Social Media for Hotels: Filling Rooms with Facebook

The hotel industry has changed dramatically over the past decade, first with the introduction of online booking sites such as Expedia.com, then with the increased popularity of review sites such as TripAdvisor.com and now with social media.

Step Ahead Inc. demonstrated the power of social media for hotels with a group of Myrtle Beach area hotels, for whom we managed all Facebook pages and a single Twitter account for the group. The results we saw over time were astounding including dramatically increased web traffic, revenue in excess of $14K per month directly trackable to social media and an ability to handle some 15-20 major customer service issues per month.

We were able to increase Facebook friends from just a few hundred in 2009 to over 47,000 for all pages together by early 2011. We turned their pages into a source of helpful information about theMyrtle Beacharea, literally turning each Facebook page into a virtual “front desk” for the hotels. People loved it.

The Power of a Review

Facebook, it turns out, is a place where people feel very comfortable sharing positive and negative reviews. We saw lots of positive reviews on theMyrtle Beachpages and the occasional negative review, as well.

Some argue they don’t want a Facebook page, so as to avoid negative reviews, but people will share them whether you want them to or not. If they’re on your own page, at least you can monitor and respond to them. If they get posted somewhere else in Cyberspace, if you don’t have an active online monitoring service in place, you’re likely to miss it and it could easily spiral out of control.

Positive reviews, on the other hand, are a great selling point for your hotel, and can help sway potential customers. We found that often when someone said something negative about the hotel, other people would come to the defense without us even asking. What a powerful testimonial!

Beyond 9-5

A big key to successfully managing social media for hotels is being present outside of office hours and that means more than scheduling posts outside those hours. You have to be on and engaging.

If someone posts a complaint or negative review, you need to respond within a couple of hours max. Twenty-four hours is a lifetime in the world that is social media.

Also, don’t forget that people are very active on Facebook over weekends and holidays, often more so than during the week. That’s the time when they tend to be planning trips, doing research and booking hotel rooms. If you’re not on, you’re missing a key chance to engage your prospects.

This constant monitoring may seem tedious, but when you make your Facebook friends feel special and important they become even more loyal brand ambassadors and return visitors.

Social Media as a Money Maker

Who says you can’t make money on social media? Hotels who offer online booking certainly can and we proved it!

In early 2011, Facebook was averaging $14,000 per month of bookings for this hotel group directly trackable to Facebook and Twitter. This more than covered their social media fees, making social media a very profitable endeavor for them indeed.

Keep in mind, this number only includes direct traffic to their website, not phone calls from Facebook or Twitter friends. They did not have a tracking system in place to track phone calls that may have been generated from a visit to their page and we can only imagine how many of those originated on Facebook.

Traffic, Traffic and More Traffic

On a monthly basis, the Myrtle Beach Facebook pages were sending more than 5,000 visits to the websites, making Facebook one of their top referring sites.

We also noticed that the quality of traffic sent to the sites was very high, with a lower than average bounce rate and people stayed on the sites longer than average.

An important thing to note here is that in order to get the traffic and get the booking, your Facebook page should be made up of friends who are the right target, not just anyone you can get to click “like”. We take a very targeted approach to building a friend base and we believe that’s critical to generating these dramatic, measurable results for our hotel clients.

Social media has become a must-do marketing strategy for hotels, enabling them to be more effective at customer service, generate more revenue by providing followers with information for booking online and a way to get more eyes on your hotels as people research where they want to stay. Take a dedicated, consistent, targeted approach to social media and see if you don’t see your results from social media take a sharp turn upward.

Social Media News of the Week: July 4, 2011

This short holiday week was full of announcements! Facebook unveiled video chat powered by Skype! That’s a great idea for Facebook, because now you are able to increase your communication with friends all over without ever leaving the social network. Company pages can’t communicate with their “likers” yet but it’s just a matter of time before that’s an option and I’m sure video ads will be in the future as well!

What you might not know or remember is that MySpace released Skype-powered calls many moons ago in 2007! It’s funny how things don’t seem as cool when someone other than Facebook does them. In this case, many people just think Tom and MySpace were ahead of their time, considering Skype didn’t have the video option quite yet.

Google also released their Facebook competitor, Google+, and it’s getting rave reviews from early adopters and the social media glitterati! Here are 10 testimonials from those who are already registered courtesy of Mashable. We’re giving it a go here at Step Ahead and will have a blog next week detailing our thoughts.

I’m leaving you this week with a few questions: Did anyone follow Obama’s Twitter Town Hall? If so, what were your thoughts? Did anyone else religiously follow the TV show “The Voice” like I did? If you did, then you won’t be surprised that they snagged the title of “most social TV show in June”!

Final question: Who misses 4th of July already? I certainly do mainly because I love fireworks. If you love them like I do, here are a few great Twitter images from Independence Day!

Social Media Day: Round Two

Yesterday was the 2nd annual Social Media Day, and for all of us in the social media marketing field it’s nice to have that recognition. I (personally) spend the majority of my life in Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and writing blogs so it was nice to actually get out from behind the computer and be social!

This year we held our get together at Uno Mas in Mount Pleasant, keeping to our Mexican food theme (last year was at Taco Boy)! We had a great turnout, great food and even better happyritas!

Thank you to all those who came and a big thanks to Dine with Sal and everyone at Uno Mas for hosting the party! Here at Step Ahead we’re already looking forward to next year.

*** For more pictures visit our Tumblr account!

Social Media News of the Week: June 27, 2011

This was a great week for social media mainly because yesterday was Social Media Day (be sure to check out our Social Media Day Charleston event)! Other than that, Google announced their own social network Google +, Twitter lost their co-owner, Biz Stone, and so much more!

On Tuesday, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced that he is going to be focusing on other projects and step out of the “twit-light”. Dick Costolo, CEO of the social network, will stay front and center with the company.

Facebook is having to deal with the Winklevoss twins again who are back, now asking the Boston court system to look into their case. When will these guys take a hike? Google is not taking a hike either as they announced their Facebook competitor Google +. I’ve taken a brief look and I’ll admit it’s pretty cool. I don’t think people will just jump off Facebook and join Plus but you just never know! What do y’all think about Google Plus?

On a side note, I swapped my Droid for an iPhone, so the new Tumblr app 2.0 is amazing! And, I still can’t understand what Justin Timberlake sees in MySpace to have bought in but I guess he might just surprise me!

Oh yeah, and Step Ahead joined Tumblr this week, so check us out and follow us!

Holy Twitter!

We all know that if you want to stay connected online with friends or colleagues, the place to do it is through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and other social media tools. But what about staying connected to your church? Or the Pope?

On March 14, the rumors were confirmed that a Facebook profile had been created in honor of the late Pope John Paul II. The Vatican launched JPII’s page as a part of their social media initiative to create an online presence for the Catholic Church. Now, another Pope has decided to create his own social media presence.

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI made history by becoming the first Pope to utilize Twitter by sending a tweet with his iPad to promote the Vatican’s new website. The tweet said “Dear Friends, I just launched News.va. Praised by our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI”

Although Pope Benedict may be new to social media, the Catholic Church is not. With more than 40,000 followers and some 1,200 tweets, The Vatican’s Twitter account is thriving along with the launch of their new interactive website.

News.VA is a mothership of real-time information for the Catholic follower. It’s comprised of the latest news from The Vatican Radio (with plenty of social media sharing options for readers), a real-time Twitter feed, a Vatican Events page, a Facebook updates section and a YouTube video channel.

This past year, the Catholic Church has truly brought religion into the realm of social networking. With this “old school” institution embracing and understanding the importance of new media, it seems that online networking has no limits. If the Pope can tweet, well so can you! No more excuses…

Social Media News of the Week: May 15, 2011

If you’re like me at all and support a local non-profit, then you’ve probably been bombarded with requests to vote for that organization and tons others to win a Chase Community Giving grant. I attended a webinar several weeks ago about social media and non-profits and the partnership between Facebook and Chase is creating great strides in this area. Facebook took this one step further this week by setting up a non-profit resource center.

The site will educate non-profits how they can use social media to spread awareness and generate funds. I’m personally excited to check this page out and hopefully take away some useful information! Even with all the good that Facebook is doing they can’t seem to escape negativity all together. The Winklevoss twins are back and they’re taking their lawsuit to the Supreme Court.

Other big news came to LinkedIn this week when they announced that they are worth $8.9 billion! That makes them worth more than JC Pennys, Chipotle and Tiffany & Company. All this means is that LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is a very rich man. LinkedIn going into public exchange means Hoffman will net around $855 million, not too shabby, eh? LinkedIn will be the first purely social media site to go public, but I’m guessing they will not be the last!

What are your thoughts?

Social Media News of the Week: April 18, 2011

It’s time for this week’s social media recap and I wanted to start by saying Happy Birthday to Facebook’s “like” button. It’s been a huge first year for you and I wish you much success in your second year! I also want to give Foursquare a huge shout out for a successful Foursquare Day this past Saturday.  The geolocation app scored over 3 million check-ins on Saturday and I’m proud to be one of those!

Other news this week: Twitter could potentially purchase TweetDeck for $50 million from UberMedia.  This is not a total surprise to me since TweetDeck is the most popular third party client on the Twitter platform. There has been some tension in the past between UberMedia and Twitter so it will be interesting to see how this situation all unfolds!

Since I started my blog today with some shout outs that’s how I will end, as well. Shout out to Groupon for partnering with General Mills on a deal that excited every coupon clipper in America! Buyers were able to get $40 worth of General Mills products and a coupon book for only $20!

Final shout out goes to Dream Theater, an amazing band that I have had the pleasure of seeing several times. Mike Portnoy (a phenomenal drummer) decided to call it quits this year and they’re on the hunt to replace him. They’re using Facebook to let their fans know every detail of the selection process, which is important for this band since they have some of the most dedicated fans in the world. Good luck in the selection process, guys, and I wish you all the best of luck!

Social Media News of the Week: 4/11/11

I’m dedicating my blog to the social media winners and losers of the week! I usually have a pretty good overall theme to this weekly blog but the social media world must have been on vacation this week, because there wasn’t too much interesting news popping up. With that said, there were several interesting success stories and a few failures worth calling out!

Let’s start with the losers:

1. The Winklevoss Twins- Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have been after Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for more money — as if their $65 million settlement wasn’t enough! A U.S. appeals court ruled that the previous settlement will stand, basically sending a message to the twins to get over it and move on!
2. Cisco’s Flip- Cisco is putting the Flip video camera to rest and reorganizing their businesses. Current Flip customers will receive news on a transition plan but Cisco will drop the Flip pretty much like a bad habit. Most think that the Flip didn’t do as well as predicted due to the increasing quality of cell phone cameras. I’m personally bummed about this loss but then again maybe I’ll find a sick deal on one in the near future!

And the winners are:

1. Tasti D-Lite- These guys are doing a great job at social media and they’re taking it much further than just being on Facebook and Twitter. They’ve integrated a traditional loyalty program with social media; they’ve taken advantage of locations applications and have come up with creative ways to interact with their customers. You can read more about their social media strategies here, thanks to Mashable.
2. Britney Spears- I’ve been waiting for the day to call Britney Spears a winner again and the moment is finally here. She released her newest album Femme Fatale last week and social media was a large part of its success! If you went to Britney.com last week you saw an opportunity to pre-order the album and then invite your friends to do the same. If you had 10 friends sign up, then you got 20% off the entire Britney catalog of songs. This is a brilliant way for the music industry to finally jump on the social media bandwagon.

Social Media News of the Week: 4/4/11

I have said time and time again that I’m a big fan of location-based apps. Although I forget to check-in most days, I do keep up with all the updates Foursquare, Facebook and many more are making to increase the usability of these applications.

This week I loved reading that the New York public library will invite 500 people for a scavenger hunt using Foursquare. What better way to keep people interested in reading, books and visiting the library then to make it fun and let everyone know they’re keeping up with the times. They are also the first public library to release a Foursquare badge to go along with this promotion!

Finally, this week President Obama announced his re-election campaign not on television or in a public statement but on Facebook. Obama has been known to be up-to-date social media wise but this (personally) was an interesting avenue to make such a large announcement.

Although I love that the United States government is embracing social media, I would like the present and possible future president of my country to make a more personal, live announcement not on his Facebook page which, let’s be honest, an intern or aid runs, not him.

Later this month he’ll also live stream a town hall meeting with Mark Zuckerberg on his Facebook page, and I’ll be watching, will you?

Social Media Synergy

The list of social media tools available to small businesses these days is overwhelming and growing everyday, but that’s not an excuse to ignore all the social media opportunities out there.

Many businesses are on Facebook now and may even be dabbling in Twitter, but if you’re not exploring all the different ways social media can build your business, then you’re just plain missing out. I recently met a small local business owner who was smiling ear to ear as he told me about the success he had with group buying sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial. After hearing about all his new customers, I asked how he intended to spend the rest of his budget. The answer shook me to my core. He said YellowPages! That was it!

Okay, so after regrouping and pulling my jaw up from the floor, I tried to explain that he should try to retain contact with the new customers he gained from group buying with social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, geo-location tools and blogs. He thought that since he had so much success with one tool, there was no point in pursuing others. What??

So why does it really matter if you use just one or several of these social media tools? Well, being on one is a great step for any small business, but as you continue to add different tools, your reach grows exponentially. You’re able to cross promote with different tools and reach more of your target market. Some folks out there will be active on Twitter, but not Facebook, and vice versa. Once you’re active on Twitter and Facebook, you can talk about the interesting posts on your blog, thus driving traffic to your blog and website. It’s a never ending circle of cross promoting and driving that always-important traffic.

That said, there will be certain social media tools that fit your business and others that don’t. Not sure what they are? Just ask us!

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