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Jo Foxall – Marketing Manager, Traveline Cymru

This year, Cardiff played host to the annual Traveline UK conference. The theme for the event was Social Media and transport professionals from across the UK travelled to the Radisson Blu Hotel in the capitol to take part in workshops on the subject delivered by expert partners, Spindogs and Capital Law.

Traveline is a UK wide public transport information service delivered through websites, contact centres and mobile applications across the UK. Customers rely on Traveline to provide accurate, up to date information on public transport services including bus, coach, rail and they also provide information on car share, walking and cycling too.

In recent years, the use of social media in the transport industry has become more popular, particularly during times of disruption and inclement weather. Traveline and other transport bodies are taking to Twitter in particular to deliver instant information to customers to inform of delays and cancellations.

It was deemed sensible that people delivering information in this way in the Traveline community should take part in some formal training in tools and measurement and the legal aspect including protection and pitfalls. Host region, Traveline Cymru knew exactly who to call, Spindogs!

Traveline Cymru have worked with Spindogs for a number of years on all things digital and have taken part in their social media training on a number of occasions, learning something new every time. Claire Swindell is our go to social media guru and the advice she has given over the years has helped us develop our social media strategy into a robust delivery mechanism for travel information in Wales.

The event was well attended with other Traveline regions represented and also partner organisations such as First Group, SEWTA and local authorities from across the UK. Presentations were also given by National Rail Enquiries, NEXUS and Traveline Cymru who gave the good, the bad and the ugly of social media in the industry.

Attendees appeared to thoroughly enjoy the event and many requests were made following the day for copies of the presentations, so people were obviously keen to understand more and share the information with colleagues. Hopefully this will start a trend of other transport professionals stepping their social media presence up a gear in time for this year’s forecast snow!

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