My attention was drawn to this great case study recently, it’s a great example of the direct benefits our use of Social Media can bring.
One of our client companies recently launched an innovative new application for the iPhone called Snap2Travel. Using image recognition software, the Snap2Travel application allows users to take a photo of a travel brochure page, and instantly offers photos, videos and availability information directly to your phone (more information here). This service launched recently in partnership with the German travel operator Der Tour, and Manus Rooney in the Düsseldorf office wrote a blog post about the application on the Irish Business Network blog. The blog post was very brief, containing a few sentences about the service, and congratulating the team on getting the product to market.
What makes this case interesting is the effect this blog post had on the company’s search engine results. Generally speaking, Google (by far the world’s most popular web search engine) gives content from blogs more weight than content from regular static websites, as it considers that regularly updated content will have more relevance than a website which changes less frequently. In the case of Snap2Travel, the ‘blog effect’ is immediately clear: the image below is the result of searching for ‘Snap2Travel’ on the Google.de website (grabbed on the 20th April 2010).
The blog post from Manus (highlighted in red) is the second result, while the announcement from Snap2Travel (blue) and Der Tour (green) are 5th and 8th respectively. Given that recent studies have shown that most web users ignore everything past the 3rd search result, this is an extremely positive outcome, and shows how we can effectively use Social Media tools to promote our clients and raise their profile on the Web.
