Posts Tagged ‘hospitality social media’

Building effective social media messages

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Messaging is probably the most important element to any marketing and communications campaign, as it represents the core of your PR strategy.

Building the right message is easier said than done in the era of social media, when so much is shared and often times distorted.

Growing up in Athens, my grade school friends and I used to play a game called “broken telephone,” where the first in line would whisper a word to the person next to them and so on.  By the time the communication reached the last person, usually with 6-8 kids playing, the word had changed completely!

It’s a similar concept with messaging for a business.  You want to ensure the proper channels are in place to carry the message forward by keeping it intact:

- Strategize by prioritizing what properties of your message you are willing to lose as the message is shared, and shared again.  With FB and Tw, you expect anything you post to be fair game and go viral.  Know in advance what you want people/fans/followers to talk about and what types of conversations you would like to see on social media.

- Choose the right media for your message.  This is a no brainer, especially when you know what social networks work best for you.  Take the time to research if LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube is best.  They may all work, or only one.  Maybe even none.  You need to make sure before you send posts out to the digital space

- Choose the right professionals to build your message.  Message builds content these days.  Period.  If you don’t have content, you can’t share it, no one can talk about it, and web traffic dwindles.  Keep the buzz going with the best professionals who understand your industry and know how to manage your expectations. 

- Expect that social media will keep changing, and so your message has to be multifaceted.  Keep several angles attached to your message so you can refresh it with new contect and conversations.  The more angles you can come up with, the better story you will be able to share with the right people.

It’s important to know that building a message takes time and is a strategic communications process that will evolve with the objectives and goals of your client’s business.  Being flexible as a PR person and making changes where necessary is helpful and can lead to success in the long term.  Since messaging enhances branding, it makes sense to invest in a long term approach that will yield high ROR and ROI.

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Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, Integrated Marketing Communications, Media Relations, PR, Top Accommodations, social media | No Comments »

Hotel PR: pitching bloggers in 2010 and beyond

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

About eight years ago we saw a few small hotel bloggers make their debut online, talking about properties, where to stay, amenities to rave about, room categories to avoid and so forth.  A great example of a hotel blog that started hyperlocal in Boston and grew enormously in the past decade is friend Mark Johnson’s HotelChatter. 

Between then and today, there are myriads of bloggers on the internet writing up anything from favorite hotel roundups, and top 10 destinations, to exposing bed bug infested hotels and other popular topics relating to the travel industry.   As PR people we already know there are some bloggers that have impeccable ethics, and others not so much.  It’s up to us to decide who to pitch to.

Without assigning blame to anyone, how do you pitch bloggers in the new decade?  Earlier on, it was easy because bloggers did not have the prestige they have today.  These days, bloggers are well respected writers, often times editors of high-end publications that are no longer in business.  Many senior level writers have left magazines and newspapers to start their own blog and online presense. 

The travel/hotel blog boom is still going strong.  Pitching bloggers is getting harder.  Crafting a clever angle is more important than ever.  Establishing relationships with the bloggers takes more time now than it used to.  It’s all online too, you have to follow them on Twitter, comment of their FB posts and show interest in their content.  It’s a new process that PR people have to embrace when pitching bloggers for hospitality clients (and all clients, for that matter).

One thing is relatively unique for writers and bloggers in the travel and hospitality industry:  they don’t leave it!   So, happy pitching!

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Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, Integrated Marketing Communications, Media Relations, PR, Top Accommodations, social media | 1 Comment »

Hotels: information overload and reputation management

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

I was talking to Ann Manion yesterday, a highly regarded hospitality consultant, who focuses on hotel reputation management with her new company Hotel Advantage.  She and I were on the phone for nearly an hour talking about independent hotel trends as it relates to PR, content, messaging and the complex world of maintaining an excellent reputation in a rich media world. 

We both have similar perspectives on hospitality, though practice different areas in communication.  We touched on several topics and found that it isn’t easy to manage a hotel’s reputation, especially when the property is independently owned and managed.  It takes a dedicated effort to respond properly to anything from horrific reviews, poorly positioned articles, and bad blog posts that unfortunately GMs have no control over in a social media environment.  As the old saying goes, when you can’t control what happens around you, you can still control your reactions (or ”freactions” as I like to call them).

Sometimes hotels take poor reviews very personally, and it’s tempting to lash out and become defensive on a response post on TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.  While a response is the right course of action, it should be well thought out and positioned in a constructive way.  Chances are you may lose the guest who had a negative experience anyway, but the way you respond will speak mountains to those potential guests who read the thread for years to come. 

Ann had some excellent points on hotel reputation management via social media media, and how important it is to train the right staff to guard a hotel’s message.  Keeping things viral isn’t enough, it is about maintaining quality in the overall social media marketing strategy.  Right now, there is still too much information out there on the web that should be shaken out.   

And unfortunately, there are still many independent hotels who don’t feel ready to grasp the opportunities social media can offer in the travel and hospitality world.   However, the more hotels understand the concept of content quality in the social media sphere, the more hotels will be apt to give it a try. 

I believe that the ones who have created a social media strategy (and actually followed through with it), even as a simple means to market their message, have not looked back.

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Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, Integrated Marketing Communications, Media Relations, PR, Top Accommodations, social media | No Comments »