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REDEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA
A guest column from Rajan Malhotra and Kristof Roemer of TrustYou

All these years, we have discussed over high tea and midnight drinking binges, where we should eat our next meal and where we should take our next vacation to. We have discussed on the phone with our friends which are the best hotels in Manhattan and the cheapest B&B’s in London, but now we have a bigger, far more in-depth way of cataloguing and analysing all this information and coming to constructive conclusions, thereby assisting in us utilising the right of making a calculated choice. That is what social media means to most of us today. While it is essential to get hundreds of people to sign up to social media, and then to get them to ‘like’ your page or ‘join’ your group, it is far more important to come up with a process that can entice these customers to stay on. Once you have reached out to your customers, to keep them enticed and engaged is the key, work on processes that all every 100th person who signs on gets a free meal, or every 500th ‘like’ wins the person a two night stay at one of your hotels.

Engaging with the customer can also be allowing them to voice their opinions over these social media platforms with regards to the kind of service being rendered to them at your properties. Surely this is a great marketing platform as there is nothing surer for a potential client to read that someone whom he doesn’t know endorses your property. To a certain extent it is essential to be a show off: hotels and restaurants must demonstrate the changes being made in their properties. A fresh new bathroom in the lobby of the hotel must be photographed and displayed on your facebook page; a new chef in the kitchen should be showcased as a new asset acquisition by the organisation.

Sentiment Analysis
With the advent of social media came tools that can analyse all the information being presented out there, and then came the discovery of semantic technology which can read into the sentiment behind the thought and phrase and place it as a positive, negative or neutral sentiment. Products such as TrustYou are on a mission to structure and aggregate the world’s opinion on local data and products, and build the largest sentiment database in the world. With a passion to aggregate, structure and understand data. TrustYou focuses on social data like reviews, tweets and opinions that can be matched to a specific service or product.

Speaking To Your Followers
These are your loyal customers and will speak up for you, they will defend you and vouch for you continuously but you must utilize them judiciously. They can take your products a mile forward but can also drop you overnight if they see that you are losing steam.

Appropriate Conversational Tone
A lot of organisations out there have come up with one simple paraphrase which they post in response to every complaint “we are very sorry for xyz, we will try to do a better XYZ next time given the opportunity”. This is going to get you nowhere, it’s like a customer talking to you in your hotel/restaurant and you sponding with a robotic “I am so sorry” to each and every customer. This is not going to help you. Talk to each customer as an individual and respect his opinion.

Expectations
It is essential to setup expectations for your followers. You could post expectations such “We will respond to all queries within 24hrs” for the customers to be aware of the reaction time. Thus if they need to find someone in a more urgent situation they can use alternative contact mediums. All in all while social media has opened a cacophony of chatter all over the web, it has also created a huge amount of data that can be useful for a varied number of businesses. Further analysing the statistics with regards how many times a certain word/phrase was used and then getting into the sentiment behind the statement creates a lineage of information that businesses can utilise to understand what the customer wants, and to deliver it better. While for the ‘followers’ and fans out there, it is essential to continue posting your views and opinions as these thoughts are the ones that will assist us in doing a better job and delivering a better end product to you.

Authors promote TrustYou in India

Lessons for Managers Who are Listening to Social Media

1. Don’t forget about the silent majority. Many forums are dominated by a small, hardcore group of individuals who may not be representative of the broader customer base that has chosen to remain silent.

2. Social dynamics in the forum can influence who posts and who remains silent. In the face of conflicting opinions, less involved and more positive customers increasingly remain silent, letting the more critical customers steer the ratings environment.

3. Don’t overreact to negative feedback. Negative reviews don’t necessarily mean that your brand or product is uniformly disliked. More favorable customers may have chosen to remain silent rather than contradict the harsh criticism expressed by previous posters. Trying to appease your dissatisfied customers may be quite costly — and not necessarily worth it.

4. Ignore the white noise. It is important to differentiate between the white noise and the meaningful insights. Many trends and dynamics observed in online opinions are simply a result of “healthy” dynamics. A careful statistical analysis of ratings dynamics can help identify when a marketer should address an issue raised by a negative comment or modify a product in response to criticism.

And for more in-depth reading, check out the rest of the article here: http://bit.ly/pRN7ZB

München (w&p), 13. Oktober 2011 – Konnichiwa, TrustYou! Das Münchner Unternehmen hat mit Solare Hotels & Resorts zum ersten Mal einen Kunden in Japan gewonnen und weitet somit sein weltweites Portfolio von über 6.000 Unternehmen nun auch im Land der aufgehenden Sonne aus. Die Hotelgruppe umfasst rund 70 Häuser in Japan und wendet künftig den Social Media Monitoring Dienst ReviewAnalyst von TrustYou für die gesamte Gruppe wie auch für einzelne Hotels an. Dafür hat das Münchner Unternehmen eine komplette japanische Semantik entwickelt und ist der erste Anbieter seiner Art auf diesem Markt.

Für die Zusammenstellung der Hotelbewertungen nutzt TrustYou zahlreiche Quellen und liefert Kunden somit einen umfassenden Einblick in die Gästebewertungen, die User über die Solare Hotels & Resorts in Internet abgeben. Dazu zählen neben den einschlägigen Bewertungsportalen auch Social Media Kanäle wie Facebook, Twitter und das japanische Mixi inklusive Rakutem Travel, Japans größter Hotelreservierungs-Website. Wie in anderen Märkten auch bietet TrustYou seinem japanischen Kunden die Sammlung sowie die Analyse und die Interpretation von Kommentaren im Internet an.

„Durch die Zusammenarbeit mit TrustYou sind wir die erste japanische Hotelgruppe, die mit Hilfe von semantischer Technologie ein umfassendes Social Media Management betreibt. Wir sind sehr stolz darauf, uns hier als Vorreiter zu positionieren. Uns hat neben der einzigartigen semantischen Technologie überzeugt, dass TrustYou zahlreiche japanische Quellen analysiert. Dies ist eine weitere von vielen Initiativen unserer Hotelgruppe, bei der wir mit Gebrauch modernster Technologie die Wünsche unsere Kunden entschlüsseln, unser Marketing erweitern und es unseren Hotels möglich machen, schnell zu reagieren und den bestmöglichen Kundenservice zu bieten.“, sagt Jack Tan, Chief Strategic Marketing and Technologie Officer von Solare Hotels & Resorts in Tokio.

Mit dem Einstieg in den japanischen Markt ist TrustYou ab sofort auf fünf Kontinenten vertreten. Getreu der Devise „Globales Wissen mit lokaler Expertise“ sieht Benjamin Jost, Geschäftsführer und Mitgründer von TrustYou, keinerlei Beschränkungen für den Einsatz der TrustYou-Technologie. Mit einer ausgeklügelten semantischen Technologie durchsucht TrustYou hunderte von Internet-Portalen und Social Media Kanälen nach Gästebewertungen für Hotels und touristische Verbände – und das in insgesamt zehn Sprachen. Die Daten werden im Auftrag von Kunden gesammelt und analysiert. Je nach Wunsch sind Kunden in der Lage, die so gewonnenen Informationen für die Vermarktung ihres Unternehmens zu nutzen.

„Der Eintritt in einen so speziellen Markt wie Japan ist eine enorme technische Herausforderung“, kommentiert Benjamin Jost, Geschäftsführer und Mitgründer von TrustYou. „Wir haben es hier nicht nur mit einer anderen Sprache, sondern auch mit einer anderen Schrift zu tun. Umso mehr freuen wir uns, auch hier eine für den Markt maßgeschneiderte Lösung anbieten zu können.“

Über Solare Hotels & Resorts Co. Ltd – „Nationwide for all occasions“

Solare Hotels & Resorts und seine fast 5.300 Mitarbeiter betreiben – teilweise als Franchisenehmer oder im Asset-Management – insgesamt 73 Hotels und 12.696 Zimmer in ganz Japan. Zu den Häusern gehören Chisun Hotels, Loisir Hotels, Hotel Avanshell, das Okinawa Marriott Resort & Spa und das Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers.

Über TrustYou

TrustYou durchsucht und analysiert Millionen von Internetbewertungen. Mit TrustYou-Analytics ist das Unternehmen der Weltmarktführer im Bereich Social Media Management und semantische Technologie. Es richtet sich direkt an Hotels, Destinationen und Tourismusanbieter und ermöglicht ihnen ein umfassendes Qualitäts- und Reputationsmanagement von den eigenen Gästebewertungen bis hin zu allen Bewertungen im Social Web. Technologieanbieter wie Trust International oder Micros-Fidelio sowie zahlreiche Einzelhotels und renommierte Hotelketten wie InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, BestWestern, Maritim Hotels oder Worldhotels vertrauen auf den Service von TrustYou. Weitere Produkte von TrustYou sind die Semantic API um eigene Bewertungsinhalte zu strukturieren und besser auffindbar zumachen sowie die Social Data API um selbst Applikationen und Services auf den vorhandenenstrukturierten Daten zu bauen. Im Jahr 2008 gründeten Jakob Riegger und Benjamin Jost TrustYou mit der Vision, einen kompletten Überblick über alle Internetbewertungen weltweit zu erhalten. Im November 2010 erhielt TrustYou beim PhoCusWright Innovation Summit in den USA den begehrten Preis als Innovationsführer der Online-Reisebranche 2011.

Weitere Informationen sind unter www.trustyou.com und analytics.trustyou.com zu finden.

Für weitere Presseinformationen, Interviewanfragen und Bildmaterial: presse@trustyou.com

Julia Pawelczyk
Wilde & Partner Public Relations
Senior PR-Consultant
Tel. +49 (0)89 – 17 91 90 – 21
juila.pawelczyk@wilde.de
www.wilde.de

Having used TrustYou Analytics since a year ago, what benefits have you obtained with the tool?

After a year using TrustYou Analytics as a main tool to monitor and analyze our online reputation, we must say the main benefit has been a vast increase in our efficiency with social media in our hotels. Using TY Analytics we can react faster, as time is a deciding factor when interacting in the social space.

What’s the main reason to keep monitoring your online reputation with TYA?

The main reason we’re committed to TYA is the agility the tool offers in the efficient management of our “web 2.0″ presence. It is not just about the alerts on new reviews, it is about how the tool is smartly structured, easily understandable, and easy to use for powerful reputation analysis.

Have you studied other options to monitorize your reputation online?

Yes indeed, but we’ve decided to continue with TYA thanks to its ease of use and quickness. As well as other features like the attractive graphics…

Better positioning, Sales increase and customer loyalty. Which of these improvements have you noticed the most?

Using TY has improved contact with our direct customers and strengthened our position in the marketplace. The ability to vastly improve our reaction time with reputation management has helped us engage trusting customers on review sites and social media channels alike. These improvements combined with our daily work put us ahead of our direct competitors on positioning and an increase of income.

Regarding the tool, one of our most used areas is the “Tops and Flops” tag. We are able to see – in a quick glance – what keywords are used by customers to identify the hotel. We love it!

Would you recommend the tool to competitors?

Personally I would recommend the tool to any hotel interested in having precise control of their reputation online. Use of these tools just not help single hotels, but can be a great help for the entire sector, enabling the industry to offer good service and cater directly to customers’ expectations like we’ve never been able to before

And so closes our glowing interview with our friends in Mallorca. For more information about TrustYou Analytics, visit http://analytics.trustyou.com

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• New York Times
• Washington Post
• TechCrunch
• Tnooz
• VentureBeat