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Mr. MacKenzie
Sales & Marketing
Which Social Media Sites Are Worth Your Time?
By Josiah MacKenzie, Founder, Gradigio Group
I could just give you a big list of sites you should be involved in - but that's too simplistic. Instead, we must approach social media with the end goal in mind.
Decide on objectives, and from there, pick tactics. Social media works best when it is closely aligned to the culture and values of an organization.
There's no use forcing social media culture on a hotel where the guests will not embrace it. Social media should be a service, so selecting platforms to participate in must involve thinking through how your social media activity will provide better service.
Return on Objectives is the new Return on Investment
Because new media marketing channels differ so much, it is nearly impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison on effectiveness. At best, we create a different set of success measurements for each platform. That’s fine, but it makes high-level marketing strategy decisions harder. What services and websites are worth investing time and money? To assist you with these decisions, I encourage you to evaluate Return On Objectives (ROO) instead of Return on Investment (ROI). For example, if service is a top strategic focus for you, it is possible to quickly compare the diverse range of social networks – and see which ones are allowing you to serve guests the best.
What social media objectives are you measuring for?
What each social network does
Let's review the most popular social networking options today, and what each offers. To keep things simple, I'll use the US market leader (by number of users) to illustrate each category:
• TripAdvisor (peer review sites)
• Facebook (social networking)
• Blogging (information sharing)
• Twitter (microblogging)
• YouTube (video sharing sites)
• Flickr (photo sharing sites)
• Scribd (document sharing)
• Foursquare (location-based services)
• Meetup.com (events)
TripAdvisor and other peer review sites
What it offers: TripAdvisor offers hotels the ability to reach travelers in the decision-making phase of the travel buying process. When someone is on TripAdvisor, they are often comparing you head-to-head with your competition in a contest determined by what your guests have said about you.
How it might help you: If you provide an exceptional experience, and your guests are talking about it, there is no better way to get the word out. People will trust reviews written by their peers much more than what we as marketers can pitch. Let your guests do the selling for you.
Levels of time commitment: Once you set up monitoring systems, this may take as little as 5 to 10 minutes each week. considering this low time investment required, and how important it is to many travelers planning process, it needs to be a top priority for most hotels.
Good for: Hotels with a strong commitment to making every guest delighted.
Not so good for: Hotels with poor service and facilities - and don't really care.
Facebook (social networking)
What it offers: Facebook is all about “transitive trust” – reaching people through people. Helping your fans tell their friends.
How it might help you: Facebook is the number one social media platform in terms of number of users, so its reach is appealing. Additionally, Facebook has been adding more and more features lately that expand the options you have for communicating your messages.
Levels of time commitment: because there are so many different elements on a good Facebook page, it can take quite a bit of time to run one effectively. Among other things, you will want to include status updates, event announcements, photo albums, videos, discussions, special offers and more. Facebook is becoming more and more a very interactive multimedia platform and that by definition requires more time than some of the other social media options.
Good for: building a fan base around your brand, since people can use many types of media
Not so good for: Mass messaging -- reaching everyone at once.
Blogging (information sharing)
What it offers: blogs offer a convenient publishing platform for publishing content online.
How it might help you: once content is published through your blog, it can be syndicated easily to nearly every other social media network. It has the ability to quickly raise his ability in the social networks, and also in search engines.
Levels of time commitment: running an effective blog usually requires significant levels of time commitment. The posts don't have to be long, but they need to be planned ahead of time and fairly frequent. Usually between 1-3 updates per week is required to stay relevant.
Good for: hotels that understand and embrace the concept of content marketing, and are willing to make the commitment over the long-term to stick with this channel.
Not so good for: hotels that likes to try something for a few weeks only, and cannot commit to a long-term participation.
Twitter (microblogging)
What it offers: real-time communication.
How it might help you: Twitter is a great listening tool for engaging real-time sentiment among your target audience. When used carefully, it can also be effective for time sensitive offers: selling room inventory that will be worthless tomorrow. Levels of time commitment: Usually not much, it's more of a frequency issue. It's best if you can check in several times each day for 5-10 minutes.
Good for: Hotels with empowered staff that can spontaneously respond and serve your online audience.
Not so good for: Hotels that have lengthy content approval processes. Because of the real-time nature of Twitter, if it takes a few days to get an update of approved by management, the right moment for a response has passed. You need someone who is able to respond and resolve situations within minutes.
YouTube (video sharing sites)
What it offers: The ability to demonstrate what it's really like to stay at your property.
How it might help you: You can show rather than tell. It's easier for you, and it's more believable for potential guests when done right.
Levels of time commitment: Video can be substantially less time-consuming than written text if you keep it simple. Some of the most effective YouTube promotions I've seen are when the PR manager simply carries a Flip Mino camera around and interviews staff about their jobs and how they do what they do. Plus, there's always the option of reusing video created for your other promotions. You can upload advertisements, for example.
Good for: Hotels with the culture of openness. Another great YouTube promotion format I have observed is when hotels loaned out Flip video cameras to their guests, and then encourage them to upload it to the web with some hotel branding. Giving your guests the freedom to tell your hotel's story is essential here.
Not so good for: Hotels where there's not much to see, and not much story potential.
Flickr (photo sharing sites)
What it offers: The ability to describe your hotel visually instead of with superlatives.
How it might help you: Giving people a real feel for what they can look forward to experiencing when they stay at your property.
Levels of time commitment: It depends on the level of involvement you want. It can be as simple as posting photos you have already on your website, and can be as complicated as managing user groups around concepts related to your hotel and concept. Moderating a community always takes much longer than simply posting content, but the potential rewards can be larger.
Good for: Stunning hotels and stunning settings. Design hotels and resorts seem to work especially well on Flickr.
Not so good for: Posting slick promotional photos. The type of photos that seem to work best on Flickr are taken by users: your fans and guests.
Scribd (document sharing)
What it offers: The ability to share documents publicly in an easily accessible way.
How it might help you: You may use it to spread ideas and become recognized as an industry thought leader.
Levels of time commitment: Substantial amounts of time putting together the document, not much time once it is posted.
Good for: Innovative hotels out of change the world in some way.
Not so good for: Hotels whose marketing collateral consists solely of corporatespeak. To have the documents do well on sharing sites like these it needs to be around a bigger idea - one that really gets people excited.
Foursquare (location-based services)
What it offers: Foursquare drives repeat business. People keep coming back to the same place to become "mayor." People compete to stay mayor as well, and competitions can get ridiculous.
How it might help you: It's a next-generation loyalty program - if you have good rewards, you may be able to keep people from going to the competition. Foursquare is especially popular with restaurants and bars and can be a good tool for boosting F&B revenues.
Levels of time commitment: Low. Aside from making sure your contact details and business profile is correct, all you will have to do is come up with special promotions. This network is a largely user driven platform.
Good for: Quirky properties with great bars and restaurants
Not so good for: Remote destinations or properties that don't have much of a social scene.
Meetup.com (events)
What it offers: The ability to connect your online community in an off-line, "real world" setting
How it might help you: You can become known as a "hub" among social media and online influencers. Hotels like New York City's Roger Smith Hotel achieve this by routinely hosting meetups to connect their online fans.
Levels of time commitment: Because meetups don't usually take place constantly, arranging them usually doesn't take much time each month. This is especially true if you have a core group of influencers that can spread the word for you.
Good for: Hip urban hotels that want to become part of the social scene. It helps if you have a strong online presence in social media.
Not so good for: Hotels in rural or remote destinations. Hotels that don't have a "connector" on property that can coordinate the events.
Managing Your Time in Social Media
We've reviewed some of the major social networking options important to hotels. So how do you allocate your limited time among a myriad of social media options?
Follow the data
Take a careful look at your metrics. What’s working? What’s not?
As I said at the beginning of this article, you will probably have to use Return on Objectives to do the apples-to-oranges comparison. But in the end, numbers don’t lie. If a trendy new site isn’t producing results you’re looking for, then stop spending so much time on it. Of course, most new initiatives will require some time to build your profile in the community, but after a few months you should have sufficient data to guide your management schedule.
Some networks naturally consume more time than others. Writing a blog post takes longer than posting a tweet. Producing a new YouTube video will take longer than moderating a Flickr group. But if the additional time investment gives you higher overall ROI, then it’s worth it.
It comes back to Pareto’s 80/20 rule – find the select few social media activities that produce tangible results, and focus your time there. Instead of trying to be everywhere, you'll probably achieve better results focusing on a few highly targeted networks.
Since this is highly variable on your property and hotel concept, follow these action steps to create a unique plan for you:
- Develop a new set of objectives-based metrics for measuring social media activity in a way that is relevant to your hotel
- Compare your past statistics with your new metrics. (If you have not been gathering sufficient data, then take a week or two to do that)
- Use insights from your comparison to develop a list of social media top performers – for you.
- Create a personalized social media management routine based on this data.
Josiah MacKenzie is the founding owner and marketing brain of the Gradigio Group, a San Francisco-based collection of media properties catering to the hospitality industry around the globe. He also has roles in other ventures, with business interests in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia. Mr. Mackenzie has published over 100 articles, and has appeared in the Washington Post, MSNBC.com, and Entrepreneur magazine. His new book, The Savvy Hotelier's Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas, reveals over 1,000 of the most profitable marketing tactics used by hotels. Mr. MacKenzie can be contacted at 415-671-6235 or josiah@gradigio.com Extended Bio...
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