The South African pilot who took my girl for a flight today said his business would take off if I...

Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. Today I took my 11-year-old daughter for a socially distanced microlight flight for her birthday because she couldn't go outside with her friends and couldn't have a party. And she's got a bit of a head for heights. So I booked a microlight flight. I did that finding them online locally here in the UK. But One thing that the pilot said to me on the way out made me realise just how important word-of-mouth marketing is, and I thought I'd just share that with you today on this episode of Speak PR. Now, as you may know, this is the podcast for any company or an individual that's got value to share in their organisation, and they're just looking for ways to do that in a cost-effective and efficient way, and most likely using technology. So as we were leaving this very small airfield here in Somerset, Brad, the delightful South African pilot who had been everything from taking our reservation to doing the bookings to helping us get in through the gate of the field through to suiting up Halo, my daughter, when we came to leave, he said, just one final thing, if you wouldn't mind sharing a review for us on TripAdvisor. And I thought, well, okay, of course we would do that. And I have used TripAdvisor over the last 5, 6 years, and I've posted a number of trips, including a trip to Japan with the children, a ski trip to northeast China, and also some slightly less glamorous trips here down in the UK. And I've gone on and shared my experiences on TripAdvisor because I've always felt that they probably help. And in fact, I was first put onto this by some, uh, event organizers in Cambodia. There's a fabulous event called Fare over there which is put on as like a Cirque du Soleil-style event, uh, in tents in Siem Reap, and it is performed by people who have somehow been impacted by the war there. And at the end of the performance, the American man who had produced this show said, do go on TripAdvisor, it really makes a difference. And I dutifully did that, but then moving to China where TripAdvisor really isn't much of a player, certainly wasn't for us, I neglected it. So when Brad today mentioned TripAdvisor, it just got me thinking again about the power of what we might call reputation management and how those of us that are involved in reputation management, the reputation economy, have been impacted by the gathering of social voices, and that businesses now can stand or fall based not on the review of one editor, but on the review of every customer. Because customers now can amplify their experience on a platform like TripAdvisor in the same way that they can do with Trusted Advisor, for example, or some of these other online verification and review websites. So when Brad, this South African pilot, in this cold and rather windy day said, thank you so much for coming with the Big Smythes, do leave us a review on TripAdvisor, I couldn't help but go and have a look at TripAdvisor itself. So I dutifully uploaded to TripAdvisor my review of the Western Air Sports and the microlight flight that Halo could take and other children could take as well, flying over Bath. And I saw that Brad and his team have got over 170 positive reviews, mainly 5-star, and I'd have given it a 5-star too if it wasn't frankly a pretty cold place to stand around because they haven't got any facilities for anybody that's waiting for those people that are in the air. Of course, you can sit in the car, but it's not quite the same. So I thought that would make it a 5-star experience. But other people, and I guess if it had been the summer, I might have given it 5 stars myself. So TripAdvisor now has become obviously the, the largest of all of the websites where people can leave reviews. Every month, 456 million plus people will visit part of the TripAdvisor infrastructure and ecosystem. So it's pretty amazing about 1 in every 16 people on Earth will look at TripAdvisor and its various subsites to plan a trip. Now it is apparently a $7 billion business now, and it had originally started out in 2000 with the motto, get the truth and go. And the initial, uh, model was for advertising, um, but that didn't go off, um, so well. So from late 2001, every time a visitor clicked on a link to a given hotel or restaurant, TripAdvisor would charge the business a small fee for a referral. And within months The company's making $70,000 a month and quite quickly broke even. So one of the founders, a chap called Kalfer, said that it had obviously changed dramatically because then by 2004 TripAdvisor had 5 million unique monthly visitors. In that year, Kalfer sold TripAdvisor to the Interactive Corp, which is the company that owns Expedia, the travel company. And he sold it for $210 million in cash, which I guess at the time, after 4 years, would seem like quite a good, uh, quite a good win. But it listed then in 2011, um, for several billion, for $4 billion. So it's become a huge business and a huge platform, and Tens of thousands of posts are posted every day, and in fact more than 200 posts are uploaded every minute to TripAdvisor. Now the problem is that not all of them are genuine, and there are review farms which are in Southeast Asia, for example, where fake reviews can be bought and are posted, both positive And negative. And in the 2018 World Cup, there were thousands of fake reviews for hotels and restaurants in Russia popping up. So the people or TripAdvisor have the same problem as they do for Facebook and for Twitter and for Google and Yahoo, which is maintaining the integrity of a site which is a lifeline for people like Brad. And the World Air Sports Group here just down the road here in Somerset. Now in America, a theme park owner actually sued a man who posted a negative review after a trip to his theme park with his daughter. This has given rise to what they call a SLAPP suit, these strategic lawsuits against public participation. Only in America. But what it does mean is that if you post a review of a place, it may lead you to get some negative comeback from the people that own that facility, especially if it's an owner-operated facility, for example, a theme park. So what can one do? I think the point is that one has to obviously look at the individual reviews. I've certainly left some. Uh, there's one, uh, chap called Brad Reynolds in Hong Kong who's uploaded over 6,500 reviews, um, over 72,000 photographs. So some people take this very, very seriously indeed. I'm nowhere near Brad. I've posted half a dozen, and I like to try and make a difference, if not to people like Brad, But certainly to people that might be looking at what else they could do while they're thinking about their children at the moment during lockdown and giving them some special experiences. But it also makes a difference to people like Brad if they take part in the correspondence that's taking place on site. And a study referenced on the TripAdvisor site, it's a little bit old, but March 2015, by a group called Medallia shows that accommodations that respond to more than 50% of social media reviews grow occupancy rates at more than twice the rate of properties that tend to ignore reviews. So in other words, if you want your occupancy rate to grow, you must respond to these reviews whether they are genuine or fake. Now what's more is that these responsive properties grew their occupancy rates faster than the industry as a whole. And they go on to say that the research shows that responding to more than 50% of reviews correlates with a 6.8% growth in occupancy rate. And further, properties that responded to feedback in less than a day boasted occupancy rates 12.8% higher than properties that took 2 days to respond. So it's not only enough to respond, one has to respond quickly. And I think having looked at reviews of products as well, and situations like the Amazon reviews, or on the App Store with Apple, if there are reviews taking place by consumers in what we might now call the reputation economy, it's important to know that these are taking place and to have a mechanism to respond. So if your business somehow is the subject of reviews, invited or uninvited like Brad's were, then it's important to allocate some time and some energy and some people to address those and to address them quickly. Now, on my part, I'd like to thank everyone that's left me great reviews as I've started this Speak PR podcast. In June of this year and shared over 250 episodes of thoughts around the SPEAK PR program, which is to storify, personalize, engage, amplify, and to know. And I believe now it's time to take a little bit of a break over Christmas, spend more time with the children, and let you get on with whatever you're doing until we come back in 2021. So until we meet again, I wish you the the best of health, a wonderful vacation and holiday season, and that if you have a business that receives reviews, do pay attention to those. And if you're going to leave a review, be mindful of the impact that it could make. Someone like Brad could well be depending on a positive review from you. So if you write a review, do that and be mindful and constructive. Thank you so much for listening. And if you'd like to write to me, please do jim@eastwestpr.com. If you'd like to subscribe to our weekly newsletter, come to eastwestpr.com. And if you'd like to talk with me about joining a mastermind, do come to speakpr.co. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.