Nook, will I buy?

Image borrowed from www.bn.com/nook

For months I’ve seen eReaders come and go on the tech blogs. I usually pass it off as another techy gadget that looks cool, but would have little use for in my daily routine. The basic gadget as an electronic storage and display device for text has been around in various forms for years. None of the products released thus far has done anything to pique my passing curiosity. Initially this latest entry into the mix did little to rouse my interest either. But a couple of things look promising.

The nook is the latest attempt by a retailer to get the tech savvy to read books in a digital format. Amazon has the popular Kindle reader. Sony and others have similar devices and have seen mixed reviews and limited success no doubt due in part to their lack of content distribution. It appears the perception is that people will flock to a reader like they did with MP3 players once Apple released the iPod. I’m not sure that is going to happen, but as these devices improve in form and function I think they could convince me to buy one.

Using the compare page for the nook, and yes I know it is bias, there are a few things that standout for me that could make me a believer. The nook supports direct loading/viewing of PDF files. This is interesting to me. I hate to read documents on my laptop(s) and when editing lengthy docs I end up with several printed copies that I scribble all over. Having a reader might actually save some paper, but more importantly digitally document what I need to edit. The kicker would when others are reviewing/editing your document. If they have a way to sync their comments back to you then you wouldn’t have to decipher their chicken scratch. Or how about those cryptic emails that tell you where to make edits but aren’t specific enough.

Here is where I start to get a little nerdy. Sharing books. B&N are using, get ready for this, LendMe™ technology. This is a promising feature that allows you to “lend” a book 1 time to 1 user. The Consumerist details the shortcomings of this methodology and I’m sure B&N are going to hear it from consumers when they figure out how lame this is. The reason this excites me is that people are going to yell and scream about this or not buy the product. The solution could be libraries. How great would it be to run up to the library and “borrow” a book for two weeks. Could this be a player in the library world? Perhaps if “LendMe” were extended to other devices then it might be work.

The other thing that gets me excited is the ability to share the content among different devices, including notes and annotations. This means you can make notes while reading a PDF on the plane using the nook and when you are ready to mess with the content again you fire up the laptop and it’s off to the races. That rounds out the good. But there is more to the story.

Up next, a response to Michael Gartenberg’s article on Engadget, “Entelligence: Of ebooks and suburban moms“

Twitter accounts in Google and Bing

In a previous post I showed some examples of how you can properly fill out your profile in Twitter. The ultimate goal is to help people find you and verify that you are who you say you are. One way to start that process is in Twitter Search which uses your profile and tweets in the search results.

First up is Google, pictured here. The first thing you will notice is that the “Name” and the “Username” are listed together. Unlike Twitter Search the first label is the “Name”. In the parenthesis is the “Username” for the account. You can imagine how difficult it will be for someone to locate your account if you choose to leave the “Name” blank on your profile. It also appears that Google treats pages on Twitter the same as other pages on the web. Twitter typically sorts by the number of followers but Google does not.

Another thing to point out with Google is they do not use the latest tweet but use your “One Line Bio” to populate this area. You don’t want to skimp on the bio. Consider a good description of your property and the surrounding area. You can’t stuff keywords like the Meta Description on your website, but something a little more consumer friendly would work.

Next up we’ll look at Bing/Yahoo search results. Notice the structure of the link is essentially the same. The “Name” is first followed by the “Username”. The search criteria likely played a role in the differences in the results. For both search engines I used the following criteria [doubletree site:twitter.com]. The listings are largely the same.

One interesting result is the Doubletree Syracuse. In this example it is relatively easy to identify where this account it located. However, the same account is also on the example image used in Twitter search and it requires more effort to locate this account.

The key point is that the “Name”, “Username” and “One Line Bio” are critical elements that can not be overlooked in managing your account. By making some basic changes you can really help build your following by attracting the people that are actually looking for you.

Can you be found easily in Twitter Search?

In the last post I suggested it would be a worth your time to update your account settings to better reflect the hotel rather than the person. In this post I’ll show you why it is a good idea. This starts in Twitter Search but extends into Google and other web search engines.

Let’s start with the example here. The first hotel listed here is pretty easy to identify. The blue text is the username and is the first point of recognition for anyone searching for your property. However, notice the second and third hotels here. Both use a hotel code to identify themselves. Customers are not going to recognize that even though directly beneath the proper hotel name is entered into the “Name” field.

All of those listed here show the importance of the “Location” field. In most cases the City, ST will suffice, but depending on the your location you may need to include additional reference points. In fact you could argue that including the city name twice is redundant. But generally speaking this is really a good cue for potential followers to verify they have the proper location.

One important distinction between Twitter search and the search engines is that Twitter uses your last Tweet for the description. The search engines do not display your tweets in search results. Next up we’ll look at the implications in Google and Bing and why you should really pay attention to what is included in your short description.

Get your information in order

This post is geared toward a specific group at Hilton Worldwide, however, the content of this post applies to anyone looking to become further engaged in the Twitter-sphere.  The following is “constructive criticism” designed to help you improve your chances of being found by new followers.

Here is an image of the “Account” tab accessed through the “Settings” link at the top of your Twitter page. This tab is probably the most important feature available on Twitter. If you do not get this correct you are not going to be successful at building an audience in this environment.

1. Name: This is particularly important for hotels. Despite what Twitter says here if you are a hotel, your “real name” is the name of your hotel. Putting John Smith in this field means nothing but Acme Hotel Sandusky or Sandusky Acme Hotel means much more when someone is trying to locate you in Twitter Search. If you have a brand standard that has been communicated stay with the convention so customers can easily spot you as a true hotel.

2. Username: Be careful what  you enter in this location. In a perfect world the brand will supply a naming convention that will apply to all hotels in order to clearly identify who is who. You can change this after you create an account, but be mindful of changes here. You should not put your CITYHOCN or hotel code in this spot. Outside of your hotel this means nothing to rest of the world. Until a brand standard is communicated consider an abbreviation for the brand name with the name of your hotel. There are only 15 characters available here so you may need to be creative. Here is a long name for a hotel: Embassy Suites Hotel Crystal City – National Airport in order to condense this to 15 characters you will need to think creatively. Here is one idea: ESCrystalCtyDCA, the emphasis is on the location in Crystal City near the airport at DCA.

3. Email: Twitter requires a unique email address for each account. Do not use a personal email account for this spot. Enter an email address used at your property. Important updates and notifications will be sent to this address.

4. More Info URL: You absolutely must put the URL for your hotel in this location. Do not use URL shorteners either. Put the friendly URL or the long URL to your hotel here so followers can easily find your site from your Twitter page. This is crucial to helping your SEO value as well.

5. One Line Bio: You might consider this the “Master Tweet” about your property. It will always be visible on your page and should be a reflection of your property. With 160 characters you get to expand your bio beyond a typical tweet. Consider updating this bio as seasons change, new services are added, etc. In the following example location is the key to the bio:

We are in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia. Just one mile from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport(DCA) & two miles from Washington D.C.

6. Location: There is quite a bit of talk around what might change here in the future, but for the time being this is really an empty text field. You know your location best and what customers are looking for. This field allows for 30 characters so use them wisely. Do not mislead in this spot. In the example of the Embassy Suites used earlier the city is Arlington in Virginia, however using Crystal City and DCA as key landmarks it may provide more value to visitors.

These are the basics of the “Account” tab. The next post will cover how these fields are used, especially in Twitter search results when people are trying to find you.

Swimming in a sea of numbers

I love going through our web analytics tool, WebTrends. The sheer volume of information collected is staggering and you can weave your way through revenue numbers, visits, page views and other useless bits of data for hours at a time. What I find really fascinating is the changes that occur over time.

My first pass at looking at browser stats several years ago was typical for the time. Firefox 2 and IE7 were just released and Safari was not ideal even for Mac users. The breakdown back then was IE 88%, Firefox 7.5% and Safari 2.75%. Today the breakdown nearly three years later the numbers look a little different with IE 74%, Firefox 15% and Safari 8%. What I like about these stats is the ability to see the change over time and speculation.

You might be saying, “So what?” This one piece of information alone isn’t the only thing to take into account as there are other pieces of data that need to be considered in this context to formulate any sort of hypothesis. Based only on this stat you could argue that Mac users are an increasingly important user base. Afterall three years ago at most about 10% could be Mac users. More recently you could argue the max number of users could be 23%.

The danger is that change like the example above can lead to misinterpretation and overreaction. Sure there may in fact be more Mac users than before, but the hard part is figuring out if it really makes a difference. How will the information be used to better the customer experience?  So often we grab a snapshot of where we are today, last week or this month. While long term trends are not the most important variable, I think there is great value in seeing how customer trends appear over a much longer period of time. In this case further research might yield some additional considerations to providing a better customer experience.

What does your Twitter avatar(picture) say?

Twitter avatars

How do you expect a potential customer to recognize you and your tweets in a crowded sea like this?

In this case I think it is clear that the default Twitter avatar is not ideal. it is also worth noting that a transparent background for your avatar is also not ideal as many Twitter users are viewing their feed and tweeting outside of Twitter.com.

Exterior shots, of hotels in this case, are very small and while the hotel might recognize the location it will be difficult for customers to identify the image.

Use of the brand logo appears to be a good option if you have one that will work. Hilton Garden Inn has an easily recognized flower with the red background. Consistency from a brand would be key when a franchise is involved like in this example.

It is important to remember that people are not waiting for a message from you via an Inbox. They are scanning lines and lines of messages from many different sources. Make sure people can easily pick you out.

Some other observations from others are here and here.

Why my wife will never use Alice.com

Several weeks ago I read a blog post or Tweet from someone announcing Alice.com as the latest e-commerce shopping site around. Sorry to whomever announced it but it clearly didn’t leave a burning impression on my brain. Then this post from TechCrunch pops up via Twitter and so I had to make my way over to Alice.com again to see if anything changed. Clearly they know what they are doing and have a business model that appears attractive to the VC’s out in the valley.

I see this as a pretty neat opportunity to save a little money and at the same time “automate” some mundane tasks that would free up time for my wife to do other things. Just think of the quality time she could spend with me watching the Cowboys suffer another heart wrenching defeat instead of going to the grocery store. Okay, not really, but I would have less, “Can you pick up XXXX on the way home?” trips.

As cool as this tool is my wife will never use it. Not even consider it. Despite the apparent ease of use and cost savings it just isn’t for her. Although she began her career in a web services company she prefers the tangible to the intangible. Her preference is to us a day planner and physically write everything down. She has lists for everything. I think she made a list for me to boil water one time. The hurdle online companies face is that people like my wife are not motivated by time savings shopping online because the list management is fairly detailed and daunting. She compares, size, color, weight and price in the context of a grocery store. If an item is on sale when she happens to be in the store she may choose to purchase based on a price motivation, yet other times price will not win over quality.

I have not tried to figure out how she shops. I’ve been to the grocery store with her and have since been banned from ever doing that again. She appears to adopt some sort of Coast Guard search patter than flies in the face of logic. Truth be told my father used to do the shopping in my family when I was a kid and literally organized his list in the order it was laid out in the store. I mean from endcap to endcap his list was laid out like a map. I wish the Alice.com team the best of luck and perhaps one day the logic will exist to do some predictive analysis on the buying habits of my wife.

Hotel Tweeps: What’s that chirp?

Since I work for a hotel company the idea of hotels in social media has me kicking around some concepts about what might work. It is important to note that not all hotels or hotel brands are created equal. For example Hilton has everything from the humble Hampton Inn in a small town to one of the most recognizable hotels in the world in the Waldorf=Astoria in NYC. These are very different brand voices that need to be molded to fit the expectations of the target audience. These comments are not intended to be “law” but ideas to be debated, tested and validated.

My audience is…
One of the biggest problems I have noticed with the hotels that are active on Twitter is they seem to have no idea who they are talking to. An audience for any given hotel could be sliced many different ways with many different demographics. It is important to know who is interested in your hotel and cultivate the relationships with those that can influence decision makers to stay at your property. You need to understand that business travelers, families, meeting planners, CVB, Chambers of Commerce, travel agents, reporters, etc. want to know more about your property. Keep in mind that you have many different customer types with different motivations checking in to see what you are up to. This should provide plenty of opportunities to shape your messages.

Who are these people?
It is imperative that you review the followers on your account. Number of followers do not mean anything, so don’t get caught in the trap of finding lots of people to follow you. When you review your followers some clearly identify themselves, make note of who they are and who they are affiliated with. If you find you have a healthy number of travel agents following then take advantage of the opportunity. They want to know about your property and the more you can do to sell your property the better.

Additional Links:
Social Media Today
Pew Internet

I’m getting a grown-up voice now.
Many hotels have younger employees manage the Twitter account. General Managers need to regularly review what is being said and help these employees shape the “voice” of the hotel. Additionally you don’t want to move away from the overall brand identity. There are some hotels that are able to translate their brand and hotel voice online successfully. I am fond of the @HiltonSedona and @HiltonCancun for providing a nice balance.

Additional Links:
JPROF: Writting for Twitter
The Morning News

Where’s my $$$ from Twitter?

There is so much talk about Social Media that you might think the Internet Messiah was en route. Social Media is not a money making venture. So the sudden push to monetize this channel is humorous but expected. Make no mistake, I really like getting into the conversation and collaborating and sharing stories and solutions. But let’s get real for a second. Dell claims to have made $2 million via Twitter since 2007 according to this USA Today article. In all of 2008 the revenue for the whole company was $61.1 billion. If my math is right that would be .00003%.

This isn’t really fair since the Twitter revenue spans more than the fiscal year 2008. So it is likely the number is much lower over the same date range. This is why I don’t get too excited at the prospect of making tons of money off Twitter. If a small business were have annual revenue of $1 million in a year then they should be happy if they make $30 a year from Twitter? I don’t claim to be a math genius, but if my motivation is revenue, Twitter does not appear to be a profitable place generate revenue. The overhead is surely going to outweigh any revenue gain for the small business person.

Not all is doom and gloom though. I suspect there are many more small businesses that are successful at managing their customer expectations and comments via Twitter than Dell is able to do. But I think it is important to point out that Twitter is not a cash cow waiting to be sliced and diced. Without a clear execution plan your expectations can get in the way of reality.

Why can’t we just “unthink” a little

Yesterday I found myself in a hurry to grab some lunch before a marathon webex meeting. I figured I grab something quick, inhale my sandwich and run to the conference room. I unexpectedly ran into some colleagues from another floor and had a brief conversation in the lunch line. Idle chatter by most respects, until we got to where we pay for our food.

Before I continue the story I need to provide a brief explanation of our Deli. This is a family run business that must be doing okay because they have expanded in the nearly four years I have been in this building. They are modest but serve good breakfast and lunch options at a decent price. They are also know for their snacks. They have frozen yogurt that many around the building crave daily. They also use the power of baking cookies to lure unsuspecting midday snackers.

Back to the story. As we approached the cash register my colleague asks if I’m getting a cookie. The deli cleverly offers cookies as part of the special instead of a bag of chips and many do this. I say, “No. I never get the cookies. In fact I’ve never had one.” This is the part that gets me in trouble. The deli owner has seen me for 4 years and is stunned that I have never had a cookie. He opens the lid and orders me to grab the last cookie off the cookie sheet. Before I can pay he tells me to take a bite. You might be thinking this is a brilliant move on his part. It was! They are darn good cookies. I see why people gush over these things.

This example is similar to how we can engage customers online in Social Media. He wasn’t thinking about the PR angle, he didn’t run through a cost/benefit analysis or a A/B test. He simply overheard a conversation and was so sure of the product he offered to let me try a warm, delicious cookie on the house. This brings me to my headline. I understand the value of analysis, trends and communications that are “on message”. I had a call earlier that morning that was hotly debated about where Social Media fit in the discussion. My interaction with the deli owner was a refreshing example of being social that big corporations stand to do a little more. Can we just “unthink” a little?