Social interactions are hugely influential on travel customers when they are looking a sorting out a holiday/trip, with recommendations from friends having more weight than a piece of advertising. This can also be thought of as your customers influencing their friends and effectively becoming ambassadors to your brand.

For the travel industry, the local aspect of SoLoMo is obviously important due to customers wanting to know information about where they are going or wanting to discover information once they are at the physical location. 1 in 3 searches done from mobile phones in 2011 had local intent, meaning that people are looking for information from their immediate area.

Back in September we said the 26% of the western population had a smartphone and that the number of people owning them was increasing by 3% each month. New predictions suggest that percentage of people owning smartphones will go beyond 50% in 2012. Add the fact that the mobile phone is one of the few personal possession that travel customers take on their holidays, you now have an extremely strong reason to engage with your customers on mobile devices.

As we look into 2012 and beyond we can see that travel customers are accessing information and sharing their experiences in real time from their location aware smartphones and tablets.

SoLoMo Strategy

Mobile websites and applications need to be robust, cater for all sizes of smartphone screens and have clear navigation. It is also important to has cross channel consistency because it is likely that visitors to your website might of been on your desktop site or seen your social media presence and will expect to navigate around your mobile site in a similar fashion to the desktop and for it to have the same aesthetics.

For local, the most important action is to make sure that all the location information about your hotels, attractions or destinations are correct. Without correct local information any strategy you implement will be immediately ineffective. Once all the geo-location information is correct then, thanks to location aware devices, your mobile website or application can access the user’s location in order to provide then with the most relevant information for their area. This could take the form of showing the user where your nearest hotel is, information about the local area or public transport information.

With a robust mobile website that can provide location based information the next step would be to integrate social functionality to allow users to easily share the information they have found or use services like Facebook connect to create a more personal mobile experience. Social media integration can go further than just sharing experiences, it can help users to ask for recommendations from their friends through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, rate a product.

Although we’ve talked briefly about SoLoMo as a whole package, they can also easily exist separately and paired together in order to achieve your business objectives. If you would like to discuss SoLoMo in more depth and how it can work for your organisation then please get in touch.

Tablet adoption by consumers has been on the rise since Apple launched the original iPad in 2010 and although they currently represent a small percentage of online browsing this study shows that, compared to smartphones and traditional computers/laptops, tablet users were the most valuable online customers in 2011.

During 2011 tablet visitors delivered an average conversion rate of 2.3%, which is considerably higher than the conversion rate from Smartphone visitors (0.6%). Traditional computer and laptop visitors still delivered the best conversion rating of the three, but at 2.5% the difference is minimal.

What makes tablets the most valuable of the three devices is the Average Order Value (AOV). Tablet visitors, on average, spent £79 ($123) per transaction, which is 54% higher than Smartphone visitors, who on average spent £51 (£80). The AOV from tablets was also 21% higher than that of traditional computers/laptops visitors, who spent an average £65 per transaction.

What tablets mean for online retailers

Despite representing the smallest percentage of total visitors to a website the study showed that the number of tablet visitors is rapidly increasing. The percentage of tablet visitor went from 1% to 4% during 2011 and the report A Portrait of Today’s Tablet User predicts that the number of users will increase a further 23% in 2012. The report also put the average tablet owner in the 18-34 age range and came from a household with above average incomes. So all together this means that some of your most affluent customers are accessing your website on their tablets and this trend is growing. It is also worth noting that mobile traffic to retail sites double in the same period.

So the retail sector must now consider the fact that a one-size fits all strategy to mobile optimisation might no longer be the best method.

“Mobile” must now be split into “Smartphone” and “Tablet” when it comes to a retail website and e-commerce website, due to tablet and smartphone visitors not having the same objectives when visiting the website. Tablet users are 4 times more likely to purchase than smartphone users and when they do they spend over 50% more, so their value is also not equal.

As tablet adoption increases retailers should look into how best to provide an engaging customer experience for tablet users. With an effective strategy a tablet optimised experience should generate a higher ROI, whether it’s a tablet optimised website or a native/hybrid app.

If you would like to discuss anything mentioned then please feel free to get in touch. You can also read the full Adobe Digital Marketing Insights report here.

As anyone within the Travel Industry will know there are seasonal peaks at January and then again in July. These are due to people first looking for early deals for their summer holiday and late deals on winter sun trips in January and then again in July/August with late summer and early winter deals. This pattern occurs in both the high street and online but research carried out by Hitwise has shown that online consumers are changing their habits and we are seeing that the peaks where people used to search for and booking holidays is, year on year, slowly being eroded to an even spread throughout the year.

By looking at online traffic from the Travel Industry for the past 3 year we can see how this change is happening.

The graph shows that the seasonal peaks in January and July/August have seen a decline in traffic, whereas the months running up to them have seen a year-on-year increase, with December experiencing the greatest amount of growth. This indicates that the Travel Industry is becoming less reliant on the seasonal peaks and if this trend continues, travel companies might have to adapt their digital strategy to accommodate this change.

This will involve shifting focus to capturing more customers outside of the traditional peaks, in particular during the months December, May and June where we can see the largest increases.

If you would like to discuss this trend and how it should change your digital strategy then please get in touch.

My first impression of the Google+ pages is rather an underwhelming one and I’m left questioning why we waited so long for this update. On the surface the new Google+ pages don’t appear to be any different from profile accounts and then after I played around with the new pages I also found out that the functionality isn’t that different either.

Here is a list of differences between Google+ Profiles and Pages from Google:

• Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned.
• Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
• The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
• Pages have the +1 button.
• Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.
• Pages can’t play games.
• Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’.
• Pages don’t receive notifications via email, text, or in the Google bar.
• Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device.
• Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location.

So the majority of differences is that Google+ Pages are restricted from using many of the Google+ functions but on the other hand they have a +1 button. It makes me wonder what has been done over the past few months and I can only hope that Google has a lot more up their sleeves for Google+ Pages.

Something I would like to see in the near future is the ability to customize the pages, much like how Google allow companies to do fun and exciting things with their YouTube Pages. Even just the ability to change the background would be welcome!

A feature that Facebook has that Google+ Pages desperately needs is the functionality to have multiple admins managing the page. As well as this we are again left frustrated by not having vanity URLs. Surely this isn’t too much to ask!

A nice feature Google have included is called Google+ Direct connect where users can search for Pages from their search box by adding a + at the start of their search to view the Google+ Page and the company or brand logo is shown in the drop down. Although this is a nice feature I’m unsure whether it will change how people search. Instead it would be better to have the logo appear without the need for the + or for the Google+ Page to appear in a promoted location somewhere in the SERPS, with some of it’s latest updates (this would involve being a verified account or more likely coming at a cost).

There is bound to be more on the way…..there has to be if brands are to embrace Google+.

View the KMP Digitata Google+ Page

Here we look at what’s been done, what we suspect might happen and what it all means for brands.

Update to OpenGraph vocabulary

A update to the OpenGraph system means that the current “Like” system could be ready for a major change. The current system of liking a page or a product is a good one keeping up to date about what you’re interested in and then sharing with peer but it didn’t always fit with certain products. The latest update will bring new vocabulary that will allow people to interact with content more creatively by not being restricted to just “Like”. In the future brands will be able to define the verb and the noun before their product or brand, making it possible to create activity updates such as:

• KMP Digitata “read” a “Book”
• KMP Digitata “Watched” a “Movie”
• KMP Digitata “Designed” a “Website”

So for a company that is about to launch a product they can let people announce that they “want” it, for example “KMP Digitata wants an iPhone5″,  and then once the product is launched the Facebook user can update their activity to “has” or “owns”. With the information this feature would provide brands can create focused updates targeted towards those who want and those who have the product. To those who “want” the product, updates can be targeted towards them containing information to entice them to purchase or special offers, whereas people who “own” wouldn’t be shown those updates and instead could be shown updates about the latest developments or fun things being done with the product.

Updated News Feed Structure

The news feed on users home screen now consists of multiple feeds. For a brands their updates still appear in the main feed but those who rely on the appearance of friends “Liking” a page in order to achieve more fans will be disappointed to hear that “Likes” no longer appear in the feed and instead appears in the Friends Activity ticker in the top right mean that the updates are buried deeper and harder to find. Although it means “Like” update will be a lot less visible we are believers that if you rely on the Like feature to attract more fans then your strategy is flawed and instead you should be actively engaging your fans to get them talking and truly sharing your news.

Although activity updates now appear in the top right of the home screen Facebook now recognises when multiple people are doing the same thing and promotes that activity to the top of the news feed. An example of this would be if a number of friends were listening to the same album or mentioning a movie, then it will now feature at the top of the news feed.

Focus on Engagement

The change to how Facebook promotes popular activities is a shift from trying to get more people on Facebook to trying to get people engaging with each other and the brands they are interested in. No longer will the focus be on how many people “Like” your page but instead it will be about how engaged your fans are with you. If you have 100,000 fans but only 1% of them actively comment or share your news then you will be less likely to be promoted in the news feeds then another brand that might only have 20,000 fans but 80% of which engage with them regularly.

Potential of Timeline

Timeline is designed to create an individual’s life story through their Facebook profile, where they are able to identify key points in their life, for an example of what Timeline is then watch the video below;

There was no official word on how Timeline will fit into Brand pages just yet, but if the design is applied to pages then brands will have the opportunity to express themselves creatively and create a page that features updates as usual but also build an engaging story to how the brand got to where they are now. A good example of how it could be used is by Coca-Cola who could set their brand designs over the past 125 years as a key point and so their Timeline would feature large images of each new design.

Increased Advertising Space

Facebook has played around with its measurement metrics to provide marketers with a larger premium ad format that although it’s not too noticeable to the end user it does provide more space for adverts. With this extra space Facebook will apply a similar system as the Sponsored Stories feature, so that adverts will display friends who have engaged with the brand presented. This will add validity to your Facebook adverts because people will see that their friends have also chosen to click on the advert or engage with the brand another way.

The demise of the Discussions Tab

Facebook alerted Page owners about the removal of the discussions tabs with a message saying “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall” despite AppData showing that there are 22 million monthly discussion users.
The problem with removing the Discussions Tab to focus on the wall is that the wall doesn’t provide the functionality to group comments around a single topic or archive them. Facebook did comment about the issues though, saying “We’ve removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content. Our goal is to help you can manage everything from one powerful place. Stay tuned”. Whether this means that discussions could return in another form or if the wall will receive new functionality we can’t be sure just yet but we are keeping a close eye on it.

What are your thoughts on these latest updates for brands? Leave us a comment below or tweets us at @KMPDigitata.

It is important to stay ahead of the curve to get the most out of your Facebook strategy. If you would like to discuss anything above or your digital strategy on a whole then please get in touch.

The potential of QR codes is huge, with their ability to blend together online and offline marketing but so many times I’ve got the feeling that during a marketing meeting someone piped up with the comment “QR codes are cool, maybe we could use them for something”, then they are shoehorned into a campaign where they don’t naturally fit. I believe this poor shoehorning method could be part of the reason for many people disliking QR codes.

The major issue behind QR codes is not their functionality, instead it’s the experience they provide after the user has scan the code and that is purely down the marketers. They are meant to provide an extra content that is otherwise unavailable in the format where the QR code is promoted.

The worst case I’ve ever seen of using QR codes in the image to the right, which has become quite a famous QR failure, where the QR code is used to provide the user with a code that they then have to write down and post to a physical address.

Other issues facing QR codes is that their designs are not the most attractive and that many Smartphone users are still unaware of what they are and what they need to do, meaning many QR campaigns still require instructions.

If you’re interested in doing some marketing with QR codes here is a brief best practise guide;

QR Code best practise guide

• Keep the design simple – Although QR codes are unattractive applying colour and other designs to them can reduce the number of scanners that can read it. You want to keep it as open and available to as many people as possible.
• Make it mobile – People scan QR codes from their mobiles, so if you’re linking to a website make sure the website is mobile optimised.
• Provide Value – You want people to engage and scan your code so provide incentives such as special offers or exclusive experiences, such as trailers/videos.
• Make it easy – Be aware of where your QR code is placed. Make it easy for the user to spot and to scan.

We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on QR codes, so please leave a comment below or tweets us @KMPDigitata

The winning entry was for TrekAmerica’s Ultimate Road Trip and the viral Facebook application we created at the heart of it.

The reasons given for winning this award was the campaign’s “Expert knowledge of the target audience, strategy to encourage engagement and the outstanding results it achieved”.

We were up against some stiff competition in this category, including promotions for brands such as ASDA and Cobra beer so we’re delighted to have won. We were also nominated for “Best Social Media Campaign” for the same work.

We are regularly nominated in these types of awards for the work we do and it’s worth noting that great work comes when working for clients, such as Trek America who are willing to put their faith in an idea and devote resources to social media and digital channels when competing with budget for more traditional marketing endeavours.

All that’s left now is to decide where the award will be proudly displayed.

Twitter

Twitter can be many things to many brands. A news source, brand monitoring tool, a customer feedback and support tool, a promotional channel. However you decide twitter best fits in with your business make sure you stick to your goals.

Twitter Tips

• Don’t just broadcast. Think of twitter as a conversation
• Find the conversation – engage with like minded users using @mentions and #hashtags
• Think about how you can add value – hold competitions for your followers in exchange for content or loyalty
• Use Twitter Search to monitor mentions of your brand and competitors. You can gain valuable and actionable insight before actively engaging

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is of particular use in B2B marketing. Think about what your profile says about your business, not just you personally. Use LinkedIn to build and maintain relationships that could lead to sales.

LinkedIn Tips

• Keep your profile up-to-date and make sure your public summary contains all the information necessary for people to understand what it is your business does
• Claim your Business profile and update with the messages that you want to communicate to your audience
• Use the search to find relevant individuals in industry related groups. Contribute to these group discussions to become an authority in your field
• Find questions relevant to your industry on LinkedIn answers. Share your knowledge and connect with individuals who have expressed a need
• Research individuals for recruitment purposes

Facebook

Facebook is primarily a tool for interacting with friends and family. However, 38% of users “like” a brand page. A facebook page can be a useful B2C tool. If you give people a reason to “like” your page, you with have an active, living, realtime audience just waiting to interact with your content.

Facebook Tips

• Give people a reason to follow. Discounts, exclusive content, brand affinity and peer endorsement are all incentives for liking a brand page
• The aim is to get your content into the News stream of your audience and your audience’s friends
• Encourage interaction by sharing engaging and exciting content. Photos, videos and links are more engaging than text updates
• Use facebook ads to grow your userbase. Target your ads to your intended audience based on demographics or consumer behaviour

Foursquare

Foursquare, a geolocation app that allows users to check-in to various venues and locations from their mobile devices. A newcomer in the social media landscape but is gaining traction with users. It’s especially useful if you are a business with that relies on foot-fall, e.g. bars and shops.

Foursquare Tips

• Claim your venue. This will allow you to set up special promotions with foursquare which will be presented to users checking in nearby
• Leave tips and encourage users to leave tips on your venue

Blogs and Forums

Social media isn’t just about the broadcast tools; it’s about being involved with the conversation.

Social Media Tips

• Find the conversation and monitor influential blogs and forums. See what is being said about your business or your industry
• Don’t engage in a conversation unless you can add something of use. Comment spamming is not the way forward!
• When you do engage, consider your business messages and if possible, provide a link to your site/blog/linkedin profile for further information
• Abide by the Ackura Rules of Social media Engagement

The key to social media marketing – Influence

Listen – People want to know that their opinions are valued.
Be a voice of authority – By providing people with useful information and being knowledgeable you establish trust and credibility.
Create a Dialogue – Engaging with users and enabling them to question and discuss your content will generate conversation and prologue the relationship.
Generate awareness – People who are engaged with your content will want to share it within their networks; encourage them to become “Connections”, “Retweet” and “Like” you.
Generate Loyalty – Keep your audience informed with regular news, products or service updates.

Rules of engagement

Be active – Post content regularly but also comment on and share
other people’s content.
Be interesting – Remember the aim is to be viewed as an authority
and get links/shares to your content. Make sure to add your
own opinion or extra insight when commenting on or sharing other
people’s content.
Be humble – Social media etiquette lets every user have a voice:
Give credit for people’s content and opinion.
Be human – Avoid slogans and brochure-speak. Try to inject
content with your personality. Include profile pictures for author blog posts and LinkedIn profiles.
Be honest – Always be transparent about who you are and who you are representing. Don’t plagiarise content or bad-mouth competitors.

Adrian Graham, a project manager for Questions said;

There are a lot of places you can go on the internet to ask questions of people who you don’t know, but there are very few places you can go to get responses from your friends.We thought that this is where we should focus.

The new Questions feature allows users to create questions with either multiple answers or the ability for receivers to add their own answers, which when publish, gets pushed out to their friends. From a friend to friends point of view this can be used for social recommendations, an example of this could be asking friends what film at the cinema they recommend seeing. Once a friend answers a question their result is shown on their own profile and pushed out to their friends, potentially spreading the questions to millions of people.

Nice feature that Facebook have added is the ability to chose a Facebook page when answering a question. An example of this is when someone creates a open question “Who is the best digital agency in the North West?”, their friends are able to add their own answer and if their choice has a Facebook page they can include that as an answer.

The improved Questions feature is more importantly available to Brand and Businesses who have a Facebook page allowing them to perform market research in an effective manor. A business can publish a question which will be pushed out to all those who are fans on Facebook, allowing them to answer and pass it onto their friends. Facebook questions could be used by a restaurant to find what people’s favourite dish is, a sports team to find the favourite player or a tourist information board to discover what people think is their best location.

It will be interesting to see how companies will use this feature and see whether it will truly develop into a strong market research tool or just a fun gimmick used every now and again to increase customer engagement.

If you want to add Facebook questions to your Facebook profile or page then follow this link.

Whenever something new like a phone is made people ask “Is it an iPhone killer” or the latest social media development being “The next twitter killer”. Facebook unveiled its latest developments with the message service it provides, which people suddenly jumped up and declared that it was “a Gmail killer” despite Facebook claiming the improved service is not email. The Facebook “non-email” is only available via invite but will be released to the public soon.

Facebook to provide @facebook.com email

Google will tell you that their phone, the Nexus One, despite poor sales was a great success in showing phone developers and users what the Android Mobile OS is capable of. The phone was launched in January but discontinued 5 months later and you wouldn’t think badly of Google to not try again and remain being an operating system provider. It was quite a shock when leaked photo revealed images of the Nexus S.

Nexus S revealed

Google seems to love nothing more than keeping SEO experts and executives on their toes. Google launched its Instant Preview feature where the user is able to view a preview of the website found while they are still in the search engine results page. This feature provides a snapshot of the page the result navigates to and although it might not affect SEO to much it will make websites visuals even more important.

Google Preview is launched

Apple has a special effect over many people around the world. They have managed to position themselves where they need to do very little PR to create a buzz because the word of mouth between their fans is so strong. By simply putting up a message on iTunes saying “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget” discussions all over the internet developed on what it could be, including iPad cameras, OS4.2 update but the most popular was the iTunes Cloud. When it was announced that it was the Beatles back catalogue was available of iTune the digital exhaled in disappointment. No doubt people will get excited when Apple are about to announce something else, lets hope it lives up to the hype that’s created.

Apple release the Beatles back catalogue on iTunes

DKNY are the latest company to feel the negative effect that social media can create. It’s no surprise that large numbers of the public started protesting when DKNY announced a Rabbit Fur coat in its new winter collection. A protest started by PETA developed and in addition to various fashion shows the DKNY Facebook page was also subject to the protest where 13 creative individuals changed their profile pictures to single bold letters and posted on the wall in order to spell out DK BUNNY BUTCHER.