On Wednesday lunchtime, AMCHAM held the second in their new series of lunchtime workshops at the premises of Allen & Overy in Luxembourg-Kirchberg, on the topic of "How to Tell and Sell your Story on Facebook".

Gregory Tugenhat of the AMCHAM Marketing Committee, introduced the topic and the speakers and explained that the main content would involve the Facebook strategy of a Luxembourg brand, in this case the Luxair Group, and examining its implementation in a case study.

Christiane Schmit of Allen & Overy welcomed everyone to the premises and referred back to the first such workshop held at Kneip and focusing on LinkedIn. She explained that their main clients or corporates who mainly use Facebook for private uses, therefore they use Facebook as a tool to attract talent to the company. They also use Facebook to promote local events such as seminars and other client services, as well as an overview of life at Allen & Overy.

Dan Eischen, CEO at Interact, a social media consultancy, talked about content, where Dirk Ebbighausen, AVP Online Sales & Digital Transformation at Luxair Group, talked about the strategy.

Dan explianed that with Luxair's different business areas, there are different strategies to be developed and implemented using social media, including Facebook. He explained that Recruitment is the latest page to be unveiled on the Luxair Group's Facebook presence. One question they asked themselves was whether to group recruitment together for all the Luxair business lines, or separate them; the decisoion was based on employer branding - for the airline, tour operator, etc. They established that the employer brand is strongly linked to personal experience, to travel and where people have dreams. As a result, the recruitment activity can support the brand in other areas too. The Luxair Facebook page is therefore an extension to its existing social media strategy and presence.

Around 4,000 people follow the Luxair recruitment page (the Luxair main FB page has circa 50,000 fans and the LuxairTours page has circa 30,000 fans). They have found that when they post information on the page they get engagement from not only in Luxembourg, but as far away as Asia, etc. He talked about using pictures and video content ("video kills" he stressed). With this rich content they did not need to implement a traffic-building campaign. Page content includes awards Luxair has received, plus information about life at Luxair, including how to learn specific tasks (how to extinguish fires, how to store items on board, etc.)

Dirk Ebbighausen explained that for him, Facebook is a consumer platform and is therefore customer-centric. It is a channel for them to push information out to customers, a channel for customers to feedback to Luxair (including complaints) - they have circa 10 posts/day coming in, and to win new customers. He also said that Luxair has limited resources so it has to be selective on what they do and what they post on Facebook.

He revealed that Luxair also uses Instagram but this is still young for Luxair (he mentioned that Thomas Cook, for example, deem this their largest social media platform). He briefly covered the different ways each social media platform is used, where Facebook is mulit-functional. He also revealed that Luxair keeps an ey on other airlines, including Easyjet, Ryanair, etc., to see if they can learn what to do on their own Facebook pages, including content and a flight-tracker tool.

He defined key content blocks and themes which include a LuxairTours Insider Blog, a Family Corner, Travel Themes, Luxair Travel Blog, eServices and Did You Know?, etc. Much of the content is already available in-house; he stressed that it must be interestign and authentic.

Dan Eischen explained that there are different channels of engagement and different types of content for social media, with Facebook playing one role in a Social Media strategy. In traditional marketing, there are three stages: awareness, consideration and sale: the content for each stage needs to be different and needs to be inspirational. Stories and memories are a very good way to connect with people. He advised that Facebook should be used as a "touch-point" which then directs people to other sources, e.g. Luxair's travel blog which has more detailed content.

He also reviewed a number of different campaigns, both recruitment and promotional, as well as games and competitions. He also stated that the more touch-points and the more channels you have, the more focussed the social media campaigns need to be.

Dirk also mentioned the need for developing social media guidelines for staff which can be crucial in brand management. He also touched on location-based advertising, interest-based advertising, etc., on Facebook. He also showed how Facebook can be used to increase reach and gain more visibility. He explained that they use Facebook advertising for sales messages primarily.

The next AMCHAM Lunchtime Workshop will be held in the autumn on the topic of Twitter.

Photos by Geoff Thompson (L-R): Dan Eischen, CEO at Interact; Dirk Ebbighausen, AVP Online Sales & Digital Transformation at Luxair Group