Review of the hotel industry in Oman on Facebook

As tourism is one of the major industries in the Sultanate hotels should be at the forefront as it can give them global exposure but also precious feedback.

Nowadays being on Facebook is a must for nearly all businesses but what makes a FB page a great page? How do you stand out from the competition? 

Firstly what they say it’s true; content is king. By providing great content people will come and stay on your page, they will comment, provide feedback and feel like VIPs.

Secondly, I firmly believe a successful fan page should be graphically appealing to potential "likers", a bit like mine in terms of having a welcome page and other customised tabs..;).

Lastly a page should offer incentives, specials as well as having contests and polls for the fans to keep coming back. If you think that a page is great simply because it is “liked” by many people than look at this previous post I wrote sometime back.

Whether your objective is to provide better customer service, launch a new product or build a community around your brand then your Facebook page must be impeccable by providing the right balance between written and visual communication.

Having briefly mentioned that let's go back to the hotels in Oman; generally they should all improve their pages one way or another, whether in terms of page customisation, vanity URL, info, multimedia, news on happenings, etc. Let's see in details:

Al Bustan Palace InterContinental Muscat

My favourite hotel in Muscat. The page should be updated more often with so much going on within the hotel. The hotel and surrounding areas are so beautiful that including a few video clips would make the page stunning. Interaction with the fans is good.

Number of Likers: 1,880

Grand Hyatt Muscat

Another fantastic hotel. Again good interaction but news and info should be given more often. All outlets are pretty much covered and given the same space and importance. The page could do with customisation.

Number of Likers: 3,195

Crowne Plaza Muscat, Oman

One of the most updated pages, the people behind it are doing a fine job in letting their fans know about the latest events and activities. Not much else is there in terms of customisation or multimedia.

Number of Likers: 690

InterContinental Muscat

Very similar to the Crowne Plaza in terms of sending messages to the community but nothing else.

Number of Likers: 612

Park Inn Muscat

They are trying in terms of customisation but the result is poor as their welcome page does not fit within the page width and therefore it just looks bad. Most of their news in about the Sama Terrazza, isn’t there anything else going on within the hotel?

Number of Likers: 535

Shangri-La Oman

All comments are from fans and spammers; the last comment from the hotel itself is dated June 2009. They even have spelling mistakes in their info tab. Very poor page considered how beautiful the hotel is, it should be closed immediately.

Number of Likers: 417

Crowne Plaza Sohar

Very little info given to fans; it should be a buzzy page as it is one of the top hotels in Sohar.

Number of Likers: 323

Radisson Blu Hotel, Muscat

Nice page, plenty of events and activities however when i left comments there they were immediately removed. The page owner told me that they do not allow people to comment (what's the point then???!!!)! So don't get upset when your comments will be removed.

Number of Likers: 465

Millennium Resort Mussanah

The latest hotel to open in Oman; just about two months ago and it played a very important part in Second Asian Beach Games. The page is new but fairly good with latest happenings, photos and a video. Just not sure about the “welcome” and “Promotions” pages.

Number of Likers: 216

The Chedi Muscat

An average page with ongoing updates. Lacks of customisation and multimedia. They should make an effort as the hotel is stunning.

Number of Likers: 404

Six Senses Zighy Bay

Very good page, definitely the most complete of all. A part from the “Special Offer” page which does not work everything else is there; photos, videos, news, reviews and interaction. Well done!

Number of Likers: 1,174

I did not include other hotels’ pages like the Salalah Marriott Resort, the Ramada, the Hotel Muscat Holiday, Ibis Muscat, Crowne Plaza Resort Salalah and others as they either don’t have a page (but groups or personal profiles instead) or the page is “dead”.

I believe there is a big opportunity here for hotels to use Facebook in more creative ways especially for promotions, discounts, giveaways, etc. As this social platform is still fairly new as a communication tool I have no doubts that soon they will all have great pages.

Of course, for any help feel free to get in touch...:)

Social media the way it used to be

Advertising agency, Moma Propaganda from Sao Paulo, Brazil came up with this very cool creation for the Maximidia Seminars whose slogan is "Everything Ages Fast".

Back to the future. These 1960′s style illustrations and copy convey the purpose and usefulness of the futuristic technologies to a historical audience. I love the old-fashioned iPhone.

Coca Cola happiness around the world

As some of you may recall a few months ago I posted about the Coca Cola Happiness Vending Machine; this time Coca-Cola converted the machine into a delivery truck and it is delivering doses of happiness in the streets of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Where will happiness strike next? Coca Cola are also doing a very fine job on Facebook and if you check out the page you will find more videos and stories of the Happiness Truck tour around the world.

Great emotional response by the people; when people feel drawn to something, loyalty will surely follow. Hats off to Coca Cola once again, they know very well that a successful product appeals to the heart...not the mind.

Times of crisis for Times of Oman

What happens when an employee opens a Facebook page without knowing how it works?
What happens when he gives his word and doesn't stick to it?
What happens when he ignores fans?
What happens when he deletes fans' comments?

A few days ago Times of Oman (mis)reported on the farewell party organized by the 12^th Grade students of the Indian School of Muscat. According to students, ex students, parents, staff, and committee members of ISM the article was just an accusation to tarnish the image of the school and its students. However I will not go into that and i will only focus on the social media aspect.

Some students, very proactively, opened on Feb 13^th a Facebook page (as well as inundating ToO with mails, letters and calls) called Times of Oman - Time to Apologize, with the aim of gathering support against the "lies" posted by the journalist in the article titled Farewell parties turn into wild night-out for kids. In a few hours the page reached nearly 1000 fans.

What Times of Oman did on Feb 16^th, very bravely, was to open another Facebook page called Timesxpresso in order to have an open, frank, uncensored and bold discussion…as it states on the page. Many people, most of them students, immediately commented and all of them were either ignored for a couple of days or replied, yesterday only, with the following same two messages:

When 6pm came the Business Editor of Times of Oman, James, was finally there to answer the long awaited questions by several hundred irritated fans. 

Sadly, even then their questions were not answered and James left after 10 minutes!

All people were looking for was an apology and to correct the facts, nothing more. By behaving that way Times of Oman infuriated even more all ISM students, parents and staff and James definitely damaged even further his own, and Times of Oman, reputation and most likely future sales. Surely there will be further developments in the next few days and I'll update the post if necessary.

Social media is not a game. Do not go into it if you’re not prepared and if you don’t know how to use it. Hopefully this will be another lesson to learn for any company before entering social media.

If you want to see other famous online dramas here they follow: Benihana, Dell, Nestle', Gap.

If instead you want to know how James should have handled this crisis please click here.

Social media slowly killing print media

For many years, when we wanted information on any subject, the best way was to get our favourite newspaper or magazine.

With the invention of television, computers, then Internet and social networking sites, iPhones and iPads, the sources available to people are near limitless. Information is now available at the flick of a switch or the click of a mouse and therefore no longer limited to a daily, weekly or even monthly print or broadcast publication.

Personally, when there’s something important, like news, I go to a newspaper website. Then I would go to Facebook and Twitter to find out that the same info is already there, being shared and commented by several thousand, if not millions, people.

Social networks have become more than just a place to chat and keep up with friends and relatives. 

Companies, music artists, actors and footballers and even some governments now generally use some form of Facebook, Twitter or other social media platform.

The one-sided information is now dead. Social media is democratizing communications...big time! Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, and the media elite. 

Now the people are in control.

So what’s the future of the print industry? Reports are saying that it is in decline, will it die soon?

(Probably) The best viral video ever!

It’s been a while since I posted a viral video, so here it comes, and i tell you...you'll love it! It is from last year so you might have seen it already.

Tipp-Ex, a brand of correction fluid, launched an interactive YouTube campaign inviting users to White & Rewrite the title of a video in which a hunter attempts to shoot a bear.

In the video a man about to be attacked by a massive bear shouts out “Hey, I don’t wanna shoot this bear!” Once the hunter used the correction fluid you’ll be able to write any word you like to make the hunter and the bear do anything you want.

Give it a try, it's hilarious. I spent at least half hour on this. Kudos to Tipp-Ex for an excellent idea executed amazingly well!

The new Facebook Pages layout

The new Page design launches officially in March 2011, but you can already upgrade individual pages as of yesterday. Once upgraded, every visitor to your page will see the new layout, and you will not be able to revert back to the previous one.

Here’s an overview of all the changes in the new Page design:

1. Navigation Moved

The tabs at the top of your Page can now be found in the column underneath your Page profile picture. The text in the box that used to appear in the box underneath your Page profile picture will now appear in the Info tab.

OLD

NEW

2. Profile Picture Size Reduced:

The profile picture size for Pages has been adjusted from 200×600 to 180×540.

3. Use Facebook as your Page:

This enables you to interact on other Fan Pages as your Fan Page. You cannot interact with personal profiles as your fan page. I love this!

4.  Photos at the top:

The most recent photos that you post to the Wall of a Page you admin, or photos you tag your Page in, will appear here in a random order. This area will not include any photos posted by people who like your Page.

 

5.  Wall filters:

Pages now have two publicly visible Wall filters -'Posts by Page' and 'Everyone'. Page admins will be able to view additional filters -'Most Recent' and 'Hidden Posts'.

6. Email notifications:

You can opt to receive notifications when people post or comment on your Page.

9. No More Static FBML app:

On March 11, 2011, we will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, I strongly recommend that start using iframes as soon as possible.

I will be updating this in the next few days as new information comes in.

5 ways of tweeting more than 140 characters

Twitter is a great social networking site; it's not my favourite but i understand why people use it so much. Twitter's limitation (or maybe is the beautie of it) is that we should keep our tweets shorter than 140 characters. 

But what about if we have more to say and don’t want to split the content into several tweets? 

Here follow five ways of tweeting with more than 140 characters. Not saying that they're all great but it' s worth checking out some of them.

 

1.    Maxi Tweet: lets you send a tweet of up to 200 characters.

2.    Tweet Cut: it cuts down the size of your tweet by using common abbreviations in the sms manner, Such as to use “ur” for your”, “u” for “you”, “c” for “see”, and so on.

3.    Twitlonger: it’s an easy way to post long messages to Twitter. Write your tweet and they post the link to Twitter for you using Twitter Oath.

4.    Twit Wall : you can embed your favorite videos and widgets, upload your photos, mp3 music or podcasts all in the tweet.

5.    Tweet Compressor: makes your tweets shorter by replacing groups of two or three letters with a single character that looks the same just as you do while typing a sms in your mobile. 

Hope it helps!