Catherine Holahan penned a brief, but interesting, article for Business Week on how Google plan to expand their efforts in the online travel arena. In an interview with Holahan, Rob Torres, Google’s managing director for travel said:

the goal of Google’s travel division—aside from tapping into the $90+ billion global travel ad and sales market—is to give users a destination where they can research travel plans, read user reviews, and see user uploaded videos and photos. Already, about 50% of travelers use some sort of online social media site to research their plans, says Torres. Why not give them a one-stop shop for travel information? “We are already so highly searched for travel,”

This news adds to the speculation that Google are doing a lot of work around ‘vertical search’, and the travel market could be one of the first industries to see the effects.

There are also concerns from travel operators and marketers that Google could to use their strong position and large resources to quickly dominate the online travel market. However, it is unlikely that Google would want to enter the market for online bookings or sales due to the sheer scale of that undertaking.

So for operators and tour companies this could be good news, but for the myriad of hotel booking portals and cheap-flight brokers maybe not so good. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth keeping track of this development.

A few days back I wrote a post about brand monitoring and how negative customer comments posted on social media platforms are not always a bad thing.

Yesterday, I spotted this post from Darren Rowse (producing the goods again and again) reviewing a new reputation management tool called Trackur. Here’s a snippet of what Darren has to say about it:

“Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool that has been developed for companies and individuals wanting to take a serious look at what is being said about them in the blogosphere. I can also see the possibilities for using this tool for higher end bloggers who want to track what’s being written about them and/or their niche topic.”

Whilst this may well be too heavy for many of our readers, I think you may find it interesting that such tools even exist. A much lighter alternative is Google Alerts - worth a look if you’re concerned with what’s being said about you across the all-mighty vortex of the World Wide Web.

Last week, amidst the delivery of a web marketing pitch, I was asked about the negative branding impacts social media could have on ones business. The client was particularly concerned with the open interactive company-specific groups, like those becoming common place on Facebook.

I addressed the concern by discussing constructive feedback and by pointing out that complaints or negative comments made by customers are not always a bad thing. On the plus side, they provide the business with an opportunity to respond publicly and they often bring up concerns that the management may not have been previously aware of. David Alston, a guest on Lee Odden’s Top Rank Online Marketing blog summed up the social media complaint responding benefits (wow, that’s a mouthful) very nicely in his last post Top 10 Reasons for Monitoring Brands in Social Media.

“A complaint is an opportunity to demonstrate problem-solving abilities. A posted complaint may also draw out other comments from people with the same concern, which provides an opportunity to reach out to them as well. And who knows, impressing customers with great customer service may generate some positive posts about how you resolved the problems.”

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Today is May 1st. Aside from being the 56th anniversary of the day Mr Potato Head was introduced to the public (a historic day indeed), it is also RSS Awareness Day.

As enthusiastic purveyors of RSS here at Tactical Thinking, we were as keen to play our part in the initiative as kids were eager to stick plastic eyes and ears into potatoes in the 1950’s.

So why do we need an RSS awareness day? Well, as useful and powerful as RSS is, it has yet to become a mainstream technology in the big picture of global internet use. (more…)