On Tuesday 4 November 2015, Flow Cape Town hosted a Travel Depot social networking workshop at the request of City Sightseeing, which runs the hop-on, hop-off red tourist buses in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Travel Depot concept, it is essentially a travel hub located at City Sightseeing’s biggest and busiest stop, 81 Long Street. Here visitors can enquire about specials and packages for some of Cape Town’s most popular attractions, like shark cage-diving and ziplining.
The two-hour social networking workshop took place at the Flow Cape Town office at 74 Shortmarket Street. The idea was to get all of the Travel Depot tenants into the same space to allow for the free flow of ideas on how they can collaborate effectively and collectively benefit from using social media to promote each other’s services and offerings.
Attendees included social media managers and marketing representatives from City Sightseeing, Aquila Private Game Reserve, Shark Zone, Cape Town Helicopter Tours, Harley-Davidson Chauffeur Tours & Rentals, SA Forest Adventures and Cellar in the City.
The workshop began with the attendees being divided into two groups based on their social networking skills level. Flow Cape Town manager Kate Rau then opened the workshop with a brief introduction on the importance of social media. She provided an analysis of people who use social media based on age and gender, discussed current statistics like which South African brand has the largest following, and spoke about the most popular devices used to engage with social media.
Quathar Begg and Stuart Buchanan, both media developers at Flow, then dug deep into the inner workings of Twitter and Facebook. They explained that these social media platforms are effective marketing tools for businesses because they’re both real-time public platforms and a cost-effective means of two-way communication.
They then proceeded to educate attendees on how to effectively manage their social media accounts and grow their following by posting relevant and accurate content, observing social media etiquette, responding to messages and comments on posts, and ensuring that their online profiles look professional.
The workshop fostered enthusiastic engagement and everyone who attended provided positive feedback – even the seasoned social networkers.
Stuart led the Facebook section of the workshop, and had this to say: "It was good to have a bunch of different social media people from different companies in the same room. I got a sense that we will see a lot more engagement and cross-promotion between these brands going forward. This can only be good news for putting the Travel Depot on the map.”
Anton Groenewald from Cellar in the City gained useful insight into the benefits of social media for business. “I enjoyed the interactive nature of the workshop. It also helped with some practical applications and the key issues of do’s and don’t’s, which are always helpful for newbies to the social media scene,” he said.
To enquire about setting up a social networking workshop in Cape Town, please get in touch with Kate Rau (+27 (0)21 424 1790; kater@flowsa.com) to discuss your requirements, and we’ll develop a custom solution to meet your needs.