I learned this phrase when talking with someone about adoption of new technologies in the tourism and hospitality industry. And whilst it’s true that there is an inherent conservatism among these businesses I believe it’s born out of bitter experience of buying the “next big thing” that will “streamline your operation” and “integrate ALL your systems”.
Over the past year or so the next big thing has been Social Media and we’ve been involved in lots of discussion with our clients about ROI and the pro’s and con’s of adopting this new and disruptive technology. We are enthusiastic about it, we do think that it will fundamentally change the online customer experience (for the better) and we’ve helped most of our clients to establish their social presence and develop a strategy to make the most of their investment (we prevent them getting shot in the back).
In most cases this involves us establishing a presence for the client across most well recognised social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc, applying our knowledge of the client and their market and working out the best way for them to engage with guests / visitors.
So it probably comes as little surprise that we have been dabbling in “the next big thing in Social” Google+, it’s really early days but from what we’ve seen the user experience seems to take a lot of the good things from both Twitter and Facebook and leave behind a lot of the rubbish.
In particular the interface is really clear and clean with very little clutter and distraction, you can still attach links, images & videos to what you post and your friends / followers can “+1″ your content, this is the same as sharing on Facebook or Retweeting on Twitter. One of the things we like a lot is Circles, this is a really easy way to organise your connections into groups that you control, so you can have Friends, Acquaintances, Work etc, this is a really intuitive way to organise your privacy too as you can decide which circles to post content to and the other circles don’t see it.
Google+ is still technically in beta test so there are some things that need work, but so far Google seems to be quite responsive about listening to feedback and implementing changes quite quickly. The one thing that we’re most excited about is the launch of business / brand pages on Google+, we’ve built and customised lots of Facebook Pages for our clients and whilst they can be really good for interacting with your customers, there are some challenges and workarounds that always present a challenge.
It seems that Google have taken a decision to delay creating a business platform on Google+ to ensure that they make as few mistakes as possible and also integrate it as tightly as possible with its other business platforms such as AdWords and Analytics. We agree with this and we look forward to building some pages for our clients once it launches.
Tell us about your experience with Google+ so far, have you signed up?
Email the team to discuss further or call 0141 342 4335
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