Couchsurfing

PART 3 CONSUMER CHARACTERISTICS & BRANDING STRATEGY

A. Branding and Consistency Online/Offline Branding

1. Online Branding

a. Website

* The most popular website of couchsurfing is www.couchsurfing.org, or you can join using facebook site which boasts 6 million members in 100,000 cities worldwide. It’s free to set up a profile, and before you travel you can either send out a general couch request to the area or send a message to a specific host, searchable via the site. Similarly, when hosting, you use the same profile to either message people who are looking for a host, or wait for them to contact you.

You can also use the page to find answers to common questions! Also, be sure to check out our known Issues page to learn about bugs and technical issues that we are aware of and working on. You can either search by typing in the search bar above or browse through the categories listed like: Getting Started for New Members, Surfing & Hosting, Messages & Inbox, Changes in the new Couchsurfing site, Policies and Guidelines, Media and Research, Beta Panel, My Account, Verification, Known Issues & Feedback, Ambassadors and Profile Icons, Translations and Languages, Trademark Use.

b. Blogs

* A blog is a Web site that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer and the contents of such a site or a discussion and informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order.

* http://blog.couchsurfing.com/

* https://couchsurfingberlin.wordpress.com/

* http://charlieontravel.com/best-worst-couchsurfing-stories/

* http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/confessions-of-a-couchsurfer,12936/

c. Social media channels

* Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Couchsurfing has...