Carlota Pico recently met with Ayoub El Mamoun, who manages the global social media team at Skyscanner. He’s responsible for aligning the company’s content strategy across multiple regional audiences, and maintaining a consistent brand voice worldwide. In this interview, he discusses the importance of communication, user-generated content, localization and partnerships, and provides insight into the future of social media in the travel industry.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on our YouTube channel, listen to the podcast on Apple and Spotify, and read our recap below.

Key takeaways

• Skyscanner acquires and strengthens customer relationships through several channels, but social media and community management are especially vital.

• User-generated content adds authenticity and diversity, and can help you celebrate your community by highlighting the quality content created by loyal fans of your brand.

• Localization is key to Skyscanner’s strategy; they rely on local team members and native speakers to ensure that what they publish is relevant to each specific market. This makes international experience incredibly valuable for managers like Ayoub.

• The coronavirus pandemic will change where and how people travel, and Skyscanner aims to be a reliable source of information as its customers navigate this new world.

• In the future, social media platforms may converge into a single feed. People are moving their activity to closed groups and private channels—and brands are likely to follow.

• Travel is a very personal thing; you need to hear the right message from the brands you’re booking with.

Social media is constantly changing, and it can be hard to keep up—but it also presents an opportunity for you to lead the way and be an example for other brands.

Rapid-fire recs

What’s an app or tool that you can’t work without?

We recently started using Zapier for automation and integration. It helps us to connect different tools like Slack, Google Docs and Google Sheets, and makes us more efficient as a team.

See also: Top 10 apps for content and marketing professionals

A marketing influencer who you follow?

I follow a lot of influencers who are specialized in social and digital marketing. Neil Patel creates a lot of content about Facebook, Instagram and paid social media. His content is amazing, and has helped me a lot during my career.

See also: 8 inspiring content and marketing influencers to follow

A valuable resource, event or group?

I attended Social Media Week London last year, which gave me the opportunity to meet so many people in the field, and exposed us to all the great work that’s being done by brands on social and digital. I will definitely try to attend it again this year if it’s not postponed. 

See also: 7 online networking groups for content marketers on Facebook & LinkedIn

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Connect with Ayoub and Carlota on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Melissa Haun, a freelance content creator based in Lisbon.

To see the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.