Social networking is taking over email, says Facebook director

Time spent on social network sites has now surpassed time spent emailing in the UK, according to Facebook-¬™s UK director Blake Chandlee.

Chandlee told delegates at the Eye For Travel Travel Distribution Summit in London yesterday that the average user of social networking sites spends 302 minutes a month on sites such as Facebook, TripAdvisor and Bebo where they spent only 179 minutes emailing.

He said: "If you are only planning on using traditional media to market your product you are only going to be successful some of the time. You need to think how you can add value to the customer experience using these sites.

"Some 52% of all 25 to 34-year-olds in the UK are on Facebook now and in the last 30 days in the UK, 28m events (people making arrangements to meet up) have been created on Facebook.

"There are 10.5 million people in the UK with a profile on Facebook and 100,000 of them have a travel profile. They can be targeted and a whole new level of marketing opens up."

But Lastminute.com-¬™s CEO Ian McCaig warned that caution should be taken before companies jump into the social networking environment in an attempt to market their product.

He explained: "There must be a level of sophistication and consideration because interruptive marketing in this environment does not work and alienates the customer as well as potentially damaging your brand.

"You need to check that your marketing is not popping up in an environment where a transaction is not taking place and people are just talking to each other. Intruding on social networking with your brand in an irrelevant situation is not welcomed."

By Dinah Hatch

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

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Quite right Tara

Intention is the key - even though advertising on the social network has the opportunity to be more targetted than lets say a banner on a random webpage, it's still way behind google in terms of accuracy. That being said, in competitive markets where exposure is more expensive, and if you are monitoring your ROI effectively, you might test it out for a couple of months speculatively and see how it stacks up - if it delivers traffic, but no bookings it's simple - put that budget back into a campaign that will work.

By Matt Illston, Friday, May 30, 2008
Difficult to compare Google to Facebook

User intention being the main point of difference - people go to Google to search for a specific product or service, and it is possible to run a successful campaign with the right keywords and creative; but people go to Facebook for a very different reason - a social one, and ads in this environment can appear invasive. Plus, you have no idea what 'content' your brand will pop up next to. Mere volume of users doesn't equate with targeted marketing.

By Tara Bradberry, Wednesday, May 28, 2008
If Google Doesn't Hit the Target, will Facebook

It is generally accepted that Google is the world leader in indexing and targeted advertising. As anyone who has seen a page with this 'targeted advertising' can attest to, many of the adverts have little relevancy to the page contents. It is unlikely that Facebook would be more successful than Google and would simply be a drain on resources. Lastminute knows its business and its advisory is one to ponder.

By Jon Hewson, Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Lastminute - Quite right

Interesting developments and very much agree with Ian Criag's point of view. Equally (if not more) interesting for travel sector are the numerous specific travel sites and forums. But with all of these, you need to perceive how your service or brand is being discussed in myriad social media before you can think about protecting, participating and projecting.

By Jonathan Moody, Thursday, May 22, 2008