VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TOURISM

Value of Social Media for Tourism

Value of Social Media for Tourism

Introduction

Social media is a generic term for online technologies and practices that people adopt to share texts, images, video and audio. Professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as a group of Internet applications based on assumptions ideological and technology of Web 2.0 that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content (Partridge 2011, 108).

Social media is fundamentally a change in the way people learn, read and share information and content. In them there is a fusion of sociology and technology that transforms the monologue (one-to-many) in dialog (many-to-many) and place a democratization of information that transforms people from the users of content publishers. Social media has become very popular because they allow people to use the web to build relationships for personal or business. Social media are also called user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM) (Qualman 2009, 77).

Social Media vs. Mass media

Social media is derived from the traditional mass media such as newspapers, radio, television and film to differ. Social Media is based solely on digital-based communication channels and applications. It also has relatively low barriers to entry, such as low cost, simple manufacturing processes and easy accessibility of tools for publishing and distribution of content of any kind which are used both for companies and private individuals. Other hand, require extensive resources and mass media production processes to realize publications. A common feature, of which media and mass media have social, is the possibility of large and small groups of recipients to achieve. For example, a blog post as well as a TV show millions of readers or viewers are to collect revenue, while there is the possibility that no reader or audience can be animated, to deal with the contribution. While mass media as television increasingly on the linear communication a broadcast share, subject to the communication of social media in addition to a high real-time factor and the principle of the Long Tail to generate attention and coverage (Tuten 2008, 45). Some properties that help in the differentiation, such as:

Range

Both, social media and mass media, allow everyone to have a global presence.

Accessibility

The production of mass media is subjected to private or governmental rule, your own company. Social-media tools are available to everyone at little or no cost.

Production

The production of mass media uses specialized knowledge and requires extensive training. This expression of knowledge in the context of social media is clearly lower than the previous.

Novelty

The period between an event and the publication of mass media, is larger but in the case of social media it allows direct and publishes the content without delay.

Resistance

An article in a mass medium (e.g. newspaper articles) cannot be changed after creation and publication. Social media allows virtually no time delay to make changes to publications.

Almost all companies can benefit from the marketing of social media, but for the tourism industry is especially ...