Can You Establish A Brand In 30-Days?

The travel/tourism/hospitality vertical recognised early on the value which social media could have on its revenue streams and customer relationships. Brands such as KLM and The Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and The Ritz-Carlton Company made major financial commitments to ensure their continued dominance with their respective bases, as a result, the latter two have subsequently earned top 50 ranks globally amongst luxury brands using social media.

While it is true that anyone can ‘do’ social media, to generate results in 30-days such as we have achieved demands critical thinking, an OCD-level of commitment, best practices knowledge of social platforms, and yes, an ‘eye’ for creating resonate content helps (a great deal). As offered in my post Zero to Klout 40 in 12 Days we wanted to show the relevance and value of digital communications in building a brand (with absolutely no budget) in exactly 30-days. For those so interested we have the analytics documenting every nuanced gain. And, as I have mentioned previously, this has been an entirely organic, content-driven effort based on SEO and best practices knowledge.

Let’s be honest, a single #Airbnb or #TripAdvisor self-catering rental wouldn’t normally realise much of a digital impact. “Ballyogan”, as it was called when we took over, alone didn’t differentiate the holiday let from our search results which included a city, a horse and his pedigree, a horse race, a recycling park, innumerable streets, &c. &c. The door being the initial point of welcome to visitors, particularly in the hospitality industry, made adding “Doors” to the brand name logical.

At 188 tweets we ‘over-delivered’ against the best practices of three-per-day but it’s hard to argue with the results. Of the top twenty tweets, the first has found special resonance. The top twelve tweets (each with a minimum of 1500 impressions) have earned a combined 45,686 impressions, or 46.1% of our 30-day total of 98,300.

We recognise that both Klout and Kred exist on borrowed time, but free influence analytics still offer value. (Not sorry) it doesn’t get old when your efforts for a client are apace with a national or regional tourist board.

The profile bio has been rewritten four times to account for achieving SuperHost status, adding the Tripadvisor page, changing the #bnb to #selfcatering, and specifically identifying geographic locations to aid potential guests. We published two Twitter Moments and drafted additional ones for the owner to fully develop as time allows. We did only nominal follower management and used ManageFlitter a total of six times to ensure that Follower and Following numbers were on par. Increased Airbnb and Tripadvisor weekly views are consistent with hospitality industry social media conversion of 11% of the Twitter profile views (enquiries have been received but no bookings as of this writing). 30-days is our hard-stop managing the account, our last tweet was the evening of 15 April.

In answer to the question of our title, we’ll respond by posting the results from Bing and Google for the search term “Ballyogan Doors” where our various efforts dominate the first five positions against a Dublin-based business (whose customers our client hopes to have as guests).

What Story Do You Need Told?

What Influencers Don’t Do

Twitter analytics for the hashtag Seimens #MindSphere at #GartnerSYM Barcelona

Here’s a hard truth about your digital presence. Despite the fact that you, or your boss, want someone with 20m+ followers to manage your corporate social media accounts not only can your budget not afford such, but they are not interested. An influencer is only interested in expanding their personal brand and driving revenue from their influence. On the off chance you have an unlimited budget and are able to establish a relationship the content they develop will reflect that priority, putting them in the spotlight yours will be residual benefit by association.

I speak of this with experience in both participating in the inaugural, and observing the second, #ShareIstria campaigns. Getting all starry-eyed over an influencer will not help you accomplish your business objectives for brand awareness, driving revenue, reputation management, supporting employee recruitment and retention or launching your new offering. What does help your business succeed in leveraging the digital landscape is strategic content coupled with best practices for platforms relevant to your specific business. Whether it’s a tweet about an egg, or tech related, a communications professional should be able to generate the kind of results I share here (there’s no messing with third party analytics).

It used to be that everyone thought that they could ‘do’ corporate communications. In every tech start-up I ever worked in I invariably inherited a less than optimal corporate identity, messaging that failed to convey the actual business case for the product suite, and really unfortunate collateral materials. Now, because we all walk around with a Smartphone and we have multiple social media accounts everyone thinks they can do social media. Sorry, doing and succeeding are too different things.

Yesterday was the first day of Gartner SYM (Symposium) in Barcelona. For transparency sake I am not physically present, but I have been remote curating. The screen shot as the leading photo for this post is an example of what a marketing communications professional can (or should be able to) do for your business. The top ranking, just as tens of thousands of impressions, or double-digit engagement percentages do not just happen. These are made possible because the content development has years of strategic thought behind it.

16 hours, analytics for my curated tweet of Siemens #Mindshare 

What’s interesting, even for me, is that my tweet is re-written from various parties tweets including that of the original creator Siemens and yet my tweet ranked higher than any others. These results are not an anomaly. I manage this repeatedly, in Dubai, in London, on the ground or remotely (as evidenced by this Twitter moment screen from a follower’s feed).

The global average rate of engagement is 1.6%. The generally accepted success benchmark for a tweet is 1000 impressions. If you have questions, I am happy to spend some time with you via Skype. Ping me.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you!