Hraba Hospitality Consulting

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!

NB: As soon as Yelp sees this, they will be working on fixing these specific errors, which is fine.  The point is that these exist… endlessly… throughout the site, and these were just the obvious ones I catalogued in a few hours.

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I was so pleased to see a 2 star review disappear from one of my client’s pages today… one that sponsors yelp.  I doubt that means anything, because the below problem looks as if it follows zero rhyme or reason.  This looks like that algorithm really does have a secret aspect about it…. that it is irrevocably flawed.

So… this isn’t about yelp being unethical.  This isn’t about deliberate unethical behaviour.  All Jeremy Stoppleman seems to do is look for blogs, waiting to defensively react against criticism… usually ending with the incredibly vapid “it’s the algorithm and it’s secret” argument.  But really, that’s harmless.

However, that argument might not hold water anymore guys.  Below is an afternoon of research, and it is hardly complete.  This could go on forever.  Hopefully… you will recognize that this is enough proof that the integrity of yelp, and it’s functionality, is endlessly flawed.  This is about a faulty algorithm, no more no less.  The below links are all too self explanatory…. pointing out profiles with reviews that are suppressed from business pages.  Whether or not it is about “maintaining the integrity of yelp” as they so often suggest is moot….

These are real people, and real reviews.  In the below documentation, I have often countered the suppressed review of a certain business by highlighting a reviewer that has a nearly similar profile that actually *has* a review posted.  What that means is that many of the profiles that have suppressed reviews are no different from reviews that are posted on the site (sometimes no avatar/pic, sometimes very few reviews, sometimes long periods between reviews)

Many of the arguments against the below research will be:

1) that they don’t have a picture…. but many of the posted reviews do not have a pic as well.  You have to start out with a fresh profile at some point.  If they aren’t giving a voice to people, why would anyone finish updating a profile anyway.

2) Yelp is protecting against “one hit wonders”…. but that won’t stand up, in that many of those people have completed profiles with many reviews that are totally legitimate.  What’s more, some businesses pages have multiple one hit wonders, just to have one of those suppressed?

I also find it interesting that, after a person voices concern on a talk thread…. the reviews magically appear.  I am not suggesting that yelp is reviewing talk threads and acting accordingly when people bring this issue up, but look for yourself…. seems a lot of the voiced reviewers’ concerns have been placated since the beginning of those threads.  I guess it is tantamount to yelp having the mistake brought to it’s attention, and fixing that error.  Admitting that the algorithm is flawed is one thing… but having to constantly correct and second guess, or act as oversite, sort of lessens any integrity or trust I had in the site.  If I have to sit and think about whether it is honest, or whether it can be trusted… well isn’t that a problem?  Many yelpers I have spoken with don’t think so.  You decide.

I have also supplied links to other talk threads where people are simply confused about flagged reviews, or why their review was taken down or isn’t showing.  I added some confused businesses to boot.

If this is your algorithm yelp, you have built your business on one of the most flawed I have seen.  Just my two cents.  If real reviews by real people is what this is all about, yelp has some serious explaining to do about the incredible flaw in their model.  I don’t think this is fixable, and I don’t think they can defend it.

Frankly, I love yelp.  I hope they can.  I think they may want to start.  I knew this wasn’t out and out unethical behaviour… it was just a deeply flawed model.

If you have any odd situations like this…. a review on your profile not existing on a business page, or confusion of the lack of transparency or communication on yelp’s part… let it be heard.

I may be way, way off on this.  But the below is interesting to me.  I hope it is for you as well.  While we wait for transparency, communication, openness, earnestness, and any ounce of interest in clearing up the confusion… Jeremy will pop into any conversation acting defensive and contradictory.  Instead of being defensive and having to always manage bad press… why not just fix it?

Funny that yelp helped destroy the original marketing model so you can no longer damage control or control any “message”…. which is precisely what yelp is retroactively doing when things like this come up.

I have said it before… you need to be an ethical business that consumers identify with, and have an ethos that draws people to “opt-in” to your offering… and not trick people into thinking you are something you are not.  If you aren’t ethical, or you aren’t run well… people will find out.

It’s possible that yelp is both.

Below was sent to “elite” (read “drunken”) members of yelp. This is INCREDIBLY exciting. This will legitimize yelp, and I have to say this is the most important development in the last couple months in social media. This is huge, exciting, and I am very happy to explore this with my hotels. What a PHENOMENAL tool.

———–from yelp————

As a member of the Elite Squad, I wanted you to be among the first to know about a new feature that is rolling out in about a week or so. It’s called Business Owner Comments, and as the name suggests, it will allow a business owner to write a public Comment after any given review. Comments will be the latest addition to the free Business Owner’s Account that any business owner can sign up for, and that lets them add Photos, post Special Offers and create an ‘About This Business’ section (for more info, read up *here*). As a reviewer, you’ll be emailed each time you receive a new Comment, just like when you get a Compliment.

The goal is for all Comments to be pleasant and useful. For example, if you wrote a glowing 5-star review some months ago about your favorite pub, in which you mention drinking Harp because they didn’t carry Guinness… both you and other readers would probably be happy to see a new Comment saying, “Just got our Guinness tap last week. Hope to see you soon!” Here are a couple other example Comments.

Comments will NOT be a forum for a business owner to disparage a reviewer. As you’ve probably seen with Private Messages, most business owners are actually appreciative of honest and constructive opinions, and realize that being rude to customers is — both on and off Yelp — bad for business. But for those few ill-mannered folks out there, we have come up with some fairly strict Comment Guidelines — and our customer service team will remove violating posts.

Brands on Facebook are nothing more than dissonance now.  Whereas before they were meaningless, and the pages were little more than non-functional, limiting, and fairly non-interactive static places….

….now they are annoying, interruptive, and totally dysfunctional.  The new layout for facebook has turned personal conversations into nothing more than reality TV with advertisements at random intervals. Brands and Pages used to be benign, and it was obvious there weren’t *doing* much of anything.  But now people look at these pages as malicious marketing that is getting in the way of their social network.  The furor I have seen is remarkable, but I hadn’t experienced it until today.

I have three facebook accounts… two for work, one for personal.  Because I sorta “work” I don’t get “personal” too much… but I was on there this morning jibber jabbering, catching up, being a voyuer… and all of a sudden one of my *FAVOURITE BRANDS EVER* pops up with a blurb about an art showing.

I won’t say what it is; but it is sassy, salacious, lurid, and compelling.  So a little blurb pops up into my stream.  Remember…. I love this brand and what they do.. sort of punk chic stuff.  Maybe I do get personal, and will let you know I don’t mind salaciousness.  But, we are talking about something that should be compelling to my core.. a brand I have followed for years, enjoyed, interacted with, and whole heartedly endorsed.

I found it annoying… but brushed it off like a harmless spider on the table.. ignoring it but knowing it may come back.  Then another popped up… and another.  So what did I do with my favourite brand’s page?  I immediately unfanned it.  Immediately.  I don’t want that information in my personal, closed network of friends.  If I want information on the brand, I will search it out… go to the site… peruse the conversation.  But I don’t want it in my feed.  It was just total dissonance, and totally irrelevant.

Facebook…. you just made a terrible mistake.

I know I know… all these bloggers like to shoot from the hip and say, “critical fault”, “nail in the coffin” nonsense…. but just like most emotive reporting (if you want to call it that), it really is just a storm of hot air brewing in an empty tea kettle. Okay I know it doesn’t totally make sense, but you get the idea.

Video didn’t kill the radio star, and the earlier, initial report of radio being crushed by TV was premature. They found a symbiotic relationship, and their niche.  FB is an a/v laden TV, while Twitter is more like visual radio.  The analogy is flawed, but they are two things similar that are fundamentally very different…

Facebook made an error thinking they were like twitter.  And albeit all of *us* (the eyes that hit this are undoubtedly thoughtful – industry eyes well versed in social media) know that twitter and FB are different…. FB didn’t realize that.  I am not sure why, but in wanting an open stream for brands to interact with users, they neglected to see the difference between a closed and open network.  All this immediately before their CFO leaves?  Maybe they finally realized that the ad model won’t help them reach profitability?  Maybe because the ad model is failing, as Mr. Khan from JP Morgan suggested?

They want a page’s wall to post to user profiles, effectively allowing marketing and more “business” to happen on facebook…. they want a brand’s wall posts sitting in the middle of a private stream of communication within a closed network?  I hadn’t really thought about it during the initial changes, but it just seemed odd.

Twitter is an open stream of networking and collaboration. People ask strangers questions about how-to, products, and more.  FB has a closed network of friends interacting about personal things. This difference is obvious, but let’s talk about FB’s myopia in attempting to capture all of social networking, the “there can be only one!” mentality.  This has caused FB to move into territory that is unfamiliar, and it is seemingly eroding the base of trust and interactivity that made FB so popular to begin with.

Why did Myspace (maybe this is premature) fail?  The answer is that there was no accountability, no verifiability, and no real trust… which is where FB swooped in and confirmed status based off real world markers. Is this person real? Where do they work? Where did they go to school? When?  What’s their birthdate?  Facebook found a way to solve that accountability problem, which gained them quite a bit of trust with users. This trust has been challenged multiple times with things like Beacon, etc. The public outcry is because FB was famous for having built a trustworthy social network and then started eroding that trust by attempting to inject business and marketing. Apparently, people didn’t want that on FB.

What’s funny is that the Beacon outcry was a huge disaster, but I am thinking it was a gain for FB because they were able to immediately rectify a big problem noting canceled accounts and the media buzz.  In light of this new issue, I think the erosion of the users trust will be just as severe, if not more so… but in a long term, sustained migration away to new networks (that are inevitably on the horizon).

The new problem might take far longer to discover… instead of a large group of people complaining, closing accounts, causing a stir immediately…. you are going to have one or two people at a time slowly get frustrated with “advertisements” and walk away, or unfan pages making any business commerce obsolete.  I still would love to know what that commerce is supposed to be anyway, but I guess that is a different post.

Now, I am using one of my largest, most popular brands to run an experiment for our fans:

“Cheers to all our fans! I would love to know your honest opinion. Facebook changed without asking all of you what *YOU* want. Do you find it an imposition or annoying to see pages interacting with your closed network of friends? I won’t post on the wall if it is dissonance. Please let me know!”

I will update you as I find out more information, but the test will be successful. Either I find out what they think, or they don’t say a word and I further note that no *real* or *meaningful* interaction happens on Facebook in regards to business or brands.

It *might* be fine for posting events, but I really didn’t think anything more than long term brand building.

Now I am thinking it is not only *not* that… I think their new layout might actually kill any ability to market or further a brand.  Enough wall postings and people will be unfanning pages immediately.  “Why did I fan Tabasco hot sauce anyway?”, “He’s a great musician but I don’t need to know everything he is thinking!”, or “I love that hotel, but who cares about events I can never go to?”, ad naseoum.

Whatever the case, these are my ramblings.  I am one of the most patient, accepting, and brand aware people out there… and I was annoyed to the extent that I immediately acted, an unfanned a page.  If you have a guy like me doing that, no telling what people less tolerant of marketing will do, and how quickly they will react.

I don’t think this is anything Facebook can fix… I just think it is something we will have to ride out and watch.  Any comments on this would be appreciated!  I am not going to shoot from the hip and suggest this is doom for Facebook, but I will suggest that this will rapidly become a problem.  Pages were totally benign before; now they are, frankly, annoying.  I know I am not the only one that thinks so… what about you?

My blog posts run aggressively long at times.  So… I gave the instructions and “how-to” in the last post, but all you skeptics might want a “WHY” section to refer to…. and we shall call this the “meat” of the discussion.  As I have made it late to lunch due to this post, it will not only entice me to end it, but will provide the bulk of the point of this discussion.

The reason this is important for business:

The more places we are active online, and the more places we exist online, helps us significantly. The more places we are talked about or our media is represented, the more relevant our brand and hotel is online, and the higher we will be ranked in search engines.

Search engines are changing and will be looking for content (media, graphics, organic conversation) and normal “keyword indexing” will be at the back of the bus. So as these changes start happening, we need to increase our online footprint as much as possible to grab as much “land” online before our competitors do. It is like the Oklahoma Sooners…those first to arrive ended up with the most land. Land in this case is content… personal photos on personal accounts (FB, flickr, shutterfly, etc) that casually mention work, or personal twitter accounts that engage people in conversation about your brand, or professional accounts for work. If guests, meeting planners, restaurant clients all post photos on their personal Flickr accounts, or youtube videos of their stays, or review (good or bad) on sites…. it benefits us greatly. The more content we have online, the more relevant we become. I know it seems like a lot of content, often empty or meaningless, but the more content the wider our footprint will be.

So get to it! =) Don’t hesitate to shout or scream or bemusedly confusedly ask questions. I am happy to talk about it, and today something clicked in on how important it is for EVERYONE to be talking about the brand or hotel, not just the social media guy. One smart person is good to get the ball rolling, but it takes the help of a whole network to get it up that hill.

Go.. learn… experiment.. have fun.  The online world has forever impacted our business, and it promises to get even weirder.  When these search engines start engaging content and media more than before…. successfull SEO will be a minour part of the overall picture.  So go create an account or two!

Some relevant articles to this discussion?

Brands in searching saving the internet from being the “cesspool” it is:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/08/this-cesspool-we-call-the-internet

This is a link to my blog, but it has some great “future of SEO” articles:
http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/01/23/keywords-will-step-to-the-back-of-the-search-engine-line-or-how-consumers-will-find-hotels-in-the-future/

Seriously…. panic!  Panic now!

Okay calm down and chill out.  It really doesn’t help.  Actually my mantra is quite lazily swiped from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:  “DON’T PANIC”.  I can’t tell you how often that phrase helped during bomb threats, broken water mains, or total service meltdowns in opening periods…..

*But* I have your attention.  It’s devious to be sure, but you’re here and you might like this.

As you are calming down, I will help raise your eyebrow a bit, and possibly the bar.  This isn’t the limbo… so we will hopefully bring it up so that everyone can pass through! No, it is not the kind of bar you wished it to be.  You will need to find that later in the day.

We hotel social media people are all over it!  The internet that is.  We are in a lot of places online.  Frankly we are everywhere and it wears us out.  Following yellow page sites like citysearch and yellobot, following customer generated reviews on multiple hotel outlet pages with sites like TripAdvisor, Zagat, or Yelp.  We have multiple Twitter accounts, facebook pages, blogs, myspace, and more.  We have RSS feeds creating feedback loops of brand info!

Simply…. we are doing our job for the company, as rapidly as that is being defined.

But more and more I notice something.  Most corporate offices are totally clueless.  They are years away from this.  Many are catching on, starting to get it, almost there.  Even the corporate offices with visionary ownership – far ahead of the game – fall a bit short in that they understand that social media is important, vital, and very much the “here and now” of grassroots word of mouth, but aren’t completely utilizing the tools yet.  At times it feel as if there is a self satisfaction in having that “one online guy” managing things, so they can tell their other industry pals, “We’re on it.  We are relevant, fresh, and in the know!”

Sipping of Arnold Palmer’s then reverbrates in the lounge air with a smug sense of management being hip (Actually, that is usually me with the Arnold Palmer). I am fairly lucky this isn’t my case and it is hyperbole to be sure, but you catch my drift.  The point is that it’s so new a “tool” (for lack of a better term) there is a strong likelihood there will be communication problems at the beginning, the learning curve will be great, and making people aware of it will be very difficult.

If you believe in the brand you work for, it is your cross to bear.

The difficulty is bridging that gap, and helping people grasp it’s importance.  What is happening with social media, search indexing, and brand positioning is going to alter *everything* in the next couple years for the internet.  Quick article *here* However it so new I am not sure people are fully grasping this “thing”, beyond the hip and organized ones that are currently shuffling their social media guy into a room and praying that that person does a good job (so they no longer have to worry about the “annoying reviewers”)….

It isn’t the “be all and end all”, it isn’t a religion… but it is vitally important, much bigger than one person, and hopefully this ramble will help you will see why.

Ownership, management, and most employees are lost on it, understandably so.  Social Media is an overwhelming place of daunting content and endless snide reviews….  but we “SMO” were put here to build a base for the brand’s social media presence, and that is much more than just hiring someone to do the job and ignoring them.  It is allowing the SMO to interact with employees and help reinforce what social media is and does.  This is a position that will not only be a property level position at some point, but it will be a respected manager training and helping other staff to get on board and help the hotel.  Ehhh… possibly (Feynman said fence sitting is an art)

Most hotels with social media campaigns do not alert guests to it, often forgetting to mention it if it comes up. Often it is because employees don’t know about it, or sometimes because it just aggravates them.  You have all heard of it, probably been inundated by it and confused by it, which is often times why people just ignore it. But it is vital we talk about the lack of connection between the campaign and employees on property level, and why there needs to be more interaction than “yeah we have a guy doing it”.

How do you start this interaction?  My advice is to find any and every employee property level that “gets” social media, is into it, and might have fun with it.  In fact, many of your SMO’s already see some employees online while performing their job tasks… you know those employees online a bit more often than they might need to be?  That is where you start…. it’s that simple!

People are concerned about their employees talking about them online, but that concern should be obsolete!  You shouldn’t worry about it… THEY ALREADY ARE TALKING ABOUT YOU!  You couldn’t stop them if you wanted to, so it is wise to reinforce that your brand is online, they are representing it… and anything they can do to help will be appreciated!

Then start talking to those who might be interested in increasing sales leads, contacts, and bookings.. no doubt there is a savvy sales agent already hammering away on facebook all day.  Why not extend that into a professional sales page that they link a twitter account to?  Then you have networking for the sales agent, and brand presence for the hotel!  The more of these sort of interactions, the better!

Your tech guy might already be there, but if I know hotel A/V and IT people… they are way too busy to actually *do* social media.  But remind them they could use it to keep informed about current trends and products they can geek out to, as well as ask questions to quickly resolve conundrums.  Maintenance could use it in the same way as well.  When all your people have accounts up and running, think how convenient it would be for a guest to twitter engineering about a burnt out lightbulb, or a Wireless point that is down?

Starting to wrap up this ramble!

SO – the social media guy can handle a property level account for twitter, a facebook page, a blog, and more… constantly cross posting and getting the word out, but it takes more than that to increase your online footprint.  You want sales people talking sales, and tech people talking tech… you want all the employees connecting with other hotels and hospitality employees, as well as to other guests and clients. You want people commenting on blogs about the hotel where applicable, and talking about it on their own.  You want people posting their pics and videos.  You want your brand to be bolstered by thousands… not just one social media guru locked in a windowless room in a cage.

BUT WHY?  WHY ON EARTH IS THIS ACTUALLY A USEFUL BUSINESS TOOL?

Well … this post was so bloody long we will save the meat for the next post.  It will make sense.  I promise!

I have already experienced with a few hotels a blase attitude towards peer reviews because it is “simply a place for people to bitch”, or “whiner central”.  Many hotels have a wait and see attitude about social media, and many are as cantankerous and defensive as…. well… the industry has typically been when regarding technological or social advancement.  We were one of the last industry’s to go wireless, and we were also one of the last to enforce a “no beard” policy.

An aside about the hotel industry if I may:

Industry wide, we are not adapters… nor are we pioneers.  One of the most respected men I know in the industry told me an old industry joke:  “Pioneers were shot in the back.”

ROI is hard to justify when it comes to pioneering new technology that is buggy and will probably fail.  Anyone ever had to rip out faulty construction three days before opening will attest trying the “newer” tech isn’t always the “safest” tech.  And don’t get talking to me about radiant flooring used in commercial hotel projects.  Ugh.

So, it has been hotels standard operating procedure to do the following:

Wait for some other “idiot” (said endearingly) to pioneer the tech.  Let *that* person waste all their money trying it, figuring it out, and then fixing it when it breaks.

After 6 months, you take what they did, *AND WHAT THEY LEARNED*, and do it right, better, and cheaper.

This is a fail safe business plan to be sure, but it does backfire.

So back to the current state of things, IE Hotels Backfiring.  If you are a hotel and don’t get social media peruse the below.

Hotels seem to have a somewhat guarded and defensive approach to social media.  Even the wise properties that are innovative, internet aware, and with strong marketing teams… they are at times LOST.  Scared that their old marketing trends are dying, and now their rolodex and contacts and college degree are quickly becoming a vestige, or worse… irrelevant (that is marketing degrees are now sort of moot if you were in school over 5 years ago.  Yeah it hurts, I am getting old as well). I am not so quick to think it isn’t of merit… but it will take some fixing to get old marketers communicating with new marketers.  It is like the dorky book scientist that needs to explain his innovation to the public but cannot find a simple way to describe what a “Differential Microwave Radiometer”* does.

So… we have hotels looking at social media as a compartmentalized outlet for people to bitch about something with other bitchers (pardon the colloquialistic expression… just imagine you are at one of those managers meetings during a lunch hour with those “types”… you know?).

But it isn’t that.  Well it is.  Actually.  Just look at my previous post.  Sure I attack the consumer, but I must take a swing at the stodgy old hotelier once inawhile too.

Social media is a vital tool for a couple reasons.  One is that you can retroactively “hear” consumers and respond, both directly to them and about the situation.  How you respond is up to you…. like employees fishing comment cards out of the box and ripping up the ones with their name (saw it happen, never did it), or getting these comments to the department heads: GM for serious issues, Rooms for cleanliness issues, Maintenance for broken hooks, etc.  It can actually help you run your business, sure!

But what is more important is where it is taking your brand, and what being aware of social media can do for your brand in the coming 100 years.  Reidentifying, repurposing, and shifting your old brand (that was pushed through old media efforts) into this new world of anti-marketing and all advertising becoming spam.

The upshot is that you can reorganize your business into something with purpose, meaning, ethos, and intent.  Instead of pushing a terrible product (no offense, anyways I mean the other guy reading this) on people with glam marketing tactics like direct mail pieces and flashy billboards (that was tongue in cheek), you reorganize your structure to understand and yield to consumer demand and interest.

Finally, that one human to one human connection exists between social reviewer and business.  When you start seeing how the new market works, and how the new consumer handles businesses (in this case a hotel) you will be able to go from pushing your product, to listening, learning and then packaging your product into something not so much “sellable”, as something highly “DESIRABLE”.

Force fed consumers are a thing of the past, and now consumers create individuality with their demand for quality products to endorse.  People are empty vessels to fill with your brand if they so identify or appreciate the intent behind it.

Realize this.  It isn’t about selling a product anymore.  It is about creating a product people want.

When your brand / hotel / business stops pushing itself on a million people that don’t care about you, and really listening to the 1000’s that do… and modeling yourself to the market…. is when you will start being successful in this post-advert world.

(* a microwave instrument that would map variations / anisotropies in the CMB)

I have been thinking about the odd hypocrisy with some of these review sites…

They want your money for advertising, but won’t do much to help you moderate untruthful reviews.  What’s more, I note once you are “in” with the sales team, your point of contact makes the wheels turn ever so fast.

Which is fine, but then it limits the low revenue mom and pop’s ability to moderate and creates a gap between the have’s and have nots.  Isn’t there always one somewhere?

We all know the silly owners that lash out with libel suits:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travelbuzz/810335-hotels-contacting-posters-tripadvisor-com-about-negative-reviews.html

But my concern is when owners don’t feel they have an outlet or anywhere to complain about lack of responsiveness to ownership.  I have noted this with yelp too.. that they constantly err on the side of the consumer, while attempting to get ownership’s marketing dollars to bolster their ad model revenues?  This seems like an inherent flaw doesn’t it?

http://www.travelblog.org/Forum/Threads/12462-1.html

people airing grievances about the fact TA’s “get the truth and go” is sort of BS….

http://ideasandthoughts.org/2007/04/25/tripadvisor-as-a-model-of-social-networking-and-critical-thinking/

the positive idealism of the post gets mired in a business owner cruising the internet just looking for help and to vent…

http://blogs.bookassist.com/blogs/industry/2008/05/responding-to-tripadvisor-reviews-of.html

the comments go south pretty quick….

Owners are being ignored, and they are thirsty for help and action… to be able to earnestly and efficaciously resolve complaints, issues, and problems.  Many want to act on social media, but haven’t the foggiest as to how.  What’s more, if sites like Trip Advisor ignore this base for too long, they might lose out on a potential community opportunity.  I am not sure if they could leverage the businesses a bit more like Yelp has done, or strengthen their brand by having people identify with the site from both the content generating side, and the business side.

But whatever the case, this is just a couple of unhappy business owners.  I just saw it all the time, and thought I would bring it up.  Anyone else have stories from ownership end?  Let em fly!

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.