Search Fragmentation is Coming - Be Prepared to Capitalize.

This week, a Google representative declared "in three years time, desktops will be irrelevant".  In December, Morgan Stanley stated "more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years".   According to Compete.com Facebook now has more users than Yahoo.  This rapid increase in mobile and social screen time is changing user behavior and creating new types of searches - apps, friends,  music, photos, etc.  These changes will fragment new search queries away from Google and other universal search engines.  Google will continue to dominate desktop-based searching, but new smartphone and social searching will fragment to a host of players including Apple, Google and new companies.  These new entrants, including Twitter, have an opportunity to adopt Google-like PPC ad model to complement search behavior on their services. Some will simply copy Google and design an even better mouse-trap and APIs for ad/bid mgmt. Digital marketers need to follow these trends, begin testing and measuring new models and start gaining insights, revenue, profit and, most importantly, a marketing competitive advantage.

On this blog, I've labeled the last decade "The Google Decade".  Despite predictions of vertical search and resultant search fragmentation, it never materialized. In 2005, I remember search pundits predicting huge growth for vertical travel search. We have seen the emergence of meta-search sites like Kayak, but have also seen failures such as Yahoo's Farechase.  Vertical search never came to pass as Google added incremental features to their popular search service and creating Universal Search - local, images, blogs, maps, real-time Tweets (recently), etc.  For practical matters, Google's ground-breaking business, AdWords, only faced one competitor during the decade - Yahoo's Overture.  It's nice to be a fast-follower.  But, Google really focused on user experience and having the best search experience before they even added a revenue model through AdWords.  This is precisely the strategy of Facebook, Twitter and others.


Google and Apple are in an epic battle for smartphone market share that will continue through this decade.  Google hasn't faced competition like this since the early days with Overture.  Based on this chart, both Android (Google mobile OS) and Apple are gaining smartphone market share and, most probably, will win.  As I spoke about in my January post, Apple is focused on a new user experience and Internet navigation model that is not centered around Google search. Also, Google's launch into Social through Buzz has been challenging and could contribute to a loss of trust and Google's looming privacy bubble this decade.  So, will these trends and new user behaviors lead to the search fragmentation others have been predicting years ago?

Let's look at some predictions of things to come, how this will affect the way we search for things and how advertisers can capitalize on these changes.  

• Apple iWords - In a recent blog post, I wrote about the proliferation of mobile Apps.  I posited that on Apple smartphones, we are being trained to navigate the web through apps and Apple's App Store.  In fact, the screen area dedicated to search in a fraction of what you see on a typical PC browser.  Just like Google trained us to use Search to navigate the Net through a PC, Apple is training us to use their storefronts. Apple's PPC solution will tie relevant search ads to app searches. I am sure their are plenty of App developers and businesses that would love to reach this highly targeted user base.
• Twitter Search - Rumors abound that Twitter is about to launch a PPC model to compliment an improved Twitter search experience. This could work and provide a revenue model that doesn't interfere with the micro-blogging experience.
• Facebook Advertising - Facebook has already launched a Google-like self-service, auction-based advertising service.  While the user feedback has been bumpy, the hyper-targeting opportunity remains.  Facebook has wisely exposed their API allowing bid-mgmt and attribution tools to add Facebook to their systems.  It is not a stretch to see Facebook improving their on-site search experience and adding these targeted ads alongside the search results.
• Digital media mgmt technology will add new PPC platforms and optimize accordingly using holistic attribution tracking, measurement and optimization.

How should digital marketers prepare for these changes to come?  Let's look at a few recommendations. 

• Ramp up your knowledge about mobile, social, apps, etc.  Talk to experts, immerse yourself, read blogs.
• Launch Social strategy.  Target social search PPC at your target social profile based monitoring, listening as well as technographic and socialgraphic research.
• Launch Mobile strategy. How will users find your company from their mobile device?  What will the experience be like?
• Utilize a 3-pronged media management approach for Owned, Earned and Purchased media. Use media attribution and optimization.
• Test, measure and learn from everything.

What do you think about this blog?  Do you agree with my take on how this will upfold?  I don't have a crystal ball - just enough experience to have a point of view.  This is a process of collective learning where we all benefit through dialogue and debate.  Please add your comments below.  Thank you.

Industry Analysis: Hotel Review Sites and Social Media

On behalf of hospitality clients, I’ve been digging into how well social monitoring tools cover hotel review sites, including Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Kayak/Travelpost, Hotwire, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, and a few others. These sites are important channels by which hoteliers can sell their inventory. They also, of course, are a source of guest reviews and ratings that are very valuable to guests and hoteliers alike – it’s the kind of consumer feedback that other industries must work hard to find or cultivate. Needless to say, review site content is must-have for hotels when we talk about social media. Plus, the potential for groundswell transformations within hospitality is significant because of the industry’s native focus on consumer feedback.

Nearly all of the review sites (also known as “TPIs” and “OTAs” in hospitality parlance) make it very challenging for monitoring tools to pick up their content. The result is that, for hotels and resorts, “social media” remains sadly fragmented between the reviews and ratings on these important sites and the other 95% of the internet. I’ve talked recently with over a dozen social monitoring providers: Small and midsized monitoring platforms simply don’t have this content, and enterprise class platforms have to deploy a roomful of humans to keep the content flowing. Even the few industry specialists who seem to have cracked this nut still silo “reviews” from “social media” from the user-interface level on down. In fact, the industry does not yet seem to be considering the review sites as social networking platforms, and I think that’s part of the problem.

Sadly, this current state inhibits the development of social media best practices at hotels and resorts, but it is just as damaging to the review sites as well. So today’s post is an open message to the hotel review/TPI/OTA sites…

For your own sake, open your content up to social monitoring tools now. You have little to lose and much to gain.

1: The market needs independent third-party review platforms. Reviews on a hotel website will always be held with a certain amount of suspicion by the public. TPIs provide a valuable service to consumers because the content is crowdsourced, passive, and unbiased.  And, the ability to compare the reviews of multiple hotels (from different brands) at a single site provides a lot of value to guests. Even as an increasing quantity of guests book their reservations property-direct, these two benefits remain firm.

2: Current business models are not compromised by monitoring tools. Remember that monitoring tools are for the hotels and brands, not the guests. Even the most bare-bones monitoring services are about $99/property/month – and they provide no real value to guests. Guests will continue to arrive at review websites for reading, commenting, booking, and clicking on banner ads.

3: Monitoring tools make review data more useful to hotels and, in turn, guests: Because ratings/reviews are fragmented across many review sites (including local/niche sites), it’s a challenge for hoteliers to find and react to users’ comments in a timely manner. Monitoring tools would enable all reviews, regardless of source, to be processed in a single place. The resultant increased response rate from hoteliers would add vitality and relevance to a given review site, resulting in greater end-user traffic.

4: You can’t hold onto user-generated content forever: There are significant trends at play that guarantee that reviews and ratings will be sprung from the review sights sooner rather than later. Consider Google Profiles, Disqus (and other comment communities), and the new Facebook APIs. Consider, too, the ever-growing sources of organic feedback – the real “social media” stuff that most other markets have to deal with. Review sites/TPIs/OTAs can act now to establish positive relationships within the community and to influence the future of “review portability.” Or, they can lose their current head start in the social media revolution and become victims.

In the near future, savvy hotel brands will be willing to entertain syndication deals that bring review sites’ unbiased content to the branded hotel sites, perhaps along with greater reporting insights. Holding onto the old models will only hurt review sites in the long run. The winner will be the first to make its content universally available to hoteliers via social monitoring toolkits, including third-party authoring tools like HootSuite, so that hoteliers gain greater reporting insights and can more easily interact with the reviews.

Am I missing something in today’s post? Is there an angle of the business model that I’m not giving enough weight? Comment. Contact me. Let’s discuss. This is an important issue for the industry as a whole…

Do Not Curb Your Enthusiasts

While one of the most-cited benefits of social monitoring tools is “reputation management,” it’s far from the whole story in social media. For starters, “reputation management” includes a lot of defense and reaction. How can we use the same toolset to go on the offensive? To create opportunities? To drive revenue?

We have been able to create success for our clients by using social monitoring tools to find smaller and more focused online communities – that is, enthusiasts. One of the cornerstones of good social media strategy is to find your target market segment, including your enthusiasts, and to take the conversation to where they already are. Well, that’s easier said than done for certain brands and products. Example: we have a current B2B client that has operated successfully for decades outside of the public view by working with various resellers and other third parties. They do not engage in traditional marketing beyond their website, and their product line is utilitarian enough that it does not generate mainstream end-user enthusiasm. Their quantity of mentions in the last six months, anywhere on the web, is zero.

So you can understand the challenges we’ve faced, from a social media point of view, on behalf of this client. Simple brand monitoring (the first step in reputation management) did not help us to find current and potential enthusiasts. Instead, we’ve searched for communities built around the activities supported by the product. It takes longer to sift through the noise, but the end result is that we’ve been able to discover small communities that are highly qualified for potential purchase. Engaging with the moderators of these communities has lead to positive product reviews, which in turn generate very positive results: significant spikes in web traffic from three different communities with bounce rates under 1%. To put that in perspective, here’s a quote from Avinash Kaushik (see step #3)

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My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.
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Really puts the 1% bounce rate in perspective, right? It means that we are driving very highly qualified traffic for this client and building relationships with communities that absolutely want to hear from us. Will we be able to repeat these kinds of numbers for every client? We’ll work hard to try, but what matters more, however, is that we are defining how we measure success and learning to make the most of our social media toolkit. Once discovered and engaged, it is not a long stretch to convert super-qualified audiences like these to actual dollars, actionable feedback, and more.

Quick sidenote: I want to point out that this client hadn’t done anything “wrong” in the world of social media and e-commerce. Rather, their business model and strong industry relationships created a situation that had not traditionally needed this kind of support to grow. I mention them today because they present a somewhat unique, almost laboratory-like, case study on how social media can support a variety of business models and objectives.

Although our B2B client is just getting started in social, today’s lesson is just as applicable to bigger brands. Community and reputation managers must use their toolkits to look for conversations about the hobby/lifestyle/problem-to-be-solved in general. Looking for specific brand mentions is not enough. Cast a wider net and look a little deeper. Like us, I’m confident that you’ll find many untapped enthusiasts that want to hear from you and get greater value out of your social efforts in the process.

Will Twitter Become the AM Radio of Social Media?

David Pogue had a user-friendly article on Google Buzz yesterday. His natural first comparison was with Twitter, which he described as very user-friendly because it has so few features. I agree, even if he made the apparently willful omissions of related services like TwitPic or TweetDeck, for example, when stating that you cannot upload photos or filter Twitter content. I liked David’s review of Buzz;  highlights include: functionality and usage is inconsistent and confusing, even while features like geolocation are awesome fundamentally important in a world that is shifting to mobile. He then concludes with this statement…

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Buzz probably won’t make much of a dent in Facebook or Twitter or FriendFeed. But… because it has powerful and flexible features and because millions of Gmail members can get in with a single click, Buzz will have its own following…
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I disagree. Twitter, in particular, I think is doomed to irrelevance. The combination of its weakening adoption curve, substantially smaller user base, and limited feature set will almost certainly relegate Twitter to obscurity in the next few years. I can explain by sharing some of my impressions regarding Google Buzz:

• Google’s never been the best-looking kid in the room, just the smartest. I think looks do matter in this case, however; the labyrinthine UI isn’t exactly going to help adoption.
• The feature set, including threaded conversations, location recommendations, auto-recommended friends, and more is a bit overwhelming, too.
• I’d like to get more mileage out of Buzz, but message parity across networks matters to me (lest something like this should occur. Especially for business interests, I need to be able to selectively simulpost to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and –preferably– Buzz.

The fact that Google are making their API available will address these current weaknesses, just as it did for Twitter. I’m sure players like TweetDeck and HootSuite cannot wait to bring Buzz into their service offering. When they do, the feature set will become more manageable. Google users will be able to use the service in Twitter-like contexts, but with the notably added benefit of geolocation and tie-in with Google's ever-growing set of services (and non-Google services like Flickr, too). Especially with the understanding that mobile internet usage will become more common than traditional internet usage in the next five years, I don’t see how Twitter can compete. Also very important: you can use more than 140 characters if you want.

Now let’s look at the numbers. Twitter is tough to measure because of substantial usage off of its website, but these are pretty clear metrics:

• Adoption rates are decreasing and almost leveling off at around 25 million total users, and Twitter has a despairing retention rate, but to be fair…
• Usage metrics are becoming deeper in terms of quantity of tweets and following/followed metrics per account

Compare that with Gmail’s 146 million monthly users and the assumption that the Buzz service will evolve quickly via both Google and third party apps. It seems clear to me: Google’s connected services and substantially greater mass will simply swallow up Twitter over time. Even if Twitter’s core user base is getting more value out of the platform, I just don’t see how Twitter can compete with Google and/or Facebook when they now offer: a) the same features, b) along with other features, and c) an enormous lead in user base. Maybe by a tie-in with FourSquare would save Twitter? Because those guys are going to be in trouble, too, as Buzz matures and takes its place in mainstream social media and mobile usage.

So let’s put all of this in terms of strategy. Bottom line: Beware of anyone peddling a “Twitter” or other platform-specific strategy. Context, not platform, is what really matters. This is especially true as services like Buzz (and Facebook) enable sharing in a variety of contexts, now including microblogging.

What do you think? Will Twitter fight its way out of the corner or is it doomed to become the AM radio of the social world? Will these trends help to evolve social media strategy beyond the platform-specifc?

More on Kevin Smith and Southwest

While talking about Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines with the client who turned me on to the story, we realized that this really is an emerging case study for social media. In my earlier post, I had mentioned that the issue was as much about a communication failure between Southwest employees as it was about any purported “anti-fat” policy. As the story progresses, however, I see Southwest continuing to fail in the world of customer relations via social media. Get this- they tried to apologize to Kevin, via Twitter, by offering him their standard $100 voucher.

Was there any basic social media training for the customer support team at Southwest? Regardless of what we think of his celebrity (or lack thereof) in mainstream media, the guy has well beyond one million followers on Twitter. His initial rant was via Twitter, so it is not a big leap to expect someone to check on this –and therefore gauge his level of potential influence-- before making that standard (and somewhat insulting) $100 voucher.

Key takeaway: SOPs for handling customer complaints should attempt to assess the customer’s level of influence. This does NOT mean that the everyday people should get lesser service. It DOES mean that the organization should recognize when it has an impending customer service issue AND PR issue and react accordingly.

As if that first move were not enough, Southwest then attempted to tell their side of the story via their blog. Yikes. It’s hard for me to imagine a response that could be much worse. Do they understand that they’re dealing with an emotional issue in a media ecosystem uniquely designed to convey emotional content? Not only that, I’m sure their blog does not have the same kind of dedicated traffic as Kevin’s Twitter followers. Even if their apology were right on the money, Southwest’s bullhorn isn’t big enough.

My colleague and I were trying to imagine ourselves in the (painful) shoes of Southwest’s PR team right now. The truth is, however, that Southwest has it pretty easy in this scenario. Kevin Smith is obviously upset, he was inconvenienced and embarrassed, but he also has the presentation of a funny and somewhat humble guy. To show what a good sport he is, he even gave them an easy out via Twitter…

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Hey @SouthwestAir: you bring that same row of seats to the DailyShow, and I'll sit in 'em for all to see on TV. If I don't fit, I'll donate $10k to charity of your choice. But when I do (& buckle the belt as well)? 1) You admit you lied. 2) Change your policy, or at least re-train your staff to be a lot more human & a lot less corporate when they pull a poor girl off the plane & shame her.
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What a great idea! Southwest gets a forum that’s big enough for their apology and corrective actions to be heard and Kevin gets to stop sounding like an irate fat guy. Only problem is that Southwest should have come up with this idea, not the wounded party. And, no matter what, they should make a charitable donation to something selected by Kevin. I can’t resist making a few PR recommendations here: Southwest should show up on the Daily Show with a hilariously small chair for Kevin to try and fit into. You know, have a laugh, try to focus on the miscommunication and less on the “anti-fat” policy. As I mentioned in my previous post, Southwest must take this opportunity to exam their processes - the issue is not just about the policy itself.

I’m interested in what you think. Did Southwest handle Kevin’s twitter-transmitted rant correctly? Did they miss other opportunities? What else can we learn from this?

Social Media Accelerates Opportunities for Improvement

Director Kevin Smith was deemed too fat to fly on a Southwest airlines flight this weekend. While famous in certain circles, he was on the brink of becoming yet another anonymous customer service casualty until he described his ordeal to his 1.2 million Twitter followers. This in turn generated traditional media coverage and a spike in is follower base to 1.6 million. Southwest thought Kevin was too big to fly? Well now they have a really big problem on their hands.

Southwest says they have had the same “customer of size” policy (I prefer the term “obese customer” – I mean, we all have a “size”, right?) for nearly twenty-five years. Is their policy fair? In this case, it doesn’t even matter. The problem isn’t the policy, it’s a breakdown in Southwest’s internal communications that got Kevin so upset. An organizational communication failure at Southwest became a customer service issue and its now been exposed to over a million people directly and many millions more through traditional media.

According to his own story, Kevin actually had THREE seats purchased (his family was going to travel with him, etc -- see the whole story using the above link) but plans changed and he was able to leave town on an earlier flight that had only one seat available. Again, according to his story, he explained the situation to the staff at the check-in desk, who assured him that there would not be an issue with a large man like Kevin taking the one seat. I’m guessing that no one at that desk thought to talk with the pilot of the plane, however. Whether justified or not, the pilot made a decision that was in direct contradiction to what Kevin had been promised moments earlier. Although Kevin is clearly a big guy, it seems that Southwest allowed its own policy to be broken by allowing Kevin (who had already bought many tickets) onto a different flight with one seat.

Internally, Southwest failed to consistently enforce/make exceptions to its policy. Although Kevin was in face-to-face communications during his ordeal, I think most of us go through something very similar almost every time we pick up the phone for customer service: We get bounced around from one person to the next without any one of them having legitimate context or history of our customer service issue. I had a similar situation with Verizon FIOS a few months back that caused me to drop their service entirely.

Social media creates an environment where only excellent organizations can thrive. And, in this case, a weakness in how Southwest handles situations like these was exposed. They tried to placate and apologize to Kevin, but with little success.  So what’s Southwest supposed to do? “Learn”, is my advice. In the context of social media, many organizations rightfully fear this exact kind of situation. But one of the understated benefits of the environment is that bringing these issues to the surface creates opportunities for improvement. This is an opportunity for Southwest to improve and undoubtedly make many other passengers (even those without 1.6 million twitter followers) happier with their service.

I’ve been reading that certain people and groups, like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance will make the issue discriminatory one, but remember that the point of failure was first and foremost a procedural one. As the PR dust settles around this, I hope that Southwest are able to look at the issue for what it was and make the necessary adjustments.

Thinking beyond reservations: Mobile, Social, and Hospitality (Part 2)

In my previous post, I shared a rough sketch of my ideal mobile application for resorts – it’s much more than booking a reservation! Today, let’s talk about how social media can bring potential guests closer to the live experience of a resort by enabling real-time descriptions from friends and family.

Why is real time important? Because sharing experiences while they are fresh results in more descriptive –more authentic-- content. Compare real time to how vacation experiences are usually shared: A guest returns from vacation… and a few days later connects his camera to his laptop… and then uploads photos to Flickr or Facebook… The context is limited. The feeling of being at the resort is not conveyed. The whole thing is stale as soon as it’s published and –importantly- the impression made by that content cannot be measured. There are exceptions if the guest labels his vacation with the name of the resort and/or also posts to a Facebook fan page, for example, but it’s far from ideal.

That’s why designing the killer resort app is so important: with all of those great features, guests are given incentive to keep their devices on-hand and to share in real time. While discovering super local-ratings for the various beach areas, they can also share of-the-moment feelings of excitement, bliss, relaxation, and happiness with their immediate connections. Aside from actually teleporting a potential guest to the resort for 10 minutes and then yanking them back to their cubicle at work, I cannot think of a more emotionally direct way to market a resort experience. It sounds obvious, but a more authentic description of a guest experience at a resort is equally a more authentic description of the experience that the resort is offering for sale.

In addition to the features I described previously, the well designed mobile resort app would include easy-to-use options for creating and sharing content with other onsite guests and with traditional social circles like those on Facebook. Some suggestions for content include:

• A short video that is pre-timed to be a max of 20 seconds and then uploaded to a pre-specified page
• A micro blog that helps to communicate with other guests and existing social circles. (Perhaps Twitter with auto-hashtag and list functions?)
• Physical signs on the resort that encourage guests to “share a picture”. These signs could easily transmit via bluetooth to mobile devices...

In turn, ideas like these create a real opportunity for

• User-generated content (including photos, videos, status updates, and tweets) to always be branded for the resort, which in turn further promotes the resort through organic search (assumes guest opt-in, of course)
• Dedicated landing pages for guest-generated content that enables conversion tracking, and in turn ROI reporting
• A content-rich platform that would support any number of contests, games, and other interactive campaigns

I’m obviously thinking out loud here and purposefully giving a light touch to the details (technology, privacy concerns..), but hey- that’s what blogs are for. Well designed functionality in this area would be like a rocket booster for a resort’s emerging social networking strategies. It would enable guests/other vacationers/back-home friends to share in real time their rich experiences related to very specific resort amenities. Think about how much more viral that content would be vs. the traditional “I had a great stay!” feedback that I often see on hotel fan pages. As an added bonus, publishing this content would incentivize management to resolve published issues quickly. Preparing a resort to process that kind of feedback is for another post, however….

As always, interested in your thoughts. What's your take on how to bring immediacy to the social efforts of resorts or similar destinations?