What is going on in Swiss minds this week. Looking at the rising searches this week.
-Ski Worldcup. (ski wm, and Lara gut)
-Google latitude (see where your friends are)
-Floricienta (see also picture)
- and of course Valentinstag.
Twitter goes mainstream says an article in The Wall Street Journal and I think it is.
Last week I noticed a few new starters and besides that you see more and more companies using and tracking twitter.
I mentioned earlier the respond on my complaints about netvibes on twitter and their active reply. You see this happening more often. Lately I had the same thing with skype while complaining about the quality.
One thing to be careful for as a company on twitter is again that you deliver value. There are a bunch of companies which just publish their rss feeds to twitter. That is not so bad. But the thing is they never respond if you send them a message. So no interaction.
About this going meanstream this seems more the case in the US. Counting Swiss Tweets look at swisstweets.chor follow swisstweet on twitter. The amount of twitter users in Switzerland is not much, but think also about the quality of its visitors.
Today for our CH BrandReview I am going to look at the website of Hotel Des Bergues in Geneva. When I just arrived in Geneva and I passed by Des Bergues, it appealed to me instantly. It has a remarkable location and I think I have seen it appear in movies ones and a while.
For this reason I had high expectations of their website but I became a bit disappointed when I took a visit.
When I searched for Les Bergues in Google, Des Bergues came out properly on the top position. However Des Bergues doesn’t have its own hoteldesbergues.ch, it has only a few pages on the fourseasons.com website. The photography is good but the framework is very basic. I see some similarity with this website only this is not concerning a luxury (hotel) Brand like Four Seasons is.
However I did contact Four Seasons about this and they do not agree with me on this. As a result they did put up an online survey. So when you visit their website you can agree or disagree with me.
What I really do miss though is storytelling. I want to know more about Des Bergues. It is supposed to be the first hotel of Geneve. And it has been a landmark on the Rhône since 1834..
There must be a lot more to tell. For example is the Quai des Bergues named after the Hotel or is it the other way around.
To be continued.
Screenshot Hotel Des Bergues Geneve
(inspired by brandchannel.com)
Last Thursday, 29 may, there was the second e-Business Convention in Geneve. It was a small conference and the aim was not to be inspiring, I guess, but more to inform new prospects and clients.
I was surprised there was a photographer instead of some flashy podcast and or back-channel experience. Must valuable of the convention was, in my opinion, the list of companies serving Geneva and it region in the online marketing field. So here is a list of companies based in our region.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) can be found in most European countries and in various other countries of the world, even in South America. There are now attempts to launch the first Asian IAB in china.
Strange though that there still is no Swiss IAB.
Asking IAB Europe about it, they confirm that IAB Europe is in conversation with a group of people about opening an IAB here. They hope to make a formal announcement about it before June. That is in about 10 days!
Mission of IAB is accelerating the growth of e-commerce, interactive advertising and online marketing.
I have just created a Google custom search for Switzerland, CH Social Search. Searching within major social networks and websites used by Swiss people. If you need it, use it.
This custom search is open for contribution. So if you have any suggestions to make it better just send it in.
Custom search is vertical search made easy for everybody. I suggest companies should make their own custom searches serving or exploring their target audiences.
