Wow Apple is off the rails, eh?

AT&T is tragic, at best.  Om, from GigaOm (he went early due to AT&T), talks about his big iphone break up from earlier this year.

Now Iphone’s massively inconsistent app store is getting called out, and long time fanboys are bailing on the iphone.  Wild stuff…. have you guys been following this?

Google Voice app rejected (on engadget)

Apple Rotten to the Core (on techcrunch)

Finally… the fan boys are getting why collaborative business and open source is vital, necessary, and the future.  Decisions shrouded in mystery,  and inconsistent application of policies have finally disappointed some of the biggest Iphone fans:

Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, was an Iphone fan boy who quit his iphone on principle.

Or Bad Apple: An argument against buying an iphone (“if you don’t want to be locked out of innovation… don’t get an iphone”) – this is from someone who co-wrote a book exaulting the iphone

Now…. Apple is sort of in a corner. With so many unhappy customers, they are making up urban legends and attempting to instill fear into the populace with lies about massive failure of cell towers if you unlock your iphone.  Frankly, that is one of the most bizarre things I have ever heard.  Or at least… an incredibly odd move for iphone to make up new physics. “”This kind of theoretical threat,” von Lohmann said, “is more FUD than truth.”

*aaaaand* the fan boy charm is wearing off, as the cult gets jabbed by The Onion to boot.

*aaaaand* a serious memory bug can let hackers control your phone through a simple SMS message, and it was demonstrated at the Black Hat Conference last week.  “One minute I’m talking to Miller and the next minute my phone is dead, and this time it’s not AT&T’s fault. “

Way to go Apple.  You are able to take the ingenuity and pride of technicians, engineers, and everyone else and begin too drive it into the ground with terrible business acumen.  Well done guys.  Keep it up… the more market share you lose, the more competition…. and then the brilliance of capitalism will shine as I finally have a phone that works perfectly.  (Idealism is for the future, to say the least)

Your cult-like, inconsistent, proprietary bullying is starting to get old. Rhyme and Reason are friends of business. Give em a call (if your AT&T plan doesn’t drop the line first)!

I had been chatting with the guys at Market Metrix a couple months ago about the necessity of using their solid metrics with social media.  Of course, I didn’t know they were already up to something….  I am very interested to see what has been developed, and feel this may turn into a very useful monitoring tool that will monitor trends, issues, etc… highlighting what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and gathering the advice in a way that makes it better measured, and more organized.  Please to see this everyone!  Looking forward to it!

Coming soon: powerful review monitoring tools

TripAdvisor has teamed up with Market Metrix to offer you Review Metrix, a tool to help you analyze customer reviews. Review Metrix will score your reviews and compare your results to benchmarks to determine which reviews require immediate action. Look for Review Metrix later this summer.

So…

This is a fairly funny, interesting article about the complexity of social ads, and how they can exploit any of your proprietary data for their own ends…. in that you agree it isn’t proprietary anymore by uploading it to the site.  IE:  Complain all you want, but if you are on a social media site, they own you.  Some try to be fairly deferential to the artist’s rights (Flickr, Tribe, etc), but others like Yelp and Facebook seem to have little concern for their single users, and are wholly concerned with users overall (read: business).

That being said, have you heard about any of these wildly incorrect or funny social ad gaffes?

Here are some from Cheryl Smith’s original article:

Husband sees his own wife in a picture for “hot singles”.

Karen said: “Despite having three degrees and no children, I keep getting ads urging ‘Moms’ to ‘go back to school and earn a degree.’”

Rachel said, “none of my friends have come up in dating ads but one of my guy friends – a 20 something with perfect skin, popped up in an ad for a wrinkle cream”

“I saw a Facebook ad that read “Pinecones. In glass. The want is real.” They were advertising just that — pinecones in glass jars. Very odd.”

[The following, I assume, was for a dating ad?] “My picture was posted in an ad for my sister, who then posted a comment in her status on FB, and everyone got to share a great laugh – after a collective: Ewwwww. Cheers!”

“Best one so far was a picture of our church’s pastor next to an ad asking my wife if she were hot enough to be in his sorority!”

These are hilarious… but somewhat frightening.  If you use FB, or most of these sites…. you should simply consider privacy over.  Don’t give up on it, but don’t act shocked.  At least, have a great sense of humour like Cheryl did on her original post.  The fact is – social media is young, and growing.  This will all get hammered out, and someday there will be parity and the new model will synch up.  Until then, please share the weird, wild, or funny things you see or hear about on social media ads!  Cheers!

Mr. Kirby from Hotels Magazine has written a great piece about @hiltonsuggests and their new model of using twitter. In light of that, the massive amount of new twitterers/followers since my posts about the development of an “e-concierge / Concierge 2.0″ role, as well as how to effectively establish and utilize your brand using the tool of social media… I thought I would expand a bit and touch on it again.

It is exciting to see brands establishing themselves as I had envisioned… not vapid spam marketing, but being leaders in helping guests. Hospitality is the name of the game, and the only way to build your brand isn’t to market it, so much as effectively position it, with deference to your guests and not your marketing department.

Kirby’s post talks about active searching for guests, instead of the passive approach; letting them come to you. Albeit a massive undertaking for a flag like Hilton, it will also be incredible effective.  I have been doing this for a couple years, and it really works. If you are a property with hot springs… search hot springs.  If you are a property in a wine growing region with fine dining… I think you get it. Fact is, this is INCREDIBLY time consuming, and I have backed off of it a little in need of positioning and building the social media presence for a number of clients… but there should be a point I am back to having the time to filter through aggressive wide netting of google alerts, backtype, twitter search, and other RSS’.  In fact, I think I totally melted down at one point through a blog post, as noted here.

In fact… the following will start to really help you position your property on something like twitter:

1) Firmly commit yourself to the geography and history – know your story, know where you came from, and know what your offerings are, what makes you special.. and share it!

2) Ingratiate yourself to the community – share city and county wide news, events, stories, photos, etc. Celebrate the Juniour Varsity going to state, or the new art gallery exhibit.  People don’t often care about a hotel.  They *do* care about what matters to *them*.  If you share and come together over similar interests, you will start to matter to the social web. Become a leader in information about your surroundings and tap into people’s interests. It isn’t all about *you*. It isn’t about wanting to sell your rooms, talk about your rentals, or pitch your restaurant. If you are myopic enough to think only of yourself, you won’t be as relevant as if you represent yourself as part of a community. Don’t just offer a room rate, talk about what makes a room special – from the historic quirks to green room design.  Instead of selling your bike rentals, talk about the incredible trails & picnic day trips in the area. If you have a nice restaurant, talk about all the local farms you buy from and the guests you have, instead of just putting a discount/special out there. If you have a spa, tell a story about one of the favourite therapists instead of just saying “1/2 off”. If you have meeting rooms to sell…. talk about one of the cool groups that came to the property and why they excited you. Involving more than just yourself will stimulate and open up conversation.  Could I go on?  Obviously… but I am assuming you are getting it.  Social Media is *NOT* a print ad.  It is a relationship, networking, and interaction.  One sided, spam-like deal tweets will only help you get recognized long enough for the people to ignore you.

3) Build a culture and humanity around your property… not just a shallow marketing effort. You need to humanize and personalize your activities online. If you are nothing more than an RSS feed for your hotel, people will walk away.  You need to show you are a real person… so wear your quirks and emotions on your sleeve.  If you are an emotionless robot, people won’t notice you… but if your energy, personality, and even idiosyncrasies, show through… it will truly create a more meaningful and real experience for other users. If you play at the deferential professional being obsequious with no character… that will only reflect on your hotel in a negative light. You need to intone and create a sense of “soft and comfy beds”, rather than sterile hallways littered with emotionless automatons.  Always be professional, but for criminy *BE REAL*!!!!

4) Then…                    after all this….                 you become the Concierge 2.0.  Help anyone and everyone REGARDLESS of whether they are utilizing or recognizing your brand. You cannot be so disingenuous that you will only engage people you think will bring you business. You have to cordially, professionally, and earnestly engage anyone and everyone. Not because you are trying to brand your hotel… but because you are a real service provider that is inherently interested in fulfilling guests, helping the community, and creating harmony in people’s lives.  This isn’t advice…. this is a way of life.

Hospitality is about service, consistency, and making people happy. Don’t make it more complex than that…. Follow that as an ultimate guideline in creating your business online, as well as in the real world. You are there to stay open, pay your employees, and hopefully walk out with a little profit (someday). But the only thing that will keep you there is the community, and the community is filled with living and breathing people that need to be respected and treated with integrity… online and off. If you treat social media as a marketing tool, you are not only going to miss the point, you may actually damage your brand.  But if you are real, engaging, enthusiastic, and humanize your property, you could become indispensable to the people and surroundings of your area.

I know I have been slow on blogs lately… I have a security related blog coming, as well as follow up to my LEED and eco-resort related blog post. In fact, I seem to always have one or two in the wings, but for some reason this caught me. I will repost some of my older blogs that discusses this online concierge method of utilizing social media: “Concierge 2.0”, “What do you say about managers not in the room”, and “Did we Just Create a New Position for Real??”

Cheers all!

There might be some rights issues here, as I am in the process of receiving permission for posting this 1 page article from the Law Group who published this. That being said, no offense… but we have all talked about intellectual privacy versus memetic operations of data, right? Meaning…. good ideas want to get out. They become memes… just like music, jokes, fashion trends…… a good idea is not own-able, and will travel of it’s own volition and propulsion (some lawyers will disagree). It is eerie, because memes really subject us to humility that can leave us ideologically foundering: Does the concept of individuality or originality exist when it is the *IDEA* that seems autonomous, simply using the human mind as a vehicle? Is our living, biologically charged body simply a tool for the truly alive *INFORMATION* to move about, and we are a finite, disposable entity? How long was Uncle Harry around compared to the knock knock joke he used to tell… to everyone… always? Information outlasts human frailty.

It’s astonishingly philosophical, and possibly unduly complex post modernist hooey… but I like how all that works. It is interesting, to say the least.

That being said, the information here is a REALLY helpful, concise, and solid advice about social media, and making sure to establish best practices FIRST… instead of acting like a paranoid and out of touch despot that controls people through authority and fear mongering.

Yes, I do understand that there is a lack of productivity associated with social networking… but they can also be an efficacious tool to drive revenue and build brand. To have an executive committee panicking in light of ignorance of how these things work is simply shooting the property level hotel in the foot….

*THESE TOOLS CAN PROVIDE BOOKINGS, SOLVE PROBLEMS, BUILD YOUR HOTELS’ REPUTATION, AND BUILD COMMUNITY SUPPORT*

Restricting them would be foolhardy at least, and hypocritical at best. It isn’t an employee’s fault for not knowing rules you haven’t established, and every time upper management decides to clench a fist for seeing a FB chat box open, realize it is because you haven’t set any boundaries. This stuff has moved into our turf *FAST*…. and because of that it seems like things are out of control in regards to people using this stuff at the property, during work hours. But this isn’t new…. us hoteliers have dealt with this before. For the really initiated of us, back in the 20’s when night auditor’s in the mid 50’s brought transistor radios to the front office. Then small black and white TV’s. But all that technology came at a pace where we could mitigate it, and understand how to control it.

A good example of rapid technology advancements bypassing normal societal cultural protocols is the cell phone. When those came about, all of a sudden “in the trenches” middle management is looking over at another employee during a heavy Sunday check out and seeing them texting… during the middle of the shift! It was like common sense had left the building, and poor work ethic was oozing in. But that, too, was dealt with… eventually through proper “social” managing (“put that damn thing away”) and then by lawsuits of people using it on the job (crashing while driving a company car). Eventually it worked itself out, but the rise of social media has provided more than a modicum of challenge for us hotel people. The problem here is that it can waste time (as demonstrated by the FD agents during slow periods during the heyday of MySpace), as well as drive business.

So it seems to me that a “best practices” for social media *IN* business needs to happen… I had mentioned it before…. and will likely mention it again. The point being is that I am not about to form best practices. I will clue you in from time to time about what I think works…. but my real mission here is to inform people not to panic… not to be frightened. If you are worried about lost productivity, go back to the “Mad Men” style of business that *absolutely* took place in the past days…. we have always known how to waste time, and skillfully, artfully pad it as being something more than it is. “By the hour” consultants depend on that fact.

What I hope to do is open a dialogue for the industry to talk about “best pracitces” and what it means….

And the reason this is at issue is that, for some of my clients, it means full censorship of the intra-hotel network. Censoring and limiting every possible site that might be used, abused, or thought about. I am a conservative manager, and I like employees working….. (to be precise I like them worked to the bone with a “time to lean time to clean” mentality. You bet the reg cards were audited even after a slow turn… =) )

However, I don’t like limiting my employees’ ability to operate. I always thought you hire employees that you trust… so that you *don’t* have to police them as if they were small children. The Exec Committee shouldn’t, and doesn’t, have time for such petty antics. If one of my employees needs to watch a youtube a client sent them to help with a room setup idea, or get a confirmation number from an email or FB account, or any number of reasons I can think of (but mainly for the ones I can’t think of)…. I want them to be able to operate and successfully accomplish the task of pleasing the guest.

So does “best practices” mean banning all sites outright? I doubt it… but that is the precarious direction our neophyte industry is headed. We need to re-orient, and realize it isn’t about the sites, it is about training our employees how, and when, to use them. So many intellectually powerful people have copped out to mindless, cynical, authoritarian rule in lieu of wanting to spend the amount of time to properly train and hire someone. I don’t know if it is my general distrust of human resources, or just noting the smiles don’t always justify the lack of credible work…. but you shouldn’t have to be backed into a corner like that. I guess it is idealism, and another blog post entirely dealing with our shrinking work force and complete lack of qualified applicants.

I don’t mean to be rude, I just want to make sure that the hotel industry doesn’t botch yet another tech moment (remember the debacle of wireless installation and tech support throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s?) that we can turn to our advantage to help our brand, identity, guests, employees, and community to more seamlessly leverage the offerings of our properties. In these times, as the tired expression goes, we surely can use it.

So here you go…. Best Practices and Guidelines for Social Media in the Work Place completely created and composted by someone else….

….. ENJOY!

The image will be much too big, but if you right click and ask to “view image” it should become … umm.. actually readable. =)  I too am a neophyte in a sense, and a pioneer as much as it takes not to be shot in the back.  That being said, sorry for the trouble… but “viewing image” will work fine! =^)

Spot on and completely hilarious, I am sure many of you have felt this frustration. Apparently, everything is negotiable nowadays, eh? This makes it nice and ridiculous, for easy lunch time digesting.