Content Strategy for the Masses

I recently had to book some flights for business travel and the online landscape has changed. Did you hear the one about American Airlines not appearing on Expedia? Back in January, American Airlines has its second falling out with an online airline sales website due to contract issues, namely the airline wants to pay these sites less money and have users book directly on their own website.

Airlines and hotels are increasingly encouraging the public to book directly on their corporate sites rather than through third party aggregators to offer additional buy-ins like hotel room upgrades and airline seat choices to the consumer. This trend could force Expedia, Travelocity and others to change their business models slightly in order to stay in business.

While Global Business Travel Assn says booking directly with the airline and the hotelier may increase costs for the customer, other sites are popping up to help you compare prices and make sure you’re getting the bang for your buck. Here’s one to show your colleagues: Hipmunk.com is a very easy-t0-use site that organizes its search based on time, price and agony. It doesn’t support all airlines, yet. Toronto’s Porter Airlines for example, wasn’t appearing in any of their beautiful charts.  Upon chatting with their very helpful live help chat, they thanked me for letting them know the airline was missing. How nice!

Bonus: OK, so say you’re flying to the U.S. and you want to check up on an airport’s hands-on TSA review process, look no further than this TSA Status site, created and updated by its users.  This heavily rainbowed site doesn’t have the cleanest of interfaces, but it is handy. It’s also a great place if you feel a compulsion to complain about a TSA agent online.

So next time you need to book a flight for work or pleasure, impress everyone with your knowledge of these two handy sites. Got others?

Oh dear. So, earlier today I was alerted to a tweet posted by the clothing design clothing company, Kenneth Cole.

I shouldn’t NEED to explain why this was in poor taste today, less than 24 hours after peaceful protests turned violent. But I just did.

Given the amount of outrage this tweet caused, Kenneth Cole took responsibility for the mistweet in an apology on Twitter and then on the company’s Facebook page.

His damage control was swift:

1. He apologized personally and took responsibility. Though his initial tweet says “we weren’t intending to make light,” he later clarified in a further tweet that his “joke” didn’t come from an employee at Kenneth Cole, but from him personally.

2. His team isn’t countering the negative comments with excuses on why it happened.

Yes, this tweet was in poor taste and some comments even accuse the company of posting something controversial for free publicity (forgetting, of course, this is a fashion company), but there but for the grace of God go I, people. Here are some lessons we can all take away from this:

-  Once you post something online, it never goes away. @kennethcole deleted the original tweet, but I found it easily.

- If you schedule your tweets, it’s probably best to not schedule upcoming posts beyond 24 hours, particularly if your tweet is related to current events.

- If you’ve made an error, take a short break to catch your breath. Then, calmly take responsibility, admit the error, apologize and move on. If you’re the CEO, go on social media yourself, even if the blame lies with an employee.

- You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last company or person to embarrass yourself on social media. I’ve accidentally tweeted DMs, celebrities fight it out with each other on Twitter , and there’s always Kanye to the rescue.

Any other rules for social media to share? Comment!

Wow – I am SO RIGHT! Not too long ago, when Facebook adopted Places, its Foursquare copy,  I smugly asked on Twitter when Facebook would next copy GroupOn.

Yep.

Now, when you check-in using Facebook’s Places, some retailers will offer a discount… and they’re pretty good coupons, too (damn it). In Canada, Indigo/Chapters will give you 40% off the price of a book, you can buy $5 jeans from Joe and H&M gives you 30% off regularly prices merch. Not bad.

This type of couponing will definitely encourage more users to check-in using Places, and may create more Sponsored Stories for Facebook’s advertisers. At least, if you appear as part of a sponsored story in your friend’s wall, you got something out of it.

Facebook announced today “sponsored stories,” where the check-ins and likes you post onto your wall could turn into advertisements on your friends walls. As a potential advertiser, it’s a unique way to tap into personal recommendations to get more Facebook likes on your branded pages and, therefore, achieve more impressions by appearing on more walls.

For the consumer, it isn’t perfect. For example, what if you checked into a shop that ended up treating you like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and now you’re its Facebook spokesmodel on your friends walls? (Well, maybe you should have worn something different to the shop, young lady.)

From what I can gather, you can stay out of the Sponsored Stories by choosing not to communicate with businesses on Facebook. This means not touching the “Like” Facebook button on any website and refusing to post your FourSquare or Facebook Places info on your wall. If you wish to not see any Sponsored Story on your wall from any of your friends, however, you’re out of luck. There is no opt out feature (cue the Protest pages) and I couldn’t find any information on what user data the advertisers get for purchasing a sponsored story since the service has yet to roll out to all businesses.

Though Sponsored Stories might be frustrating without an opt-out feature, it doesn’t appear to be breaking any privacy rules, though don’t ask me. Ask the  Canadian Privacy commissioner. These guys deserve a superhero comic based on their work to protect us citizens.

I love my 30 Rock: so much that I chose, for the second year in a row, to purchase iTunes’ Season Pass for the show since I don’t have cable. This means every episode is available for me to download soon after it’s broadcast on TV… in theory.

There are a few reasons why I chose to pay for an episode on iTunes:

- I’m a good person and not keen on illegally downloading content

- much like those who pay to watch a movie at the cinema rather than wait to watch the film for free on TV later, this Season Pass gives me the privilege of watching a commercial-free episode before others get to watch it for free

…

The newest 30 Rock episode aired last Thursday. It is now Sunday and the episode is not yet available on iTunes.  And to add salt a $3.50 wound, I can go to my local broadcast channel website and watch this episode today for free.

When this happened earlier once before, I was annoyed, but shrugged it off… NBC  had changed 30 Rock‘s timeslot and in doing so perhaps affected its availability on iTunes. But for this to happen a second time just a few months later, without a means for me to get my money back or a gesture for a free download, shows a lack of respect for the consumer of legal content.

If companies create business models based on having consumers pay for content directly, these types of hiccups cannot happen – especially when the content being sold is already readily available elsewhere for free – first illegally and then legally by means of the broadcast website.

Now that this is the second time an episode I paid for is available for free, I shall:

- never purchase an iTunes Season Pass again

- collect horror stories by other good citizens who are willing to pay for content, but who venture to watch the content for free to avoid the hassle.