5 Questions...with Gregg Tilston

Gregg Tilston is the SEO and Social Media Manager in Canada for Flight Centre; a leading retailer of travel products with 1,700 shops in 8 countries. Gregg believes Social Media, Word of Mouth, and Face-to-Face marketing activities are relatively inexpensive ways to increase market share and brand awareness, build communities, and crowdsource for evangelists, ideas, content, and customer service. Gregg’s sales and marketing experience range from startups to connecting Fortune 500 sized companies with organizations and government agencies across North America.

Most recently, Gregg came up with the concept for BestTravelJobEver.com. Now launched, BestTravelJobEver.com gives people the opportunity to earn their share of $50,000 in clothing, video gear, and travel to far off destinations.

With introductions out of the way let's get on with this week's 5 Questions... 

What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?

Connecting people with Flight Centre (the company and brand). For example, I love reaching out to someone who’s made a comment (good or not so good) about Flight Centre on Twitter, engaging them directly, and then seeing/reading their surprise that an organization the size of Flight Centre would respond - with personality. I honestly don’t understand why more companies aren’t doing it; there is huge opportunity and potential ‘in them thar hills’.

One of my favourite Flight Centre engagements so far has to be with @theNDM which you can read here. 

Do you have any success start-up tips for people wanting to create a name for themselves in your industry?

To me the best way to build credibility is to listen, engage, and share as much content as possible.

It is so easy with tools like Twitter search, RSS feeds and Google Blog Search to listen to what people are saying about your company and/or your business at large. Search for your company/brand and terms associated to your business and then provide relevant information and answers. Too many people think ‘this is my IP and I need to keep it to myself’ when the opportunity at hand is to become the expert in the field that people look to.

At Flight Centre we have a wealth of travel knowledge locked up in the heads of our retail Flighties (noun for someone that works at Flight Centre). Instead of keeping that information close to our chest we use the Flight Centre Travel Blog, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, BluBrry, iTunes, and a few dozen other social channels along with syndicating to services like fpinfomart.ca to get our content and links anywhere and everywhere. In the end the content and links point back to our site and the Flightie/expert who wrote it. 

In your opinion why is Toronto a hotbed for cool tech start-ups?

I think one of the main things we have going for us here in Toronto is our sheer size and thus talent pool. When you look at the diverse backgrounds you realize how many incredible ideas and points of views we have to draw upon. Having had the privilege of attending various BarCamps across North America, PodCampTO last year blew my mind in terms of the amount of knowledge; not just the presenters but (more importantly) all the attendees sharing ideas. That said, I’m not suggesting that teams from smaller towns/cities can’t come out with killer solutions – just look at the gang from ConceptShare up in Sudbury. 

What's your favourite tech toy and social media site and why?

One of the coolest toys I’ve seen of late has to be the Wibiya toolbar (which we just implemented for the FlightCentre.ca site relaunch). The way it integrates your social channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, GetSatisfaciton), demonstrates your social media presence, helps build/grow your community, and facilitates communication from anywhere you want on your blog/site is incredible. 

Who would you say is one of Toronto's social media/tech stars and why?

In terms of an individual I would probably say Dave Fleet because he provides a lot great information (which I can use) and engages. Oh and Saul Colt because he makes me laugh and teaches me new things everyday.

In terms of companies, I love the way Freshbooks delivers customer service via social media channels, you can’t help but be impressed with the incredible growth of Viigo, and I really like the team approach the Molson gang take.