E-Marketing Associates

Periodic Table of the Elements of Social Media

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 30th, 2011

Are you ready to dig into the science behind social media? As demonstrated through the periodic table below, social media is an interconnected network of platforms or elements that are regularly mixed together to create a variety of social formulas that are used by people throughout the world. Within the social sphere, each formula represents the combination of platforms used to receive and/or push out information of every day news, events and opinions. And just like the chemical compounds we learned about in chemistry, each combination differs in terms of availability, reactivity and functionality.

As you can see, this particular interpretation of the periodic table of social elements is created in an easy to read format so that it can be used by both social media beginners and experts alike to learn or teach others the basics of the social sphere, from bookmarking sites to blogs.

 

 

I have determined that my social media equivalent of H2O is Fb2MaTw because it is a combination that I can’t live without. What is your H2O equivalent?

Categories: Blog,Facebook,Social Media — Tags: , , , , , ;

Why it’s Time to Take a Ride on the Social Side of Life

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 28th, 2011

Just when I thought last week was going to be another typical week, early Wednesday morning I was given tickets to watch a very thought provoking interview with social media sensation and author of The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk. With over 865,000 Twitter followers, a million dollar business and two New York Times best sellers, this outspoken, well respected visionary definitely has a message or two to share with the rest of the world. Vaynerchuk is a funny, outgoing, no BS type of guy, and during his interview he offered business tips, told a couple of real life stories and gave his perspective on the social evolution taking place today.

Although the entire interview was filled with insightful information, I formed a list of what I thought were the most valuable takeaways of the event.

Listen to the Conversation
With social media, conversations are no longer hidden behind closed doors so it’s important to take advantage of this by listening to what people are saying. Vaynerchuk pointed out that social media gives businesses the unique ability to gain in-depth insight into individual customers’ interests to help build relationships on a more personal level, increasing loyalty and positive sentiment. On the other hand, he also pointed out that since this platform is so open, companies that are not listening will likely lose out on business at some point or another if they simply continue ignoring their customers. Check out the story of Heather Armstrong and Maytag.

Give Content that People Actually Care About
Brands that succeed in social media don’t push out the same messages that are found on traditional outlets. Most people use social platforms to view information that can’t be found on billboards, magazines and television, so don’t be a commercial. For example, as a way to gain awareness for his wine shop, the Wine Library, Vaynerchuk finds wine related questions being asked through Twitter and answers them. He doesn’t try to add a plug about his shop, he just responds with the truth. Sounds simple, right? That’s because it is! The important guidelines to follow when posting content onto the social web is to keep it accurate, valuable and meaningful otherwise you will just turn people off.

Don’t Dismiss Change
Change is inevitable so rather than fight it, why not embrace it? Before heading into this topic, Vaynerchuk first expressed his understanding toward businesses that don’t like change, especially those doing extremely well within the status quo. But then he stressed that complacency won’t stop change from happening. His prime example was Borders Bookstore. Rather than embrace the e-commerce platform in the late 90s, Borders’ executives decided to stick to brick-and-mortar and let some startup, called Amazon, take their chances. Well, I think we all know how that story ends. To further express his point, Vaynerchuk pointed out that social media has the potential to move faster and with more force than the dot com boom so holding out or accepting it halfheartedly can only have detrimental effects on any business in the long run.

If this interview is any indication of the advice that can be found in Vaynerchuk’s new book, then it is a definite must read! As you can see, now more than ever is the time to look into your opportunities and take a ride on the social side of life before it passes you by.

Categories: Blog,Social Media,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , , ;

How Much Social Influence Does Your Hotel Have?

David Sotelo by
on March 23rd, 2011

With the explosion of social media comes an explosion of questions and how to understand the vast amounts of data. Hotels like any other business always want to know where they are at in terms of their social media efforts and influence. Returns on investment metrics are critical but how do you know where you stand socially compared to your closest competitors? I want to discuss a couple of helpful tools to help shed some light on your hotels social influence and how other hotels stack up against you.

Klout

Klout is a tool that measures your overall influence across the internet. You get a score 1-100 and the higher your Klout score the more social influence you have. How do they do this? They do use algorithms that look at the behaviors over different social networks. They actually use over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. It’s about how often you tweet on twitter and post on your Facebook but yet it’s not just about that. They don’t care about the number of friends and followers or the number of tweets or status updates you have. They do care about who responds to your messages and how often your messages will generate a response. They are constantly improving the scales of measurement to address issues such as inflated scores or “robot” tweets and “chit chat” that show your are actively tweeting but does not necessarily reflect how social influential you are. For a full list of how they achieve a Klout score you can check out their website.

Social Mention

Social mention is a social media search and analysis platform that takes user generated content from across the web into a single stream of information. They also monitor and search through many social websites including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Google and many more. If you want a thorough real time analysis as well social media alerts then you will want to use social mention. You can receive alerts about your company, brand, marketing and social media efforts as well as “mentions” across the social landscape. They have several tools but some of the more prevalent ones are sentiment, strength, passion and reach. Sentiment is a ratio that tells you the mentions that are positive to those that are negative. Strength tells you the likelihood that your brand or company is being discussed in the social media space. Passion is a score that measures how often people repeat or talk about your brand. Reach measures your range of influence by taking the number of unique authors mentioning your brand divided by the total number of mentions.

Your social presence is obviously important if you are starting or have an ongoing social media campaign but knowing where your company and brand stand within the social web is also critical. Return on investment can tell you how your company’s efforts are performing but what about your competitors or how about how you rank amongst everybody else.  These tools can be looked at as a measurement of social success or failure for your hotel and how and if your marketing campaigns and social presence is growing.

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HSMAI Los Angeles March Luncheon: The New Culture of Media

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 21st, 2011

Recognizing the rise in digital marketing, HSMAI Los Angeles organized an eye opening March luncheon that introduced local hoteliers to 21st century marketing tactics. The informative event focused on the new culture of media and featured a remarkable panel of distinguished speakers from a number of well known companies, including Living Social Escapes, Hautelook, Travel Ticker, and Los Angeles Magazine. The wide variety of viewpoints allowed for a stimulating discussion and broad outlook into popular marketing and advertising opportunities of today.

Getting Social with Living Social Escapes
Before the event began, I had a chance to visit each panelist’s booth to have an in depth conversation on how they can help hoteliers bring in new business. Even though every group had compelling information, I was particularly intrigued by Living Social Escapes’ business model and product offering.

In order to compete in this relatively new market, Living Social Escapes differentiates itself with a selling platform that gives the customer more options and the hotel a greater chance at a higher return. Unlike most flash sale travel websites, upon checkout Living Social Escapes gives its customers a set range of dates (For example: Valid for stays from now through June 30, 2011), and it is up to the purchaser to call the hotel to schedule his/her days of stay. At first the extra phone calls may seem like extra work to the hotelier, but in reality this method typically leads to extended days of stay. Most travelers want to get away for longer than a night, so by offering a large number of 1 or 2 day stay deals, the flash sale website opens the door for the hotel to sell extra nights at their usual rate and with their usual return. In addition, marketing through this platform, along with other flash websites, will also help hotels build awareness and attract a new audience.

Variety is the Spice of Life
Although there were differing opinions across the board on almost every topic, the one piece of advice that all of the panelists could agree upon is that variety is the key to a successful marketing plan. They all emphasized how important it is for hoteliers to embrace change and build a presence in both traditional and digital advertising because travelers are not all found in one specific spot. Additionally, the program successfully gave the audience the resources needed to design an integrated strategy specifically tailored for their property to help earn new revenue, new customers and a new bottom line.

Categories: Blog,HSMAI,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , , ;

Foursquare Looking to Lead the Way with Location Based Services

David Sotelo by
on March 16th, 2011

So we all know and use Foursquare right? No I don’t mean the ballgame we played as a kid. Foursquare is a location based social networking service that seems to be emerging as a legitimate and useful tool for both small and large business. I only say this because not too long ago it seems like it was a toss up if location based services were going to continue to exist at all. There are other location sites that provide similar services such as Gowalla, Facebook places, Loopt and of course Yelp. Foursquare though has managed to separate themselves from the pack. They have teamed up with American Express and started a pilot program that will offer exclusive location based offers to Foursquare users to hopefully spur sales and begin cultivating relationships with the growing number of young foursquare users.

So basically American express customers register their card through Foursquare and that will allow them to receive offers and specials from other Foursquare business merchants. The customers who shop at these merchants and spend $5 with their Amex card will receive both a notification and credit of another $5 to their account . It’s a win for the merchants as well since they will see an increase in sales.  This is a much needed step to reach out to the generation of younger and online savvy buyers. I don’t think this is a bold move since a large part of a company’s success today and in the future will be dependent upon how effectively they can reach this generation of digital shoppers.

Foursquare has been partnering up with quite a few name brands and seems to be focused with product development and less on revenue. Its shows with their updates and number of users they have. They have gone from under 500,000 to over 7 million within the past 12 months. There is a wealth of data to be discovered about the consumer behavior of location based services and Foursquare look like they want to take lead at least for now.

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Gogobot: Travel Planning Just got More Social

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 14th, 2011

For travelers that are fed up with eating at all the wrong restaurants, hanging out at all the worst spots and missing out on all the most awe-inspiring sights, Gogobot is here to help you get the advice you need before venturing into a new destination.

Gogobot is a social trip planning website that integrates travel information with the best of social networking, making the destination discovery experience simple and fun. Utilizing popular social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, this travel friendly site is a one stop spot to get all the advice you need from the individuals you can relate to the most. The creators believe that the best advice comes from people you can trust – people like you and me.

Ga-Ga for Gogobot
With TripAdvisor’s recent Facebook integration, I thought that it would be difficult for any social travel planning website to gain some traction, but Gogobot’s unique features has earned the startup the spotlight in current technology and hospitality news. One of the most enticing features of this new website is its ability to create a customized travel guide for your desired destination. For example, if you’re heading to Miami and want advice on where to stay, what to see or where to eat, you can easily post a question on Gogobot for your online network of friends to answer. It doesn’t end there. After your friends respond, the sophisticated site will take every suggestion and automatically create a categorized list of all the recommended hot spots, including hotels, restaurants and bars. Additionally, the guide will also include pricing, maps and pictures, making the final decision of where to go a painless and easy task.

Popular Review Websites of Today, Look Out!
Lately, there has been a lot of media coverage on the common misuse and abuse of popular travel review websites, like TripAdvisor, making these sources a little less trustworthy in the public’s eye. That being said, this is a good time for Gogobot to come out. The social aspect of this site adds faces, profiles and real connections to the mix, making recommendations feel more real and relevant. It’s still too early to say whether the social media travel planing craze will catch on or not, but if it does, Gogobot will likely find itself near the top of the list.

Categories: Blog,Social Media — Tags: , , , , ;

Blogger Outreach: PR of the Social Media Century

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 10th, 2011

When most people discuss social media, they typically bring up Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter or YouTube. Although these channels are important, there is one very promising, yet underutilized, online resource that is missing from this list – the Blogosphere!

I’m not here to talk about writing a blog, but instead to discuss the importance of outreach. Blogger outreach, better known as the PR side of social media, involves creating, building and maintaining relationships with the most influential bloggers within your industry. You may not be aware of it, but these valuable interactions can help you expand your reach and build awareness. Of course each blog ranges in daily visits, but the blogosphere is one of the primary destinations for users looking for news, information, and reviews.

People Read Blogs
With the Internet becoming such an integral element of the public’s everyday lives, businesses are constantly trying to find new ways to reach their desired customer base through this platform. And with this change, PR of today has moved beyond magazines, newspapers and television, and into the online world of blogs, social networks and lifestyle websites. According to an eMarketer study from 2010, 50% of U.S. Internet users read blogs, and this number is expected to increase to 60% by 2014. As seen through these stats, the general public is slowly moving away from traditional print for their news to online resources, particularly blogs.

If you’re wondering how outreach can help, there are already a number of businesses that have formed valuable relationships with popular bloggers within their industry and utilized their influence to help build awareness and boost business. For example, the BALSAMS Grand Resort Hotel in New Hampshire ran a winter campaign with two well known Canadian social media travel stars, Alex & Luke. The travelers used their own website, along with the property’s social channels to share their stories, mishaps and adventures at the resort. As a result of the publicity received through the campaign and outreach, the hotel nearly sold out during their opening week of the winter season for the first time in years and now receive two times the amount of traffic to their website compared to before.

Be Real. Bloggers will know when you’re not.
Keep in mind that bloggers are real people just like you and me, so don’t treat them like billboard space in Times Square. That being said, there are a few things to remember when venturing into the ever evolving blogosphere. First, it’s important to perform in-depth research into the writers that provide the most opportunity for your business. The less relevant a blogger is to your brand, the lower the chances are that they’ll be interested in promoting your business. Makes sense, right? Second, you want to make sure you abide by any rules set by the FTC or any other governing body because getting in trouble is hardly ever fun. And most importantly, be real! Bloggers will know when you’re faking it and it is unlikely that they’ll use their influence to promote a person, business or product that they do not believe in themselves.

By no means am I saying that the blogosphere is the only place to be. If anything, I think that blogger outreach should be mixed within an integrated social media and/or PR campaign because it is a powerful resource for almost any brand looking to find the best places to reach their customer base.

Categories: Blog,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , ;

Google gives Hotels an Opportunity to Loosen the Chain from OTAs

David Sotelo by
on March 7th, 2011

Online Travel Agencies or OTAs as they are commonly referred are often looked at as the necessary evil for hotels. On one hand they help generate a lot of business for hotels and generate traffic to their sites but on the other they can charge large commission rates and fees that can seriously take away from the hotel’s revenue. This constant leveraging of power back and forth between the OTAs and hotels has been going on for some time and they still seem for the most part to be a thorn in each other sides. Google has been getting their feet wet in travel search for quite a while now. They have been working with a company called Pegasus solutions and have a program called Google Hotel Price Ads  that is designed to help hotels capture their bookings directly on their websites. I wanted to go over what this new service is about and how it enables hotels to become less dependent upon online travel agencies.

Traditionally when you look for a hotel on Google maps you might type in the keywords “hotels in new orleans” It will bring up a map with pins for each hotels on the right and on the left you will see a vertical list of hotels and you can click on the price and you will get a different prices to choose from that are integrated with various ota’s but not the hotel directly. If you click on the OTA’s price it will take you directly to the OTA’s site to complete the booking. The hotel gets the business but they take a hit on revenue by the ota for the booking. Google will be using their metasearch functionality and integrate it with Pegasus technology to help hotels capture all those booking directly on their websites. It will enable the hotels direct pricing to show right along with the online travel agency. Accurate rates are still a big issue for hotels when it comes to travel search so we will see how this will affect it. This may not sound like a big deal but it’s a start and it does create a more level playing field. You do need to be a part of Pegasus central reservation system but their partnership with a powerhouse like Google should make that less of an issue.

Google always seems to step on somebody’s toes while making someone else very happy. They will continue to increase their advertising empire with their increased presence in travel search so it only makes sense to understand how they change the game up because it’s going to happen.

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Google Attempts to Improve the Quality of Search Results

David Sotelo by
on March 2nd, 2011

Google has recently made some changes to their search engine that will affect 12% of all search queries. This is a pretty significant change that is affecting both small and large businesses in the ongoing battle to reach the top of the search results page. The goal is to raise the quality of content to the top and rankings of high quality websites and lower the rankings of lower quality websites. What exactly defines a low quality and high quality website? Well to put it in simplified terms a low quality website would be what many call “content farms” or sites and companies that have writers come up with content designed to satisfy Google’s algorithms but offer little in terms of relevant and useful content for the user. The idea here is that they can make money off advertising revenue they charge because they are so highly ranked. This is a win for them but a loss for the user.

This is turning out to be a pretty big deal because unlike the past most companies rarely saw changes in their rankings but many companies for better or for worse or seeing big changes. For example one man claims to have lost 40% of his traffic in one day compared to Google’s old algorithm. Sistrix GmbH is a research firm based in Germany that has just recently did a study on a number of websites and how their search results have changed. Wisegeek is one company from the study that has seen its traffic take a hit based off of the new algorithms. Ezine Articles.com, Mahalo.com, and TheFind.com are other notable companies that were included in the study that experienced lower search engine rankings. On the flipside there are plenty of sites that have seen their content receive higher rankings. Target, Wal-Mart, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google’s own You Tube have all seen their rankings move higher since the new changes. There has and always will be both sides to the coin and many of the companies that experienced lower rankings acknowledge that they may be hit hard in the short term they quickly move back due to their quality content.

This is a change that is nothing new for Google. They are always fine tuning their algorithms and trying to make improvements in search, this one just happens to be one of their bigger changes. A healthy web ecosystem is vital to our daily lives. I am definitely for improvements in search engines that will lead to better content. We are heavily dependent upon it to help us access relevant and useful information as efficiently as possible. Google is king of the hill when it comes to search engine use so like it or not if you want to your business succeed you need to learn their rules how to play by them. Let’s just hope their rules turn out to be the right ones.

 

 

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Why You Should Think Twice Before Giving that Article a Facebook “Like”

Jacquelynn Mendez by
on March 1st, 2011

Web surfers who can’t help but addictively click the Facebook “Like” button every time it appears may want to start thinking twice before giving a link or article their thumbs up.

In a vast effort to improve the user experience and bring more traffic to publishers’ websites, the popular social network is rolling out with a major update that will give each “like” more prominence on the Facebook platform. Now every time you give a story your “thumbs up,” a headline, blurb and thumbnail will display on your wall and on your network’s newsfeed updates, essentially eliminating the need for the Facebook “Share” button.

For those of you who don’t know, in the past whenever a user “liked” an article, only a link would appear within the newsfeed, which typically goes unnoticed. But with this new change, users will likely put more thought into the stories they “like,” otherwise they will run the risk of annoying Facebook friends with their constant inflow of noticeable newsfeed updates, which can lead to a one way ticket to unfriending. Although, I don’t think too many people would take it that far.

Win/Win Situation
I’m not always on board with all of Facebook’s updates, but this particular change is great because not only should it bring higher quality articles to the Facebook platform and more traffic to websites, but it will also end the confusion between the functionalities of the Like button over the Share button, making it a win for both publishers and users.

So what do you think…are you happy with the new Like button update?

Categories: Blog,Facebook,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , , ;