Keeping your Business Healthy

Keeping Your Business as Healthy as You Can

In times of crisis it is essential to look at the positives: every disaster creates opportunities. Although it may be hard to see those now with costs mounting and revenue sinking to zero, there are some practical steps to take now we are sitting on our hands, for both your online presence and your recovery.

Your Team

For hostels that are closed: many of you still have paid staff still on your books (although they may be trapped at home in isolation). This is a great time to task them with being creative - ideas, opportunities and to contribute to your social media. All the tasks that no one every has time to have: now is the time. Get them to make videos for 'meet the staff' talking about their favourite places in your destination, researching the best online travel blogs to share, and answering all your reviews. Not only are your guests along with everyone else now sitting on social media all day - they are also looking for positive news stories. This is the time to get to know your customers, and get social with them online, try to keep customer relations up, let's call it keeping in touch.

Virtual Tasks

With Real Life on hold and in crisis management phase, it could be a good time to do all those virtual tasks such as updating web content, checking SEO, editing your third party sites, adding new photos to Google Business, checking on your Tripadvisor. This is the time to spring clean your online presence and get more social. Delete all those old pictures, check for broken links, update your foursquare, everything that gets left to the bottom of the list. Think of it as a time for customer relationship management, and an investment in lead generation for the future.

For physical tasks I'm sure you're all busy bleaching your whole building, but it's also a great time to get things ready for receiving guests again with a clean and shiny hostel. Take down all those old posters, add a lick of paint, or fix those squeaky doors. Some things can be done without adding any more costs - so focus on those first. 

Some ideas of online activities to keep your audience engaged or things you can do when you open again:

• Take people on a virtual tour of your hostel (for those of you open) or re-share old content to when things were more fun (Throwback posts)
• Run a competition to win free nights stay when you open again!
• Do you have video guides for virtual tours of your city that you can share? Many museums and galleries have them. Here is an example of a bunch of the world's best. There are also free concerts online worldwide, and theatre.
• Meet the staff video interviews (staff can film these at home themselves - a couple of minutes about the best things to do in the city, why they love it etc. These don't necessarily have to be lockdown videos! Unless you have some great ideas to be funny)
• Host an 'Ask Me Anything' #AMA on social so potential guests can ask questions about you and you will actually have time to respond. This should generate leads to bookings in the future
• Communicate with your customers on social media - reply to comments etc (be social!), ask guests to write reviews so you can add some good ones
• Try doing a 'secret city' where every day you post a less known tourist place in your city and get people guessing / tell people about it (to create intrigue to come visit later)
• Get creative, look at ideas for new packages etc to encourage groups later (family and friends reunions?) The Hangover from Corona party will be massive.
• If you have a loyalty programme, think of an incentives you could run (afterwards)
• Do you have gift cards or a voucher? People could buy now (before they run out of money) and claim their discount or bed later in the year.
• Decorate. Invite a local artist to paint a mural on a wall to make you selfie-tastic (if you are allowed out still)
• Think of 'experiences' you can add to your business later - you have plenty of time for ideas
• Promote your destination - work with local tourism boards. It looks like less people will be travelling when this all quietens down, and competition will be tough.
• If you have budget, set up a PPC advertising campaign to run in the future (so when people start travelling again, your pay per click starts to run)
• Offer stays to bloggers to get you promoted once they start moving around
• Host events at your hostel - people will be desperate to interact socially
• Create packages that include local activities to support businesses
• Keep posting on Instagram! Everyone is sitting at home bored
  

For a look at the future of the travel industry after this crisis, check out article here.

We hope these tips can help you keep your business busy and inspire you to get creative. Let's try to look at the positives!

For help or advice for your business, contact us at hello@hosteldoctor.com and we will try to help you keep your hostel business healthy.

SEO Hostel Health Check

Keeping your website SEO Friendly


We want you to make the most of your assets, and having a kick ass website is a great way to showcase them. Attract your perfect match with beautiful and relevant content, and a strong message to book direct at this amazing hostel. The purpose of good SEO is to get good positions in SERPS (search engine result pages) - make your website the best it can be for you, Google, and your customers - everyone wins! 

So how do you master this wizardry? Well, there are some basic steps that you can do for yourself before calling in the experts. Here's how to get yourself off the blocks.

Some key points to look out for:

• Make sure that your site is mobile friendly!! Depending on your audience this could be up to 89% of your traffic. Insane.

• Be Google friendly. Make sure you are on Google Maps and when you appear on Google business check that your reviews are responded to (nicely) and you have added your own photos and description. This will help your organic views push you to the top.

• Be user friendly. The user experience is important for bookings and and search engines - you need do to be easily navigable and have a website that makes sense - not a cat's picnic!

• Keep content relevant. Have your important content on your homepage, optimize it for keywords related to your hostel and destination, keep it interesting and unique. Don't bury the really useful stuff somewhere in the back. Like your address.

• Be aware of Good Practice rules to avoid penalties. Don't duplicate content or syndicate it to other websites; it has to be unique. And careful what images you use - it's not ok to borrow from Instagram unless you want a copyright fine - always get permission first!

• Get on top of your content by creating it yourself. Start a blog and try to add relevant topics. Blogs help keep material fresh and make Google bots re-visit and index your pages more. User content is also joyful, but this is something you have to have under your control.

• Make sure your website also loads quickly for anyone with a slow connection. Have your images and videos set to web pixel sizes and don't have huge files you don't need. Search speed is incorporated into rankings.

• Keep on top of your tabs. Pay attention to where pages are leading and what information is on them, and match up your content, titles and descriptions to the relevant pages. Just keep it tidy!

• Be social. Link to your social accounts and make sure they are active and relevant. You don't have to be posting all the time, but make sure when you do it is on brand, with your business tone of voice, and relevant, engaging or useful to your audience.

• Connect with bloggers and partners with your press releases or getting personal with them. This may be just through Facebook, but don't leave them out when it comes to connecting.

• Make sure those you do build a relation with have happy SEO and are not going to be bad for you to link with. Links aren't as important as they used to be, but you want to link with authority sites to be seen as one - so avoid a tour company with terrible reviews and dodgy certification - keep it classy!

• Secure you website with 'https' to give buyer confidence 

So those are your basic SEO health check tips from the Hostel Doctor! Make sure that you are helping yourself get direct bookings with the best organic search you can get. Get this right, and your hostel will benefit from an amazing website! 


We hope these tips help - get in touch with us at hello@hosteldoctor.com for more help with your hostel website. We're here to help keep your hostel healthy!

Famous Hostels Market Research

 Famous Hostel Guest Survey

Hostel Doctor has just conducted a survey of guests at 5 locations across Europe to find out about their bookings, expectations and the marketing cycle for hostels on behalf of Europe's Famous Hostels. The results are in, and they're quite a surprise.

Did you know, most bookings made by the under 25 year group were made by apps only? Do you know what percentage of bookings are made within 24 hours of arrival? Do you know where guests are mostly reviewing your business? Some of the results were a surprise to us.

We love keeping up with the latest trends and actions of the youth travel market, so for us, this project of genuine market research was a great to take part in. Speaking to the guests directly and gaining insights into what they genuinely wanted from their hostel, and hostel booking experience, has been invaluable at preparing us and our clients to keep ahead of the competition.

If you want to find out more about what Hostel Doctor can do you for your business, then get in touch with us at hello@hosteldoctor.com or check out our services on our website here www.hosteldoctor.com

Copenhagen Downtown Blogs

What's on in Copenhagen?

Copenhagen Fashion Week, Copenhagen Pride, Copenhagen Art Week, even Copenhagen Cooking Week! There's lots going on in Copenhagen at the moment. Check out the blogs we created for Copenhagen Downtown hostel and find out more.

http://www.copenhagendowntown.com/blog

#cphdowntown

Copenhagen Downtown Photography

Copenhagen Downtown Hostel threw a huge opening party for their new bar and live music venue, Copenhagen Down Under, and Hostel Doctor was there to take their official photos. We had free champagne for our guests and VIPs, a free buffet of traditional Danish delicious food and deserts, great drink offers in our happy hour, DJ’s until 5am, and best of all, hip Danish girl band the Gabriellas played live. What a night. 

Find out about the party on the Copenhagen Downtown blog here

Check out the photos on our facebook page here:

Facebook 'Likes' no longer offer organic reach

As Facebook 'likes' no longer offer businesses any organic reach, what do you need to do to market your business? The first answer is have a budget in place for strategic Facebook advertising...
This interesting article from Marketing Interactive looks at the options for marketeers and businesses and includes 5 key points.
"Ever since Facebook went public, it has made its stance clear about the saturation of the organic reach of branded content through Facebook pages." http://www.marketing-interactive.com/fbs-organic-reach-whats-strategy-now/ #facebook #smm #socialmedia #marketing

Will Amazon Become the Next Big OTA?

Max Starkov, President & CEO at HEBS Digital takes a look at Amazon entering the travel retail market with their new industry-focused travel offices. Will Amazon become the next Booking.com? Or the next Expedia? Can Amazon become a major OTA player or are they just testing the water?

Read his illuminating article here on Hospitalitynet.org

Fake Accounts on Facebook

With so many of Facebook's profiles being fake, how many are real 'likes'?

Well this infographic from Joyoftech.com might help explain!

Make sure you target the right audience with your posts and campaigns and beware of those fake accounts!

Top 5 Tips for Marketing with Facebook

Having trouble attracting the right audience on Facebook? Try these 5 tips to help market your business

Facebook is moving towards just being an advertising tool, and as such they're developing functions and models that help marketeers. Here are some of the ways to maximise your Facebook marketing.


1. Make a New Product and Boost it Announcement

Despite all the fake accounts on Facebook - boosting posts is still relatively effective as you will stay in the Newsfeed for longer. Use this for announcements, not advertisements - by keeping it to news you don't turn people off.


2. Make use of Your Newsfeed

How often do you look at pages? Most people on Facebook interact via the newsfeed - this is where the shares and likes are won from. Avoid writing updates that require people to go to your page and leave the newsfeed, such as entering a competition. Try using ActionSprout to allow someone to sign, join, enter from the newsfeed itself.

3. Customise your Marketing to your Audience

You can target your marketing on Facebook and reach specific fans. One such tip is using the 'Custom Audience' option, especially if you post in multiple languages. You can also customise it to people who have visited your website, so know your users and set a different marketing message for them. Essentially you're getting to know your market better and targeting them based on what they are looking at.


4. Don't Run the Same Adverts

To make the most of your advertising efforts and maximise your budget - run a trial of adverts and use different keywords for each. Use only a small portion of your budget and find out which adverts have the best engagement. It may sound a hit and miss way to find your return on investment, but split testing gives the best results to find exactly what segments of the market your reaching and with which keywords.


5. Use Audience Insights

These measuring functions are there to help you and should be used! Take advantage of the insights and check when your users are most active - times of day, where and what they're looking at. This should make you better equipped to target your audience so use this as a tool and engage with them.


For more suggestions on how to market your business check out www.hosteldoctor.com

How to deal with negative reviews

Top 5 tips on how to deal with negative reviews from customers and turn them to your advantage.

1. Don’t ignore them! Internet use now means that everyone has an opportunity to post about their experiences as customers, but it also provides a platform to answer these posts and create a meaningful response. Use this to your advantage to turn negative reviews around and show that you value their opinion.

2. See negative comments as constructive feedback on your business. There are always going to be customers who complain for the sake of it, but there will also be valid comments about how to improve your business. Take the comments on board about what experience your hostel offers your customers, and make changes based on this.

3. Thank customers for their feedback – good and bad. By acknowledging and improving on any problems you can create a better experience for the next customers walking through your door.

4. Be polite and professional. Not all reviews will be either of these but your replies are there for all potential customers to see, so keep your tone professional and explain any questions or issues raised and what you can do to avoid these problems occurring in the future.

5. Admit when you are wrong. Things go wrong in any business, but it’s best to acknowledge this, apologise, and move on. Some customers may pursue a refund or discount, but most will just want to know that you have heard their complaint and will be taking steps to avoid these issues in the future.

Make sure you regularly check all platforms for feedback and comments – whether it’s tripadvisor or hashtags of your hostel. Many people use social media platforms to voice their experiences so check your channels are up to date and respond to messages accordingly. There will also be mentions in blogs and other forums, so make sure you have Google Alerts set up (it’s free) and can monitor any posts about you. Remember that your customer’s experience of your hostel doesn’t end when they check out!

Top 5 Tips for Branding your new Twitter profile

Top 5 Tips for branding on Twitter's new Profile

Twitter's much hyped new desktop look has arrived, and with it, the expected shift to more visuals and the opportunity for better branding exposure. For those not already using the new design, all profiles will be switched by May 28th. This new look profile means companies can take advantage of the prime real estate with increased corporate messaging and imagery, creating a more dynamic profile. Follow our top tips on how to make the most of your new profile.


1.The cover photo and profile picture

The new increase visual look includes a big header image, similar to Facebook, but so far without the rules on promotions. Not only can you update this with relevant brand messages, it also doesn't have to be one image with the opportunity to create a collage of images within the 1500x500 pixels dimensions. Make sure you are able to tell the story of your brand with this visual marketing space, and keep your cover image fresh. Also make sure your increased profile picture size is updated with a 400x400 pix image.


2.Using Multimedia

The increased prominence of multimedia tweets (and on the left side and right side of your profile page) means you can manipulate your tweets to stand out more in the feed. Use the opportunity for presenting photos, promotions and video messaging also, especially useful for blogs and articles. Beware that everyone else will be doing this so quality images and messaging only - if you flood your followers' news feed with branding messages it's likely to encourage them to unfollow you.


3. Pinning and prominence

With your column of tweets now comprising 50% of your page width, there is still the emphasis on your actually tweets. Still limited to 140 characters, the type is now double the font size, so can you get your message across visually while keeping it short. You can also now 'pin to the top', as with other social sites, meaning you can chose your most important branding message to stay at the top of your profile. When thinking about which one to use here - you can also chose a tweet that received a lot of engagement, even if it's an old one, or chose to swap it with another message as it starts to lose engagement. The sizing of favourited or retweeted tweets means that your page will 'shout' out the messages that have received the most engagement, so check through that existing ones are the ones you want to stand out.


4. Your 'Favourites' and 'Lists'

This function has been used to date in various ways - some people use it to bookmark or archive articles or tweets of interest to read later, others favourite to show appreciation or thank for retweets. Now the 'favourite' option is publicly displayed, so others can check through what you've favourited. You might want to check that these are all on-brand and nothing is there that shouldn't be. 'Lists' are also more  prominent, so check the lists you have, and the lists your featured on.


5. Who you follow

Twitter now adds who you've followed recently through your profile page feed, so check who you've added recently as it's now part of your public profile. As with all online profiles, make sure you regularly check through what is publicly visible and that your brand messaging is clear.

Will more changes take place? With Twitter rapidly losing share value and posting huge losses this April, watch this space.

If you would like to more about social media, check out our website at www.hosteldoctor.com

Top 5 Tips for Using Pinterest for your Hostel

Pinterest is a way to virtually 'pin' or bookmark images and videos of interest to a board in your Pinterest account. For businesses it's a great way to create boards to showcase your product, but also to get images from your website and blog shared by other users for free. It's a great platform for the travel industry as it appeals to people as a way to collect ideas together and places to visit, engage with other users to promote your hostel.


1. Make your account a Pinterest business page

Make sure you use Pinterest as a way to represent your business not just for fun. It only takes a few minutes to set up a business page and means you can access analytics and metrics to find out users, repins and impressions. This means you can quickly analyse which types of images are engaging or appeal most. Then focus your pinning on your audience.


2. Use 'Place Pins'

Pinterest introduced 'Place Pins' in 2013 which is specifically to allow people to plan vacations. There are almost 100 million of these now being used! There's also an iPhone app to pin on-the-go. The place pins are simple to use - just add a map and drop pins with the address and telephone number. You can even create a board of your location with recommended tourist sites and restaurants ready to share with people heading to your destination. Check out Air bnb's 'Loved in Paris' board as an example of how to do it! http://www.pinterest.com/airbnb/loved-by-parisians/


3. Use all your assets

Pin all your photos but also any maps and blog images too. Make sure you add proper descriptions with hash tags and alt tags incorporated and urls where applicable, and that your website images are named for search engines, such as 'xyzhostel-Paris-bar', so when they're shared it has the correct information. You can tag people to pins too using @. If you work with a charity add a board for your photos with them and the activities you work on together. You can even add old pictures showing the history of your brand to create a story board.


4. Add a 'On Hover pin' to your web, blog and social media images

This encourages people to 'pin' an image whenever they hover their mouse over it - a great 'call to action' in marketing terms. Obviously this won't work on touch screens but is an effective way to encourage re-pinning. (Pinterest has instructions of how to do this)


5. Interact with other users

As with other social media sites, engaging with users is key. There is space to comment or converse with people pinning your pins, and equally respond to comments directed to you. Find out what boards people are placing you in, for example 'Paris Vacation Inspiration' and engage with your audience. You can also seek out influential pinners and write messages to them, for example people with the same target audience. Make sure you follow competitors and similar businesses to find out their latest news. You can also create Group Boards and invite users to collaborate (you have to be following each other to invite them).

And make sure you link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts!

Check out other hostel pages to find out what friends are doing, and see what works for you.
Good Luck!

For more advice see the Hostel Health Tips on www.hosteldoctor.com

DOs & DON'Ts for SEO marketing

Search Engine Optimisation is maximising your webpage to achieve higher recognition and listing on search engines through natural (unpaid) search. You should be taking into account all major search engines but Google has a 65% market share globally. If you’re marketing to Asia then there are differences; for instance Google only has a 17% share in China with Baidu having an 80% market share, so do your research on local trends.

Do use meta descriptions, keywords and tags
Use a few concise meta descriptions, tags and keyword for your pages- then repeat them in your content. Don’t use too many – this counts for all search engines. If you have Chinese translation pages, Baidu has a website tool that tells you trending keywords so you can include these in your descriptions to maximise exposure – but you must use keywords relevant to your page. Try to register with search directories – some take a while and some (Yahoo) you can pay for, but they will immediately improve your ranking.

Don’t use ‘black hat’ tactics
If you stuff website with irrelevant keywords, cloak them, and add links to spam sites - Google will punish you. You are also preventing people from finding the relevant material they are searching for. You can even be removed from searches for this, so keep your content relevant and true – you will attract less visitors; but the right visitors. This goes for Social Media too – don’t buy likes, it won’t increase your bookings.

Do Optimise
Add ‘alt’ tags and a title for your images so they load faster, reduce them in file size so they are optimised for the space, and keep your page sizes under 100kb throughout the site – search speed has been incorporated into ranking for search results. Make sure you have a ‘contact us’ page and site maps for both users and search engines.

Do write great content
Despite many changes to Google with the latest algorithm - Hummingbird, overall content is still the most important factor for search. Big changes were made to keyword searches which anyone using Google Analytics will be aware of, but the purpose is to value the content of the whole site for relevance, and provide better search results for users. Focus on useful content for your users – tourist information, places to see, places to go, and information on your hostel. If your bounce rate is high, your content is not that relevant.

Don’t forget your key business
Yes, you need good content on your areas and activities for guests, but your website should be a booking tool and point of information about your hostel primarily. The rest of the information is great, but secondary. Make sure you are marketing yourself as a great place to stay and have an intuitive site that leads to booking. You want people to read about you, book and share positive reviews. Make sure your social pages all use your url also, it’s better for your brand and counts on search too.

Hostel Health Tip
Beware that on China’s Baidu search – Flash and JavaScript don’t work!

To find out more about changes to Google search with Hummingbird
see our blog article HERE.

How to Get More Facebook Shares - by Mari Smith

Mari Smith is an excellent Marketeer who created a great infographic to help you get more 'shares' on facebook.  Follow the advice below and you can't go wrong!

14 ways to get more facebook shares

How to Create Great 'Brand Positioning" for your Hostel

What does this mean? Well, your brand is not your product (in this case your hostel) – it is the perception of your product. So, you need to identify how you want people to see your product before you start your marketing campaign. Then you can work out effective and fun ways to achieve this.

The first step to creating your ‘brand positioning’ is to create a ‘Statement’. This means a lot of brainstorming, honesty about what your unique value and proposition are, and get all your team’s ideas together. Put together a list of everything that is important for your business, your team, for you and your customer. Synthesize your results to include everyone’s point of view, give it a couple of days to think about it, then come back and decide your ‘Statement’.

When you have all the information in front of you – it should read like this:
- Your Target Market
- Definition of the market you are in
- Your Brand Promise
- Reason to Believe (RTB) the brand promise

This sounds simple – your market is backpackers, the age range and demographic is mostly open, and you’re offering a place to stay that is hopefully safe, fun, friendly, clean and good value for money. And your reviews, ratings and testimonials on your website and social sites provide the Reason to Believe.

What are you really selling?
You and your competitors are all selling beds – but ultimately, what is the experience you are selling? What do you really offer that is different from other hostels? Is your demographic really ‘everyone’? Who are you targeting? What nationalities are you promoting to? What translations do you have on your website? Do you encourage group bookings? What are you known for? What activities do you offer or can you recommend? You must work out all of these things before you begin to market yourself. Also make sure you identify what you don’t want to be known as – if you’re a party hostel then make sure you tell people if they want to sleep, to stay somewhere else!

Stay focused. The more focused you are, the more individual and distinctive your brand will be.  Try to find your exact section of the market, your promise and one or two reasons why that promise is believable. Remember you are also positioning yourself against competitors, so make sure you have a good understanding of their positioning too.

Product Message
Once you have established your positioning, put together the following, and make sure everyone in your team knows about it:

- Key Statements:  your benefits/unique selling points in a couple of key statements. These will be repeated      like mantras in all your marketing.
- Differentiators:  In marketing speak – what makes you different from the rest?
- Positioning:  Make sure everyone knows what you want to be known as.
- 25 words:  This is one sentence about you that says it all.

Now you have you message and product identified, you can build your brand.

Build your Brand
Now you have created it, you have to make sure you use it. This means keeping your brand identity ‘true’ (don’t stretch your logo!) and populate it across everything from your facebook to your invoices. This should be consistent – you will want it to look professional in everything you do, and to remain clearly identifiable. Read our article on ‘Building your Brand’ to see the checklist of what to do.

Manage your Brand
Once you have decided on your brand positioning, and have begun to build it, make sure you keep it well managed. Your “Reasons to believe” come in here, because your brand makes a ‘promise’ that the experience will be positive, and as you described. If you tell your customers you have an amazing party atmosphere and when they arrive you bar is under refurbishment, they will be disappointed. You need to manage expectations when they differ from your usual promise (such as when you are having renovations done etc.) and if something goes wrong, as it sometimes does, you have to recover your customers’ trust by managing the experience. Things can go wrong and you can still get a good review, but only if you manage it correctly. If you had a bad customer experience with a well known brand, you know they will respond to it immediately and try to gain your brand trust again – usually with discounts, exclusive offers or something free. Decide your standard protocol for dealing with complaints at front desk, online, through social networks, and make sure you send out consistent, positive responses to manage your brand.

Also, don’t forget that managing your brand is also a positive experience, not just crisis management! When you get positive reviews, thank the customer, share it on your website or social channels, and make sure the customer feels it was worth telling people. Good reviews and feedback from happy customers are your best friends, remember 51% of people follow friend’s recommendations when it comes to where to stay.  Your customer will feel more inclined to visit again, recommend you, read your email marketing rather than thinking it’s spam, and remember it as a positive customer experience, even after their visit! This is marketing gold dust, so don’t think the customer experience ends when at check-out. Find out more about Positive PR in our free article online.

Good Luck!

If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact us at hello@hosteldoctor.com

Is Google+ the Best Discussion Forum?

Google+ is trying hard to be what all forums (back when the internet was invented) have always hoped to be. Relevant. Forums and chat rooms have been around in one way or another since the internet was invented, but so has spam and an overwhelming amount of irrelevant material from prolific users and sharers. The idea behind forums being to share relevant information and start topical discussions has taken a backseat for years.

Overwhelmed with sales pitches and dancing animals? LOL? With so many different mediums now, it's almost impossible to know where to make your posts and read other people's posts, let alone get genuine advice. The biggest sites, such as facebook groups and LinkedIn face constant spam postings and self-promotion instead of being used as a tool for discussions. And for asking questions or seeking genuine advice, you will certainly receive replies that sell you something. I know that my inbox has become full of updates that aren't relevant to me. Is this perhaps where Google+ can step in?

Being the behemoth company they are and ranked #1 in the world, Google had an obligation to create something to challenge or better the existing forums out there. Google+, Google Circles, Google Hangouts, Google Talk, Google+ Communities - what is it all about?!
Well Google+ allows you to create a topic or community or discussion, and talk about it - the same as the other platforms. You can follow what you like, join in what you like, and see a whole host of recommendations for you. You can also have private and two-way conversations as it incorporates Google Talk network directly, as does Gmail. You can also use its instant messaging function, or one of the many IM third party services out there, such as Pidgin. If you want to interact by video or watch youtube clips as a group, then you can use Google hangout. This is essentially a chat session for up to 10 people, with the usual requirements of a webcam and microphone. To be used with select circles or users even.

Google+ Communities focuses on just that, the community. So instead of a category for film that includes documentaries and horror, it's broken down further to find what is relevant to you. You have the ability to create Categories within your Communities (but the Community itself has an owner), so you can drill down to issues that you're interested in, and avoid irrelevant material (and perhaps even less spam due to the 'moderator' function). Being Google there is high tech monitoring taking place, and repetitive content and multiple posts are weeded out and deleted, so this should keep your Community as spam free as possible - better for user experience. Then there is even a community for moderators, a group if you will, to report back on issues. This sounds like prefects in school, but if there are people willing to monitor and keep clean the Communities, then it should work.
Where facebook and LinkedIn groups fall down is control of the groups postings. The are also generic postings that discourage other members from joining discussions as they're not focused enough to engage people. The online community welcomes new platforms, and Google has recognised and embraced this. With millions of users and the easiest member engagement, could Google+ create value in forums rather than playing the numbers game? It's for the user to decide.

Do you use Google+? Do you find it a happier place to avoid spam and interact?
Let us know your thoughts! hello@hosteldoctor.com