Social media will not be ignored. Social media may be difficult to grasp and that’s ok, even the industry leaders define “Social Media” differently.

Definitions

1. Duct Tape Marketing – Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value

2. About.com – Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication

3. Brian Solis – Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers

4. iContact - An umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures

5. The Financial Brand – Social media isn’t about the media, it’s about being social

Peter Lang -  Social media is user generated content that is shared over the internet by applications and technologies that encourage engagement, sharing and collaboration

As you can see from above there is certainly a wide range of definitions. Like it or not more and more businesses are using it. Hotels are finding that marketing via social media has become a fantastic way of finding and connecting with potential and current customers. Putting it simply, the Directors of Sales can’t take your name from your credit card and friend you on Facebook. But there are many other ways to find and connect with guests. If you’re a hotel owner, General Manger or  any other managerial position you should truly consider participating. From my experience working with hotel properties I’ve included what I consider the best ways hotels should be using social media.

Best ways

Tweet – Begin by creating a front desk twitter account. Have your literature and staff share with guests that they can get immediate answers to their questions without having to call or talk with a staff member.

Facebook – Create a Facebook Page. Keep up with the changes and write solid content about the hospitality industry, freely.

Customize Content – Landing Pages is the example I will use for this example. A Local Hotel (shown on the left) and the Corporate Brand (shown on the right).

Emphasis on your Niche – All brands have a particular demographic, but take it deeper. If your hotel offers a wonderful honeymooners suite, or beautiful venue of weddings – make sure you’re promoting your hotel as a wedding hotel. Social media empowers niche marketing in that you can focus and tailor copy to your target market.

Encourage Networking  – Hotel staff frequent networking events, mixers and seminars and should rightfully connect with those people on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc

Introduce/Highlight – You’re staff is extremely valuable. Share with us the people behind the brand.

Blog – A website is automatic but brand-blogging is growing in importance. As search continues to become more social it is the dynamic content that will position the highest. (Position aka “top listing on Google, Bing, etc.) If you have a Blog (website is still default, yes), listen to my next words very carefully… GOOGLE ANALYTICS.

Protect the brand and your job – Policy is important. Every day I hear about employment termination due to social networking, microblogs, etc… Read: Fired Over a Post on Facebook

Bad Publicity – Oh I said it. It will happen. People will find something wrong with anything and post comments on social media sites. Trip advisor, Google Reviews on Places listings, Yahoo reviews, and Yelp. I’ve linked to the recommended response sections of each listed.

Positive Reviews – Share with your community through any distribution method you have access to all the great positive reviews you receive. Post on Twitter, Facebook, and website so people know what your hotel has to offer.

Competition – The hospitality industry tends to have high turnover with staff migrating between properties. But when it gets down to it if two properties are competing for rooms knowing your competition will pay dividends in your properties success. If you’re not listening to your competition online you’re missing out. How are you competing if you have no idea what your competition is doing? Rhetorical, you’re not.

Engagement - Get permission, I refer written, to take pictures and videos at the mixers, parties, meetings, conferences, managers reception, and so on and tell them they can get the pictures on your Facebook Page. Or twitpic the person that moment.

Hiring – Use social media connections when looking for staff. You will have less employee turnover if you find people who align with the dynamics of the property.

Get permission from your guests to take some pictures or videos at wedding and parties. Feature them on your social media sites so that others can see what you’re offering and how much fun people are having at your hotel. That will make people want to stay with you, too.

At least have

http://www.google.com/alerts

http://www.hootsuite.com/

Conclusion

Social media can be a powerful tool for hotels, if used correctly. Remember to use social media personally, therefore when it comes to business you’ll be able to engage and enjoy the time online and most importantly evolve with the technology. Social media allows you to supercharge engagement, make guests happy and generate more stays and ultimately more exposure, influence and revenue.

-Peter

Twittering on the Desktop (3rd party): Twitter Clients

http://hootsuite.com/ *

http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Twittering on the Web: Twitter Web Sites

http://bit.ly/ *

http://twitpic.com/

http://tweetshrink.com/

http://itweet.net/web/

Working with Twitter Gadgets and Widgets

Power Twitter *

TwitterFox

TwitKit

Mobypicture

– @peterlang

For more Social Media coverage, follow Peter Lang on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

If you find yourself posting on Twitter multiple times per day you won’t find much use in this post. But for the readers that find themselves drifting away from Twitter due to daily time requirements, continue reading.

There are some primary reasons why users stop updating their profiles:

1. No Interest – Often a result of a few months of participation with little connection to others.

2. Professional reasons – Created by tweeting for clients or for work that makes updating your own profiles too much work.

3. Lack of time – Invested to much time in the beginning and never received any kind of return for the interaction.

The truth is we have no choice because short form communication will continue to dominate, so it’s time to check out Twitter again. Here are some reasons why.

• Twitter.com/yourname will always help you rank well on search engines. When you are searched online it would be good to have the results be updated and relevant. 
• As your clients and companies embrace Twitter they’ll look to you as a person to follow and as an example.
• Engaging in Twitter and maintaining an up-to-date feed only takes 10 minutes a week.

Yes, I said 10 minutes. How do you accomplish this?

1. Use a 3rd party app that allows you to schedule tweets. I recommend Pluggio, TwitResponse and Hootsuite.
2. Give the application you’ve chosen access to your twitter account. Best way to accomplish this is by staying logged into Twitter. 
3. Aggregate information via a reader. Google Reader or Alltop, for example.
4. Write 5 tweets. Choose from a statement, a link to something you enjoy, a link to something one of your followers wrote, a celebration of your followers, an @ reply, something interesting you overheard, a question, or an RT of something you find interesting.
5. Write your tweets and schedule them for the coming week. This way you’ll have a Twitter feed that is personable, interesting, current, and useful.
6. Link your Facebook Fan Page or profile.

Follow me @peterlang.

The world of social media is invading the web at a speed that we cannot even imagine. It ‘a revolution, the social media revolution, social networking, the new way of conceiving the web, media, sharing. It ‘a revolution before our very eyes, of which we are all a part of and can no longer control. No one could have imagined, even a few years ago, that this would have happened. Read and watch these stunning statistics on social media:

Gary Hayes has collected some statistics and has made a counter that shows the numbers in real time: ‘Gary’s Social Media Count’: Which I have included below.

• 20 hours of video are uploaded on Youtube every minute!
• 600,000 new members each day on Facebook
• 700 million photos and 4 million videos on Facebook per day
• 18 million new users per day on Twitter and tweets sent 4 million per day
• 900,000 new items on blogs a DAY!
  
• 1 billion videos viewed on Youtube DAILY!
• 250,000 virtual goods in Second Life each day, and 1250 messages per second!
• 73 million visitors and 700 million Flickr photo uploaded a month!
• More than 2.3 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2008 alone! Here is it written out  to make it clearer 2,300,000,000,000,000,000 SMS!

via (web.splesh.net)

Thank you noltha.

If this is you, then Ping.fm is a must. This is a one-stop service that will allow you to post to all your important social networks. Not only will Ping.fm update statuses and micro-blogs it can now update your Facebook Page. Their step-by-step guide will help with the setup. The first attempt at creating the connection was tricky but if you follow the steps closely you will be just fine.

To point out- Once you’ve finished the setup you will need to grant permissions to the desired pages. Your options include posting status updates, notes, and photos to pages

Once Ping.fm is setup then you will see the advantages.

A Twitter Mystery

I had the great opportunity of having this presentation shared with me. It’s all about Twitter and I felt the wonderful creator Meryl Evans did a great job, and knew I had to share.

The presentation gives an introduction to Twitter for buisness and strategies to take marketing and relationship building to a new level.

Enjoy and Share!

Standout and allow people to see your social media passion. Personalize, popularize, and promote your presence with a Social Media Shirt.

–Peter

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

Plugin

When beginning a blog one of the first things to come to mind are plugins. Great example- web.splesh.net.

The 10 “Get First” WordPress plugins when starting WordPress Blog.

1. All In One SEO Pack – It’s top on the list for a reason because it is essential for all bloggers!!! All In One SEO Pack allows tweaking Meta Titles, Descriptions and Tags of your blog without changing the content.

2. Comment Luv – Comment Luv enables you to show some love as soon as a comment has been posted by including a titled link to their last blog post or tweet at the end of their comment. This plugin drastically increases user interaction on your blog through increased exposure.

3. Popularity Contest – A great plugin because it shows which posts are the most popular by evaluating views, comments, impressions, etc. You will be able to create a side bar widget showing the most popular by the date style of your choosing. (year, month, week)

4. TweetMeMe – The Easy ReTweet Button. Using TweetMeMe will increase the likilyhood of your posts being tweeted. So much easier, a must.

5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – YARPP provides a list of posts and/or pages related or similar to the current post/page introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. This will imporove click through rates because it gives the reader more of what they like.

6. WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache makes your blog load faster. What is there to say other then that? Get it.

7. Smart Update Pinger – Plugin protects your blog from over pinging by pinging only when you publish a new post – not when editing. Great for security.

8. Redirection – Bad SEO is often caused by broken links. Redirection enables you to prevent Google Bots and Yahoo Spiders from getting stuck in a loop. Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

9. Contact Form 7 – Every major blog has a contact form. They used this plugin to create it. Visit mine on the Contact tab above.

10. Sexy Bookmarks – A great way to share in the sexiest way possible. The best looking sharing plugin you can get. Sure, there are plenty of alternatives and some of them are probably much better than Sexy Bookmarks, but unlike any other, this plugin actually makes you WANT to share.