Final Project : Aggregation Apps

New Trends in Social Media on Prezi

Reputation Management Seminar

In today’s web dominated world the role of an online Reputation Manager is crucial as the clients, nowadays, are more comfortable with sharing their opinion openly on the Internet. Moreover, according to the statistics the clients’ buying decisions are influenced to a great extend by the opinion of the people they know and generally by other consumers’ opinions. The public opinion can easily spoil or alter the Hotels Reputation.  Unless the clients’ comments are monitored and tracked in a structured and professional manner the Hotel brand image can be seriously damaged or even ruined. Therefore the skills that an excellent Reputation Manager should possess in my opinion are as following.

An online Reputation Manager should be in full control of the Hotel’s branding and Reputation by monitoring and analyzing the consumer opinion, therefore he should be extremely hard-working and organized.  He should fully understand the nature of the opinion expressed and how to respond positively.

Reputation manager is an advanced tool that searches the Web for positive and negative comments on selected criteria. This enables a Reputation Manager to continuously monitor and track your brand perception on Internet sites and Social Media Networks. Therefore he should have an ease using social networking. An understanding of the social web, including blogs, forums, social networks, micro blogs, photo/video sharing, ratings and reviews, RSS etc.

He should be ‘everywhere’, energetic, self-starting, dynamic, and able to develop and edit high quality written materials, ideally with Public Relation experience.

The Reputation Manager should have detail-oriented, excellent critical thinking, writing, editing and presentation skills. Proven ability to develop compelling proposals and present them effectively and persuasively.

Sometimes the response to the negative opinion should be found and written as soon as possible; therefore the ideal Reputation Manger should have the ability to meet deadlines without sacrificing quality.

To summarize, here are some basic skills and traits a person should have to do the job well:

• An ability to manage several social media profiles (an organized person)
• Exceptional communication skills, fluent in English with proper grammar and spelling
• Someone who comes across as pleasant, positive and polite in online communications
• Attention to detail
• An understanding of search engines, or someone who can learn new software quickly
• A curious person who keeps up with all the Internet marketing and social media blogs on a daily basis, and  thinks outside the box

The main difference in my opinion between the Reputation Manager and the regular manager is that the Reputation Manager has to be passionate about the Web and quick-minded. He is supposed to be in Sync with the new technology much more than a regular manager, he has to be extremely sociable and to express himself in a professional and polite manner, a real diplomat he should know what the clients would like to hear in order to feel that their opinion is important even if its negative.  Reputation Management should work closely with to Social Media Marketing management or even the Reputation Management should include the Social Media Management as we cannot separate them.  I also think that Reputation Manager should be in constant communication with all the other departments of the hotel in order to quickly transmit the message left by the customer. For example, if the guest was not satisfied with the Restaurant service, the idea is that Reputation Manager should pass the information over to the Food & Beverage department or Restaurant Manager, the person in charge, in order to rapidly find a solution to the problem. On the whole, the Reputation Manager should play an important role in the hotel organization assuring a successful operation.

How the hotel should measure if the Reputation Management is a success? It is obvious that in order to receive pleasant reviews from customers the hotel should first of all assure an excellent service!  And the Reputation Management should contribute in the constant process of maintaining the high-quality services by transmitting the message from the customers. Excellent service will encourage people to talk about the hotel in a good way and therefore will assure the strong positive reputation and will bring more customers. And the Reputation Management is out there to protect this reputation.  By protecting your business name, you are also protecting your business success. If anything should go wrong, if there is a crisis because of the extremely bad review or public opinion, the Reputation Management should rapidly propose different solutions in order to save the hotels reputation. Timing is crucial and is one of the most important criteria to judge the Reputation Management efficiency. 

Key Achievements in Digital Marketing class

First of all I would like to stress out the fact that this course was one of the most interesting and useful for me. I have understood the importance of a thoughtful Online Marketing Strategy for a Hotel or a Luxury Brand, as the whole world goes digital. Digital Marketing is becoming an essential part of the General Marketing Strategy for a Company, as important as In-store, Press and TV advertising, PR and publicity.

The IQ reports were the excellent sources of information in order to provide the company I would work in the future with the appropriate Online Marketing Strategy and Marketing Tools. I have realized the importance of Social Media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc, as a part of Digital Marketing Strategy. Before I was only thinking about them as a mean to chat and connect with my friends, and now I know how to use it to the company’s benefit, as Social Media could be a powerful tool to interact with customers and influence their buying decisions. On the whole, to the great extent the Web should be used in order to interact with the clients and alter the company’s reputation, and most of these tools are free, which is great!

I will look in a different way on Google too from now on. Not only it is the most popular searching engine but also a helpful guide to a successful Marketing Strategy as it created some user-friendly and extremely useful applications such as Google Maps, Webmaster Tools, Google Places, Adwords, etc.  And finally I learnt how to create my own blog, use Issue, Slideshare and Prezi! Digital Marketing made me even more passionate about Marketing than I was before as I realized that we have a new field to play on, the one that gives us an endless opportunity to be creative without limits – The WEB.

Affluent clients’ characteristics vs Luxury Brands Online Strategy in Response to their demands.

Open publication - Free publishing - More affluent

Assignment session # 7 : Calvin Klein team ups with GQ men's magazine, as an example of an Online Marketing strategy for a Luxury Brand.

Apart from the devices that I already wrote about before in my Luxury Report, such as QR codes, Facebook page with 2 million followers, iPad applications etc, I would like to especially mention the CK Box program is a visible example of the Marketing Online Strategy. Not only this online program involves the customers into the interaction with the brand but also encourages the customers to rival with one another through a Contest, bringing in the competitive edge. The internet users can now film themselves on home camera, register a message and send to CK. The best videos are placed on the CK websites. More information about this program could be found in my IQ Luxury Report. Another interesting Calvin Klein initiative is integrating into the GQ a men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine. It is published by Conde Nast a famous and reputed in a fashion word publishing house. Calvin Klein has integrated its own content into GQ magazine’s Style Picks application via a sponsorship that hardly feels like advertising. CK bought this sponsorship directly from GQ to present its new product line to mobile shoppers. The ad unit is what NearbyNow calls a “sponsored guide,” and it is full of interactive content such as model shots, a product catalog and videos. Within the application, consumers can click on a model with a new summer look and get a list of all the products that model is wearing. For those users who like what they see, they can find the closest Calvin Klein to store to go try it out.

The GQ Style Picks application targets men looking for quick style advice. All of the picks, tips and videos are short and to the point, perfect for the man on the go. One more time the application proves how progressive the Calvin Klein is about their Marketing Strategy. The application in a guide destined to advertise the product in a more creative and less pushy way, using a new technology is a marketing tool.