NEW DELHI, July 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

iXiGO.com Emerges as Most Influential Travel Brand on Social Media, #4 Amongst all Online Brands

India's leading travel planning website, iXiGO.com, has reached a critical milestone in its growth story. The fast growing travel site has emerged as India's most influential travel brand on social media, as per statistics shared by two third-party sources - Pinstorm's India Influencers Index 2.0 - http://pinstorm.com/ii/#brands and 'Brands Going Social' by Media2win - http://socialbrands.media2win.com/

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While Pinstorm's India Influencer Index ranks iXiGO.com #17 among all brands in India, the rank goes up to #4 among all Indian brands when measured purely by the brand's Klout score, ahead of all other e-commerce brands in India, and even a large number of media and news channels in the country. As per the 'Brands Going Social' index, iXiGO.com ranks #1 in travel and #4 among all e-commerce brands when one applies an 'Engagement Index' metric, defined as the ratio of fans/followers talking about the brand and the overall number of followers/fans of the brand, for brands which have more than 100,000 likes. In both these indexes and studies, iXiGO.com emerges as the definitive #1 in the travel category and a leading brand in the overall e-commerce category, ahead of brands such as eBay, Flipkart, BookMyShow, and Expedia.

iXiGO's social media presence on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ixigocom) has over 182,000+ likes with nearly 15,000 users talking about the brand, whereas on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ixigorocks) it has 2100+ followers. On both these platforms, iXiGO has experienced sustained growth in fan following by creating and curating interesting and engaging travel related content and trivia and sharing it with their fans.

The company attributes its phenomenal success on social media to its philosophy of listening closely to users and engaging with them using a more human side of the brand, just like another friend on Facebook. 

"While one can focus on building a large fan base, what really matters is whether there is true engagement and buzz around the brand. How attentive are your followers to your communication and how relevant do they find the content to their own aspirations? On Facebook, a typical post on any brand page reaches less than 10% of the overall community and gets only 3-4% of fans talking about the brand, as likes, comments or shares. With some really engaging travel trivia, facts, photos and contests, we have been able to reach 15-20% of our community and have over 8% of iXiGOers on our page engaging with it actively. This is fuelling our organic fan growth and has resulted in this achievement," said Saurabh Srivastava, VP Marketing & Product Strategy, iXiGO.com.

Social Media has become a crucial part of the brand positioning and marketing strategy for every brand. iXiGO has integrated the importance of social influence to their innovation cycle as well. Earlier this year, iXiGO launched India's first natural language flight search product for Facebook (iXiGOSearch) and Twitter (@iXiGOSearch) allowing users to get real-time fares and availability by conversing with the page. iXiGO.com has been known for its industry-first product innovations and its most recent launch, the iXiGO Trip Planner (http://www.ixigo.com/trip-planner), dubbed 'the search engine with a human touch' by eyefortravel.com, and recently featured in BBC World's Fast Track has become a perfect example of how natural language search, infographics and travel information can be mashed up into a product with an inspirational and fun user-experience.

About iXiGO.com:

iXiGO.com is India's leading travel search and trip planning website. iXiGO.com's vision is to develop products to ease and simplify the life of travelers and to make traveling a happy and wholesome experience, exemplified by products such as TripPlanner, FareMapper, FlightPlanner amongst others. Launched in 2007 by IIT, INSEAD and Amadeus alumni as the first travel search engine in India, iXiGO's unbiased search results and ease-of-use have won it several accolades from TiE and NASSCOM, and have propelled it to one of the top travel sites in India almost entirely through word-of-mouth from satisfied users. Leading publications have referred to iXiGO as the "Google for travel" for Indian consumers. iXiGO.com is an investee company of SAIF Partners & MakeMyTrip Limited.

For more information about iXiGO.com, visit www.ixigo.com or m.ixigo.com (mobile). Keep up with interesting trivia, facts and contests around travel by iXiGO.com on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/iXiGOcom and Twitter @ixigorocks.

Primary Media Contact: Saurabh Shrivastava, saurabh@ixigo.com, 91-124-4617884

Secondary Media Contact: Kshiti Garg, kshiti@ixigo.com, 91-124-4617884

SOURCE Le Travenues Technology Pvt. Ltd. (IXIGO.com)