Google PLACES (or where did my Local Business Center shove off to?)

One of my favorite developments in the last few weeks, aside from Google’s experimentation with populating rates of hotels into it’s maps, is Google “Places”.  The blogosphere is abuzz with gentle, quiet speculation on what in the heck is going on here.  It’s obvious repositioning to compete with the likes of Yelp and Foursquare.  But Google is rolling some of the features attached to the new name a bit slow, and we will see how it reshapes our mobile experience.  I, for one, really trust Google’s methodical approach to entering this space… and when they unroll their entire suite, I think it will challenge Yelp to Expedia and other OTA’s.  If you can advert with Places in your market… let me know how it goes!

As Google positions, Tripadvisor works to get ads going in the first place

Tripadvisor toils in it’s monetization attempts… First hotels, now tourist boards.  You know how I feel about paying for your hotel to be listed with information on TA… DO IT!  Think about what percentage of your traffic comes from OTA’s, then start figuring out depending on your market and rank on TA how much of that traffic jumps to Expedia or others straight from Tripadvisor.  That 25% markup those OTA’s are stealing from you will come back, and likely quickly pay for the Tripadvisor listing fee.  It’s a smart move, and a cheap experiment.

Something else that might be a costly experiment in regards to Tripadvisor is losing you reservations to Expedia, and hurting your SEO.  Tripadvisor badges or widgets that aren’t actively blocking search engines are likely bad for business.  I posted (the below) article about how it hurts your hotel site’s SEO, but bolsters Tripadvisor’s.  What I didn’t realize was this – if people link from your website and booking engine to Tripadvisor via that widget – and like what they see on Tripadvisor – they are usually sent to EXPEDIA to book their room.  You just linked your guest to a page that will make you pay a 25% commission.  I don’t have all the answers, but in the comments section of *THIS ARTICLE*, the gent describes a fancy way to blind the widget.  I have also seen hotel sites that simply copy and paste the review from Tripadvisor or Yelp into different parts of their website – thus stuffing a page full of relevant keywords that can also help the guest decide to book… while continually mingling with your booking engine the whole time, never chancing lost control of your inventory.

MORE SOCIAL TOOLS, INFO, & Tech Talk

Unique and fairly intelligent ways to leverage twitter… a non hotel article to get you thinking about what twitter is, and how you can leverage it to benefit your property.

A brief link, but a good question – who do you use for hotel videos? Hired actors? Regular line staff? It’s important to consider how you want to represent your hotel, and how people will receive the information.  Honestly, I think the manipulated, high gloss marketing message is in shambles, and when it looks too slick, people will immediately not trust it or find it disingenuous.   Whatever the case, this is all about having a plan and understanding as you tackle new media…. if you don’t these things come out of left field and surprise you.

Design Hotels launches a Facebook Booking Engine…. (call it an F.B.E. for short!).  This will, once and for all, solve the problem of wondering whether people are on Facebook to proselytize and chatter about brands as a showy display of feathers (I LIKE THIS BRAND! It means I am AWESOME!), or is it a place to commune, share, and ultimately – BOOK?  Just checking it out, it seems fairly confusing.  I enter my dates, and then I mysteriously land on an unassociated page without it transmitting the choices I made.  Seems like FB booking has a way to go.

I for one am a) sick of hearing about the IPAD, b) sick about the marketing reinventing history as if Apple invented the tablet, and c) sick of hearing about all the giddy fanboys trying to adopt slick but inherently flawed tech as nothing more than a marketing gimmick.  HOWEVER…. this article, IPAD: Hotel Hype, or Help?,  says it is making Intercontinental’s concierge more personable & functional (not to mention cool like they are from Star Trek), and it isn’t just hype.  I know the tablet will be the future or consumers and content ingestors…. but I just think we are a bit of a way off from it being functional for content generators.  This is simply a machine to advertise to consumers, no more, no less.  Playing a game or reading the paper is incidental.

HOTEL TALK!

RevPar laws basically state – Trading Rate for Occupancy isn’t that smart of a move (Labor, among other operating costs, rise significantly, and the added dollars don’t always even out on the bottom line).  So why is the “Name your own price” phenomena rearing it’s ugly head?  Phocuswright tries to explain here.

Not to mention… most of us still think it is perceived value that has a big part in selling hotels… and not handing back money to someone who would have paid the higher rate you just tanked, anyway.

Do you think modern marketing for hospitality is at a crossroads?  I do.  But then again, maybe I think the doormen are more about the hallmark of our industry – hospitable, friendly customer service – than marketing.  When marketers start calling normal operations “marketing”, you know they are scrambling to make sense of the confusing new world of social media.

TIG shares their wealth of knowledge with hoteliers, and more!

TIG releases more reports, further exemplifying why people want to work with Thayer.  Wow.  The reports are on Microsites, Mobile, & Apps, as well as a 2 part on Social Media & the DMO Marketer. Double Wow equals video leveraging of insider’s tips…. Quick, simple, instructional videos from TIG on internet marketing, hotel SEO, and more!  If you ever have the budget to work with these guys, there is only one answer about whether you should…. YES. You should.

MOBILE IS A POINT OF SALE, but remember it isn’t all or nothing!

This one is a slam dunk, because Mobile Marketing is Good News for Hotels! Beyond that article, what you really want are actual tips – not just on energizing your comprehension of mobile marketing – but getting into it and doing it right.  Some have deemed it the “new point of sale” – and Mashable helps you figure out how to work with it.  Mashable is sometimes a bit vacuous with mindless social media fandom…. but these *9 tips about location based marketing* are winners.  If you need some help finding the business page in Foursquare.. well.. it’s right here.  If you are trying to figure out more, and it’s over your head… you might want to consider EYE FOR TRAVEL’s conference on Mobile in Travel & Hospitality in London, early June. I linked the agenda back there, and if it doesn’t get you excited about the potential of mobile (or kinetic energy at this point), nothing will.  Social Mobile is the ROI everyone has been salivating for.  Pay attention to it.

But remember… as mobile burgeons, traditional channels still provide results.  Not only do those channels hold tight, so does email marketing (something Hotel Marketing Strategies has been a big supporter of)… as you can see with some surprising information he put together on a recent post.

COFFEE TALK, or *PHEW* I am sort of getting overwhelmed because I am a hotelier, not a tech guru or social geek!

I think it’s important to take all these rapid changes with gentle aplomb, some furrowed brows, but a lot of thoughtful shoulder shrugging too.  It’s important to be a fence sitter sometimes… accumulate as much data as possible before making any decision.  I am not saying delaying action, but I am suggesting to be thoughtful.  Don’t automatically become a convert to this new world, because no one really understands it yet.  *NO ONE*.  I think Dick Feynman (a hero of mine) could have said it best:

“in any organization there ought to be the possibility of discussion… fence sitting is an art, and it’s difficult, and it’s important to do, rather than to go headlong in one direction or the other. It’s just better to have action, isn’t it than to sit on the fence? Not if you’re not sure which way to go, it isn’t.”

Everyone expected the telegraph to kill newspapers (you need to be a paid Economist subscriber to read that fantastic article), the TV to kill the radio, social media to kill traditional methods of marketing… but we all know that “sky is falling” nonsense is just about capturing attention to headlines, and the future will be a mish mash of everything.  Don’t panic…. just try to comprehend.  And if you still need a basic review of how to engage in social media, here is a fairly competent and quick article about how to do it well.

BUT THAT’S JUST CONSERVATIVE HESITATION, because the future is now….

That warning being said, here’s something that I call jaw dropping, and possibly a slight peak at the future of a semantic web (as they keep saying.  It’s the new “mobile is here! 2006, Mobile is here 2007, mobile is here.. maybe 2008, mobile is coming… 2009, MOBILE IS TOTALLY FREAKING HERE 2010!) -

SPEED MATTERS…. This is where the start of today’s post gets somewhat scary.  Did you just finish a website re-design, or pump endless cash for years into internet marketing branding and design?  Well… those flash laden pages that are pretty when they finally do load are a drain on your Google ranking… and your SEO suffers the more bulky or content laden your sites are.  GOOGLE ANNOUNCES SPEED IS NOW TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT IN REGARDS TO INDEXING. In fact, Hotelmarketing.com has a good suggestion… if you use flash, you might want to take a peak at your own speed…. and see where you stand.

Which leads us to Adtech SF, and some interesting tweets that I am commenting on in regards to the concept of the dying brand website.

Apparently the brand website is dead (or committed to an iron lung), and you don’t need it anymore.

At a fairly important conference about the advertising & the internet, they basically said that a brand’s website is dead.  They are dealing with some fairly complex issues of sustainability for business in online competition, coupled with the need to have accessibility to how your brand exists online.  I am extrapolating off the conversation I heard, but it’s basically the following:

Basically, a website should be for a booking engine, and directions, but anything else might not work, especially as google is starting to improve rankings based off of load time and speed of website.  The idea is that the way the internet is headed into a more communal area where it is about niches of relevant interests, and it will be nearly impossible to leverage a small brand website versus all the community based chatter in regards to certain topics.  In addition to this, it isn’t in the best interest of ANY of these communities to lose the potential power of consumer dollars spent through their portal, so why should they happily direct people to you in the first place?  In this, your website is moot because everyone is forming their opinions in conversations with user generated pictures, stories, etc.  The way search is changing, even booking engines will exist within social platforms (IE Facebook), and people will slowly stop visiting your site, and ultimately, no one will be going to them all together.  Also… the SEO era is moving into a “semantic” era where search engines will be reading user generated photos and videos, whether they are tagged or not -

Meaning there is *your* contribution.. a couple expensive photos, an expensive site – but the internet community members with keywords and chatter alone will overwhelm any input you have.  You won’t be able to compete with the niche communities that are actively owning *your* brand, vs making your site relevant or even noticeable in return.  Therefore, your site will be less relevant, be pushed down overall, and even the anciengt codger who won’t give up the old fashioned way of booking through the hotel’s site – well – it’s going to be even harder to find.

Scary stuff.  And not that far off.  It’s fairly interesting too, but…..

Time for me to retire. haha.

No – seriously.  Anyone have an island they could lend?

If those well researched and thoughtful representations of how things will be changing isn’t far enough in the future, let’s move a decade down the road… to 2012 (haha).  These sanguine and cogent predictions aren’t the typical crazy, wide eyed guru’s ramblings.  These are smart… and likely.  Marketing Times has 11 Predictions for social media in 2012… and they might interest you.

It sure as hell interests me.

The below words are basically a mashup of every single tweet (processed & filtered) from the #smtravel conference (blended with my commentary in the parentheses).  I arranged the information best I could, however *completely* subjective said arrangement is. I hope it makes some form of sense – or at least you can potentially peer into the chasm that is my logic.  At the least I hope I didn’t misquote or misrepresent anyone.  Speaking of transparency – I left some fairly meaty and helpful implementation/action ideas at the end that were not necessarily even part of the conference… I figure if you can find them and actually read that far down, well.. you deserve them.

I will go out on a limb saying that 100% of the data is accurate, because I basically copy and pasted from the tweet stream. I am sad to say the nature of making the “tweety casserole” of our conference helped it to lose much in the reference & citations arena, but if you need to see the authority and professionalism of those involved, please refer to list of speakers at the conference. For those that don’t know me – I am a big skeptic, and vigilant about data and non skewed statistics, as well as generally skeptical about enthusiastic marketing. If anyone would like to challenge any of the information or data below, please do! I am always up for conversation and learning…. and if incorrect data was given out at this conference I assume we would all like to know (this is highly unlikely)! So let’s have at it – Eye For Travel’s Social Media Conference #smtravel 2010!  (Boy I hope this makes sense)

My attempt at organizing the concepts throughout the conference:

1. Social Media (general)
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Geolocation / Mobile / Augmented Reality
   
5. ROI
6. User Generated Reviews / Content
7. Takeaway / Important Thoughts
   
8. Action / Implementation

You will note a lot of information on Geolocation/Mobile & User Generated Reviews/Content.  I think that’s because there is real data, opportunity, and engagement in those areas.  The other areas are more guesswork and hoping.  Twitter provides ROI, to be sure… but I think we should focus on what provides results, vs. what we like to think *may* work.  In that, I personally suggest you alot some of your Facebook time to understanding and interacting with Geolocation, as well as becoming more involved in the review sites.

I) Social Media

Stats:

• 83% of adults use social media
• 70% of participants in Social Media are spectators (lurkers – we know you are out there eating our posts)
• 18% of US online leisure travelers do not have a destination in mind when they start their trip planning
• For every 1/2 sec improvement in landing page download speed, you can increase page views 1-3% (I know.. this is SEOweb design. Sue me)
• 58% of travelers use Facebook monthly, 40% use YouTube, 32% to Wikipedia, but 1 in 4 don’t visit any social media sites (this is in tune with understanding traditional marketing vital, still important, and should be integrated and aware of SM plan)
• Email marketing still important but not as effective as it used to be. (I don’t think I need a stat for that, but 1) it still seems to be effective for some people & 2) it’s amazing how others simply won’t let it go when it is no longer effective. It used to be a cure all salve to some marketers)
• Consumers follow and fan brands on FB and Twitter to learn about discounts (32%). Learn about new products (19%)
• 35 Million LinkedIn updates/week, 600 tweets per second, 5 billion pieces of facebook content a week
• An angry customer can lose you more customers than a happy customer can bring you new ones
• Social networking is the new “morning coffee” – 4 in 10 people wake up to their social circles
• 4 in 10 people recommend products on social media
• eMarketer reports 81% of marketers say social media significantly extends their e-mail to new markets

Commentary/Conversation:

• You can choose not to participate in social media conversation but….. that is *probably* not a good thing.
• Most social media /generated content is crap. (This reminded me of a very relevant talk by Google CEO Schmidt, and the resulting piece The Cesspool We Call The Internet)
• Social media is about relinquishing control
• Social media/user generated content is the new brochure, and you have no say in how that brochure is made or what it looks like (I like the sentiment but mildly disagree… I think you be accountable of everything in your control and offer a worthwhile product and the brochure will be to your liking).
• Transparency is not for the faint of heart, and it may not work for everyone. When people get an update, they want more on a regular basis. (IMHO, It doesn’t just happen, you have to fight culture of secrecy that most business cultivates).
• Top 5 trends in Web 2.0 – 1) Semantic Web 2) SMO (social media optimization) 3) SGO (social graph optimization) 4) Affinity Graph (feel free to elaborate on this one) 5) HyperLocal
• It is about the quality, not quantity, of followers. 500 committed followers is worth 10,000 non brand interested ones (what sort of followers do contests breed?)
  
• Soc Media is a communication TOOL – not a PLATFORM – “do you ask for ROI on your telephone?”
• Social Media is not a campaign, it’s a commitment.
• How do you measure the value of a relationship? Lifetime value = more than the sum of transactions.
• It’s amplified word of mouth, right? It’s been happening for years. It’s about creating community again – SM just a new channel for old-fashioned business sense.
• Social Media let’s your customers do the talking for you.
• Social media shares elements w/journalism: Who, what, where, why, how. Formula for getting the full story on a subject.
• World has moved form 6 degrees of separation to 2 thanks to social media
• Conversation about your brand will happen without you being aware or taking part…. you might as well listen.
• Whoever earns trust, wins

Best Practices:

• SOCIAL MEDIA DOES NOT EQUAL DIGITAL MARKETING – Social Media is 2 way communication (interactivity, conversation, dynamic growth), marketing is one way communication (forced/push marketing, print, billboards)
• Good social media is about the 4 E’s: Educate, Excite, Engage and Evangelize.
• Monitor, Engage, Respond.
• Have a clear plan – where do you fit and how can you add value to your guests and social media. But you have to be prepared to manage the conversation. It’s not a campaign, it’s a commitment.
• Bake social media DNA into everyone in the organization
• You wouldn’t put someone behind the front desk without training. Don’t put someone in social media without training
• Guest services should respond to social media just like email or phone calls.
• Real time recovery is vital to hospitality’s use of & engagement w/social media – the internet is fast and speed is key.
• It’s not about you the brand, it’s about them – about being available & listening
• Non participation is akin to ignoring customers – a lost opportunity to engage, learn and make amends.
• Social should live across departments like PR, cust svc, marketing, etc. It becomes “something everyone does” like email.
• You can become pen pals with some of your customers thru social media. good way to build relationships, brand ambassadors (time consuming)
• Using persona’s to identify your average customers is useful – but be real, be earnest, be transparent, and have fun.
• Utilize effective management to maintain productivity, instead of limiting massively effective tools for business (social media being banned in the workplace)
• Social media can be a very powerful recruiting tool
• Use analytics & monitoring tools: Omniture, Cision, ReviewAnalyst, eBuzz, Revinate, Radian6
• Social Media should be fun with the appropriate tone of conversation.
• Manage Social Media both from corporate and property level – “Speak in the tone of the medium”
• Blogs bring value to SEO efforts
• Best ideas are often driven from the bottom up. Always listen to your front line people!
• Experimentation is the key to social media success. Fail cheap, fail fast.
• Social media is not free. Someone has to own, monitor, track, analyze etc.
• The Return is on customer engagement, and ROI may take some time.

II. Facebook

Stats:

• 100 million people now using Facebook mobile app at least once a month (how many are exploring brand pages?).
• 56% users check Facebook each day
• 48% of people talk about products on Facebook
• 5 billion posts of content from Facebook per week

Commentary/Conversation:

• “Facebook will remain relevant because of its privacy controls” (- My rant: I wholeheartedly disagree – twitter inherently allows the user to opt out of privacy, so the user is quite aware of what they are entering into.  Buzz is similar in this respect.  Conversely, Flickr VIGOROUSLY champions the right of privacy & ownership, so does Tribe.net.  Facebook is constantly altering their architecture so as to potentially generate constant cash flow.  These attempts at creation of revenue wholly disregard the individual users’ privacy & bungles the process constantly, while adding layers to a flawed structure/network that is based off of non-meaningful geo-connections.  Connections, of course, should include *immediate* social circles, but the strongest connections are based off interest, not educational institution – which pits classmates across broad socioeconomic and political backgrounds into similar social circles.  The preceding line is precisely why Facebook *could* eventually fail. The sky is not falling, and the landscape is changing constantly… but until Facebook figures this out, their dominance is tenuous.  You cannot create a solid network based off of “loose interests”.  Topics/Subject matter drive content creation, and content creation drives social networks.  There can be no meaningful brand interaction in “loose interest” networks – there is limited opportunity to get the network effect started around brands if one user who likes you suggests your brand to a user completely foreign to it’s necessity or disinterested in it’s existence).
  
• I voice constant concern about Facebook – is the conversation meaningful? Do they book?
• Facebook pages for brands as a “fad” was brought up, many disagreed with the concept.

Best practices:

• Instead of attempting to create a new social network, connect with an existing one: FB connect picks up that slack – interactivity is at leisure of user. Facebook connect allows published content and comments on both your website and Facebook. Helps build engagement in both places. Travelmuse received a 30% increase in membership from using Facebook Connect. One of the best ideas was this – “It’s easier to buy access to someone else’s audience than to try to build up your own in order to market to them”
• Add a booking widget, customize the tabs and cross-integrate your Social Media channels (connect but do not auto-post – remain native)
• Tag FB pages w/Omniture(Analytic) tags to help measure ROI
• “5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Page”
• Competitors’  followers should be at the top of your list of who to find & target
• The Facebook ads that work best to grow a fan base show the user their “friends” that are fans, and has a “Become A Fan button” on it.
• FB doesn’t always grab people not coming to your hotel, so it is often better used locally. FB pages work GREAT for F&B, spa (incremental revenue).
• FB apps can best be seen as complimenting a good FB marketing campaign instead of the center of it
• (I just started realizing the mapped network of facebook pages creates a tighter community online if you connect – try to get as many local businesses to highlight your page, and vice versa. Creates a stronger local presence overall.)
• Create “status questions” (what are you doing today?) so you can check engagement and how often guests interact/check-in with you.
  

III) Twitter

Stats:

• Michael Perhaes with MGM Grand said Twitter is 5x more effective than email for us, & GM Grand’s Twitter customers have higher ADR than email customers (someone suggested this as savvy, but honestly I would imagine a savvy consumer to find a lower price?)
• 600 tweets per second

Commentary/Conversation:

• If you’re going to make money, Twitter must become a transactional platform at some point
• Twitter is the new flight attendant call button
• Twitter drives revenue, no doubt about it.  Twitter = ROI, Facebook = idle brand chit chat.
  
• Young kids don’t trust it, and think it’s for old people or fame seekers

Best practices:

• Twitter is not a direct marketing platform
• Twitter can be used as an R&D tool
• Uses “extended” shelf space by having multiple twitter accounts to represent brand :chef pages, nightclubs, hotel, spa, etc. Multiple Twitter accounts for multiple audiences
• Consider integration with API to expose what is tweeted about your brand (like highlighting reviews, it does suggest letting go of message)
• Even if you do have a group of people working on social media, don’t forget to tweet (fb/blog) with personality – be a real human voice & be real – but be transparent, be consistent,
• Separate conversation – promotions, customer service, etc should be separate Twitter accounts so as not to confuse (this is debatable depending on your brand)
• competitors’  followers should be at the top of your list

IV) Geolocation / Mobile

Stats:

• Google estimates 50% of web traffic to come thru mobile devices w/in 5 years (if that doesn’t blow your mind, re-read it slowly, twice).
• 240 million people mobile browsers in 2010, surpassing PCs for first time
• 100 million people now using Facebook mobile app at least once a month
• According to a recent comScore report, 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3 points from 22.5% one year ago.
• Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347% jump.
• 1 in 3 mobile search queries have local intent
• Mobile Shopping to balloon to $119 Billion by 2015

Commentary:

• Morgans Hotels tagged NYC airport codes on Foursquare during recent blizzards, ran ads, & generated some sales.
  
• Are iPhone apps a “flavor of the month”? Or should you just develop a good mobile-optimized Web site?
• Geolocation tools like Foursquare mark a significant shift in social-real time interaction – it’s valid, useful information
  
• hyper local = search + social graph + mobile + your location
• Impressive: Morgans Hotel leverages themed twitter hashtags, 4Sq hotel checkins, Artist Generated Content and analytics tools
• Location-based marketing will be a trend. “It’s clearly good.”
• Adding hotel rates to Google search results enhances relevancy of listing – mobile access & booking to skyrocket. One thing, however, is that rates in Google maps is customer friendly, but maybe not so great for suppliers (link to maps blog post here: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-to-show-hotel-prices-on.html)

Best Practices:

• You got me. I think, again, I defer to Del Ross from ICH – “Experimentation is the key to social media success. Fail cheap, fail fast.” But frankly, FOCUS ON IT. I would be willing to bet my name that it’s worth limiting some Facebook time to interacting with Foursquare.

V) ROI:

Stats:

• What we are after (and trying to define)! *or* “No clear, easy way to track back social media ROI” says panel, “An attribution model has yet to be developed.”
• Forrester Research says it is a way to enhance relationships with customers, build brand, help hiring & recruitment, engage in customer service, and helps to build employee morale.

Conversation:

• If social media goals are not clearly communicated, how do u know what “good” looks like?
• If you aren’t paying attention to conversation about your brand, who is? A different ROI – Return on Ignorance
• Interesting perspective on generating demand vs conversion in social media. Examples: FB = demand, Yelp = conversion
• Will virtual cash become taxable? (It apparently already is, in some places.)

Best Practices:

• Social media is not free. Someone has to own, monitor, track, analyze etc. It is ROCS – a return on customer satisfaction in early stages
• Measurement involves many different goals, not just sales. Overall revenue, room nights (Hilton’s ROI measurement) are just two of them.
• Southwest measures SM ROI by: employee satisfaction; ratio of cust compliments to complaints; new signups; conversions.

VI) User Generated Reviews / Content

Stats:

• Their data shows that people believe online strangers to friends and family in regards to reviews, user generated content. Expedia
• Travelers search 20 different sites when planning a trip
• 44% of online travelers trust other travelers before commercial advertising
• 32% of Yelp reviews are 5-stars. Only 15% are 1- or 2-stars
• TripAdvisor has 32 million reviews and gets 16 new contributions every minute.
• TripAdvisor gives less weight to older reviews than newer in terms of ranking
• Content submitted to TripAdvisor at its start 10 years ago is still on the site. There are no plans to remove those.
• Management response to critical reviews more important than review content according to Tripadvisor research
• TripAdvisor says an average traveler reads about 30 reviews
• Only 4% of hotels respond to tripadvisor reviews

Commentary:

• By being confident, taking ownership, & being enthusiastic, authors have altered or taken bad reviews.
• Immediacy of customer feedback on mobile posed to change how companies use social media
• Online Reviews allow satisfied customers play “ambassadors” of your business
• Negative reviews play an important role too, you can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time
• it’s better to join the conversation than not. Reviews can go from 3 to 5 stars because of this

Best Practices

• Be humble, be swift, be specific – How a hotel property responds to criticism says more about them than the criticism itself
• By replying to reviews, you humanize the brand – it’s less of a place to complain & more about commerce
• Every negative comment is an opportunity to turn around the relationship, and create a long term brand centric consumer.
• Bad reviews are exciting to highlight, celebrate, and learn from. Great marketing opportunity. Your reaction is vital.
• responding is never a knee jerk reaction #smtravel they take a LOT of thought, editing attention. Good impulse control – required quality for persons chosen to respond to customer comments on social media

VII) Takeaway & Important Thoughts

Stats/”Subjective Facts” :

• Social media is about relinquishing control
• Google estimates 50% of web traffic to come through mobile devices w/in 5 years
• Investing money in search visibility reduces need to spend money elsewhere.
• If anyone says they are a social media expert, they are lying to you. We are all learning and failing constantly.
• For every 1/2 sec improvement in landing page download speed, you can increase page views 1-3% (content heavy, uber-marketed sites are going bye bye)
• User Generated Content (UGC) is the 21st century’s word of mouth, and your new brochure – and you’re not the one writing it. your customers are your new copywriters (Jennifer Davies, Expedia)
• Virgin will soon have 3 FTE people handling SM. Hilton has 1. Southwest has 6.
• The new big three in travel = Brazil, China, and India. New travel up 50% in recent years.
  
• People under 30 use email only to talk to you if you are over 30, or to talk to brands/companies (suggests the data… there are exceptions to these facts)
  
• Social media matters, but does not replace traditional channels. One in four travelers are not on social networks
• People want to connect, people want to share: this is what drives social media growth

Commentary:

• Ignoring social media today is like ignoring Google in 1999.
• Customers no longer search for news & deals — they want the deals to find them
• It’s a conversation, not a broadcast. Be authentic, honest, transparent.
  
• Think about shaping conversation, not controlling it
• When social media relationships become “real” they become private & go offline
• Social Media is most powerful when integrated directly with the product
• Work with your competitors to create a “trend” for media coverage
• Social media is not a “nice to have” anymore. It now must be a part of an integrated marketing strategy (but it isn’t just marketing, and it isn’t just a strategy)
• It’s easier to buy access to someone else’s audience than to try to build up your own in order to market to them
• Consumers want you to engage with them in social media, but only when and where they want to hear from you.
• Not sure contests are meaningful so much as getting endless non brand centric people following you for free “stuff”. Free stuff followers are not as useful as brand followers.
  
• “Social Media builds employee morale” was a concept that came up a couple times during the conference.
• You don’t market what you want to say. You market what your customers want to hear.

Best practices:

• Social operates on a shoestring at most brands – requires empowerment, education and training to succeed
• Not all social media programs are the same.
• It’s important not to isolate social media for the organization; you need to immerse your business in it. It’s everyone’s job…. it shouldn’t be just one person.
  
• Make conscious choice for structure – do not do the easy thing and lump it with PR or Marketing
• Use everything as an opportunity for learning – Don’t overreact to customer comments
• Flickr, YouTube good social media for hotels to use for customer engagement. Visual content very importnat for hotels (and has SEO value too)
  
• Leverage existing social networks and influencers – go to existing communities instead of wasting time and money building one (Facebook Connect, for example, expanding between brand site and “vibrant” community).
• Consider a dedicated page on your website for social media – Hard Rock Hotel has one full page dedicated to all social media & review sites. To shatter industry benchmarks, it’s essential to bake your SM strategy into your site. Consider your market – go to where they are and engage them. Morgans Hotels has whole website section dedicated to music
• Employees can take brand message, localize it, and put their personality behind it. – participation FUN for employees! Don’t just throw a bunch of rules at them.
• The days of content heavy & marketed website are changing – they go to review sites and then go to the hotel site for booking. Consumers don’t trust pretty, over the top, content laden sites.
• By utilizing closed loop promotions you maintain parity with OTA’s.

VIII) HHOTELCONSULT’S Action / Implementation

For FB:

• Add booking widget, customize the tabs and cross-integrate your social media channels.
• Add analytics tracking wherever you can to gauge success in raw data form
• virtual gifts/money (First 10 to post get a comp glass of wine, and then after posts say the deal is the free glass has to be for a close friend… be tricky, have fun, get creative)
• Leverage Facebook Connect when possible.
• allow management to post changes, updates, pics
• Birthday related offer?

For Twitter

• compartmentalize social media campaign by having smaller departments reach out – multiple twitter accounts across all hotels for different reasons – chef, F&B, sales/banquets, spa (whichever works or would be viable)
• add analytics tracking
• integrate/allow management to post changes, updates, pics
• Reached out to influencers at smaller groups – 500-700% ROI from inviting “influentials” to a tasting
• Twestival?
• Birthday related offers?

For Geolocation:

• Research about Gowalla, Twhrrl, others we can possibly interact with?
• Create Foursquare Mayoral Advisory Board
• Foursquare deals/offers
• Flash mob or Swarm Badge opportunity?
  

Website

• local tweet map on site mashing up tweets with brand mentions, associated conversations
  
• have one dedicated social media page per hotel
• If you offer discounts, info, events, etc online, make them “Facebookable” and “Twitterable”

Misc:

• Be creative – Morgan’s printed QR codes on cocktail napkins
• showing OK Go on YouTube $100,000 spend to sponsor video – less than 3 weeks 10 million views on YouTube. Press exposure
• Fairmont launched dedicated Presidents Club forum on FlyerTalk in July ’09. Now has 412 threads; page views >200,000

Follow Up Questions (endless, frankly – and I WANT TO HEAR YOURS! What didn’t we talk about that you wanted to talk about?):

• I would like to chat more about HOW, & not WHAT: how to integrate API’s, how to interact w/mobile-geolocation, how to implement facebook connect, etc. Check out mobile hotel app – Smart Stay
  
• Contact morgans about themed hashtags – Morgans Hotels tagged NYC airport codes on Foursquare during recent blizzards, ran ads, & generated some sales.
  
• Live streaming video & webcam opportunities?
  
• Is creating a list of your hotel’s followers on twitter necessary?
• How do you use FB connect for one small hotel?

This isn’t just about keywords by market which is endlessly fascinating, but it also says a lot about their markets…. the sheer volume of terms in SF compared to, say, Portland is pretty intriguing.

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches?page=01

that’s for SF.

You can also search other cities

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches/nyc?page=01

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches/la?page=01

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches/chicago?page=01

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches/sacramento?page=01

http://www.yelp.com/topsearches/portland?page=01

750+ pages of terms for SF, 521 for LA, 443 for Chicago, only 59 for Sacramento, 63 for Portland, etc.  Enter your city and see if it is at all worthwhile or interesting for you.

Cheers… just thought I would share.

Also….

I apologize for posting the below (I had published the keywords, but didn’t feel comfortable with them, now I just list the #), as it is the nefarious naughty words of net searches… but I doubt this will be up for long, due to searches like this tarnishing yelp’s equity with user base searches like #35, #47, and #60 among other less illegal or salacious terms on the SF search term board (like #99).  Ouch, yelp.  Ouch.  If these pages are removed, I will post the terms.  Frankly, they are sort of disturbing. =/  Can any SEO people suggest what these are?  I cannot believe they are organic searches?

Yet another ambly, rambly post from a caffeine fueled hospitality dork. This is more waxing than anything, and is a state of affairs and insight rather than some exciting insider news. Hopefully, if you actually finish it, it will just make you nod your head and think a bit. This is about how we spend out time…. and however it ebbs, however fast; it’s an issue nowadays.  “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”  Might be easy for Albert Einstein to say that…. but it sort of seems like everything *is* happening at once nowadays.

You know what we do. I know what we do. We goof off all day long online!  <ducking>

Ha ha… I kid I kid! But there are moments I feel a hairsbreadth from snapping, lost and boggled while in the stream… panicked with glazed over and angry eyes just trying to read the matrix. Then a client calls and wants me to explain what I am doing?  Yeah right… like I have to answer to them (tongue firmly in cheek).

So we social media people do a couple things. Of those things, I think we mainly get overwhelmed with the depressing fact that, of the 100% of things we see, only a small percentage of the data is relevant.  Beyond the natural conversation, CRM, and carrying a torch for your brand…. I think most of us start our mornings by filtering content, right?  And … OH!… so much content!

Sometimes during this process, I come close to forgetting to walk Pavlov, or eat lunch (like today), or take a break… or look up.  Sometimes when I do look up, it’s 9pm.  Frankly, I *have* started to get a unique balance of work/life between all these influences, something especially complex in that so many of these social media platforms cross back and forth from the personal world to the professional realm.  It isn’t easy to balance, but I think we are all getting there. This isn’t about work/life balance however, but if you have any good tricks let me hear them!

Honestly, some of my aforementioned dementia is rollicking good hyperbole, but I *KNOW* you are aware of what I am speaking about.  I am a hotelier at heart and in practice, but now I am part of this league of social media people with some very peculiar problems.  As for this chaotic side to our job that is less about conversation and more about keywords – what would we like to call it?  Content management?  Data filtering?  I know we have to have google alerts, rss’, twitter searches, flicker searches, and an endless amount of other minutia.  I am not sure how much of my day is spent *working* versus *filtering*.  What’s more, unless you are deft with boolean logic, the sheer volume of stuff that comes our way into readers, email reminders, and feeds is insurmountable.  More and more I find I am choosing my battles, and scarily deleting whole streams of keywords that just don’t feel relevant enough vs. the amount of time I would need to comprehend all of them.

The frustrating thing is that a monkey (or bright lemur) could perform a decent chunk of this.  There are great solutions for these time and data management issues, such as Radian6, but they provide a whole new level of work and have a price point some of us cannot justify. So, many of us our relegated to doing our own work… HEY NO FAIR!

The problem with the amount of time consumed by this is that it keeps us from the real conversation and CRM duties we are being paid to accomplish. For proper yelp and tripadvisor responses, or the courting of potential clients on twitter, you need a fairly robust intellect bolstered by a grasp of how to inject professionalism, personality, and passion into your interactions, coupled with the tactful skill of being deferential *and* confident?  That stuff isn’t easy…. but then these same people are sitting and filtering keywords and conversations for relevancy…. A mind numbing task that a smart 6 year old could do for you. It isn’t a bad idea really… I think they work real cheap.

Whenever I get somewhat insecure or OCD-tweeked with the robotic like filtering of keywords, data, images, and the basic conversation… I just remind myself that someone has to do it.  It is sort of like a B-52 bomber right?  The guys up top had a job to do navigating and bombing, while us little brand watchers in the belly of the plane have to survey the landscape…. watch what’s going on… and shoot when necessary (The coffee this morn was so strong it beat up that weak analogy).

Basically what I am saying is that it is part of a larger picture, and is basically moot. For our purposes, it is just a daunting necessity…. And part of our world. In fact, I see that it is getting its hooks into me… a casual 2 minute weekend web search for dinner reservations or a movie showtime can turn into an exhausting foray into my new drug. While my fiancée readies for our evening excursion, I am sneaking about like some philanderer, furtively injecting my head with this addiction via rss feeds and alerts. As she emerges from our bedroom I scurry away from the computer for fear of getting caught dosing myself and basking in the dimly lit glow of my screen. “But someone might be mentioning the brand!” I think to myself. I realize that social media’s speed *DOES* mean that you need to be on top of it, and join in the conversation as soon as it happens - But there is a limit.

This *huge* aspect of our job is tantamount to trying to beat the internet. Just a friendly reminder that isn’t possible. So what’s the point here? Why the complaining if there is nothing to be done about it??

The issue is the client.

Not only do clients not always “get” social media (that is why they have hired you), but they also may have sneaking suspicions about how much work you are doing versus playing. All the boomers like to talk about “productivity in the workplace dropping”, but if the old days of business were anything like “Mad Men” I think a little playing online during the day is just fine, compared to being drunk on scotch at half past ten (sounds lovely, to be sure).

In the end, this all may be born of my insecurities. I admit I have some concerns with relating the work we do for clients, and resolving the best way to inform them of it. I have spoken about Social Media ROI and getting over it, but I saw a very sanguine and concise point in a blog comment recently: “I know it’s hard, but this is business and it just isn’t right that we can’t measure it”. It’s true. It’s business. It needs to be measured. I think we will get some level of measurement someday, but it’s still evolving. For now, I still think the ROI is the “return on ignoring” social media…. But it still doesn’t make it okay that we can’t get a grip on it.

My clients are happy whether or not they “get” social media, because the end result has been more bookings, better brand image, and people talking about them. Therefore, they are incredibly trusting and supportive, even in relation to the above issues. We social media people need a lot of room, and a long leash, so we can really dig in and gets are hands dirty. But many of my clients don’t understand some core aspects of what we do… namely the amount of time we spend just *getting* to the conversation. Sometimes the important conversations aren’t that apparent, or don’t just come to you via your facebook page. What’s more, I am concerned about measurement for *me*, and not just my clients. This, again, is about time management. At the end of the week, or month, I would love a way to hand over all my work in the form of a single document, spreadsheet, etc, as compared to the lengthy phone calls I need to have. When clients don’t understand social media, and you start showing it to them in the form of work accomplished (building a twitter account and participating, or commenting on a blog, etc)… it may just go over their head. I have seen a number of shrugged shoulders and a “well you have obviously done something….”. I know it is our job to get across what we are doing, but most of what I am doing now is showing them the actual conversation and chatting about it at length… let’s look at twitter, then flickr, then youtube, then…. Aaaaaaaaaaand my day is over and once again I haven’t gotten to any real work. Ha. There’s the rub. Forget sleeping or dreaming (for the Shakespear fans)

All of this is more consumption of time (yes… same as this post too), and it just adds to the dilemma of actually getting work done when you are simply filtering data on the front end, and trying to explain the work you did on the back end. Informing your clients about your work is vital, and if *ANYONE* has ingenious thoughts or methods of efficiently and succinctly relating your social media campaigns to your clients.. I would love to hear them.

Until then, don’t try to beat the internet. Not only is that impossible, but if you literally do it your laptop will be busted into smithereens, and your router will be in shambles. =) Time for lunch at 2pm!

Hello,

Flickr account “framesdirect” was deleted by Flickr staff for violating our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.

www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

# Don’t use Flickr for commercial purposes.

Flickr is for personal use only. If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account.

-Terrence

My question… how are these hotels and brands getting away with using flickr for business purposes, or better question:

How long before Flickr further cracks down on businesses and starts deleting accounts?

Anyone that understands this complexity with flickr, please let me know.  I don’t get how this is being utilized as it violates the TOS?  Is it ok, or does Flickr just not care until they choose too?  I think there is a transparency and consistency issue here for Flickr?  Thoughts?

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!

]]> http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/03/03/panic-now-why-everyone-in-your-hotel-should-be-all-over-social-media/feed/ 0 http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/02/22/hotels-as-pioneers-not-technology-and-status-quo-for-social-media/ http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/02/22/hotels-as-pioneers-not-technology-and-status-quo-for-social-media/#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:35:55 +0000 Michael Hraba http://www.hrabaconsulting.com/blog/2009/01/07/hotels-as-pioneers-not-technology-and-status-quo-for-social-media/ 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)

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

SEO PEOPLE! MARKETERS!  WEB DESIGN!  and hotel people to boot….. some really interesting thoughts

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_future_of_search_5_ways_to_prepare/

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_future_of_search_5_ways_to_prepare/