When using social media for marketing it is not about broadcasting - it's about engaging. The most successful campaign is the one that engages and activates the most people to become the brand's ambassador.
The Radisson Blu hotel brand with hotels in over 200 locations world-wide has started such a campaign. It seems to have started mid-May but is reaching it's tipping point these days and is spreading fast.
It's actually a very simple competition. They are giving away "the greatest holiday in the world", probably inspired by the best job in the word. And the greatest holiday on Earth is 365 free nights at any Radisson Blu hotel in the world that the winner can use over the next five years. All you have to do to participate is signing up and telling the world why you should win.
It's then up to the users to get as many people as possible to vote for them but each person can vote once every day. The one with the most votes at the end of the competition on July 24th will be the winner of the 365 free night at any Radisson Blu. Simple and effective. Last Sunday night about 1500 people had signed up and now, on Wednesday, there are about 3000 people competing. And those 3.000 people are now all actively promoting their spot in the competition and the hotel brand at the same time. Not bad!
To encourage people further Radisson has enabled sharing options for twitter, facebook and a number of other social networks and lists ideas on how people can promote themselves offline. One important thing is lacking though, which is a badge to put on a blog that automatically updates the ranking and encourages people to vote.
My wife signed up for the competition and is trying to win us and our 5 kids a few (ok, not a few, a bunch) of nights at the Radisson Blu hotels to use for the next five years. You see, since the kids are five, we actually need 3 rooms for each night! That has made impossible for us to travel the whole family together in Europe - or beyond, unless we rent a house or an apartment and stay there. So this is our opportunity to get more mobile and show our kids more of the world.
I'll be pulling a few tricks from my hat in the days ahead to help my wife win this competition and the first thing I'm going to do, is sharing. I'm going to share some of those nights with other people and for a start, I've decided to pick one person who encourages his/her followers to vote for us and if we win, reward him/her with two nights at the Radisson Blu in London during the 140conf in October. Make sure you include the link: http://bit.ly/a2AbeP and the hashtag #5elves so that people can vote and I can track your tweet :) It can be something like:
If they win, they're going to give away a hotel room for the #140conf in London, so start voting http://bit.ly/a2AbeP #5elves
or whatever else you can think of and find fitting :)
I will then list up all those who tweeted and if we win, one lucky one will get to join us for two nights (you get a separate room for two - so you can bring a friend) at the Radisson Blu in London during 140conf on October 26th! (depending on availability)
Let the games begin!
Hjörtur
(This is a guest post from Andy Hayes, managing director for Travel Online Partners.)
So, if you’re reading this then you probably have a website or “online presence” (cue buzzer noise) where you market your business. If you don’t have a website, then you’ve totally missed the technology shift of the century, so please stop reading now and go get one.
Websites are fantastic – they’re good for consumers and they’re good for business. Consumers can browse your products and services, hassle free, and comparison shop in an environment that’s on their terms. They’re good for business too: a website is a 24x7 sales workhorse, always putting your best foot forward and providing consumers easy access into your marketing channel.
Or at least that is the idea. A lot of small business websites are really bad not very good. Some of them are downright awful. Here are two of the many reasons why.
Your Website is Built for Everybody
One of the basic tenants of small business marketing is having a clear persona of your ideal customer – in my view, into such detail that you could give them a name and hair colour. Yet, most websites are built for everybody: Joe Bloggs, Jane Bloggs, John Doe….You use language that your customer’s don’t understand, you have images that do not resonate with them, and worst of all: you fail to convince those website visitors that your product or solution solves the problem they have. Wasn’t that the idea of having a website in the first place?
Everything on your website should be written for somebody special. Not everybody. Everybody doesn’t care.
Your Website is a Technology Showcase
Did your web designer talk you into some fantastic flashing widgets? How about that 5 minute video I have to sit through before I can get my question answered? (oh – wait, nevermind – there’s a skip button hidden here in the corner I didn’t see). Oh, and here are those fold-down menus showing me the hundreds of pages that you have to describe what exactly it is that you can do for me. Fabulous!
For the techno geeks, that is. For your special customer, the one I mentioned previously, they didn’t come to your website to experience your technical prowess. They came here to get a question answered. [Note: web designers – you are excused and are allowed to be slightly show off.] Get all of that fluff and junk out of that way that is stopping them from deciding whether or not you answer their question or take care of the problem they have.
It should be effortless to get into your website and get around. No auto-start videos, no mandatory full-screen flash animations, and pages of advertisements before your content. Take a minute to declutter your menu, declutter your sidebar, and while you’re at it, have a fresh look at that sales copy. Oh, and if I don’t understand or have technical issues, is your contact information prominently displayed on every page?
Websites are an awesome marketing tool. Well, they should be. Is yours?
Andy Hayes is the managing director for Travel Online Partners, a travel online marketing firm. They offer a popular website review service - and they’re also writing a new eBook, Why Your Website S***s. Go, subscribe now.
Iceland has got enormous publicity in the last weeks, and pretty much all of it negative. Beside the financial difficulties and disputes with the UK and the Netherlands, the Eyjafjallajokull eruption caught the eye of the world by grounding all air traffic in Europe - outside of Iceland (yes, believe it or not, while Europe was shut down all airports where open in Iceland).
The president gave some interviews warning authorities and airlines abroad that this was not a unique event and a much larger volcano was expected to erupt any time. This is true, but this is not nearly as dangerous or as much of a catastrophe as the media tend to put it. Even though the mountain is bigger it may have much less impact on air traffic, and it is definitely not the end of the world as some media has been indicating (named after a small dog-like animal).
So the government of Iceland had a meeting this morning and decided to dedicate some 3 million dollars to restore Iceland's image and get back all the lost bookings - and more! People seem to fear coming to Iceland now, thinking they will be in immediate danger of exploding or risk being stranded in Iceland. The truth is, there's no risk except you are just by the volcano and since the mountain is located in Iceland, at least one of four international airports will always be open. The ash can only blow one direction at the time ;) You're therefore much more likely to be stranded in Europe than in Iceland in case of an eruption.
The government plans to spend the 3 million dollars on not only traditional advertising, but also online advertising - even social media. My thought is that we should not spend but maybe a tiny little fraction on advertising. We should rather spend it on events, initiatives and different kind of publicity. Something like a science project contest between 8. grade classes in the UK where one class gets an all-inclusive science expedition to Iceland. Or inviting 10 travel bloggers on a trip of a lifetime. So I'm asking you, if you had 3 million dollars to spend on publicity for a small country with a big bad name, what would YOU do?
Hjörtur
Image from Reuters/Lucas Jackson
Millions of passengers have been stranded unable to fly to or from airports in Europe. As this obviously has got huge implications and inconveniences for people and companies, and specially the flight industry, this also is an opportunity for alternative travel companies.
Destination offices have been offering packages and I know that VisitReykjavik offered stranded tourists in Reykjavik a citycard with access to several museums and attractions to "kill the extra time" they had in the city. Some hotels have been filled with stranded tourists while others have not gotten cancellations. Many have been losing money but many have been creative in cooking up offers and incentives to minimize the losses or even make some extra bucks on the whole situation, something that seems to get mixed reactions from the public.
I would like to hear more stories about how people in the industry have reacted to the situation and what the feedback has been. Did you do something to make the best of the situation? Did it work well or did it backfire. What's your story?
Tell us in the comments below and answer our twitter poll: http://twtpoll.com/zp180a
One of the big worries companies have regarding social media is who should be the face of the company. Should it be the CEO? Should the marketing department run it? Or the PR department?
GM's Fastlane blog decided to use the managers of different
departments in the company. Not just from marketing or pr, but also from the
production team, the design team, all of the departments. A company is
always the sum of its employees so a company does have many faces, even though
they try to maintain a single, wrinkle free, cut-out-in-ivory face.
You should look at the face of the company as a mosaic. A face of many faces. Don't try to shut up your employees online. They're all on Facebook, Twitter and thousands of other communities and whether you like it or not, they're all spokespeople for your company.
So this is your job:
1. Make sure ALL your employees know what the face of the company should be. If you can't convince your own employees of what you want the company to represent in the minds of the public, how are you supposed to be able to convince your customers? Or let's rephrase that, how do you expect them to convince your customers of that?
2. Evangelize. Realize that a happy employee spreads good rumors and a good image about your company. Let's say you run a company with 25 employees. Those 25 employees are all but one on Facebook and have on average 250 friends. Their direct reach is therefore over 6000 people. Maybe 3.500 if we take into consideration that many of them know the same people. If you've got 250 employees we might be talking about 35.000 people they reach directly. That's a pretty powerful tribe you've got there. Don't shut it down, evangelize it.
3. Activate your employees by allowing them to be more active in the decision making. They're the people on the ground. Listen to them and integrate them in the company's decision making. That way, they will care for the company in a whole new way, because they feel they and their opinions really matter.
Have a happy employee meeting
Hjörtur
Follow me on twitter or become a fan of Marketing Safari on Facebook
Iceland has taken matter into her own hands. And I'm not talking about the nation this time, but the land it self. A volcano eruption started in Eyjafjallajokull just after midnight.
It's still only a minor eruption and is actually located just east of Eyjafjallajokull glacier, which makes it much less dangerous. That's good news for the tourist industry, as this might just become Iceland's new biggest attraction, conveniently located about 150 km east of Reykjavik with a hotel on location (Hotel Skogar)
Iceland's most popular hiking routeThe eruption is actually located on a 1 km long crack on Fimmvörðuháls, a popular hiking route between two volcanoes, Eyjafjallajokull and Katla in Myrdalsjokull (jökull means glacier in Icelandic). Katla volcano has three times erupted following an eruption in Eyjafjallajokull, in year 920, 1612 and 1921, and is a much larger and more dangerous volcano. Last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted, it lasted almost two years, from 1821 to 1823, so we might be looking at something "sustainable" that could attract tourists. But even though the eruption won't last long, the hot new lava will be an excellent addition to the experience for hikers and the headlines a good commercial, with the volcanic eruption in Iceland already topping Google trends and being CNN's most read news this morning.
The biggest danger for the tourism in Iceland during the eruption is the effect it can have on flights to and from Iceland. As it is not an eruption under a glacier it will have minimal effect. But if it moves and starts to erupt beneath either of the glaciers, the smoke becomes more dangerous and the flight ban zone around it will be enlarged.
You can see some fantastic images from Eyjafjallajokull and Fimmvorduhals on Flickr.
I'll be tweeting updates from the eruption and links to videos, images and news from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption on my twitter account.
Hjörtur
The PhoCusWright
bloggers summit was Thursday the 11th at ITB in Berlin. The day started with a
"town hall" meeting led my Philip Wolf, president of PhoCusWright,
where everyone could participate in discussions about the coming trends in the
social media environment. Quick surveys revealed that just about everyone reads
Kevin May's blog Tnooz and not a single person in the room admitted to using
Google Wave or Google Buzz.
Two workshops
were after lunch, the first one titled "Using Social Media to Boost the
Bottom Line". Kevin May was the moderator and panelists where Guido the
happyhotelier, Yen Lee from Uptake, Detlef Meyer from Heritage Consult and
Jonah Sigel from blog.planeteye.com.
Guido said that
he never watches the metrics from social media. He just isn't the metric guy.
For him it isn't about getting more guests, it's about getting better guests.
The hotel rooms sell themselves if people like him, plus, he gets guests to his
hotel who agree on what a hotel should offer. The relationship he has with some
of his guests is so strong that some of them even have keys to the hotel. Now
that's customer relationship management at the top level.
Yen Lee of UpTake
said they used the blog for two main purposes. One is to improve the content
which is good for both users and search engines, and the second is to aquire
more customers. "We spend a lot of money on social media even though we
can't proof the ROI. It just feels like the right thing to do." sain Yen.
While search is still crucial for the traffic and conversion, social media has
now become the primary channel for traffic for UpTake. The other panelists
agreed to that but Sigal reminded people that though social media had become
the primary channel, they still had number 2, 3 and 4 which should not be
neglected.
Kevin posted a
few twtpolls during the panel discussions which was a smart thing to do, though
I found the options incomplete and limiting.
The topic of the
second workshop was "Brand Management, Fighting Fires and Finding Fans
through social media". On the panel were Sam Daams from Travellerspoint,
Robert K Cole from rockcheetah.com , Claude Benard from hotelitour.com and Uwe
Frers from escapio.
Kevin May posted a poll for the audience during the panel, asking what were the most successful social media channels for improving brand recognition.
Many still fear
social media because of the negative effect it can have on your reputation.
It's important to have a social media disaster plan. Fast response to crisis is
crucial.
It's a principal
policy never to edit or delete a negative review, said Sam Daams of
Travellerspoint. Just react. "I don't think bad recommendations decline
conversion rate" Uwe Frerer added. "The question is just which hotel
gets the revenue"
The panelists in both the workshops seemed to agree on most things, which maybe made the discussion less interesting that they otherwise would be. You need oposite poles or some wild card into the panel to fire up some lively debates. People could at least see what direction to take in their social media efforts.
Hjörtur
Opportunities in Chaos
The PhoCusWright conference started
Wednesday with Philip Wolf's introduction where he was focusing on the
opportunities in CHAOS, an approach I like. While the chaos and recession the
hotel industry is going through it also forces us to rethink what we are doing,
look for new opportunities and eventually become better at what we do. Being
adaptive is crucial to survival.
The
investors on the travel investor panel with Gene Quinn was disappointing, as they mostly said they were
looking for something save and profitable when times are tough. Not quite in
the spirit of Philip Wolf's talk just before. Not much support there for
innovators in traveling.
Changes in search for the travel industry
Krista Pappas from Bing
was my favorite speaker at the conference with a clear message and something new
for me, the Bing visual travel search. So far it's only available in the
States, but we all look forward to the day it reaches other parts of the world.
Krista started with 5 lessons for the travel industry that are never repeated
to often, supported by a few famous cases:
* Be authentic
(the million dollar website - can't be repeated)
* Relentless
measurement and optimization (TripAdvisor)
* Be social
(Starbucks)
* Be
opportunistic and responsive (Aston Kutcher's million followers on Twitter)
* Ads are content
(Burger King's dump a Facebook friend for a burger)
Javier Gonzalez-Soria from Google Travel in Spain was a bit more reluctant to
share inside information from Google. When asked if they were planning on
following the same path as Bing in vertical search, he said that Google would
never start competing with its customers. He pointed out that YouTube had now
become the second most popular search engine in the world, which is a reminder
to all to check your optimization on that front.
Rick Seany from Farecompare.com had some very interesting numbers about
conversion:
* You increase
your conversion by 2-4% if you cut loading time by 1/2 a second.
* Ajax pages
convert 10-20% better to checkout then other types of pages
* The best time
to book a cheap plane ticket is at 3pm on a Tuesday. This is actually based on
a research of 5 years of data.
Rick also stated
that rich content pages (bloated pages) would be penalized by Google within few
months. What matters is
having a fast page, and content of value. Value counts, not quantity, and value
is precisely what Google is trying to deliver. So my advice is don't start
cutting down your content richest pages, as long as they provide value and
convert. Just do what ever you can to make them fast, effective and user friendly.
Where's the growth?
David Roche, president of Expedia's Hotels.com and Venere.com
shared a few perspective from his side of the industry, but despite last year
being the worst in the history of the hotel industry, online hotel bookings
experienced significant growth. The reason is simple. The consumer is always
price sensitie, but never as much as in a recession. And the consumer knows
where to shop for the best hotel prices.
When asked about
airfares and alternative income, he said that when it came to income, Expedia
was a hotel company. That's were the margin is.
CEO Matthew Goldberg from Lonely Planet explained their strategy and predictions
for the future. According to Goldberg the big themes of 2010 will be social
media, mobile platforms and contextual commerce, and plan to harness it all.
Currently 75% of their revenue comes from traditional guidebooks but Goldberg
expects this to change to 65% in the future. Not because it will decrease, but
because digital publications will grow that much faster. Goldberg was not
willing to sign off a technology that's been around for 500 years that easily.
Besides, paper guidebooks never run out of batteries.
The most
important thing to LP's strategy, according to Goldberg, is to be authentic.
Their role is to help people get the most out of their travel and they will
continue to do that, even though it means aggregating third party content - and
that party being a competitor.
We got a few short
talks as well, like Gregor van der Made, founder of re-ticket .com, Joost
Schreve from Everytrail.com and Jean Louis Richard from MASSIVEGOOD.com.
Overall, an
interesting day with some of the most influential people in the travel
industry. Norm Rose from PhoCusWright gave an enthusiastic talk about the
possibilities mobile phones, or mobile devices, are bringing to the travel
market. The crowd wasn't as enthusiastic, maybe still just seeing one big
jungle and waiting for someone to lead the way for the travel industry into the
world of mobile technology. It's great to see the open approach PhoCusWright
has to all the opportunities that are out there.
If you remember
something I'm forgetting or remember something differently, please share in the
comments below.
Hjörtur
