mytable1

====The meeting was held at the well from 15:30 to 17:30 and whole group attended the meeting. This aim of the meeting is to figure out the assignment outline and background information of MyTable. The meeting was held around 2 hours while 30 minutes for research and 1.5 hours for brainstorming session.====

The group discussed the main goal for the project, which to increase fan community of Facebook fan page from 250 to 3,000.
====There were several ideas raised up, such as using social media platforms, strengthen the Facebook page, create a campaign and improve the interlinkage between MyTable official website and Facebook fan page.====

====A Skype group is created to convince the communication within the group. All the ideas were all written down and shared among the intranet (Google Doc). It was agreed that all group mate have the responsibilities to keep on track with any updates. Changes and suggestions can be made on the document per person. The next meeting will be 12 April, all group mate should be able to raise up more ideas to add on and the next meeting is going to finalize the ideas and prepare proposal presentation to Mr Ritzel.====

====The meeting was held at the well from 17:30 to 18:30 and whole group attended the meeting. The aim of the meeting is to strengthen the project, finalize the ideas and develop proposal plans for presentation.====

====The group add on some ideas such as set up a wiki page with company profile information, interlink reservation system with Facebook page with an automatic event group page creation system on Facebook, create a campaign with an idea of voting the best restaurant competition on Facebook. In addiction, posters and video are suggested to be two of the advertising ways.====

The group also came up with work allocation plan, which is as follows:

 * ====Posters (Jennifer)====
 * ====Video for the campaign (Soraya)====
 * ====Wikipedia page (Lydia)====
 * ====Executive summary (Esther)====
 * ====Prezi (Irene)====

====The next meeting will be held on 20 April 2012 at 19:30 (Skype meeting), which aims to evaluate the presentation and review on the feedbacks from Mr. Ritzel, redirect the project if there are extra suggestions. Also, the group aimed to finalize the skeleton and details of the entire project plan.====

====The meeting was held though Skype from 19:30 to 20:15 and the whole group attended the meeting. The aim of the meeting is to discuss the feedbacks from Mr. Ritzel, redirect the project plan and finalize the details.====

The idea presentation is presented by Soraya on 20 April 2012 at 16:00. The timing was changed due to a change in class schedules.
====During the meeting, Mr Ritzel suggested the group to combine the ideas as a whole. Secondly, he suggested the group to concentrate on campaign creation on Facebook and further develop to make it more fun and need not limit to food only. He suggested us to discuss more on the voting categories, duration for each voting session, give more effort on the linkage between people and the campaign itself. Moreover, the advertisement should be based on a location.====

====The meeting was held at the well from 15:00 to 17:30 at well and whole group attended the meeting. The aim for the meeting is to reconfirm the direction of the project, reallocate work responsibilities and follow up individual progress.====

====The group again discussed the suggestions from Mr Ritzel and made further changes as he recommended. We confirmed again within the group and worked on our own area. Clarifications and recommendations were discussed and shared among the group during the meeting.====

Recorded by Esther
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** 1. Introduction **
====With the main objective of building audiences on MyTable Facebook fanpage, the authors will first address the nature and the positioning of the company in the industry, with an overview of other close competitors and industry players having similar products and geographical competition. The target market will also be assessed so as to set a foundation stone of what shall be done further to achieve the objective. Lastly, based on investigations on MyTable Facebook fanpage as well as their products and services, proposal of a series of all-rounded actions with long-term strategies and short-term campaign will then be illustrated in detail. ====

**2.1 Bookatable **
====Bookatable.com is Europe’s largest online restaurant booking service. It is founded in 2009 and owned by a global online reservation and restaurant marketing service company named Live bookings Holdings Ltd, which has a network of 8,000 restaurants in 23 countries (www.bookatable.com). Because of its market positioning, Bookatable created different Facebook fan pages with various language options, users can search and obtain the information of the fan page with the best suit in language. Plenty of discount details and interactive posts are posted in the fan page. There are over thousand likes for each of the Booktable Facebook fan page. ====

**2.2 OpenTable **
====OpenTable is founded in 1998 and starts providing free and real-time online restaurant reservations around the world. There are more than 25,000 restaurant customers aware of its rapid development. Besides owning toptable.com, a leading restaurant reservation site in the UK, there is a steady cooperation between OpenTable and other distribution partners, such as Google, TripAdvisor and Yahoo (www.opentable.com). OpenTable positioned itself globally and apply English as the official language on Facebook fan page for users to understand better. Besides, daily updates about dining tips, food facts and recommendations are up on the fan page to increase awareness, which successfully attracts 37,169 Facebook likes! ====

**2.3 Bookurtable **
====Compare to the two e-reservation programs above, the popularity of Bookurtable is higher by accounting 163,708 likes. This India online reservations program is started in 2009 and it is not just offering online reservation but also food ordering and discount details for all customers. The offers and discounts details are all posted on its Facebook fan page. The program works with a variety of smart phones, such as Nokia, Blackberry, iPhone, Android and Samsung. Bookurtable has a wide networking on Facebook. English is the official language of the fan page even the program itself is based in India. Besides, the fun facts, dining and cooking tips are considered as key factors in its successful marketing strategy (www.bookurtable.com). ====

** 3. Target Market **
==== According to the research undertaken by the authors, the existing services in MyTable are considered as foundation stone to determine the target markets for the new campaign. Such as a variety of language options, number of restaurants registered in different cities or countries, linkage to Facebook and use of social media platform for promotion. Along with the discussion and development of the campaign, target markets are repositioned. ==== ==== There are two target markets for the new campaign of MyTable. Firstly, male and female international travellers who are aged between 13 and 43, who travel with spouse, family and friends. A range of language selection is definitely a beneficial factor to attract more people to concern about the App. By making good use of existing language options in MyTable, the group believed that it is applicable to expand the market share and increase awareness by targeting travellers who are travelling internationally. Besides, both the existing app and proposed campaign are utilising advanced websites and smartphone technology to offer an attractive user experience to diners. People who aged from middle 1970s to early 2000s, known as Generation Y, are more familiar with the usage of technologies. They get along with convenient communicative styles, which the group found is the best suit for the campaign. Second target group is male and female Generation Y locals from Switzerland. There are a lot of restaurants registered throughout Europe but above 60% of all registered restaurants are located in Switzerland (www.mytable.com). It clearly stated Swiss people a core group of customers in this campaign. ==== ==== **4. Measures to Increase Fan Community of Facebook Page ** ==== ==== Nowadays, social media has become a great influence around the world. They were originally meant for connecting with friends and make new net-acquaintances around the world, but the great marketing potentials were swiftly discovered in the recent years. Among various social media tools, Facebook is by far the biggest social network with over 900 million active users in the world ( __www.clicky.co.uk)__ . Many businesses have been setting up their own Facebook fanpages trying to gain more exposures and ‘pull’ their customers closer instead of ‘pushing’ them to the products. For MyTable, various measures shall be taken so as to effectively build their customer network and thus gain more businesses in the future. ====

**4.1 Long-term Strategy **
==== **4.1.1 More Updates and Exposure (Without Budget) ** ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Among all the various measures in the entire strategy, content enrichment and constant updates are the most critical elements, as they will show what MyTable is and what the products are. ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In order to present a clear image and product to potential customers on the Facebook fanpage, more product information should be input on the spots where people can easily see. For example, a motto/slogan of MyTable can be input on the cover picture, and also put the official web link in the ‘About’ column. As such, by several glimpse and clicks people will be able to grasp the big picture of what MyTable Restaurant Reservation is about. On the other hand, as photos can easily attract people’s first sight and leave a stronger impression, more updates with wall photos about restaurants information, offers, special dishes and cuisines shall be made. Posting questions and polls can also stimulate fan interactions and at the same time allows the company to know more about their target market and changes in the market trend. As research shows that 69% of Generation Y-ers said that once they ‘Liked’ an organization, they rarely or never return the fan page (zeenews.india.com). With constant updates, they will usually be shown on the fans Facebook News Feed Wall and therefore continuously grasp attention to the followers. However, a main issue is that although MyTable is mainly based in Switzerland and German is used in a large part of Switzerland, English shall also be used together with German to post updates so that it can facilitates the international travellers to easily understand the content thus maximize the target market and more efficiently ‘pull’ them to ‘Like’ the fan page. ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Wikipedia is also a useful tool to get people to understand more about the company. As Wikipedia has been maturely developed with vast amount of global information and loads of internet users interactions, Wikipedia is always among the top search results whenever people try to look for information about an organization or a company. By setting up a Wikipedia page for MyTable (Figure 1), possibly with web links of the official website and the Facebook page, it will enhance potential users to know more about the products hence increase the chance for them to ‘Like’ the company. ====

====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Besides the above, a couple of measures can also be done, such as writing posts and uploading digital posters on Swiss forums such as the English Forum Switzerland, along with the other campaign, which will be described in detail in the following sections (see Section 4.1.2 and 4.2). ====

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> __More connection to facebook (With Budget of 1500 CHF)__
====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It involves two major improvements of intensifying Facebook connections with the mobile application. Firstly, it would be better and more convenient for users to use Facebook account as their first-time registration and login. By doing so, the company would obtain not only users’ personal information, but also their home and current locations. 1-click login shall also be installed in the mobile application so as to be more user-friendly and saves time for the app users from logging in every time they use the app. ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In addition, the company can utilize the users’ Facebook networks for exposure by allowing them to create events and invite their friends once they have made their reservations online. Figure 2 below shows the procedures of how this can be done. As such, this will increase the chance for more people to recognize the app and with the attached facebook page link, it enhance the chance of people clicking the link and ‘Like’ the company. ====

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Figure 2

==== **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4.1.3 Dining Point System (With Budget of 1000 CHF) ** ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> With the basis using Facebook accounts as MyTable customer database, a loyalty program, the Dining Point System, can be established so as to build and maintain the customers as well as to encourage the continuous usage of the Facebook page. Basically, a person will earn 50 Dining Points when they have made reservation successfully. When customers accumulates a certain amount of points, they would be entitled to redeem rewards such as a free bottle of wine or free meals in a certain restaurant. If a restaurant would like to boost their businesses in certain period of time and days, MyTable can then make special offers by providing 100 Dining Points to attract customers making reservations, in exchange with provision of Dining Points rewards from the restaurants. ====

**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4.2.1 Campaign Detail (With Budget of CHF) **
====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Although various campaigns had been carried out on the company’s Facebook page, it shows little success with minimal customer interactions and participations. Therefore the authors would like to suggest another campaign aiming to publicize the product and the Facebook page itself, as well as to build the fan community more efficiently. ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The campaign is called ‘LIKE Voting”, which the intention is to allow MyTable followers to vote for their most favourite restaurants by clicking ‘Like’ on the restaurant photos. The winning restaurant will get a free promotion on Mytable Facebook page for one month. On the other hand, the follower who voted in the campaign will get dinning point in their account. One of them will get a CHF 100 coupon in the restaurant if they reserve the table through MyTable.com and this will be cellected by lucky draw. ==== ==== **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4.2.2 Campaign Promotion (With Budget of 1000 CHF) ** ==== ====<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In order to publicize the campaign, online adverts such as Facebook adverts shall be made consistently (see Figure 3). Digital posters can also be uploaded on forums and the Facebook page so as to gain more exposure with the use of the Facebook network. On the other hand, posters with QR codes can be distributed to restaurants so that it provides one more means for more people to know about the campaign (see Figure 4). ====

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">

** 5. Conclusion **
==== To conclude, different ways and ideas are suggested by the authors to reach the aim of building on fan community on MyTable Facebook fanpage. It is important to understand the company’s profile before considering the ideal target market. There will be a creation of a voting campaign with a mix of both short term and long term strategies to beautify the structure and consistency of the entire program. Posters and videos will be used as the advertising channels which will be correlated with the original aim, encouraging people to click like on the fan page. There will be an involvement of a pitch of technological techniques, QR codes are up on posters to ensure the new campaign is the best suit for the target markets. ====