Like any new feature rollout, Facebook’s Timeline has become a creative showcase for individuals and brands.
Travel organizations have an especially fascinating opportunity here, given the richness of history that accompanies countries, destinations and other groups working within the travel sector.
By creating rich posts and backdating them, brands can create an immersive environment that provides contextual engagement for the user – and bring a bit of wonder and intrigue into the history of a place or segment of the industry.
It’s not surprising that Tourism Australia was one of the very first organizations that took advantage of these new Timeline features. By using the Timeline as a sort of visual history, the organization created a browsable encyclopedia of Australia’s history. By opening it up to users to submit photos, they were able to cultivate a rich history of their country.
And with over 4 million likes, this is clearly working on a growth and engagement level.
The Royal Dutch sure know how to leverage both social and emotional. By taking the wonder of travel – the imagery, the excitement, the engagement – and suffusing it throughout their promotions and pages, the airline has succeeded in garnering over 3 million likes.
This is an impressive feat that has the airline leading the pack in regards to innovation and, with over 100k “people talking about this”, are clearly winning on repeated user engagement.
Browse through KLM’s Timeline and be prepared for another jet down memory lane.
World Travel & Tourism Council
The latest org to the party is actually the World Travel & Tourism Council, and while the product is not as sexy as their compadres, the WTTC should be commended for their Timeline approach.
The organization has put together a “history of travel,” taking in some of the most memorable moments and “firsts” in the industry. In fact, some of these older concepts might actually be worth a second look, such as the 1600′s “Grand Tour” taken by the wealthy around Europe:
The proliferation of the Grand Tour among the wealthy then lead some enterprising folks to gather all the information in one place – thus setting the stage for news such as the recent sale of Lonely Planet.
Other favorite moments include the first commerical flight and the first airport.
Props to the WTTC for putting this together – perhaps other nations, destinations and organizations will follow suit.
The page currently only has a couple of hundred likes, so it will be interesting to see how this sort of endeavor impacts that number. Like the WTTC here.
Has your company come up with a creative use of the Timeline? Tell us about it in the comments!
