"50% of page views on the Internet are on social networking sites": Google's Ted Souder
Published: 26 Mar 2008
Social Media Strategies Travel 2008 Special
Travel industry is using social media monitoring solutions, which tracks and analyses all forms of social media, including blog sites, top video-sharing sites, opinion review forums.
How quickly travel suppliers need to update official web content so that when consumers re-check the suppliers sites they get authentic information?
From Google's perspective, Ted Souder, Head of Sales - Midwest Travel Vertical, Google, pointed out that fresh content is key but it doesn't need to be limited to the suppliers sites.
"The supplier would do better to create an RSS feed that can then feed a supplier gadget on my iGoogle page. This way the updated information is sent to me on a regular basis. I don't have time to go and check all my favorite sites to see if things have been updated. It is much efficient for me to go to my iGoogle page and see which headlines are new. There are some suppliers who are taking advantage of this. Hyatt for example has their Hyatt eDeals feed which sends up to date deals to me. This is efficient because now I don't need to remember to keep checking the Hyatt site, I can just look at my iGoogle start page and know what is new," said Souder, speaking to EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta in connection with Social Media Strategies Travel 2008 Conference in San Francisco.
"In regards to monitoring feedback, this should happen in almost real time. Many blogs and social media sites like YouTube enable the content owner to screen feedback before it is posted. This is a great way to monitor what comes in but this needs to be monitored and posted on a very regular basis (intra day). Because the ability to update a website has gotten so dynamic, there is very little patience for sites that are not up to date by the minute," he said.
In an interview, Souder spoke tapping the potential of the symbiotic relationship between search and social media and much more. Excerpts:
From Google's perspective, what do you recommend when it comes to tapping the potential of the symbiotic relationship between search and social media?
Search happens everywhere and all the time. When I ask a coworker for a great restaurant suggestion, I am engaging in verbal social search. When I am doing research for a trip, I search through all the various social media sites to find what I am looking for. If a supplier or an OTA wants to tap this then they should be placing ads in relevant locations throughout the social media landscape. If I am watching a video of the Grand Hyatt Kauai then it would make sense for there to be a Hyatt booking engine gadget next to the video content.
In your opinion, what sort of progress have you witnessed when it comes to social search engine marketing effort of suppliers?
Overall I have seen many travel companies embrace UGC as a way to enhance what they offer to their users. TripAdvisor and Orbitz are great examples of large, established sites that provide great review opportunities for their users. This feedback is relevant and helpful and it almost starts to take on a life of its own. People have come to expect feedback as part of the research process.
In the future though, I think it would make sense to expand the sites social media options in an effort to keep me on the site. Instead of having to go to multiple locations to research my trip, why can't I just go to one site to research, find a package and book it. There are all sorts of great monetization opportunities around this but it will take a fundamental shift in what many sites are trying to achieve.
It is important to note here that this is not a 'build it and they will come' scenario. If you have UGC then you need to promote it. If you build a channel on YouTube like the CheapTickets Deal of the Day, you need to promote it. You need to let the public know that this exists, otherwise it will get lost in the hundreds of millions of videos that are out there.
Which is the best way to approach social search marketing on the part of suppliers? Should they develop in-house expertise or work with vendors? What benchmarks should be set to assess the success of social search marketing initiatives?
I can't say whether suppliers should do this in house or not. Regardless of whether or not they allocate resources internally and control the whole process or pay to farm this out, they need to get moving and do it. Some large suppliers are starting to embrace this but they are way behind the OTA's and start-ups in the travel space.
The use of analytics now holds us accountable. No longer are we creating a couple :30 second spots that run on the 4 major networks. Now you are able to post an ad or video and almost instantly find out if it works or not. I have seen instances where Travel companies have launched things like videos and the immediate feedback was almost entirely negative. The brand needs to take that feedback and make changes to the video or it will never be a success. This sort of immediate feedback can help companies find success faster than ever before.
From Google's perspective, what trends do you foresee in the time to come as far as suppliers go about cashing in on the relationship between search and social media?
First and foremost, suppliers need to be where the users are. 50% of page views on the Internet are on social networking sites, yet there is very little supplier presence on leading sites like LinkedIn, MySpace or YouTube. These sites are hugely popular and are not just a bunch of 12 year olds after school watching videos of dogs skateboarding. For example, YouTube, which is the 6th largest site on the web, has the same demographic profile as the greater web itself. The suppliers need to figure out how to use these sites to not only brand themselves but also use them for things like fare sales and special promotions. If you are an airline and are trying to fill the first 6 rows of your airplane, it would make sense for you to run a targeted campaign on LinkedIn. If you are about to relaunch your brand, it would make sense for you to do a home page takeover on YouTube on the day of launch.
Second, those that thrive in this space will respect both the users and the intimacy of the environment. Users will sniff out fake or planted comments from a mile away. They will respect and embrace real comments. Of course there are always going to be comments that are bitter, misplaced or off color and those comments should be removed. The remaining comments though need to be left there for the user to see and for the supplier to react and reply to. If you go to YouTube and a video has thousands of views but no comments, something is fishy. You can almost bet that the owner of the video removed the comments because they were worried about how they may impact the brand (for better or worse).
Third, suppliers should look at social media as a new frontier where they can experiment and get immediate feedback. The only certainty is that not everything will work, so suppliers should have both the patience and the stomach to truly listen when the audience responds (even if the response is not responding at all).
Comments
tromba said on 27 Mar 08:
Google's management has been brilliant and the company has made very few mistakes, but a couple points in this interview gave me pause.
If half of the page views are indeed on social network sites, what percentage of advertising is on these sites? My guess is that it is substantially less than half, maybe somewhere down around 10%. As Mr. Souder said, there is very little supplier presence on these sites. It would seem reasonable to assume that the reason for this is that because the demographic is wrong -- kids just don't have the money or the inclination to buy what the online travel and tourism markets have to offer.
I'm a half-century beyond 12-years-old and I happen to like videos of dogs skateboarding. But, you don't want to base a marketing campaign on my tastes. On Google Video I have noticed very few adverts, most pages with no advertising at all, which makes one ask where Google is going with this service. Perhaps the answer is in the current buzz about the upcoming Semantic Web, whatever that is.
Greenroom said on 26 Mar 08:
I see UGC as a issue the CRM department needs to deal with
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