am delighted to say that they delivered on all fronts. We are especially pleased about how well the social medium worked in persuading people to re-assess their perceptions about Johannesburg and how user generated content can be leveraged to endorse our messages.”

Said WAYN joint CEO and founder, Jerome Touze; “Johannesburg is fortunate to have one of the most innovative and forward thinking DMO’s in the industry. Johannesburg Tourism has demonstrated how imaginative use of social media such as WAYN can go way beyond simple brand awareness and how an integrated strategy can be used to deliver both marketing and sales objectives. Through their work Johannesburg Tourism is well on its way to placing South Africa’s capital on the premiere list of must visit destinations. This is a very exciting partnership and we look forward to developing more integrated and bespoke campaigns for Johannesburg as a world class destination”

*Alexa.com traffic rankings.