Hraba Hospitality Consulting

If I may wax for a second….

Hotel related Social Media Optimizer / Social Media Optimization.

A new job, with new tasks.  Incredibly interesting in regards to Web 2.0, and massively complex.

But long term stability…. I just don’t know.

*Pardon the simple business lesson below*

Business doesn’t get too far away from money.  People in business spend money.  People spending money want justification for what they spend their money on. This is part of business.

Sooooooooooo….. it is *this* thing that is my primary concern with the complexity of our jobs right now:

1) Traditional print media has started (continues) to break down, and the “impression” model of reaching an existing customer base is something online sales reps are trying to grasp onto because it is a familiar model for offline marketers, but it simply doesn’t work.

2) The public is massively wary about traditional marketing methods, and much of traditional advertising in the real world or online world is considered spam now.

3) There is zero ROI associated with much of the online world’s Social Media optimizers, and people need a turn around on their investment quicker than “long term brand building” and “internet brand custodian”.

4) The social media ad model, in my opinion, is failing…. Completely.  So now the social media boom is going to lose a lot of the venture capitalism when it starts becoming obvious that the power of the network effect won’t convert social media consumers into measurable income.  Not only this, but not one of the sites (facebook, youtube, etc) has become profitable.  Not one.  This doesn’t mean they will fail… networking effects are strong.  But it is cause for concern.

5) Instead of falling in line with traditional ad models (advertising to consumers), new ones are on the rise (consumers as endorsers, wearing brands for identity purposes)

my biggest concern:

6) The amount of time spent vs. rate of pay vs. output.  One hotel I work with has 6 Yelp pages or so (mercantile, spa, cooking school, bar, restaurant, and main page)…. The management company that owns that property and 4 others has something like 13.  The amount of time it takes a SMO/SEO to work for one property/management company is ample, while the justifiable consulting fees don’t cover amount of time invested.  The worst issue here is that actual work output (other than a spreadsheet of links) is minimal.  THE ROI is not demonstable in many significant “OH WOW MOMENT” sort of ways.

It is all very complex, and if you guys ever have any insight or thoughts into this I would *really* appreciate hearing from your experiences, and having a discussion about this stuff.  And my bullet points are sort of all over, so sorry.  I should be working, but again… I start thinking.  Make it stop.

But in the end…. with all these pertinent yet unstable aspects of SMO’ing…. how do you justify your existence in any meaninful way that can pay the bills?

Most of you don’t have the time for this, but I know some of you are still somewhat alien to the idea of social networking and the more knowledge we have, the better we can utilize the tool.

Why Facebook Pages are important:

These “pages” leverage our brands in multiple ways. In regards to general optimizing of the website, the more our page and our links exist throughout the internet, the higher our page will bump (pardon for being simplistic). But the other side of it is that these pages target consumers MARKEDLY well… and we can get into an ad campaign later that is cheap, and incredibly specific down to keywords like “eco-hotel”, specific regions, and more. In that sense, instead of the ad appearing next to any random facebook account, it appears next to people that have relevant accounts, potentially increasing our conversion rate.

As for the pages….. since I published them, they have already been getting considerable hits without any effort *at all*. Meaning some of these pages have gotten up to 20+ page views simply for existing. In fact, Fiji has somehow picked up fans. It is remarkable really. I am going to do some very low level advertising experiments with this, and will follow up by the middle of next week.

Why Facebook is important?

Facebook is a place where users are constant “endorsers” of products in front of their friends as the targeted audience: a music video, a political figure, a local café, etc. A user “fan”’s the page, and their friends in their network see this, converting more users into your network. It can allow previous guests to touch base with staff or other guests they met, keep up to date on the resort, or post pictures and stories. It allows other people to simply wait for the right offer to visit, or fantasize from their cubicle.

What is truly incredible is that, for no fee, you can send out a “status update” to all your fans… specials, important events, etc… and it goes on their “feed”. This is important, as email is possibly in the beginning of its decline (this is another discussion entirely), and the ad will appear directly in front of their eyes, rather than hidden in an email they can ignore or throwaway.

It is also important to think of the size of some of these social networks, and the effect that one popular kingpin individual can have on the community at large. We begin looking at social networking members as individuals with high or low “equity”. The “high equity” group leaders are someone worth targeting in hopes they lead their network in the same direction.

The real impact of facebook is that it spins around the ad model where you force feed consumers endless advertising, and you target the people that want to be known as endorsers of your product. In fact, the way that hotels are going, and most businesses in general, print media is rapidly declining. I have a lot of reports with evidence that supports this. Like Here!

With this “individuality” model, endorsing specific products highlights a person’s style of individuality, bolstering their equity within their group, helping them become a more important figure for that network (including more profile hits and overall social interest, making that individual become highly desirable to interact with). In the end, you don’t have to approach them in the traditional sense with advertising…. The consumer is starting to come to us as it will benefit their standing to be part of *your* network of hotels, etc. When your brand is solid, and your social standing is good, facebook users become unaware that they are advertising for you in a personal effort to set themselves apart as an expressive and individualistic user. In essence, humans are now the vehicles for your brand, and will errantly act as walking billboards reaching more people than any traditional print media could.

————————————————

I have done a lot of work on facebook. Here are the links.

Facebook is a closed social network, but these business pages appear in everyday google/yahoo searches.

Look at them, and if you are part of facebook, please “fan” the page. If you have anyone you know that is on facebook, send these to them (cutting off the below explanation please). Upload videos and photos if you have them.

I wanted to keep this short, but a concise explanation of these and why they are important appears below.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Passport-Resorts/31208562731

PASSPORT RESORTS

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Savusavu-Fiji/Fiji-Islands-Resort-Fiji-Vacations-Fiji-Luxury-Resort-Hotel-Eco-Resort/104677890056

JEAN-MICHEL

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Sur-CA/POST-RANCH-Big-Sur-hotel-Big-Sur-lodging-Ventana-Mountains-Eco-Inn-Spa/32703496590

POST RANCH

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sonoma-CA/Sea-Ranch-Lodge-Sonoma-Coast-Hotel-Dog-Friendly-Inn-Mendocino-eco-hotel/31281769323

SEA RANCH

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sausalito-CA/Sausalito-Hotel-National-Park-Lodge-San-Francisco-Hotel-Sausalito-Resort/32504522793

CAVALLO

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hana-HI/Hana-Resort-Maui-Hotel-Maui-Lodging-Maui-Resort-Hawaii-vacation-Maui/32495359821

HANA

Curious situation that I have heard some hoteliers remark about:

They believe social reviewers a tight knit group of people that suffer groupthink (IE “Yelp Elite”).

In this, a lot of time reviewers of their own travel networks, say Trip Advisor or someone using LA Times Travel site, are easily and confidently swayed by reviewers within their own network.

In an ideal web 2.0, user generated content such as this is *absolutely* meant to be informative, evaluative, and impacting.  They are meant to create a community of honest and trustworthy sources:  balanced, honest, real, truthful, and experienced.

As it should be if all reviews on all sites if the reviewers were professional.  But… they are not.  They are often fickle, misguided or simply wrong.  Often spelling is of little concern, and a fair review (or pertinent) is further down the agenda.

These sights are far from objective.  Look at Sf.Eater‘s ongoing efforts for ontological, anthropological discussion and documenation in their series called “Yelp Wanted“.  It is hilarious really…

… until you get to us.  The business owners and those involved with the business.  Then it becomes sort of frustrating.  Sort of depressing.  Possibly maddening.

You have business owners suing reviewers, or simply lashing out.  You have other ones trying to fight back and sue some of the sites.  Merchants angry, or better yet, small innkeepers organizing trying to “convince tripadvisor”.

It is pretty incredible.  It attests to the lobby like influence these user sites have.

So why are there no checks and balances?  Why oh why isn’t there even a spell check?

Joking aside, there is no way to seek veracity for reviews on most of these sites.  Expedia and Travelocity give the opportunity to review only *AFTER* the processed stay has occurred.  Of course this was easy for them to do, as proof of stay already existed, and you didn’t have to come up with some arbitrary verification process.

But it is interesting how often (to bring this back to the first line), seemingly, someone will read a review prior to using a business, and will have a self fulfilling expectation, either good or bad, of what to expect.

For example… an important reviewer negatively comments on something, only to start a string of similar comments.  There have been cases of yelp reviewers commenting on businesses they haven’t even used, simply because other reviewers had bad experiences.  Or a better example might be when a Yelp Elite Party is held at a specific restaurant or event center.  It is assured an endless string of glowing reviews will be lobbed towards the provider as a goodwill back scratch.  When someone does not write a glowing review, there is a backlash.

(Actually, it seems that Yelp has removed that post because one of their staff continually provides bad PR.  Here is another thread where he is duking it out with a non elite member.  It sounds drunken, and sophomoric.)

So what’s the moral?  Is there one or is this another silly ramble?

No… the moral of the story is that this is an ever involving dynamic between businesses and customers.

What I am starting to get disappointed in is that these sites that aim to be a boon to the consumer is simply making it more complex.

In a day and age where human contact is rare and far between, we are now finding ways to be unprofessional to one another in our business relationship without ever having seen each other.

So… take every review with a grain of salt, be as aware as possible, and do your best to be honest, transparent, excited, and real to reviewers.

However, the most proactive thing is to talk to your guests, and engage them on property while you have the chance.  Whereas before you had the one special reviewer from the paper with his picture in the kitchen, every single guest has the potential of being an “amplified consumer” that will be a boon, or bust, for your property.

If they must groupthink, we may find it wise for it to be thunk in your favour.

I know I shouldn’t end with a made up word, but it’s time to play poker.

This was a real treat to start my day… somehow in my manic attempt to track stuff for all my clients, I missed something that involved what *I* am doing for them!  I remember deleting this alert as well, so shame on me!

Post Ranch Inn twitters well!

http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/1/14/114310/100/hotels/Hotels_That_Twitter_and_Twitter_Well

Thanks Hotel Chatter, VERY MUCH!  I really appreciate it.  A lot.

What’s more, I have something very exciting to share with all you hotel people trying to understand social media.  I know you… REALLY well.  I don’t think this is an ROI conversation.  I see this as a new job like an “online concierge”.  Just another cost of running a business about guest experience.  What I am doing already has garnered rave guest comments, and people are identifying with the properties because of how I reach out to them, earnestly, enthusiastic and participatory.  Eventually certain hotels will need to hire a FT manager, while smaller properties will need to delegate this experience as part of the job duties.  If anyone sees “social media management” in a job description, let me know!

Until then, I am seeing demonstrable ROI from twitter.  For the Stanford Terrace Inn, a cute retro eco-hotel I work with in Palo Alto / Silicon Valley, I have actually converted online twitterers talking about hotels and asking about Palo Alto properties.  It has happened a couple times now, and with one having stayed 8 nights…. that paid for their investment in me.

Of course, twitter is a very small component of a much bigger picture.  But it is fun, it is changing the way business happens (all social media is), and it is an honour to be part of all this.

Whatever the case, I hope my words and thoughts are continually intriguing or stimulating.  But I just wanted a moment of time to have a little press time for me!  Sorry about the congratulatory scratching of thine own back.

Back to the hotel biz!  Or Social Media biz!  Or BOTH!

Yelpers don’t want complexity.  They just want lovely free parties where they can be happy.  Nothing wrong with that, frankly.  Sounds good.  Actually.. really, really good.

But happiness does not sustain itself all the time… those parties may be no more if something doesn’t happen… and fairly fast.  I did just notice a new feature called “Things I Love” on the yelp profile main page.  This is worked in so as to create highly targeted advertising for the members.  If they like dogs, they can market dog food.  If they like their fiance, they can market wedding vendors.  It is a brilliant idea, but I already chatted about how Facebook’s model doesn’t work.  Even running a couple tests produced some negligible and even odd results.

So, when JP Morgan suggests that 2009 will be the year that the ad model fails…. my ears perk up and I wonder a couple things.  Namely, will there be unexpected opportunities if they are not able to get ROI or make these things profitable?

This is fascinating, and social media is so big right now… ballooning, saturating, and a media darling which has gotten an almost cult of personality like focus in the news.

I cannot imagine that they will make it profitable, nor can I imagine it going away.

What do you think is going to happen?  I think that a lot of these sites don’t have strong business leadership, and there is a lot of panicking going on right now.  As long as they focus on the business more than the parties….

I think we will live to review another day.

If anyone has an opinion on this I would love to hear it.  My previous entries on this involve Facebook pages, and their effectiveness for positioning your image and property.

I suggested they were nothing more than long term brand marketing, and didn’t really have an impact.  I surely won’t advertise on facebook again (I ran some tests awhile back.. see older blog posts), so pushing it out there by traditional methods is out of the question.

I really didn’t get why, though.  There is plenty of advertising and marketing going on within people’s profiles, based off them being endorsers and posting different things on their page.  But the pages seem to sort of just sit there, and gather dust.  They get some traffic, but nothing of merit.  It is obvious that I could be missing something, or that I am not applying the tool correctly.  I also thought I simply couldn’t invest the time to get it to take off.

But…. in the odd twitter jibber jabber, in a moment of clarity, I absent mindedly wrote out a simple, concise reason:

“FB’ers are passive endorsers, not active brand searchers.”

And there you have it.  They will play your scrabble game.  They will comment and agree on someone’s brand name clothes, beverage selection, or sunglasses in a picture.  They will share the musicians they think are cool with youtube clips. 

They passively endorse things.

But I don’t think they are actively searching for brands to actively endorse.  At least, if facebook is meant to become a wholly integrated world of marketing and social networking, it seems to have a long way to go before people are using it like the yellow pages.

Whatever the case, I am not sure that it *won’t* become that.  It just doesn’t seem to be there right now.  I also have one property that has a peculiar value offering in regards to facebook, so I am excited to see if this perfectly situated hotel will become relevant on FB.

Everything aside, I just had a thought and a rambled a bit.  I would love to know what you think about it too.

Do you think Facebook will ever be a place to build a strong brand presence?  Do you know of any companies that have a strong brand presence on FB besides Milton Bradley with Scrabble, youtube with videos, etc?

TripAdvisor responded to me earlier posted questions for the tripadvisor hotel relations team.  They did not respond directly to some of the more esoteric questions, pontificating on social media.  But they did provide some useful information that I am sure many hoteliers are clamouring for.

The main juxt of my questioning was whether owners use profiles like normal users, and who is allowed to be a management respondent.  I am surprised by some of the info.  Especially potential ethical violations of hotel owners.. swapping good reviews or shill review for their property, or against a competitor.

Their response to the above link was as follows:

—————————————————————-

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your email and questions regarding the site.

Can you please tell me the title and date of the review the management response which you would like to edit is attached to?

Yes, your owner account is the same as a user account. We do not have restrictions for owner features, it is all up to what you want your preferences to be.

Even though you are using your TripAdvisor account to write management responses you are also able to post reviews for other listings under the same user name if you desire.

Anyone representing a property is able to write a management response for a review.

Though I cannot go into great detail about how we sift out questionable material, I can tell you that TripAdvisor invests a great deal of energy and resources into separating out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  Aside from employing the use of a set of automatic filters to constantly scan both published and incoming reviews for suspicious behavior, we also manually inspect each post before it is published to our site.  Beyond that, we respond to every piece of support correspondence that we receive from both hoteliers and our members.  If you ever find a piece of content on our site to be fishy, please do not hesitate to drop us a line.  I think that you’ll find out support team quite responsive to your concerns.

Unfortunately we are unable to reveal any statical data about reviewer history throughout the site.

In order for us to best serve our community, we like to rely on e-mail correspondence for customer support issues as opposed to phone support. 

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Take Care,

TripAdvisor Hotel Relations Team

———————————————————