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.
Lately I meet more companies doing online advertising, like Google Adwords, without a good analytics in place. When you don’t measure the results of any campaign, you waste your money.
You see your traffic is growing and you think you are doing a good job. But is this traffic interested in what you offer? Do they ask for more information? Do they buy your product? If you don’t measure that, you don’t know .
In stead of using your own analytics tool you should start with implementing Google analytics. It is free, and in stead of focusing on the amount of traffic you will move forward to a ‘relevant traffic’ focus.
With analytics you get insights in all visitors but you are especially interested in the visitors who buy, subscribe on your site etc. When you follow their behaviour you know what they search for and where they came from.
With this information you don’t need to buy expensive advertisements on crowded websites anymore. You buy ads on relevant places which pay off directly.
Check out how top brands are doing in social media. Read The top Brand in Social media report 2008.
As expected: It is increasingly clear that the level of a brand’s engagement with the ever growing online community is beginning to have a direct correlation with that brand’s reputation.
And the balance of power has shifted - with control passing from the brands themselves to the consumers.
(source marketingfacts.nl)
Want to check your Brand yourself?
Looking at the report’s Methodology: You can start by measuring the number of times your brand is mentioned on Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Digg, Twitter Del.icio.us and Board Reader. And you can do a search on Google blog search and Technorati.com. After measuring the quantity you have to start looking for the tone of voice as well…
-Want to learn more about using Social Networks.
-BTW Interbrand has an office in Nyon.
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)
For Digital Branding, your visual presentation is extremely important and with the growing influence of interactivity and video the use of Flash is almost inevitable. However the problem with Flash is that it has a problem with search engines.
But there is some improvement now. Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo! to enable one of the largest fundamental improvements in web search results by making the Flash file format (SWF) a first-class citizen in searchable web content.
This will increase the accuracy of web search results by enabling top search engines to understand what’s inside of RIAs and other rich web content created with Adobe Flash technology and add that relevance back to the HTML page.
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.
