Social Media Marketing

Why hotels should be concerned about social media as DN hotels benefit from social media.

Social Media will continue to grow in importance. It's not only become an important tool to interact with the customer, but is considered one of the key factors that influence the search and placement for the hotel. Hotels that take advantage of this trend can be seen significant benefits for the online investment and revenues.

The most common question we are asked in the hospitality industry is why I should be concerned about social media and how will I benefit from elements of social media. A few months ago, we published an article in this column describes how hotels can maximize the benefits of social media channels. Of course, as we expect, even in the 12 months since we published the article things have changed in the space of social media. While Twitter was there, was the model's effectiveness Twitter is not well understood, before the presidential elections at the end of the year.

Fast tracking of these questions is, of course, as I do to optimize your social media and ROI measurement. In this article, addressing these problems that we often encounter. The content of this article is based on a lot of practical experience we have gathered over the last two years of work in social media optimization strategies for our clients.

Why Social Media?

The main reason why all companies interested in internet marketing should focus on social media.

Social media is the fastest growing category of Internet marketing in terms of attracting new users. For example, Facebook has over 250 users and Facebook users log on daily 120M. Therefore, the previous design was that the social media generation and high school and college, the reality is that two thirds of Facebook users are outside college and the fastest growing segment of the population 35 years and more. (Source: http://www.facebook.com/)
Social Media allows you to establish a relationship with their customers like no other media has already authorized. Lets you establish a relationship that is receiving regular information on how customers 1-1 react to your marketing messages
Social Media offers an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your market. The use of blogs, twitter, etc. can help you establish yourself as an expert at your destination. People like to buy as well as experts monitor experts on their blogs, tweets etc.
Consumer reviews, and user-generated content is still dominated by the view of the hotel's owner, social media. Even if the consumer reviews are absolutely critical, and a potential gold mine for running a smooth operation of hotels, social media extends well beyond estimates of consumers' of a number of other social media channels.
Last but not least, Social Media Optimization is the next generation of internet marketing. Search engines give more importance to the business combined with the various social media channels, resulting in higher rankings in search engines.

Now that we have made a strong argument for why you should invest in social media, the obvious question that appears is the way it should go about Social Media Optimization.

How Social Media Optimization?

This section of the White Paper deals with the different social media strategies that can be approved hotels. In our experience, we found two classes of hoteliers - are those who are interested in dabbling in social media, but are worried about too much time and investment needed to handle it, and the second class, who are aggressively go out and invest in social media get mover advantage. We suggest two different strategies for each of these categories.

Social Media Starter Kit

These strategies work well for hotels that do not currently have a social media strategy and wants to dive into social media without a significant investment.

The main objectives of the social media of these hotels may include:

User-generated content channels - Trip Advisor. If your monitor is not the most effective channel, and determine the most influential channels (where many visitors arrive)

Facebook profile
Twitter Profile
YouTube video channels
Flickr profile picture
Myspace Profile
A blog page to write your articles and views

The hotel can configure each of these channels on their own, without outside help, or, alternatively, they may use an outside agency or consultant. Regardless, here are some points to remember while creating channels:

The pipes must be labeled with appropriate keywords
Connecting to the channels back to the hotel's website and vice versa
Interlink channels so that the hotel enjoys a fruitful interaction between the channels. There are applications and plug-ins available, which can be associated with a single channel. Benefit of connection is that "a new special offer", a message will automatically appear on your blog on Facebook and Twitter. All photos posted on Flickr automatically appear on your Facebook account and a MySpace page.

Advanced Social Media Strategies

Hotels that have already dabbled booster cable and strategies of social media I've seen some success using these strategies, you can take a more aggressive strategies and deeper into the world of social media. One of our previous articles, "Social Media Optimization strategies of lodging industry," we were discussing the advanced social media strategies. We share the view of social media in 7 different categories in the table below.

Use the following link to see how to perform advanced optimization social media across multiple social media channels.

Track your return, we have experienced all the strategies described in this article, and found a large increase in the rankings hotel search engine and online resources. There are two different levels where you can measure the success of your optimization strategies social media:

Measuring Social Media Buzz
Returns measurement - leads site assessment and revenue

Although the above two points are related, there are different mechanisms to measure the two goals.

Track Your Social Media Buzz

Milestone recently Social Media Monitoring tool eBuzz Connect to see how social media channels you a buzz. There are several tools which are available on the market. These tools can say what you say about yourself on different channels, views, viewing photos, etc., and compare the performance of a month for over a month if social media strategies are effective or not. For example, you can follow a number of videos viewed per month by month, or follow the Facebook fan a month after month, and decide which social media strategies are effective to produce a buzz around the hotel. A further advantage of these tools is that it provides a single interface for all the social media monitoring.

ROI Tracking

The ROI of social media channels are harder to follow the buzz created by vs channels. The reason for this is that the conversion of social marketing efforts of the media are on different social media channels - for example, will be a customer book a hotel website or by telephone, although they found the hotel on Facebook or Twitter. The best mechanism to monitor the conversion of social media channels, the son of extent (site traffic) generated by social media channels. This can easily be done using simple analysis tools for websites. In addition, you can determine how many visitors from social media channels went into your booking engine. Use your conversion rate, you can get a good estimate of the ROI of your social media channels.

A secondary measure of the effectiveness and ROI of your social media strategy is to look at the impact of social media optimization on the results of your search engine. For example, when you write your hotel name in the search engines, you will find that after the first two lists should be your hotel website search engine page displays the results of the third variety of affiliate sites party. Aggressive optimization with social media, you should see the results of universal search will help your hotel social media dominate the pages of search results. This ensures that all tracks come directly to you and is also an indicator of the recognition of your search engine overall is increasing.

Many opponents argue that the media until the actual performance can be determined, the channel can be effective. Although the above techniques are less objective than the extent of conversion of ads paid search advertising or banner, the mechanisms above hotels are a pretty good idea of the efficiency and effectiveness of campaigns social media. As technology advances so, we are sure there will be ways to measure the effectiveness of social networks more accurately. The big question for us is whether the hotels to wait until then, when many of our competitors are ahead of the curve or what we invest today in the media that relates to the future of Internet marketing.