Interested in how to improve your Tripadvisor ranking easily? Here is how!

Recent statistics show:
A. 93% of travelers state that their decision which hotel to book is influenced by online reviews
B. 53% of travelers confirm they would not book a hotel in case it has no online reviews
C. Studies such as the one conducted by Cornell University on The Impact of Social Media on Lodging Performance in cooperation with ReviewPro and STRGlobal demonstrate the direct influence of a better score (or index) on review sites in correlation to the generated revenue for hospitality businesses
D. TripAdvisor is by far the largest review site with more than 100 million reviews

The TripAdvisor ranking depends on the Popularity Index. What is known about the algorhythm of the index is that it is based on these THREE indicators:
I. Review scores
II. Total number of reviews
III. Freshness of reviews.

You need to raise your Popularity Index, and by that the rank on TripAdvisor, by improving scores, raise the number of submitted reviews by your guests, and get reviews on a continuous basis to keep the freshness.

To achieve this hotels now can use the recently introduced solution Review Direct which is the result of the cooperation between MarketMetrix and TripAdvisor helping hotels to achieve all three indicators defined above.

Being placed into the generic guest survey form of the hotel Review Direct allows guests to contribute to Tripadvisor at the same time. Hotel guests already providing input simply choose to contribute a TripAdvisor review as well.

According to MarketMetrix results so far are pretty positive with significant increases in review volumes. An upcoming webinar by MarketMetrix in cooperation with the Swissotel hotel group using this Review Direct will show first results of the program.

Source: You can find the original post by MarketMetrix here.

Wrong! There are a lot of myths around Snapchat. There is this age old thing about sexting, that is an immature product, that its only for teens. Lets deal with these issues; sexting? If thats what people want to do they’ll find a way to do it on any platform. Nothing that makes Snapchat standout in this regard. Immature product? If thats what you believe then you probably haven’t tried it recently. For example it embodies a chat feature that is best described as Whatsapp, Skype and Messenger all rolled into one that will most likely emerge as a key CRM communication tool for brands, it provides for an authentic experience that showcases the human side to your business and you have a great degree of control over your brand message.

Just consider Snapchat as a private communication network; only those people you give permission to are able to see your content. But in Snapchat’s case it offers people the ability to communicate through visual language rather than text. So in the same way that the older demographic text each other the younger demographic snap each other. Those snaps provide compelling visual stories. Make sense?

In short you can communicate 1-2-1 or 1-2-many through features such as ‘chat’ and ‘stories’ but your snaps are (currently) never ‘public’. What this means is that you will need to build an audience that chooses to follow your account for them to be able to experience your snaps. Theres zero chance of spamming anyone or broadcasting your message. Its forces you to build relationships…and thats a good thing.

If I said you should you have been an early adopter on Twitter and build yourself a presence what would you say? You’d say ‘well yes thats obvious!’. Well thats where we are with Snapchat; its growing fast but it still hasn’t ‘popped’ yet. So if you are convinced that Snapchat is going to become a mainstream platforms then listen up; first and foremost you need to understand how to use it…now!

The only question that you need to ask yourself right now before you put in the time and the effort in to actually create these stories and get to know the app is this; is it worth the time and the effort? You’ve got two options; ‘wait and see’ or ‘get started’. Waiting is what most of you will do because you want be sure Snapchat is here to stay. But that would be a mistake IMO. Snapchat is popular right now and growing but its not crowded like so many other ‘mature’ platforms. That represents an opportunity to get a head start.

Snapchat is going places. You don’t need to take my word for it; smarter and better informed people than me are predicting that Snapchat will be mainstream over the next 12 to 18 months in the same way that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn are now well established platforms.

Something you could consider are Snapchat On-Demand Geofilters.

Geofilters are creative graphical overlays that brands design and submit to Snapchat to appear at a specific physical location for set amount of time. Geofilters essentially offers you the opportunity to place your brand in front of your target audience and for them to be able to share it.

Now I’m totally confused!

Let’s use an example; lets say you own a juice bar close to a university and want to make build relationships and brand awareness amongst students on campus. As they are all using Snapchat it would be a good idea to place a well designed geofilter that appears within the boundaries of campus during freshers week. Students would then have the option to use your geofilter when creating their snaps and sharing them with their private snapchat network. You would pay Snapchat for the privilege but it currently relatively cheap and under utilised so for those who know opportunity knocks!

There’s so much more to say about Snapchat in short blog post. As a video storyteller I can hand on heart say that it is my favourite social media platform. Whenever we run training sessions for organizations there is always the ‘Aha!’ moment when the penny drops and people get it and can identify all of the possibilities.
My advice? Get your marketing team together and get started. Play around with the app, get to grips with the interface and the features and learn how to tell compelling video stories and find your brand voice!

Link to Imran´s Blogpost

Find Imran on his channels

Twitter | Instagram | Snapchat

About thisisreel

The agency, founded by Imran Azam, is based in Manchester, Amsterdam and London .Their services are video strategy, video production, trainings and workshops. Great video stories reinforce existing relationships and establish new connections that push your brand forwards opening up new opportunities to grow. They work with brands and agencies to develop and deliver effective social media ready video campaigns that engage.

For more information, visit www.thisisreel.co.