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April 30, 2013

Social Media Inspiration – It’s time to celebrate

Many hotels, especially those catering to business travels, suffer from a lack of inspiration when it comes to social media posts. Amy Greenwood, e-commerce director, at Sun Development and Management Corporation, a 37-property portfolio, solved the problem in a fun, creative way.

Last year, when brainstorming unique ways to drive engagement on social media, she recalled the joy and excitement that her daughter experienced at school when celebrating quirky national holidays and decided to test the tradition at work. She brought the idea to the President and Sales and Marketing heads, and all were on board.

Amy combed through the list of holidays and pulled three each month that she thought would be fun ffor the hotels to celebrate in 2013. She brought the list to the Annual Leadership Conference and asked the General Managers to vote on one for each month. With a list of twelve holidays decided, Amy and the team got to work driving excitement.

As the primary Facebook Page owner for the hotels, Amy posts about the celebrations a month out, two weeks out, a few days before and then the Monday of the week the day is celebrated. The hotels are required to take photos of the events to share on their Facebook pages. In January, the hotels celebrated National Popcorn Day. In February, the hotels celebrated Ice Cream for Breakfast Day.

Amy notes that the benefits go beyond having fun content to share on social media and sparking online engagement. She says, “These holidays have brought our employees closer to our guests. Our employees look forward to the celebrations and our guests love that we do things a bit differently and it always drives conversation and photo opportunities."

Some hotels even go so far as to reward loyalty points to guests that get into the spirit and dress up for the celebration. For example, Red Hat Day was celebrated on April 25^th and guests sporting red hats at certain hotels received 1000 loyalty points for their participation.

How do you inspire fun social content? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Michelle in customers, Facebook, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 16, 2013

Hotels Show Social Media Transparency in Wake of Marathon Bombing

In the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s horrifying bombing at the Boston Marathon, spectators and runners alike existed in a state of confused panic as law enforcement and rescue teams rushed to the scene to tend to the injured. Fearful of more bombs to detonate along the marathon route, the Boston police quickly instructed bystanders to leave the area and return to their homes and hotels until the imminent danger had subsided.

As the race finish line was in the tourist-trafficked Copley Square, there were dozens of hotels in the immediate area that were impacted by the event. With attendees frantically rushing out of the area and desperately trying to contact loved ones, it was imperative for the hotels to show transparency and responsively engage in the real-time social media conversation. Fortunately, many of the area’s hotels took to their respective Facebook and Twitter accounts immediately to communicate with worried guests and assure their families and friends that all were safe. A few of the nearby hotels truly stood out during this crisis period with their real-time responses:

The Fairmont Copley Plaza

Positioned directly across from the site of the bombings, The Fairmont Copley Plaza took to Facebook soon after the news of the disaster spread to assure followers that the hotel’s colleagues were safe as well as to inform guests about an impromptu check-in station set-up for them to reconnect with loved ones. This message was well received by the hotel’s followers, many of whom were relieved to hear about the state of affairs.

As messages continued to flood in via Twitter throughout the day and into the next morning, the hotel’s tweeters made a concerted effort to personally respond to each and every tweet sent their way, working hard to ensure that each follower was addressed and thanked for his/her concern.

The Lenox Hotel

Located in the heart of the disaster scene, The Lenox Hotel was similarly quick to update on its Facebook page, announcing the immediate evacuation of the hotel. Hours later, the hotel continued its transparent communication with updates on when the hotel would be re-opened and answering guest questions regarding their left-behind luggage and how to arrange for alternative accommodations.

The Facebook updates continued throughout the next day and were time stamped to assure followers that they were receiving the most up-to-date information available. On Twitter, the hotel followed a similar communication strategy, providing updates intermittently before finally signaling guests to return to the hotel to gather their belongings.

Mandarin Oriental, Boston

Similar to The Lenox Hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, Boston is located right in the middle of the explosion site and was forced to ask its guests to immediately evacuate. To spread this news, the hotel posted a note on Facebook assuring that, while guests and staff needed to evacuate, everyone was safe. The hotel likewise posted frequent updates on Twitter and used the platform to make significant announcements.

Social Media Crisis Takeaways

What we can learn from each of these hotel properties is that, in the wake of an unexpected disaster, real-time, responsive communication is essential. These hotels were cognizant of follower concerns and swiftly allayed them with direct and transparent messaging. Each property addressed incoming questions and concerns received through each channel promptly and worked hard to broadcast the safety precautions they were taking. Finally, each hotel appropriately suspended any form of communication that was not relevant to the ongoing disaster and avoided any form of promotional or unrelated posts that may have been originally scheduled. While no one ever wants a disaster like this to occur, it pays to have a social media crisis plan in place and be prepared. Clearly, each of these hotels knew what they were doing.

Posted by Greg in Facebook, Hotel Examples, Social Media, Twitter, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2013

Social Media Advice: #WebWednesday Must-Reads

Happy Hump Day friends! We have lots going on as usual here at Revinate; we have some exciting new product announcements to share with you in the coming weeks and we look forward to hosting another full month of free webinars as we head into April. We've also spent some time this week adding some great content to our Google+ page and YouTube channel, so be sure to check those out in addition to catching up on your social media news below.

Visual.ly Launches Tool to Turn Your Google Analytics Stats into an Infographic

Social Media Analytics Strategies and Tools

10 Ways to Make Your Content More Shareable

Google+ updated with new search filter for photos

Facebook tests another Timeline layout with elements from new and old designs

Green Eggs & Facebook: 15 Social Media Tips from Dr. Seuss

Which Social Media Marketing Tactics Work Best?

Social Media Metrics & Reporting Webinar Takeaways

How To Create Brand Advocates and Evangelists

The New Facebook Changes You Need To Know About

Posted by Greg in Facebook, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 19, 2013

Manage Hotel Customer Service with Facebook Recommendations

According to L2, more than 46% of hotels with Facebook accounts receive posts that deal with customer service. Past and future guests are taking their customer service woes to the web and are posting about problems that they experience at your hotel. Therefore, it is imperative that you stay on top of posts to your Facebook page with comprehensive real-time monitoring.

While most customer service posts will appear directly on your timeline, more and more posts are appearing in the 'Recommendations' section, which is visible to both people that like your Page and those that don't. The "Recommendations" section allows page visitors - regardless of whether they have "Liked" the page or not - to post a short review or provide feedback about your hotel. The "recommendations" title of the section is a bit of a misnomer, however, as users are free to leave any kind of feedback, whether it is positive or negative. This section lives prominently near the top of your property's Page and is enabled only for Facebook Pages that have physical addresses. (In other words, users cannot write recommendations on pages for brands unless the page owners provide an exact address in the pages' About sections.) But, we encourage you to complete your address as Facebook’s recent rollout of Graph Search favors pages that have fully-completed About sections.

While Facebook Page owners may worry about prominent negative feedback, we urge you to trust in the power of your fans. For most hotels, your loyal guests will be more than willing to share a tip or a compliment on their own volition. But, if there is a concerning piece of feedback that shows up in this section, address it directly as you would any negative review and you can neutralize any bad feedback by showing that you pay close attention to guest feedback. Also, you will often see that loyal guests will come to your defense to refute the criticism. That's when the user-generated content system is really working! But, if you believe the feedback was unruly or irrelevant, you do have the option of reporting it to Facebook as spam by clicking the 'report' button.

If you want to increase the number of recommendations on your Facebook page, all you have to do is ask. Post a status message encouraging your friends and fans to tell the world with a tip or recommendation. Pin this message to the top of the page for a week and see how much engagement it drives.

By paying close attention to feedback on your page as well as proactively monitoring and encouraging new recommendations, your hotel will be taking full advantage of Facebook's customer service features.

Posted by Greg in Facebook, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 12, 2013

How Brands Can Prepare For Facebook's News Feed Update

Last week, Facebook announced a major redesign to their ubiquitous news feed. This change marks the first significant redesign of their core product features since Timeline was introduced in late 2011 and is the first update to its news feed design since 2009. Right now, Facebook is asking users to join a waiting list in order to make the switch and will likely continue this process until design tweaks are ironed out.

As outlined in Facebook's press event, the new news feed will feature three major design elements: larger imagery, multiple feeds and a focus on mobile consistency. First, photos will now occupy up to 50% of a user’s news feed, following an image-forward design trend that has been heavily influenced by the emergence of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Second, the new news feed will give the user more control of which content shows up in his feed, as he wlll be able to subscribe to feeds segmented by friend, interest and brand categories. Finally, a new navigation bar and additional white space will be integrated into the design, making the mobile site noticeably less cluttered and more similar in look and feel to the Google+ layout.

Because the feed is just being rolled out to users, the marketing implications for these changes are largely unknown. While we can only speculate as to how exactly these updates will impact brand’s engagement initiatives, it is clear that these changes will favor brands that follow a visually-focused content strategy. This reinforces what Facebook reported earlier this year about post engagement: updates that include a photo album or a picture generate about 120-180% more engagement than the average post. To make sure that your brand is best prepared for these changes, we encourage you to consider the following:

Continue to post high-quality, larger-sized imagery that will fill the expanded space for images well
Ensure that your page's cover photo is similarly bold and appealing, as it will be the default image that populates when users share your page with others
Share content that is timely whenever possible, as trending topics will be featured more prominently in users’ news feeds
Encourage your fans to add your page to an Interest Lists. Most likely, these interest lists will take the form of individual feeds that will show up on a user's profile. By being included in one of these lists, your page will have greater visibility.

Posted by Greg in Facebook, What's New | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 15, 2013

Facebook Publishing Insights for Hotels

Facebook recently published an advertorial that, in adition to highlighting several of their product's features, shared some enlightening stats on how to optimize your brand page's posting strategy. While following these guidelines won't guarantee exponential fan engagement growth in the short-term, putting these frameworks into practice will undoubtedly improve your overall approach to sharing Facebook content on behalf of your hotel. Here are a few key points to consider:

Posts between 100 and 250 characters (less than 3 lines of text) see about 60% more likes, comments and shares than posts greater than 250 characters

Posts including a photo album, a picture or a video generate about 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement than the average post, respectively.

Fill-in-the-blank posts generate about 90% more engagement than the average post.

Posts about top-of-mind topics, such as current events, holidays or news, will receive higher engagement levels. For example, posts mentioning Independance Day on July 4th generated about 90% more engagement than all posts published on that day.

Here are some excellent examples of hotel Facebook pages that really get it:

Post with less than 3 lines of text and inclusion of a visually stunning image:

Posts with photo galleries that promote the brand authentically.

Posts that effectively use the "fill in the blank" approach to encourage fan engagement.

Posts about top-of-mind topics that will be more relevant to fans.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, customers, Facebook, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 6, 2013

Social Media for Hotels - #WebWednesday Must-Reads

Happy #WebWednesday everyone! Last week, we hosted two webinars focusing on best practices in social media and digital marketing for hotels. In case you missed either session, we've published recaps of both webinars here on the Revinate Blog and encourage you to review them at your leisure.

For this week's #WebWednesday round-up, we're sharing some social media resources that will be helpful for all hoteliers to be aware of. As always, we encourage you to engage with us on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think.

How Local Businesses Can Leverage New Facebook & Foursquare Features tips for how local businesses can and should adapt to take advantage of the opportunities (as well as overcome the challenges) that these changes present.

Study Says Twitter Is Fastest-Growing Social Platform in the World overall, 21% of the worldwide Internet population now actively uses Twitter on a monthly basis - or 288 million monthly users.

L2 Digital IQ Index® of Hotels report benchmarking the digital competence of 57 Hotel brands on more than 675 data points across four dimensions: Site, Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Mobile.

The State of Instagram [Infographic] helpful information for marketers to convince their stakeholders (or themselves) that Instagram is the next place to start engaging new customers.

Pinterest may be worth $2 billion, but travel brands struggle to keep pace advanced-level Pinterest tips for marketers, first for larger brands and organizations — and then for smaller ones.

Facebook Promotions: What’s Right for Your Brand? by understanding and defining the goal of your campaign, you can better decide which Facebook promotion is right for you.

Top Social Media Mistakes, According to the Experts ten highly experienced social media strategists identify the top mistakes they see businesses making on social networks.

Twitter Enhances Viewing Options For Photos, Videos and Related Tweets Twitter is also making it easier to view related tweets, making the channel more conversational.

Posted by Greg in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 9, 2013

#WebWednesday Must-Reads: Social Media Tactics

Happy second #WebWednesday of the month to you all Revination! We hope your New Year is off to a flying start. Our year certainly has begun with a bang as we ready ourselves to both hit the road the next couple of months and also put on a series of webinars focusing on social media engagement and online reputation management. In the social space as a company, we've also begun a new series - "What's #Trending at Revinate" - that spotlights some creative ways our customers are using the Revinate social media dashboard. Next week, we'll go one step futher and reveal which hotels have been honored with a Revinate Hotel of the Year Award!

This week's roundup of must-read articles focuses on social media tactics to focus on when putting together your engagement strategies for the year. We hope you enjoy this brief but rich catch-up reading, and be sure to check back tomorrow for our story on how to drive social media engagement by learning from customer loyalty programs.

Facebook Wall Post Cheat Sheet to Increase Interaction via LinchpinSEO.com

10 Ways to Encourage Customer Reviews Online via econsultancy.com

The Smart Hotelier’s 2013 Top Ten Digital Marketing Resolutions via HospitalityNet.org

100 Social Networking Statistics & Facts for 2012 via Visual.ly

Social Travel Apps Thrive as App Store Hits 40 Billion Downloads via SocialTimes.com

Posted by Greg in Facebook, Reviews, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2013

Best Days for Hospitality Industry to Post on Facebook

Knowing when to share brand-related content on your Facebook page can be a messy guessing game for even the most experienced marketer. Each brand page's audience is unique and Facebook's continual tinkering of its news feed algorithm makes the job of staying relevant all the more challenging. Even with these obstacles, it is still useful to possess a general understanding of what days of the week see the highest level of engagement.

Fortunately, LinchpinSEO has put together a handy infographic that highlights this information, segmenting the days that have brands have the most Facebook engagement. This information is based on data that was compiled earlier last year by Buddy Media, who analyzed over 1,800 brand Facebook pages over a two-month span to come up with their findings.

Below are some general findings from the study. Interactions here are defined as a like, comment or share that a post receives.

Posts published between 8 PM - 7 AM received 14% higher interaction than posts published between 8 AM - 7 PM.
Brands that post once a day see 19% higher interaction rates.
Pages that most more than 7 times per week see a 25% decrease in interaction rates.
Interaction rate for weekend posts is 14.5% higher than weekday posts, yet only 14% of posts are published on weekends.

How is this relevant for hoteliers and restaurateurs? Well, the data on hospitality-related industries further informs the fact that higher page interaction rates can be achieved by making sure your brand is publishing towards the end of the week and especially on the weekend. If you manage a restaurant's Facebook page or have a food and beverage operation on-property, it would be wise to incorporate this kind of content when planning your posting schedule in advance.

The data related to travel and leisure fan pages confirms higher levels of fan interaction on days leading up to and including the weekend. Interaction levels begin to increase on Thursdays and peak on Sundays, when page liking, commenting and sharing is 19% higher than average levels.

Even if your hotel or restaurant does not have the resources to man your social media operation 24/7 by posting on the weekend in real-time, take advantage of Facebook's scheduling option - which is accessible in your Revinate dashboard - and queue up your posts before leaving the office for the weekend. An engagement opportunity like this is too good to pass up on. Let us know how this posting tactic works for you!

Posted by Greg in Facebook, Social Media, What's New | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 26, 2012

Facebook or Twitter...where should hotels focus?

While hotels know the benefits of social media engagement, with limited time and resources it is best to have a focused approach to your engagement choices. By the numbers, Facebook and Twitter are the obvious leaders in social media participation but there are a few surprises when you consider which social channel deserves more time and attention. Should hotels focus more on Facebook or Twitter?

Here are some insights that might help...

Demographic Profiles

I often hear the perception that Twitter users are younger, less affluent, and less likely to buy than Facebook users. However, actual demographic data does not support this theory. Here is some demographic information for each social network.

It turns out that Twitter users are 1/3 more likely to be college educated and more likely to be making over $75K per year. It is also worthwhile to note that both websites claim about 13% of their users make over $100K per year.

However, disposable income is only one part of the equation when considering Facebook vs. Twitter. Purchase likelihood is also important. Twitter offers a much higher rate of purchase by its users than Facebook. According to Digital Surgeons about 67% of Twitter users will buy from a company that they follow. On Facebook, only 51% of users will buy from a “Liked” business or brand. While this information is based on all industries, it shows that hotels with a high level of repeat business might benefit more from Twitter.

Community Mindset

Another factor to consider is the community mindset for both sites. Where Facebook is used to connect with friends, Twitter’s micro blogging format is used to create and share with friends, as well as people you don’t know personally. This subtle difference can influence how your business is mentioned on these social channels. For example, I sometimes see Facebook friends discussing personal details that may mention a product or brand that they admire or despise. On Twitter, I see many more tips regarding how to use things, praise for superior products, or scorn for disappointing ones. This may come from the high levels of engagement on Twitter (57% tweet daily), but it may also come from the ease of re-tweeting. Compliments and scorn on Twitter have far more viral potential than on Facebook where a post is mostly limited to friends.

Hotels who are engaging on Twitter are finding many more opportunities to perform service recovery than they are with Facebook. Emarketer reported in 2011 that 77% of hotel and airline Twitter accounts experience customer service enquiries and complaints. Only 46% of Facebook accounts dealt with customer service. It appears that more customers are engaging on Twitter in real-time to get their service issues resolved. It is critical that all businesses on Twitter be prepared for this.

One Revinate client also uses Twitter to monitor customer satisfaction during large events. By monitoring the hash tag of conferences at their hotel, The Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego address customer problems in real-time:

“By watching the stream of tweets during meetings, I have a real-time look at how things are going. A few months ago I saw a meeting guest tweeting about trouble with the Wi-Fi. Within minutes, I was able to send a technician to the room to fix the issue before it became a problem. The guests were floored at how responsive and on-the-ball we were.” –Kristin Spitz, Electronic Sales and Marketing Manager

Again, our friends at Hyatt were able to make a very high profile customer service save, this time in New York. Chipper Jones, from the Atlanta Braves, tweeted to his prolific following that his A/C and movies did not work. Within minutes, the Marketing/PR coordinator and the Grand Hyatt saw the tweet and the increase in social mentions in Revinate and contacted the front desk manger. The following is the tweet that Mr. Jones posted after his issues were handled.

Advertising and Booking Conversion

When it comes to the sophistication of its advertising and reported booking conversion for hotels, Facebook has some definite advantages over Twitter. Ads on Facebook allow for fairly granular targeting including the following:

Location (city, state, and radius)
Gender
Relationship Status
Age Range or exact age (Birthday often included)
Interests- based on pre-loaded options (drawn from profiles not usage)
Education (Levels and specific schools)
Employer

For example, you could set up a simple Pay-per-Click ad on Facebook with a birthday staycation offer for locals in your area within a week of their actual birthday. This could be a great way to drive last minute business during slow periods.

Facebook also allows for a fully integrated booking engine for Hotels. L2 reports that 64% of the hotels studied had either full or partial Facebook booking. Furthermore, hotels with a booking engine on Facebook sent about 50% less traffic to online travel agencies.

Facebook does not yet allow for targeting based upon post content. So a post asking friends where to stay in New York, would not allow New York hotels to target ads to that user. However, on Twitter, that question would be public so a tool like Revinate could highlight that tweet and publish it to your hotels social media dashboard for quick response and an offer.

Twitter is farther behind Facebook in the sophistication of their advertising options that could be useful to properties. Promoted tweets allow you to position tweets to be seen by your followers and those like your followers. There is some geographic targeting but other options are limited. Promoted accounts can help you build a community of followers by listing in the Twitter search results and the “Who to Follow” section, which will highlight your handle for those who have shown interest in similar businesses to yours. The company has launched promoted trends but this marketing vehicle is better suited to brands and mass marketed products rather than individual properties.

Booking conversion is also where Facebook holds an edge. I have seen reports of ad conversion from Facebook at as high as 4%, and Twitter also claims a 4% click through rate on all links. The difference is that Facebook’s 4% is attributed to ads, where Twitter includes all links from tweets in their calculation. This means that the actual conversion rate on marketing tweets could be much lower.

Both Offer Clear Benefits

The Facebook vs. Twitter choice should be made based upon your time and resources. Revinate can make managing both communities easier which can help a resource strapped hotel benefit from the advertising strengths of Facebook and the open forum benefits of Twitter. Either way, hotel brands and individual properties are landing significant business through social media channels.

Social media engagement is also becoming a major driver for website referral traffic. Shareaholic reports that in 2012, three of the top nine referring sites were social media sites. Facebook referred about 6% of all traffic on the web, more than Yahoo and Bing combined. Regardless of the direction that you choose, social media engagement can be an important factor in driving eyeballs to your site.

Posted by Michelle in Best Practices, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

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