NEW! Review Express - TripAdvisor for Business

TripAdvisor is proud to announce the launch of Review Express: the free, fast and simple way to ask guests to write reviews.

Review Express is a free marketing tool that makes it easy to invite recent visitors to write a review on TripAdvisor. In just minutes, you can create and send a customized, professional-looking email to up to 1,000 recent guests.

More Reviews In 5 Simple Steps

It only takes a few minutes to reach out to recent visitors with a customized request for a review. You can include your logo, personalize the message, and let travellers know that their feedback is valuable to you.

Start Using Review Express

Review Express - TripAdvisor for Business

UNLOCK THE POWER OF DATA SEIZE YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE - TripAdvisor

To get ahead in business, you need to stay up-to-date on your competitors and market trends. The new Property Dashboard – available only to Business Listings subscribers – can help you do both!

Track Your Competitors Visit the Your Competitors page on the Property Dashboard to see how your business compares with local rivals in 8 key metrics, including: Popularity Ranking TripAdvisor Rating Total Reviews Top 3 Comments Owner Photos

Analyse Market Trends Check out the Your City page to determine when travellers are researching your area and when they plan to travel – then create Special Offers to turn these trends into bookings!

Put these powerful business-building analytics to work by visiting your Property Dashboard today — and read our Property Dashboard guide for more practical tips on how to use this data to get ahead of the competition.

TripAdvisor:

TripAdvisor Reviews for Facebook

If your business or property is listed on TripAdvisor.com you can now share your reviews and ratings on your Facebook Business page.


Engage your fans by adding TripAdvisor traveler reviews to your Facebook page.

Upload one or more of our widgets to your website to display your TripAdvisor rating and reviews, promote your local area, encourage more guest reviews or link to TripAdvisor. See the guide for further details.

Use this link to put TripAdvisor Traveller Reviews on your Facebook page.

Set Your Company Up for Success with LinkedIn Company Pages Part 1: Easy Ways to Refresh Your Page

Great video from LinkedIn:

Companies are finding that their LinkedIn Company Page is a powerful and effective way to nurture leads and increase sales. In fact, we’ve found that 50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from a company they engage with on LinkedIn.
What accounts for this purchase behavior? Our research suggests it comes down to mindset. When people visit LinkedIn, they’re in a professional mindset. They actively seek insights and content that can help them be better professionals. And content from companies is wanted and expected. LinkedIn members are eager to hear from companies about new products and services, industry news, and career opportunities.

Full VIDEO here: Set Your Company Up for Success with LinkedIn Company Pages Part 1: Easy Ways to Refresh Your Page

10 tips to increase your rank on TripAdvisor

• Do you have a New Year’s aim to rank higher on TripAdvisor?
• Wouldn’t you love to be one of the hotel’s featured on the “Visiting [insert your region here]” page?

Finally, we have the facts! Increasing your TripAdvisor score DOES benefit your hotel’s bottom line.

The percentage of online travel shoppers consulting reviews at Tripadvisor prior to booking a hotel room has steadily increased over time,

If a hotel increases its review scores by 1 point on a 5-point scale, then the hotel can increase its price by 11.2 percent and still maintain the same occupancy or market share, A 1-percent increase in a hotel’s online reputation score leads up to a 0.89-percent increase in price as measured by the hotel’s average daily rate (ADR). This 1-percent increase in reputation also leads to an occupancy increase of up to 0.54 percent, Also this same 1-percent reputation improvement leads up to a 1.42-percent increase in revenue per available room (RevPar). Learn more about our Increase Your TripAdvisor Rankings package and get that extra 11.2% price increase!

First, the majority of the guidelines out there state the obvious. Listen to your guests’ comments and make some changes. Naturally, common sense can be used here. However, if a pattern is detected take the hint. For example, I like fluffy pillows and comfortable mattresses and I look for that before choosing a new hotel. If I see multiple reviews that reference “pillows are flat as pancakes,” I will be moving on.

That’s not very helpful you say? I am stating the obvious? Below are a few more tips and tricks I found.

1. Manage your hotel listing. Find your hotel on their site, scroll to the bottom and click on the link “Manage Your Listing.”Register yourself as the owner of the page. After you verify ownership, update and correct items such as hotel name, address, and amenities. Does a description need to be added? What about professional photos? Travelers love pictures! Additionally, review traveler photos. Are they appropriate and accurate?By doing this, you are optimizing your page which shows activity. Google loves that! So does TripAdvisor.
2. After you’re registered, set up email alerts. You will then be notified when a new review is posted.
3. Don’t forget to respond to the reviews. TA strongly suggests the hotel reply to the negative reviews. I say, reply to them all! Why should only the negatives get all the attention? It’s like ignoring your well-behaved child because his sibling is out of control. Offer the love to your happy guests too. We all like to be acknowledged once in a while. You are reinforcing positive behavior (back to the kids’ reference).
4. In regards to the negative reviews, take the high road. Be polite and professional no matter how insulting the reviewer was. Also, it is safe to state you’re sorry for the inconvenience. If you plan on doing something about the issue, let the reviewer know. Remember, the reviewer and 50 million 3 of his closest friends are watching.
5. Take note of TripAdvisor’s rules. “Don’t set TripAdvisor as the homepage on the hotel’s business center computers.  Don’t encourage guests to review the hotel on TripAdvisor while on property.  Don’t test the system with false reviews.” 2 TA monitors that. They’ll flag your account-which you want to prevent.
6. Encourage your guests to post reviews. According to an EHotelier article “Your property’s ranking is affected by a number of factors including quantity of reviews, actual ratings from the reviews, and whether the reviews are out of date – the more current a review,  the more positive an impact it will have on your property’s ranking.” Did you catch that? Newer, positive reviews are the name of the game here.
7. There are a few convenient options on the hotel owner’s page to make it easy for guests to post a review. As a reminder for a guest after he/she checks out, Trip Advisor has links available that can be added to a post-stay email.
8. Customizable widgets for your website are available to either display current reviews, write a review or display “Recommended on Trip Advisor.” 5 There are even some unique ones such as “What’s nearby” which helps visitors find nearby amenities, “hotel availability” and “check rates.”
9. Encourage staff to ask guests about their stay and if all is well, ask them to write a review. The Owner’s Center also has flyers and customizable reminder cards available to hand out.
10. Actively encourage new reviews. Pages with older reviews lose their ranking.

As you can see, working with TripAdvisor is not as much a mystery as one thinks. If I missed any good tips, please share your wisdom. If we all work together, we can make 2013 a profitable year for all. 
Good luck!

10 Great Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page’s Popularity

Facebook pages come in all manner of different shapes and sizes. Many are pretty lame, gaining very few likes and with hardly anyone talking about them. Obviously the subject of the page is the most important aspect – if it already has a sizable community then it will likely be doing well – but there are ways anyone can improve the popularity of their Facebook page, regardless of who or what their page is about.

There are several key areas to focus on when trying to improve your page’s popularity on Facebook. All of which are dealt with below. These are all common sense ideas that most people should have figured out for themselves already, but it’s surprising how many miss these core tenets and then struggle to understand why their Facebook page is listing badly and at risk of sinking under a mire of mediocrity.

Full article here: 10 Great Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page’s Popularity

Social Signals Explained – What are they and how are they important?

Great article explaining in simple terms : Social Signals Explained – What are they and how are they important? — Social Metrics Pro

Social signal has never been so important. Now, how often do we take recommendations from people in our network? Quite often, right? Whether it is for an investment, an online purchase or a personal issue , we often consult our friends or other experienced people and experts in our network. We do it to get good advice from all parties so that we can arrive at the best decision to act on. A recommendation is like a VOTE that allows you to take a step in that direction. This recommendation, in the eyes of the search engines, is a social signal.

The concept of recommendation has now come to search engines in the form of “SOCIAL SIGNAL”. What does this mean? The inclusion of the human component, YOU, in the search engine results in a more organic and dynamic manner than ever before. How does it work? Based on your recommendations through Likes, tweets and Google +, which act as social signals.

Full article here : Social Signals Explained – What are they and how are they important? — Social Metrics Pro

10 Tricks to Optimize Your RSS Feed for SEO

If you are not already using Feedburner to syndicate your RSS feed, now is the right time.

A good number of you already use Feedburner to syndicate your blog posts via an RSS feed. Let us discuss how to best optimize your RSS feed to provide the best value to your subscribers at the same time reap maximum benefits from your feed.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Its a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites. Darren has explained RSS in plain and simple English. Following graphic illustrates how RSS works. If you have never used an RSS Feed reader, try Google Reader.

Is Your Feedburner RSS Feed SEO Optimized?

If you aren’t already using Feedburner to syndicate your feed, now is the time to do so. Go ahead and sign up to burn your feed. And if you are already using it, read on to find out if you are using your RSS Feed to its best potential.

Full article here: RSS Feed Optimization Tips for your Blog SEO

Twitter Advertising: Twitter Ads for small businesses

Twitter Ads can offer a great way to get attention on Twitter. The ad formats are quite unique and the Start Advertising section provides detailed explanation about their advertising products. Twitter allows you to set a budget, choose run dates and your target locations. Once you submit your request, it will be added to the advertising queue. There are three ways to advertise on Twitter.

First is Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are displayed in Twitter search results or in user timelines. You only pay when someone retweets, replies to, clicks or favorites your Promoted Tweet. You don't pay for impressions on retweets and can extend the reach and cost-effectiveness of your campaign.

Trending Topics let users find out what's hot on Twitter right now and join the conversations. With Promoted Trend, you can purchase a trending topic. Your tweet will be displayed on the top of the trend search results. It is important to note that Promoted Trends are visible to all users, instead of a targeted group.

Lastly, Promoted Accounts can be used to quickly grow your followers. The Promoted Account is featured in search results and within the Who To Follow section. It will be shown to users who are most likely to have interests similar to your account. You can also target the campaign to specific geographical user base.



Twitter Advertising:

How To Respond To Online Traveler Reviews - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

In an increasingly technologically savvy world, it has become second nature for both business and leisure travelers to turn to the internet to research for a hotel destination, whether through a search engine, social media channel, brand website or online travel agency.  The internet has made it fast and easy to research properties, view photos, read traveler reviews, and compare rates from virtually anywhere--at desktop computer in their own home, on their mobile phone or on a laptop computer.  With the increased availability and access to information, hotels are not the only ones controlling their brand image and the content available to travelers and consumers.

The growing sophistication of online marketing in the travel industry has created more sophisticated consumers, who cut through the hype and marketing provided by a hotel and seek out independent opinions and reviews as their most influential source of information.  In a recent survey conducted by TripAdvisor and Forrester Consulting, 81% of travelers said reviews were important when deciding which hotel to book, and almost half said they wouldn't book a hotel unless it had reviews.

The relationship between OTAs, review sites and hotels has always beencomplicated, but with the proper knowledge and practices, the hotel and third party sites can grow to have a loving, successful relationship!  A major part of regaining control of the content about your hotel and making a significant impact in the minds of travelers is to respond to the reviews that travelers have posted online, often known as reputation management.

Here are Blue Magnet's top tips on how to respond to online traveler reviews of all types--the good, the bad, and the ugly!

Full article here: 
How To Respond To Online Traveler Reviews - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly | ehotelier.com