Who
is doing well and who could improve? I’m taking into consideration the last 30 days implementation of those hotels
that have at least 1,000 fans. You’ll be surprised to see that those hotels
with a high number of fans might not be on top when it comes to entertaining their fans.
A
few considerations;
- Most hotels are purely using their pages as an advertising platform rather than an engaging one, and because of that most engagement rates are very low. Overall engagement dropped even further during Ramadan as, I guess, all hotels were limited in content.
- All top hotels are posting at least twice a day. Consistency is the key.
- Only a few hotels have converted their pages into places. ‘Places’ give benefits that ‘Pages’ don’t have; one above all is that it allows users to provide feedback about their check in locations. And feedback means a lot in the hotel industry.
- Except rare occasions all hotels are communicating to their fans in English only forgetting that a dual language page would definitely reach and engage more people since we’re in Oman.
- The Grand Hyatt, Shangri-La and Intercontinental together have 52.2% of the market share.
- Some hotels have not set a proper name for their pages yet. Com’on, it only takes 1 minute.
- A few hotels only make good use of applications; I especially like the virtual tour you can do at The Chedi.
Here is my list based on the following factors:
Engagement, Post interaction, Growth, Check-ins, Response rate and Number of
fans. When figures are green means they get my thumbs up J.
Am I missing something? There is no content......
ReplyDeleteThere's an excel sheet embed at the end of the post, it might take a while to upload if you're on mobile.
DeleteI'm still not seeing it buddy. Is it an icon or embedded text?
DeleteOK- I opened it up in Firefox and I can see it. Can't see it in Safari.
ReplyDeleteI can see it in Safari too, it just takes some time to upload. I can send you the excel document if you like :)
DeleteI read it in Firefox. It is interesting reading.
DeleteI haven't gone to all of them and looked at content- the only one I use if the Hyatt and that is definitely lacking in many ways. the foundations are there as if they have someone who is following a 'Facebook 101' handbook but isn't pushing further to make the connections in the way that a social media professional does.
What I don't understand is why What's On does not have a proper facebook page for Muscat/Oman as it would give balance to the hotel sites as well as offer a valuable resource to residents. It would help the content of their printed magazine and drive ad revenues up as they would be creating their own competitive space.
Oh yes, I forgot, we are in Oman where most people can't even spell PR.
It is also ironic that the InterCon has the most impressive numbers across the board but essentially has the least to offer in terms of longevity! Good on you for putting this together and when put side by side to your first table shows who has been consistent in their effort and has taken a long-term view of social media, something which most companies don't do and any efforts evaporate after a few months.
Glad you enjoyed it. Numbers can change quite quickly so with a little time, effort and passion everyone can get to the right track.
DeleteHyatt and Intercon are both doing well; it seems to me lots of people are emotionally attached to the Intercon (probably because it's the oldest hotel and brings back lots of memories) while recently the Hyatt has started exploring other avenues such as Twitter and Instagram which shows that they know what they're doing and where they want to get. Time will tell....
Thanks for passing by :)
Does this mean that check-ins are more important than fans??
ReplyDeleteAny engagement or interaction is ultimately more important than the number of fans. Look at the top few facebook pages in Oman and you will see who has been 'cheque-book marketing' and who has been organically growing. Compare the engagement numbers of Oman Sail (121,475 with 511) versus Oman Air (234,432 with 44,476) or Nawras (124,563 with 6,005). For a starker contrast, and in keeping with this table, look at Oman Sail compared to Grand Hyatt Muscat (16,123 with 707)!
DeleteAnon 1: check-ins use GPS technology to track users’ locations. They allow users to “check in” to locations they visit and update their friends online about their whereabouts. That translates to free advertising for any business as well as potential way to provide customer incentives.
DeleteNot to mention that when someone checks-in into your place that person is physically there, while a fan could comment or like your status even if in another country or never been into your store, restaurant, etc.
Anon2: very true about engagement, for me is the number 1 number to look at while the number of fans is for people with big egos. However i'm not sure it's fair to compare Oman Air with the Hyatt or Nawras for instance. Different industries, different targets, different markets and most importantly different budgets. Oman Air has in place a yearly budget of close to $2 million while a company focusing on the local market would have a few thousands only. Plus, Oman Air outsources to third party agencies while the Hyatt, again as an example, does everything in-house.
Agree with your analysis but my point was more along the lines of effective use of content to drive the value of the fan that is talking about your product/service. The result being that you can have fewer fans but ore people talking about you and that is worth more to the communications team than fan-count. The number of fans is a quick ego boost to the uninitiated and those with a budget.
DeleteomanAir's SM budget is not $2 million, trust me, but it is probably the highest- but that goes hand in hand with the business they are in. They are far more global and their reputation management is key to their overall mix. Oman Air also has an SM manager in-house but contracts the execution to a 3rd party.
The Hyatt's engagement is testament I think to the point you made at the beginning that effective use of budget to engage organic fans gives more valued response on the site than prostitute likes.
In this part of the world people seem to go for quantity rather than quality, that’s why companies are obsessed with fans in terms of number rather than interaction or engagement.
DeleteMost of the hotels have great content (and content is king) that’s why they get so many genuine likes compared to other industries, like the automotive for instance, where companies need to frequently give out freebies in order to increase the fan base.
All hotels’ stats and numbers were taken during the past month, Ramadan (and in the middle of the summer), so probably not the best time of the year for them to be analysed. I’m sure in a couple of months all engagement rates will go up quite drastically...I hope.
And thanks for adding great value to this post Anon2.
This post and comments are very useful. Well done to everyone. My question then; what is the value of a fan if it has any value at all? I didn't know about check ins and it seems they are actually a way to measure success and ROI? Am i wrong?
ReplyDeleteA fan can be worth lots or nothing, it really depends. Some fans will like your page because they love your brand and they're very loyal to it, some others because maybe they want to find out more before purchasing something, while others because want to get freebies. It's up to you to manage your fans and find out the most possible details about them. Looking at Facebook insights into details regularly helps a lot.
DeleteCheck-ins are very useful and will be even more now that Facebook rolled out Open Graph. They're useful not only to let your friends know where you are, but also to learn if your friends are nearby at the same time, and to write down what you/they are doing at the location and what the feedback about a particular place is. As shown on the table above Hyatt, Intercon and Shagri-La have tons of check-ins, and that's a real number of people who stepped into their hotels and most likely made a purchase.
Thanks Mr M, keep up the good stuff coming!
DeleteMost hotels need to revisit their marketing approach, not only is outdated but also unattractive. The Hyatt seems to be doing quite well as they keep coming up with some good events and, as you said, they're now exploring Twitter and Instagram. The others...??
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're right. The hotels i mentioned are different in many ways, for instance the Al Bustan and Zighy Bay are in a different category and their market is very small compared to the Hyatt or Intercon. I don't follow each hotel's marketing effort but i'm sure they know what they're doing, well...at least some of them. Having said that the whole industry should step up the game when it comes to communication. Thanks for passing-by.
DeleteThere are numerous sites out there selling likes so I don't think fans or likes is going to be a good measure of any thing in the future. The likes are from an app that pays people if they like pages, so the likes are from legita accounts. I bought 1000 the other week to test it. The site I bought them from allows buying of up to 1000000 likes. I know of 2 oman pages that have definately bought likes.
ReplyDeleteOh.. and the likes I bought are for a non Oman based page that I dont care if it gets delete.(although after 3 weeks its still there)
DeleteHi Anon; there's tons of sites where fans can be purchased but those fans will never care about the brand as they don't like the brand in the first place. The number of fans is not an performance indicator if not in terms of page growth.
DeleteYou might want to read this to see why it's counterproductive buying fake fans. http://www.oman-collective-intelligence.com/2012/08/im-giving-away-free-facebook-and.html
sure. I understand that.. but then its also a weapon. If i wanted the posts of my competitor to drop in edge rank could i not just drop $100 and buy 10000 fake likes for their page? That's pretty cheap to kill their news feed exposure?
DeleteThis is why nofollow backlinks from blogs and low pagerank sources neither have a positive or negative effect in Google. Google realises if it penalises for something a website owner can't control, then competitors will use it against each other.
If this is the case with edge rank, facebook will have to rethink it soon.
I'm guessing this is why facebook doenst currently remove pages that have massive raise in likes in a short period of time. - They don't know who do it.
I think Edgerank is a very powerful tool that we are only seeing the start of. When used with sponsored articles it was damaging to the smaller pages, especially charities etc that don't have the spending power.
ReplyDeleteThat is why the best metric is 'talking about' and 'check-ins' though it is still a dark art for the cognisenti of social media and a strategical abyss for lay clients.
Oddly enough, I have found one of the best descriptions of the usage of Edgerank by George Takei in one of his books!
Nice post. Would be interesting if there is a correlation between their FB performance and their revenue change.
ReplyDeleteHey , Admin
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