The Travel Channel boasts a diverse range of viewers, from armchair dreamers, living vicariously through the shows, to veteran travelers ready to plot their next trip. Travel Channel's challenge is to deliver content and consumer touch points that appeal to a diverse range of impassioned audiences. There were two over-arching objectives of the social media initiative:

1) Identify and establish relationships with online key influencers to increase top of mind awareness and total positive sentiment of online conversations pertaining to the brand and its shows.
2) Effectively establish a presence in major social media networks by participating as a Community Manager on behalf of the brand and its individual shows.

Room 214 did the following things:

• Built comprehensive MavenMaps -- lists of Travel Channel influencers in the blogosphere for both the brand and each individual show. Each influencer received weekly updates regarding TC and/or the show relevant to their blog.
  
• Maintained online conversation tracking to monitor for positive/negative posts and respond accordingly
  
• Designed, launched, established and maintained a presence for the Travel Channel and its shows in the following social networks: Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Mixx and Viddler.
  
• Engaged with Travel Channel's multiple social network communities through daily management/interaction which included responding to questions/comments, initiating conversations, adding friends/members to each community and executing account updates to publicize show premiers, exclusive content, etc.

Room214 obtained these results:

• Identified seven separate groups of social media influencers relevant to the Travel Channel brand and shows and through direct outreach, tracked 15,631 conversations online about the Travel Channel from July through December, 2008.
  
• The sentiment for the Travel Channel was overwhelmingly positive, with an 80% favorable review.
  
• Successful design and execution of all identified social networks reaching a total of 200,176 online community members.

Credit Information
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Client: Travel Channel
Agency: Room 214, Inc.
Budget: Undisclosed
Date of Campaign: July - December 2008
Contact Name: Jason Cormier
Case Study URL: http://room214.com/our-work

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