If you’re a foodie, you have a login for restaurant reservation website OpenTable. If you’re gadget savvy, you may also have their mobile app on your smartphone. The popular reservation service has seen great success thus far in 2010, confirmed by their recently quarterly earnings announcement.
In a post by Erick Schonfeld of TechCruch, he reports “OpenTable is installed in 14,128 restaurants and seated 15.6 million diners last quarter, up 27 percent and 52 percent, respectively.” Not only is OpenTable becoming the go-to source for reservations, but users are also raising their level of engagement with the site.
Schonfeld wrote, “Those diners have now written more than 7 million restaurant reviews. As a point of comparison, Yelp has a total of 12 million reviews across all local businesses, and CEO Jeremy Stoppleman considers the those reviews to be Yelp’s single most important competitive advantage.”
Digest that for a second. Yelp, which reviews all types of businesses, not just restaurants, has 12 million reviews, and OpenTable, which exclusively provides restaurant information has 7 million?
OpenTable clearly understands the value of creating a site users want to spend time on, not just log in and log out. By allowing customers to write reviews of their dining experiences the site becomes about something more than just reserving your table.
Additionally, OpenTable is hopping on the “group buying” bandwagon and offering a new weekly special they are calling “Spotlight.” This will operate the same way Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe do, and offer specials like “$25 dollars for $50 dollars worth of food at Grill 23.”
As RaceTalk commented in a post last week, the group buying concept entices customers to try places they normally wouldn’t because they are being offered a discounted price (recession, anyone?). Additionally, the sites incorporate social media channels allowing users to post their purchase on Facebook, Twitter and more. Some sites also offer referral bonuses to customers who bring in new users.
Should OpenTable decide to incorporate social media sharing on their site and explore referral bonuses, the company’s growth potential is exponential. OpenTable is paying attention to emerging trends and adapting quickly.
Social Media Michelin awards OpenTable three stars!
In a recent blog post, Socialnomics author Erik Qualman shared updated figures on Twitter’s presence in the online search game. Twitter has officially edged out Yahoo! and Bing in number of monthly searches. See graphic below:
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Twitter founder Biz Stone shared that Twitter now has over 800 million search queries per day, which is a 33% increase from the last time he shared search figures in April (2010).
On his blog, Qualman writes, “We have indicated all along that Twitter & Facebook would be bigger search competition for Google than Yahoo and Bing. The fact that this is coming to fruition so soon is astounding. Social search and social commerce are becoming reality and it’s a great thing to see. Keep in mind we haven’t even mention YouTube and its social search activity.”
To the people who say social media is a fad, or that these sites are unimportant for business I say, think again. Consumers are searching for your products and services on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and if you are not there, they will find another provider.
Even though the NBA hasn’t had a basketball game since June 17th, the league is attracting more attention then any other sport right now, thanks to the 2010 free agent class, which is lead by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
While Bosh and Wade have been publicizing their free agent experience over Twitter and YouTube, no one has taken advantage of the media quite like James, who often refers to himself as King James.
Yesterday James launched a Twitter account which has quickly attracted approximately 250,000 followers, despite only have three tweets (none of which reveal anything interesting). James also launched his own website, which appears to be strictly for announcing his free agent decision.
However, in the most ego-stroking move of all, James’ camp has contacted ESPN to arrange for an hour-long special from 9:00pm – 10:00pm ET tomorrow during which he will make his announcement (which is being called “The Decision”). While ESPN will strike ratings gold with this special, it’s also an example of why the network is unable to cover James’ and his buddies without bias. Simply put, ESPN uses this young group of attention-seeking players as much as they use ESPN. This results in large staged events like tomorrow’s news conference, and constant attention to non-stories like James’ elbow “injury” during the playoffs which miraculously disappeared following the Cavs’ loss to the Celtics.
When people across the country sit down at 9:00pm tomorrow to learn where James will sign his next contract, many will do so with a sick feeling in their stomach, knowing that James has been able to use mainstream and social media to manipulate them, and that ESPN is willing to do anything for “The King.” However, the viewers will be there, which is enough to make James happy (as he lives for the attention) and the NBA happy (as it has never received this much attention during the off-season). However following the announcement, there will be one city of people that love James, while the rest of the country criticizes him for his large ego and inability to win just one game in the NBA finals during his first 7 seasons in the league.
Last night Racepoint Group hosted an event about social media and its return on investment (ROI). As social media continues to become a larger focal point in public relations and marketing campaigns, it’s critical to understand how to articulate it’s value to clients.
Last night’s event centered around a panel discussion with three social media experts: Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing for HubSpot.
After Larry Weber’s opening remarks, Qualman shared how he first dipped his toe into the digital space by sending a company-wide email instead of the standard hard copy memo. View his story here:
Volpe was up next and shared with the group the origins of his marketing career and the way tracking and reporting on ROI is evolving. Watch him provide tips here:
The evening was full of tremendous ideas and recommendations. The five big takeaways from the panel were:
1) Social media is not about technology. It’s about human interaction. It’s about sharing information and making connections. People who are intimidated by the technology aspect of engaging in social media should not view the applications as a hurdle. It’s simply the current mechanism to maintain relationships and reach out to new people.
2) When it comes to tracking social media, its important to focus not only on the quantitative (number of followers, number of re-postings) but also the qualitative. We need to take into account engagement and tone. Qualman said, “If social media is so trackable, we should just have robots running things. The human element is necessary here.”
3) Everyone and anyone can be a content creator, a publisher, a media property. As we shift away from traditional print and broadcast media, both we and our clients have the opportunity to get innovative and create and distribute our own content. Additionally, content creation should not be isolated to the PR and marketing staff. Volpe shared that, “50% of HubSpot employees have written posts for the HubSpot blog.”
4) Although much of PR and marketing is based in the written word, we need to start thinking more visually. We need to tell stories through pictures and videos. We need to make our content more authentic and dynamic.
5) On a personal level, Volpe stated, “The new resume is what comes up in Google when I type in your name.” As digital and social media continue to play an increasingly vital role in our PR and marketing efforts, we too have a digital and social persona, and that is now what employers are most interested in.
Thank you to Erik Qualman and Mike Volpe for joining us at Racepoint Group last night and providing such pragmatic, realistic, useful and inspiring guidance on the social media ROI frontier. Be sure to follow @equalman and @mvolpe on Twitter for real time updates on their social media adventures. You can also view all the live commentary during the event with the #smroi hashtag here.
Although the NBA finals didn’t turn out the way Celtics fans had hoped, they did prove to be great for Twitter. A record number of tweets – 3,085 per second – were posted during game 7 of the NBA finals last night, compared to their normal average of 750 tweets per second, an increase of over 410 percent.
While watching the game last night (and through the entire playoffs) I’ve been turning to Twitter to follow what local Boston sports writers and national NBA writers have been posting. Many have offered great insight, information and comments throughout the game, making the entire experience a lot of fun.
On June 21st advertising executive David Perez will officially turn his life over to Twitter. Why? He wants his boss to send him to a conference.
Perez and his boss agreed that if Perez spends one week on Twitter doing anything (not illegal) that his Twitter followers demand, Perez will get to travel to France and attend the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. While this seems like a strange means to attending a conference, keep in mind that Perez and his boss work in advertising and picked this specific challenge (or whatever you want to call it) for a reason.
Perez will spend an entire week doing whatever his Twitter followers order. These tasks could be simple (drink a can of soda), tedious (jump up and down on one foot) or downright weird (let your imagination wonder).
Life streaming has already become quite popular, with sites like Justin TV taking off in recent years. Even celebrities, like former NBA star Stephon Marbury, have gotten in on the action (Marbury had what seemed like a completemeltdown on camera last summer). However, this may be the first time someone has left control of their actions in the hands of everyone else.
So what could prove to be a very boring, pointless and stupid experiment may also be intriguing enough to drive a lot of viewers and followers next week when David Perez officially turns his life over to Twitter.
For his sake, I hope the conference (and Cannes) is worth it.
Following in the footsteps of Google and perhaps Hugo Chavez, New York City is looking to hire a “mayor” for social media to activate digital initiatives that push the city’s policies into the digital sphere. The position, Chief Digital Officer, is being offered by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The job pay will pay between $57,000-$125,000, and according to the opening listing it will entail:
“Managing and presenting a consistent and comprehensive new media face for the City of New York; coordinating with City agencies in the promotion of initiatives via new media tools; working with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to improve the design and content of NYC.gov to increase usability and make relevant information more accessible.”
It is believed to be the first city or city administration to seek a CDO and should be a sign of things to come. As community and consumer relations evolve in the digital age, the need for CDO’s (a position now popular in the private sector) becomes as important as having a press secretary.
Got any good candidates for Mr. Bloomberg? Maybe someone at Bloomberg?
The creator of the @BPGlobalPR Twitter account wrote a blog post for Gizmodo, explaining why he decided to start the account. Although he doesn’t provide his true identity (a smart move) the points he makes about BP and online image is spot on. Below is a brief excerpt from the post:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.
Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.
BP seems to only care about maintaining their image so they can keep making money
Over the past week the fake BP Twitter account has become quite popular – attracting over 55,000 followers in just over a week. In many of their tweets a fictional character named Terry is mentioned, who can best be described as an epic #fail.
Well, today BPGlobalPR is expanding its Twitter presence, as they have just announced that Terry has joined Twitter as bpTerry.
While this is great news for Twitter users that enjoy a laugh throughout the day, it’s just another dark cloud in BP’s public relations nightmare (it’s also a smart move for the owner of the BPGlobalPR account, in the event that BP attempts to have Twitter terminate the fake account).
And 20 minutes later another: “Think about it this way, the ocean is like rootbeer and oil is like ice cream. We just made America a giant rootbeer float!”
Even though the Twitter account handle account is labeled BPGlobalPR the content being posted during the past 6-7 days has been a nightmare for BP’s actual PR team. Someone (who is clearly having fun) decided to mock BP’s poor handling of the oil spill with witty one-liners such as, “Jesus walked on water and soon you can too! (Please pray for BP, we’re losing a lot of oil).”
The account has become quite popular – attracting over 25,000 followers in this short time, more than double the number of followers for BP’s official corporate Twitter account and Twitter account covering the oil spillcombine. Even more scary for BP is the amount of re-tweets this fake account is getting, which is what’s driving it’s visibility.
This situation provides other companies with an idea of how social media can be used against them during an ugly situation. Quick, honest responses can do a lot in image control and management, which BP is now learning about first hand.
