Find Great Reviews at TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is a website that assists customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel-related content, and engaging in interactive travel forums. The website services are free to users, which provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model.

TripAdvisor has extended its brand exposure to millions of people through popular third-party social networking sites, including Facebook. TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the most popular and largest travel social site in the world with more than 50 million unique monthly visitors, 20 million members and over 60 million reviews and opinions. 

Here are a few of the key features at TripAdvisor that help you understand this website and plan a wonderful trip:

• Instant Personalization – This feature allows travelers to get advice and recommendations from their Facebook friends on TripAdvisor to plan their next vacation. 

• Reviews at a Glance – This feature summarizes the most common review phrases, such as “great location” and “free Internet.” It allows consumers to get a quick snapshot of the overall traveler sentiment without having to read through dozens of reviews.

• Mobile City Guides – This feature offers smartphone access to a wealth of detailed information including traveler reviews and opinions on hotels, restaurants and attractions, as well as suggested itineraries and offline-accessible interactive walking tours. 

• Vacation Rental Calculator – This feature gives travelers an easy way to compare their accommodation options, allowing them to calculate the potential savings of a vacation rental home compared to the cost of a hotel in a destination based on the number of adults and children in their travel group, the number of nights they’ll be staying, and whether they plan to eat in or dine out.

• Flights with Fees Estimator – This feature offers travelers a large inventory of flights with the best deals available and a fees estimator that calculates the entire cost of a flight, including ticket price, fees for checked luggage and even in-flight food service and entertainment based on the traveler’s needs. 

          Safe travels, fellow bloggers!

          Until next time..

         ~Abby & Meng

BlogFriendly PR

As we all know, blogs and review sites are considered the new trend in brand marketing.

BlogFriendlyPR was created to connect PR practitioners and review bloggers. On this website, PR practitioners will find a list of dedicated review bloggers. The review writers work with PR practitioners to promote a business or a product.

BlogFriendlyPR is looking to build a list of PR practitioners, business owners, journalists and others who acknowledge the importance of review blogs. The review bloggers demonstrate to their clients the power of social media and to together they will create:

• Blog Ambassador Programs

• Reviews and Giveaways

• Ad Sales

• Share a Press Release

• Share a Pitch

• Hire a Blogger

• Twitter Parties

As a PR practitioner, you must be up-to-date with ongoing trends. The power of social media has became very important. More and more consumers are turning toward online social media to read product and business reviews and/or which product they should buy. Companies must move to the digital age... NOW!

~Until next time,

Abby & Meng

The Magic Review Site = YouTube

YouTube has been ranked second largest search engine in the world. Its videos run the gamut - from commercial to educational to music to homemade clips of nearly anything. Many people love YouTube and rely on it as a way of keeping up with popular culture. Videos go "viral" when viewers share clips they like.

YouTube is popular with people of all ages, and many spend large amounts of time on the site. YouTube now suggests video clips and new "channels" based on what users have watched previously, which is increasing time spent on the video-sharing social network.

People can - and do - post comments under YouTube videos. There are no-restrictions and the conversation is free-flowing. There are four types of comments you'll find on YouTube: short comments, advertisements, negative criticism and rambling arguments. Short comments consist just of 1 to 3 syllables or words and most are positive, or just plain silly.
        Advertisements within comments usually include the links to other videos or YouTube channels. Negative criticism isn't always a bad thing in a YouTube comment, but the highest levels of criticism usually consist of commenters insulting other commenters' sexuality. Irate,  rambling arguments are also common under religious and political videos; most are against whatever ideology is being espoused in the particular video.

Freely expressing opinions is a great thing. However, there are negatives to getting a bad reviews on YouTube, where we can see some comments containing racist language, defamatory allegations and hate speech.  One such case is attached to Susan Boyle’s audition video from Britain’s Got Talent. The girl who rolled her eyes on film at 00:45 showing her disdain for Boyle became a national laughingstock. There are thousands of negative comments toward the woman including plenty of "hate speech," like the words "ugly, stupid and useless." 

      The Susan Boyle video has run for three years and received more than 86 million hits. The comments are never-ending. To review the performance visit HERE.  

Some companies use YouTube for stealth marketing, which means customers do not realize that they are being targeted for marketing messages. The spread of these videos and the number of views actually help companies develop awareness campaigns and promote products. For example, over 37 million people have now watched the Darth Vadar Super Bowl Ad on YouTube.

According to ________________________, 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements. YouTube can be a useful tool for marketers and PR professionals. We also recommend that users exercise caution with their comments. As YouTube raises the fame quotient for video posters, it can also crash and trash a reputation overnight.

Until next week!

Meng and Abby