On what do you put the focus regarding consumer opinions and participation: quantity of quality?
The main idea is to generate quality consumer opinions, but depending on the platform and specific actions you might use, some times you can be interested in quantity to generate a viral action around it.

Which are your objectives as a community manager?
Encourage participation in your blog or community, motorize the buzz generated around your brand, provide solutions to travelers which are publishing issues or questions about your product or destination, and interact with other travel related blogs and communities

Which variables do I have to take in consideration when analyzing results of the strategy? (for example in Tourism: number of visits on a touristic website, bookings etc.)
Variables to measure your community performance can be wide, depending on the goal and objectives you establish while creating your community.
Usually you will measure the buzz generated around your brand/community, new links pointing to your website, and if you have properly tag your actions; you will be able to check if you had been able to generate sales through your social media actions.

Can you give me examples for a specific touristic message focusing on a community?
As there are many people who are testing the community, I have seen some message inviting me to participate in a community through drafts or promotions, but right now they are just exceptions.

Nowadays, “group-software systems” (e.g. Facebook) are the main tools for raising awareness towards a certain brand. Which social network are in your opinion the most important ones?
In Spain Facebook had become the most important social network, and it’s a great opportunity to expand your corporate identity, but we must be active in travel social networks like minube, trivago, hoobing, …

When do you think occurs more participation/activity in the community, before or after using a service/product (e.g. before or after traveling)?
Right now everyone is focus on participate in communities and blogs to reach users before they purchase; but there is a trend which I believe it will work better, to reach users after purchasing, offering new kind of services, content, tools and information to improve their quality service.
We can see this trend with hoteliers, which are launching communities for their fidelization programs.

What do you think? How much focus do companies put on this kind of marketing? (Estimation in %)
During this year, Spanish travel companies had started to invest in communities, and I expect the most of the travel agencies will have a position (internal or external) for social media manager or community manager.
Hoteliers are working also on this subject, and there are many properties which already have presence in communities, but usually is the manager or the marketing responsible the person who is taking care of this subject.

What do you think are the main advantages and disadvantages for companies by using this sort of marketing?
Travel companies had a long way in order to be able to take profit from this kind of strategies, but they have started in the right way, building communities and blogs to provide better user experience inside their loyalty programs.
Looks like Travel Agencies doesn’t know how to achieve a relevant position on this media, so right now they are just using them as another advertising platform, but this trend is going to change in a short time.

If you’re not comfortable with that, you can create a separate account. The President of my first company did that. Maybe use a middle initial? or something to make the two names different. My guess is that if you use a different email then Facebook won’t notice.

Do most people use their personal profiles to engage in professional networking on Facebook or do they use separate accounts? I think I may have read somewhere that Facebook only allows one account per person (although my brain may be playing tricks on me).

Any advice you can offer would be gratefully received.

- Martin