A Rundown of Alert Possibilities

Unlike traditional office employees such as myself, hoteliers are rarely at their desks. The good news for me is that my desk looks out at the Golden Gate Bridge and I never tire of the view. The better news is that I rarely miss a tweet or post because I always have a monitor with Revinate showing my mentions. For hoteliers, it's a bit more difficult to stay on top of mentions so I thought I would provide a rundown of applications that provide alerts that can help hoteliers.

1. Revinate. Revinate clients can opt-in to email alerts for notification of new reviews and social media mentions. The alerts also include recommended actions, such as respond to a negative review or read a competitor's new review. Clients can also be sent a weekly scorecard alert which provides data and analysis on social media progress and gains against the competition. Revinate is continuing to work on its alerts so stay tuned for new developments.

2. TripAdvisor. If you're not a Revinate client, make sure you sign up to be alerted when a new review is posted to TripAdvisor. You can do this in the Owners Center. You will want to respond to reviews within a day or two to ensure that prospects know you're listening closely to guest feedback.

3. Google Alerts. Revinate clients will likely be managing their properties and competition using the Social Media Searches feature in Revinate, but Google Alerts can also come in handy. Google Alerts are a free and easy way to monitor topics on the Web. For example, to stay on top of social media best practices in the industry, you might want to create an alert for 'Hotel Social Media'. I prefer to get my alerts once a day, but you can decide your frequency when you sign up.

4. Foursquare and Gowalla. Sorry - No dice. While it would make sense for location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla to alert you whenever someone checks-in to your hotel, that's not possible today using these services. However, if you are monitoring Twitter and public Facebook pages for your hotel name, many people that check-in have linked their Twitter and Facebook accounts so a tweet/status update is sent out at the same time. Revinate clients will see the check-in in the Social Media Searches section with a foursqaure url such as http://4sq.com/mnRtjJ

5. Local Response. A new service in Beta, Local Response will monitor Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, MyTown, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite and other services and alert you when your hotel is mentioned. The great news is that Local Response will fill the gap that exists today because location based services aren't sending alerts when folks check-in.

6. Twitter. Folks that use Twitter can opt-in for alerts when someone starts following you or when you receive a new direct message. For more sophisticated alerts, you need to use a Twitter client such as Local Response, ifttt, tweetbeep, or a host of other services.

If you know of other valuable alert solutions, please let everyone know in the comments below.

Comments

[Iconsulthotels]

Thanks! Very informative. I hadn't heard of "Local Response" yet and will check it out. I think it's also worth pointing out that, for TripAdvisor reviews, properly phrased Google Alerts are usually up to 24 hours faster than TAs own alerting system.