A bit longer ago some people paid millions of dollars to purchase the domain name they wanted. Incomprehensible. But supposedly Nokia had to stack up quite a bit of dollars to get Ovi.com.

But that’s history, what’s up now?

Brand names in social media.

Acquiring the relevant domain names isn’t enough any more. You may want to secure the relevant social media channels, groups and fan pages as well. Here’s an interesting article by Michael Werch about how he hijacked Heinz’s brand on Twitter.

And so, on Dec. 1, 2009, I took it upon myself to create and brand a Twitter page under the username @HJ_Heinz. I posted Heinz ketchup bottles in the profile background, a link to the company’s corporate website, and a brief bio: “News, recipe ideas & fun facts for all things Heinz.”

The comments are also worth reading. I found it especially thought-provoking that the commenters consider hiring a person for tweeting a “nominal investment”. Or that you’re a dinosaur if you don’t see how a Twitter account with a few hundreds of followers will help Heinz in engaging their customers in a way that will show on the bottom line.

I hope this doesn’t lead into situation that we’ve seen with domain names. For example: some “entrepreneurial” characters in China had acquired our domain with a .cn suffix and wanted to discuss selling it with a good price. Will the next mail be about selling me a Twitter or Google Buzz account for our brand?

Jeremy Liew of the Lightspeed Venture Partners wrote a good post about WhichTestWon.com (this is how I found out about the site). He has also a bunch of other great A/B testing related articles worth reading.

Google’s Website Optimizer is good tool to get started with A/B testing.

Kevin May wrote an insightful “ten months later” analysis at tnooz.com.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole saga is that it seems unlikely that the buzz would have reached the extent it did if it had run in just a handful of media channels, such as TV, newspapers and online.

Using established online platforms such as YouTube (for the entry process) and Twitter (for instant communication) alongside the broadcast and mainstream media literally put the competition in the faces of the target audience.

Queensland got a lot of PR. It seems that they also got a lot of added sales because of the campaign.

I take this as an example of a successful online marketing campaign. We were trying to figure out success cases with Sirkku and this was one of the candidates (thanks for the tnooz  link btw). Later we discussed with Juha in our office about whether Twitter’s role was critical or not. And especially: how to use Twitter successfully for marketing. Juha pointed me to another interesting post. It seems that the best way to succeed on Twitter is to spam repeat your message. Hmm..

Here’s my take for the next success story in social media marketing: http://www.tackfilm.se/?id=1258484014513RA63. (in swedish only)

The Players:

• TripAdvisor, a hotel review site with the most User Generated Content. TA is owned by Expedia Inc., an OTA that has the biggest market share in the States.
• TravelPost, a hotel review site that has been idle for a couple of years. Kayak.com got their hands on TP when they accuired Sidestep in early 2008. Kayak.com is a relatively new flight meta search engine that has gained a lot of traffic and has become one of the most popular travel websites.

Ric Garrido writes about the amounts of UGC that TA and TP have, see his blog post.

Playfield: the online travel market. Travel is huge online market with internet sales in Europe and USA adding up to $160bn. The online travel is growing quickly in both USA and Europe. Expect a double digit growth rate for year 2009 in Europe [Marcussen 2009]! Thus we have a lucrative market but the margins are falling. Commissions from airlines are very small and the common “truth” is that hotel bookings are the only way to make money in online travel…

Round 1: TripAdvisor launched a flight meta search on Feb 27th. In the past TA has focused on hotel bookings but now they are going after Kayak’s domain. TripAdvisor announced that their new service “Brings Needed Clarity to Airline Pricing and Provides Most Flight Options and Best Deals Available Online“. They go further:

(TA’s) Dynamic Fees Estimator, the first and only online product to help travelers understand the true cost of a flight in a single display.

TripAdvisor now provides more flight choices than any other online flight search engine for the world’s top airlines.

Round 2: On March 11, TripAdvisor’s parent company Expedia announces that they’ll “waive booking fees on all flights”. Expedia is attacking Kayak’s position as the best place to look for flights. Is this linked with TripAdvisor’s announcement? Kevin May offers some insight, see here…

Round 3: Kayak strikes back. On March 24 they announce a launch of “World’s Largest Hotel Information Site“, i.e. TravelPost.com. TravelPost supposedly aggregates reviews and ratings from a huge number of sources and provides all these without pop-ups or clutter. And further:

For the first time, consumers can visit one website for all the information needed to make an informed decision on their hotel booking.

“Consumers and hoteliers are woefully underserved by websites like TripAdvisor.com, who appear to care more about their bottom lines than providing relevant content and a seamless experience,” said Steve Hafner, CEO and co-founder, Kayak.com.

What’s up next? Can’t wait to see Round 4!

Sam Shank (TravelPost founder and ex-CEO) posted an interesting analysis on the strengths and vulnerabilities of TA and Kayak.

A vivid, colorful story told by a trusted person overrides any guidebook author’s opinions or random people’s suggestions. This is true for any purchases or selections a person makes – and thus underlines the success of word of mouth marketing.

Now, a related interesting statistics from the world of social media and web 2.0 is the number of friends a person typically has and how a “friend” is defined. According to some research, the average number of friends a person has in Facebook is 164. The median is a bit less but still: social media empowers people to connect with friends in large numbers. A traveler network with many friends raises the probability that one or more of the guys in my network have been to the place I’m going to. This is actually working in practice: with already tens of friends in my traveler network, I’m having most of Europe and some USA covered quite well!

It helps a lot in planning a trip, if a person I know is recommending some of the places along my route. Thus, a good candidate for TripSay’s slogan: “Your friends are the best travel agent.”

Anyway, it seems that an other travel start-up changed their name at almost the same day. This coincidence is clearly a sign of an emerging pattern in start-up space. As Tim Hughes of The BOOT puts it:

A new start up pattern is emerging overnight in the content space. First you form a team, then you get a little funding, put out a beta site and generate some buzz. Then, naturally, you change your name. Within days of each other we had news that community and guide content player Vailoma is now called TripSay (announcement) and content/review aggregaor Kango is now called UpTake (announcement).

Yes, naturally. Have to agree with Tim’s analysis. As I wrote in the comments, I wonder if we’ll get more followers to this pattern…

Building a web site is somewhat similar to creating a new paper magazine. In both cases you follow the same steps:

1. Print or publish the first version of your content.
2. Attract readers to sample the content you provide.
3. Do your best to convert the first time random readers into subscribers or returning users.
4. Sell advertising space on your medium.

Once you get the reader base big enough you’ll be able live off the advertising and/or subscribtion revenue. The same goes for a web site. Of course there are a number of other proven business models but I find this local newspaper analogy easy to explain when my grandma asks what my company does…

Okay, so the business depends on getting readers and converting them to “subscribers”. Andrew Chen introduced an interesting metric useful in this context: activation efficiency. In his blog, Andrew says:

So let’s define a new metric, which I’ll call “Activation Efficiency,” using the marketing parlance of how many contacts you can “activate” into leads and then into sales:

• Activation Efficiency = total retained users / total acquired users

where:

• Retained users means total # of users that had 2 visits or more, let’s say
• Acquired users means the total number of uniques that come in through your viral loop

Now that sounds like a metric to keep an eye on! As he points out, it doesn’t matter if you get 1.000.000 users if only 0.1% activate. Better to acquire 100.000 visitors and activate 10% of them!

There are three criteria for making a web site a success:

1. The service must be a question! A question demands an answer and we do want to engage the user to a dialogue. And, pay attention, the question must be to the user, not from the user! Examples of good questions: “Where have you been?” (whereivebeen.com); “Where are you now?” (wayn.com); “What are you doing?” (jaiku.com). When I come by a new service, I want to know what the service is about and whether it’ll be useful for me. A question from the service to me is a clear message and if it’s interesting, I’ll take the time to answer.
2. The service must have a value proposition! The user must understand what she’ll get from using the service. Otherwise, why would she answer the question? The service must tell a convincing story of what it has to offer to those who answer its question. Whereivebeen.com says “easily track your travels”. Wayn.com tells a story of hooking up with others travelling to where you are. Note: this criterion is not about the service’s usefulness but about the story it tells!
3. The service must support ego gratification. Why do people generate content on social media sites? Because they want others to notice them. They want show off: “You know, I’m an expert on this issue.” or “Yeah, of travel I’ve had my share.” Some people may prefer another way of putting this: something along the lines that people share their expertise because they want to help others. And that is as true but doesn’t change the fact that the service must support showing off to and helping others!

That’s all. Design your web site according to these three criteria and your site will be a success.

What about items not included on the list above? Ease of use, fancy graphics, short response times, and technology choice. All of these are important but definitely not crucial! It doesn’t matter if you have the easiest to use calendar interface that works like a breeze if people just don’t get your question and story.

Basically social media denotes a site that gives its users tools for interacting with each other. Thus basically any blog or wiki or photosharing system is a social media. But what about the services or sites utilizing many components of the social media concept? Such services are designed around a common interest such as travel or sports and their success depends on user community building.

Wikipedia defines social media as “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.” That’s quite a mouthful so let’s break down the explanation to its components. In my opinion, the three core components of social media are:

• UGC. Social media revolves around a shared social object. Jyri Engeström wrote a good summary of what makes a good social object. Users generate these objects, thus User Generated Content (UGC). Great examples of UGC-centric services are Youtube and Flickr.
• Collaboration. People collaborate and create and connect information on their common interest The social media empowers wisdom of crowds. The most prominent example is Wikipedia.
• Social graph. Social media enable users to connect to other users in order to create a social graph of their friends (e.g. Facebook), business contacts (e.g. LinkedIn) or fellow travelers (e.g. TripSay).

The best (in terms of size and growth of user base) social media services combine all of these three components.