Article for Wednesday, 2nd March 2011

The article "American Airlines’ AAdvantage Facebook Fans grow 84 fold in 54 hours. The most successful campaign ever by an airline?" shows how the airline company managed to dramatically increase its number of followers on Facebook thanks to a clever marketing campaign or rather loyalty program.

Indeed, figures speaks quite clearly: the loyalty group at American Airlines, AAdvantage, set up the Facebook fanpage on Feb 1 and in the first couple of weeks, they won 2000+ fans, organically. Then they launched the Mystery Miles campaign to drive membership, and the numbers exploded. In 24 hours, not only they went from 2,558 fans to 163,000 (and had reached a staggering 210,000 fans just 54 hours after the campaign was launched) but the interactions and engagements on the fanpage also increased dramatically  from just 41 likes for one of the initial posts, to over 1,200 likes for one just sent out.

The AAdvantage campaign consisted in a very simple proposition: “Like” a Facebook fanpage to get a random reward, that is to get between 100 to 100,000 miles just for liking their Facebook fanpage, in their Mystery Miles contest.

It is the first time a campaign launched by an airline company is so successful in such a short time. Before that, other airline companies also found efficient ways to drive brand engagement. You will find below the Top 10 Facebook contest by Airlines:

Top 10 Facebook Contests by Airlines

View more presentations from Shashank Nigam

As you can see, it exists many ways to encourage the fans' interaction and social networks like Facebook are becoming the ideal places to launch your loyalty programs. Still, the article reminds us that a few questions remain to be answered to manage very large community. For instance, companies should wonder how to distinguish between the one-time “likers” and the “real-fans; how to set the right expectations for future campaigns, given the first campaign was so generous; how to start driving business from these fans ( how many offers is too many?) or how to scale up the team internally and use the right tools to manage this.

I personally think the combination social media + loyalty program is very clever. It is a good way to reach a large number of people who are supposed to be your "fans" as they follow you and to get many feedbacks in a short time and at a low cost.

Cool video explaining the interest of LBS social rewards program - SNAP Rewards

In class exercise - What are the pros and cons of using social media in your business strategy?

What are the risks involved in using 'social

View more presentations from Lauriane Laurent.

Final Exam Digital Marketing

Open publication - Free publishing - More social

Article for Wednesday, 9th 2011 - Are Q&A sites the new travel search?

Today, I chose this article "Question and Answer sites – another piece of the online travel search revolution" not really to wonder whether yes or no Q&A sites are the new travel search (as in my opinion this question is already obvious: yes they are definately the growing trend) but because it allows me to discuss of their role in the CRM (customer relationship management) and online brand building. These sites are usually very useful, convenient and it is fast to get an answer. Besides, it is a good way to have the insights of someone who already experienced the products or services we have doubts about. We are now in a period when other users' feedbacks are more relied on than brand messages and it explains why these sites are so increasingly popular.

The article presents you 4 Q&A sites - namely Quora, Aardvark, Travellr and Mygola - and describes you how they work. What is very interesting is what comes next: the author introduces to you the 2 challenges challenging these websites, which are 1) Are incentives necessary to make work these sites on the long term or the will to share and be useful to one another is stronger? 2) What will become of these sites if (when) Facebook will launch its own Q&A section (which is actually already happening as you will see in this article)

I think these are very interesting questions. Of course, opinions vary on these topics. For instance, concerning the 1st question, some sites believe that paying the participants for their contributions is logical (like Mahalo or Mygola) while other sites believe that human desire to share stories and be useful are more powerful than financial rewards (like Quora or Travellr). In my opinion, financial rewards should not be part of the game. The greed for money could encourage people to answer all questions, whatever their level of knowledge on a topic and be damageable for the quality of the answers. I think this method could affect the "purity" and honesty of the site and of its contributions.

As for the 2nd question, it is no doubt that Facebook would be a great challenger and that it may jeopardize the survival of these sites. However, may Q&A sites are in "niche" services. Not all of them are focusing on the same types of questions and people choosing one or another Q&A sites are looking for different king of information. For instance, you have general sites like YahooAnswer, professional sites like Linkedin Answers etc. The best would be to look at the presentation below, which will give you a better highlight of what already exists:

Q&A sites, forum des années 2010

View more presentations from Cyril Hijar.

As you see, Q&A sites are already many on the virtual market and all have their own purpose. Thus, I am sure there would still be space for some of them, provided they focus on their niche markets.

I would also like to add that another challenge facing the most popular sites is... their increasing popularity itself! What I mean is that the more people interact on the site, the higher the risk to get lower quality answer and to make the sites lose its relevancy. Sites like Quora should be very careful to monitor the quality of the contents.

Now is the topic I wanted to launch: how Q&A can help businesses? We always think of social media like Facebook or Twitter as the new tools to build our brand online but hardly do we mention Q&A sites. Still, they are social media in their style and business should monitor these sites to see what is said about them, their products and their competitors. It is the new place to be as they will have the possibility to interact with the participants, to answer their questions, measure their popularity, what is positive and negative about them and how they could better compete on their markets. It will also allow them to build a relationship with people and to have a higher visibility, while controlling and making sure what is said about your brand is true. I strongly encourage people interested in that matter to watch this video:

Groupon vs Google Offer - Should hotels use these tools?

In my opinion, it depends on what type of hotel you run or manage. If you are a 1 or 2 star hotels, you can afford to bargain your rooms or meals to attract people during the low period. It will drive more revenue and it may turn 1 time guests into loyal guests after that experience. People going to that kind of economic hotels are more likely to use coupons and discounts so offering great discounts will not seem ackward or devalue your product. Anyway, these people will probably continue going to hotels of your standard.

The problem is different for 3, 4 and 5 star hotels. Contrary to the hotels mentioned above, guests going to these hotels have a higher purchasing power. If you bargain your prices too low, you may attract a clientele you did not target and you may devalue your products in the eyes of your current or potential customers. Below are the reasons why I believe upscale and luxury hotels should not use the Groupon and Google offer sites:

• Devaluation of your products and services in the eyes of the consumers
• Attract a segment of clientele you did not want for your hotel
• Offering a discount does not mean that next time, the guests will be willing to buy your products at full price
• Blur your brand positionning and in a world of brand reputation, image deficit is a killer
• It is very easy to discount and lower prices but it is very hard to re-set up origianl prices.

If you have an other opinion, I would be happy to hear your points!

Measure social influence with Klout - Group work

Measuring Social Influence : Klout


• How the tool can be used to increase brand awareness

- Klout allows the brand to find influencers based on topic or hashtag

- Help your brand to understand your influencers’ network value

- Be focus on people recommendation and not advertisements



• How the hotel can be used to create service differentiation - for influencers

- A free week-end for 2 pax for the most important influencer

- Discounts

- Loyalties

- Special amenities

- A package to use all services of the hotel (spa, room service, fitness center, etc…)



• How the tool can be used to impact revenue

- Target important influencers and their community

- Communicate we them to get more influencers

- Use service differentiation for influencers



• Why this tool is better than others, mentioned in the article

- Focus and specified on Tweeter and Facebook

- Use 35 variables of those social medias measuring True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score

- Real analysis of what is said about your brand, not only a grade