Social Media = Conversations with #Hotel Guests

Social conversations help differentiate your hotel + the positive advantages of your locale expertise.  Most hotels are using social media just to push out sales messages.  Smart hoteliers use social to engage guests in conversation - prior to stay, in destination (key = mobile users on Facebook), poststay.

This brief presentation highlights best content mix....relevant for guests + shareable to THEIR social networks.

I thank Corentin ComBalbert for putting it together.

How to Recognise Potential #Bloggers and #Influencers for Social Media Purposes?

How to Recognise Potential Bloggers and Influencers for Social Media Purposes?

Well first of all what are “potential bloggers” and “influencers”

The internet is full of comments, recommendations, legends and myths, too much information we can get overwhelmed and the most important which one is true or reliable?

There are couple of people out there, who are very active in blogs and social media this true influencers drive action not just awareness, as said by - Jay Baer
+Jay Baer 

They are the ones who can move the internet world in good or bad ways

You want them, because normally consumers will trust more third parties recommendations than your own, they will believe it more they will be curious and get engaged with the information you provide and ultimately with your own brand, you will attract not just your audience but their audience too.

There are couple of things to consider before considering a potential blogger/influencer and publishing their posts

• Monitor Social Media

  Who is there talking about your niche? if you are talking about paris look for them in your own social

• Research Hashtags

  Is the best way to get visibility and to see how popular is the subject you are searching for; this places are awesome to find and manage hashtags, plus you can find your right blogger here: hashtagify.me Hashtagify.me RiteTag,  Tagboard
• +Tatiana Kochergina (hashtagify.me) +RiteTag +Tagboard 
• 
  
  
  
  

• Read

  Read through their posts of your potential bloggers to determine if they write about relevant post topics that can compel your audience, are they fun? are they too serious? are they original? are they visually attractive! remember pictures and video attract more than long same format reading.

• Reliable Source

Do they have any degree or specialization in what they are talking about? Better they do! also, if they have been talking about that for years probably they already have some good knowledge about it

• Often Posting

Internet and the world itself is moving extremely fast, loads of information get to our hands in seconds, so if you are looking for a post try them to be as up to date as possible.. Information changes and updates constantly.

If we don’t consider these couple of questions before posting to our social we can be giving wrong information to our guests or customers, that will lead to bad reputation from our company, or website, confusion and anger, leading to bad events like: they will never get back to you and your audience will drop, dramatically… forever…

+Pinterest, parfait pour les #hôtels

+Pinterest est aujourd'hui l'un des médias sociaux le plus utilisé au monde. Lancé en 2010 par Ben Silbermann, un ancien de Google, l'a société est aujourd'hui éstimé à plus de 3 milliards de dollars .

26 données clefs à propos des utilisateurs de Pinterest 

What is #new on #twitter

What is new on twitter from OmayraMurguiaRomero

Buffer and Feedly- Powerful Curation Tagteam

Any individual or organization who regularly publishes content online will benefit from these tools.

Feedly

Feedly is a media reader that allows users to follow their favorite blogs, news, and other publications. Feedly's simple data stream is extremely user-friendly. Look at all of your streaming content at once or filter it with customized categories.

My barebones homepage with bold headlines that say it all.

If you're on the search for new content, switch over the the +Add Content tab and search by category or enter a URL directly into the search bar.

I'm always looking for inspiration, thanks Feedly!

Once you have found life changing content you can share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, (and more if you pay a monthly fee for the Feedly Pro account) by just clicking a button on the Feedly toolbar.

Check out this popular video tutorial by Johnny Beirne for even more information. It is a little dated so Feedly has since updated their interface, but it is helpful nonetheless:

Buffer App
Before you sign up for Feedly and end up frustrating all of your friends and followers because you are excitedly oversharing, get Buffer. The amazing sharing scheduler that allows you to decide when your content is published.

Don't worry about posting at the same time everyday, Buffer does it all for you.

Post directly to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, app.net or Google+ or upgrade to Awesome Buffer and 'connect up to 12 social networks at once'.

Here is SocialScoop's Buffer App tutorial:

The browser extension is great if you want to Buffer content on the fly but Feedly generally leads me to all of the content I could possibly need and more.

Happy hunting! Do let me know if you find anything interesting.

LinkedIn University Pages helps you choose a school

Going through thousands of brochures to choose a school is not easy. They all show the same thing: everybody happy, with their books under a beautiful tree... C'mon, we all know what really matter when choosing a college: PARTIES! Ok, just kidding. Although parties are important, what really matters in a school is what you are going to do after it. Where are you going to work, what are your chances to succeed and which fields of study each school has as a strong point.

Thinking about that, LinkedIn announced last Monday, August 19,  the global launch of the University Pages, a service with pages of universities around the world that aims to help users decide which college to attend. The profile of universities will be more than just a page with institutional information and news. Universities will be able to ask questions and get to know the future students (and vice versa).

The tool also will provide easy info through various filters and statistics collected from the data of former students of these institutions that have a LinkedIn profile.

The blue bars indicate in which field or in which company the
former students are working in.

Within the pages of each university it will be possible to see what kind of leaders the school "creates", see which institutions are more focused on which goal (for example: universities with economics courses more focused on the financial market), contact with students and alumni for more information and filter results by location, company, industry and lknow which skills the former students have acquired throughout their professional careers.

The page also displays the profile of successful alumni in the institution (did you know that Eric Shuster, founder of Intel went to the University of Phoenix?), the user's friends who graduated at the site and a list of schools with similar profiles worldwide. The search also helps find people who studied in the same university in the same period from the user and shows indicators on where the majority lives and works today. Almost creepy right?

Because of this, LinkedIn is preparing a change in its terms of use. From September 12, the social network will allow people from 13 years to build their profile on the site - until then the use was restricted to people over 18 years - so they can use the service on the years before actually going to the University.

See the video published by LinkedIn with some tips.

By @TaciOneGlobe - follow me!

e-LOGO

Thesis 2012 – A Direct Booking Strategy for Independent Hotels

Article copied from my personal blog

Generating revenue has become a real challenge for independent hoteliers, since OTAs’ online visibility has increased, and since they have raised the commissions requested to hotels.

The solution for hotels would be to limit dependence on OTAs, and increase direct bookings. However, independent hoteliers have limited marketing and communication budgets. In addition, they have trouble remaining visible on the Internet. Google indeed seems to favor 3rd parties’ presence, and recently changed its criteria to rank websites in its search engine.

Independent hoteliers feel helpless, in a compromising situation for their business, which raises the following question: “How Independent Hoteliers can increase direct bookings and therefore revenue, through a strategic use of Google, while limiting dependence on Online Travel Agencies?”

This paper was conducted with the collaboration of Liz Craig, CEO of Oneglobe Network (a web-marketing agency for independent hotels).
The strategy being more efficient if well adapted and personalized to independent hotels' needs and requirements, feel free to contact Oneglobe Network or me directly for more details about the strategy.

Thesis - A Direct Booking Strategy for Independent Hotels from emmalba

How Independent Hoteliers can Increase Direct Bookings and therefore Revenue, through a Strategic Use of Google, while Limiting Dependence on Online Travel Agencies? by Emilie Alba is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Better than Pinterest...

Travelers' Behavior on Social Media Confirms the Trend towards the DISCOVERY of brands and products

Statistics show that social media influences online travelers in their decision-making process.

As a result, "40% of travel companies now rate social media as increasingly important in connecting tourists with their business."

Every Independent Hotelier should be aware of the emerging discovery trend among online travelers. Many of them now first discover brands and products on social media, and then make search based on specific keywords on search engines.

ex: California Boutique Hotel San Francisco

The following statistics demonstrate this trend:

- After browsing social websites, 52% of travelers made changes to their original plans.

- 52% of travelers search social media to find vacation ideas.

Source: Tnooz

To finish, the discovery trend can also be justified by the social development of well-known companies like Facebook and Airbnb. Facebook indeed launched a "Want" button, and Airbnb created a "Wishlist", and recently released  "neighborhoods" in order to improve the online consumer experience by enhancing the "discovery" process on their platforms.

Second Screen Experience

Golden Age of Televison meets Social Media by Second Screen Application

We are in a "golden -age of television" with all these channels and programs at hand. To profit the most from this opportunity try a second screen application for a greater engagement through social media.

Discover our selections for Second Screen Applications!

GetGlue

Check what people say about the program you are actually watching. You can see what your friends are watching, and receive recommendations. You can also unlock stickers and rewards for discounts at major entertainment companies.

IntoNow

An application to complete your television watching experience by sharing on social media directly.  Ask questions if you don't understand the film, read music analysis, get the latest sport news, all in one, IntoNow

Boxfish

Boxfish builds index to all that has been said on TV channels and it is used as a new layer of discovery for TV channels. It s a live guide for tablets and replaces the ordinary TV guide. Thanks to Boxfish the TV experience has been transformed into a dynamic source of real time information at any platform. Once at Boxfish site, look for something, like type the name OBAMA and you can see on which channel , at what time this topic has been raised.

.

#WifiWork session @Starbucks Saint-Lazare

Dear FMKRS, 

Today we went to a traditional Starbucks in Saint-Lazare because we craved for muffins and donuts!!

{By the way, talking about Starbucks, have a look at their "Make your own Frapuccino" website, I tried and it's funky!! Guess which flavours I chose? :-) }

Below are the platforms we discovered and talked about altogether:

• Social Bakers provides us with statistics from all the social media platforms in various categories; you should definitely have a look at it, it’s really well organized, quite complete and easy to search inside!

• Flipboard, Your Social Magazine, is a mobile application that some of us already know and use; interesting platform, where you can organize the content you want to receive, and it's easy to share any information from the app to your own social networks profiles! // Google currents is a similar mobile application - meaning you take your feeds everywhere with you!

• Veooz is useful for people wanting to know about trendy words. It could be seen as a competitor of Google Trends but the difference is that the content in Veooz directly comes from social media and networks.

• Click to tweet is a tool that I have been using for several days, it's really easy and fast! Just write your message in the big box on the main page, generate the link and send it, share it as much as you want, and when people click on it, they can directly tweet out what you wrote!

• Pay with a tweet is also a really interesting twitter derivative - brands can increase their visibility by giving documents away (songs, pictures, factsheets for hotels for example, etc.) if people just tweet that this brand enabled them to get this item for free! I'll try to embed it on my blog next time, stay tuned!

• Shift: kind of internal network for companies – we’ll have a closer look at it, but if you have already tried it, please let us know how you feel about this platform! Related to this topic, here is an article about the Top 10 Social Entreprises Tools.

• This article provides information about the use of the Facebook Want button: it says that when the want button was first thought of, the final goal was that people would buy what they “wanted”. But it’s actually not working like this – kind of The Fancy, you can fancy or want things, but people usually don’t buy it. 

And you, would you actually buy something that you "Want" on Facebook, or would you just "Want" it to build nice visual collections on your timeline?

In short: a great sunny day with the view on the beautiful Concorde Opera Paris and Saint-Lazare train station!

Stay tuned for next week wifiwork session!

@CJuppet

NYT - Artisanship + Meilleurs Ouvriers de France

A wonderful article in Sunday's New York Times, by @AnnMahNet, captures the essence of the art of artisanship.  In France,  recognition of specialists' savoir-faire is public as individuals are awarded title of Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, by the Ministry of Labor.  The title is a source of pride as well as a  responsibility to assure continuance of tradtional metiers.

I was struck by a quote from the Master Baker:

At his bakery in Boulogne-Billancourt, a Paris suburb, Mr. Morieux selects all ingredients himself, visiting artisanal mills to create his own blends of flours. “The ingredients of a baguette are not expensive,” he said. “What’s expensive is the transformation. The savoir faire is priceless.”

The same hold true for Social Media making communication + interactions meaningful is art of transformation. When so many of the key ingredients are free/inexpensive (Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc.), the transformation savoir-faire can get lost.

What is your take?

Full article here.

Airbnb a Perfect Example of Web User Experience Optimization

Also posted on my own blog - Market My Room

A few days ago, I have been surfing Airbnb's website to look at the types of accommodation they were offering.
I ended spending the entire evening on Airbnb.com because I was impressed by their efforts in optimizing the web user experience.

My analytical mind drove me to analyze each part of the site, and I noticed that Airbnb gathers in one site, the strengths of online lodging providers and social media in terms of user experience, namely:

- a search system similar to "Hotel-Friendly" OTAs

- a "photo gallery" design similar to Online Travel Guides

- a social platform similar to Pinterest's boards

- and much more

Knowing who drew its inspiration from whom does not matter, what really matters is the result !These features on Airbnb provide web users with a fully optimized online experience because they make its products and services unique.

I therefore highly encourage independent hotels and serviced apartments companies to take Airbnb as an example, because they have understood how important it is to search what users really need, desire and expect... And provide them with better products and services than they expect.

Airbnb - a fully optimized web user experience from oneglobeddih

Topsy - The Twitter Search

Dream It Alive or Not?

First Steps to Get Your Hotel Visible Online

Dedicated to hoteliers, this paper is the first part of a complete guide that will help hotel marketers to review the online presence of their hotel.

These first steps were made in the objective to help hoteliers figure out the importance of an optimized online presence.

It briefly shows the direct consequences that an inappropriate use of social media sites and Google's tools, along with a never updated website can have on the revenue of the hotel.

This paper is also an extract of my thesis about "The Online Competition between Hoteliers and OTAs". You will be able to find (in the near future) more similar research papers on my recently created blog: http://marketmyrooms.wordpress.com/

Read the presentation below

Guide 1 for Hoteliers - First steps to get your hotel visible online from oneglobeddih

Relationship between revenue management and social media management / reputation managment

Open publication - Free publishing - More pricing