| So what is your brand karma? |
So what is your brand karma?A new site tracks what customers are saying about you in the social media space  Do you get sleepless nights wondering who’s saying what about you in cyberspace? And are you dying to know too what people are saying about your competitors?Well, a company called Circos Brand Karma, set up by three friends who used to work at Microsoft, does exactly that. From the way one of the founders, Mario Jobbe, described it to me, it sounds a bit like the “Big Brother” of travel reviews. What they do is plug into the social media space and eavesdrop on “conversations” in the social media space and put together reports for you so you know exactly who’s saying what about you and your competitors. According to Jobbe, the three colleagues had the idea for the company in 2005 when they saw blogging and social media sites such as MySpace taking off. “We knew User Generated Content was going to play a big influence in decision-making and we saw that nothing was being done in the travel space and we thought, let’s do something about it.” So in mid-2006, they started work on building the technology and launched the site last year. Jobbe, who took the opportunity of WIT 2008 to showcase Brand Karma, said the site collects User Generated Content from 250 influential sources on the web. “Our technology looks for words, not ratings, which makes it more meaningful to hotels,” he said, “so that they know exactly what customers are saying about them and the attributes that are positive or negative.” The site tracks 200,000 hotels around the world. Typically, a general manager would receive an executive summary of how his hotel is faring in the social media space in terms of most prominent topics, compliments or complaints. “It allows him to see where comments are coming from and how well his hotel is faring in KPIs such as customer satisfaction, awareness and frequency of reviews.” Jobbe said by tracking key words customers were using to describe a hotel in their reviews also helped companies with Search Engine Optimisation. “General managers can also reply to reviews,” said Jobbe. Brand Karma also categories reviewers into several personality types including Advocateur, Artsy, Authentic, Diva, Hipster, etc “so that you know how well your hotel does with what types of personas”. Hotels pay US$2,500 a year to subscribe to the service and group discounts are applicable, said Jobbe. Response has been good so far since its debut at WIT. The business was started with angel funds from friends and families and Circos said they were on the path to breakeven. He said the current tough times represented opportunities for a company like Brand Karma. “Analytics tend to do well in this economy, people want to know there their money is going and what customers are saying. “It is important companies know how to respond to the growing chatter in social media and use it to track and measure customer satisfaction.” Currently pitched at hotels as primary customers, Brand Karma is looking for pilot customers among tourism boards in its second phase. |
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