Social Media Marketing Resolution

Final exam – Digital Marketing

Deborah BomsteinMBA 2A

February 2011

1. Read the entire article linked below – then choose one Resolution that you think would have the most + positive impact on a hotel's internet success -

Why do you feel this particular Resolution is most important – for what types of hotels

The reason: Give users a reason to visit your page

This particular reason is more important because:- Hotels/businesses need to keep the customers attracted by interesting and valuable posts to make sure the guests do not “hide” them – the attracting posts will also attract the fans and develop the audience. - Hotels/businesses need to be creative and post offers that are different than the competitors. - Hotels/businesses need to create events such as meet-up only for the Facebook community or just by suggesting to play a kind of game to win some prizes.

It is also very important because it allows you to see how big the impact is of your posts and offers – seeing the number of your fans growing reassure you that you give good reasons to visit your page.

This resolution is for most of the 2, 3 or 4-star hotels, small hotels or even independent with a limited budget. I would not say luxury hotels as their name and their reputation are already a good reason to visit their page. But it still can be appropriate in a way. But for the hotels listed above, this resolution is important as it will feature their services, give a better visibility, will help to promote efficiently online by also reducing the costs of an advertising campaign, and offer the possibility to interact with their customers.

What additional actions would give that Resolution even greater impact – drive more impressive results

The additional actions that would give a greater impact to the selected resolution are following:

- Creating a different event with a creative venue for the meet-up. Meeting your community is very important. It will help the selected resolution to have a better impact on the number of fans. The meet-up is a good way to also share face-to-face with your fans. It will allow you to create another link and try to develop your business.

- Sharing as much as you can videos – especially your own videos that talk about any interesting topics, about your own expertise. It will help you to build your brand/image further.

- Writing reviews: sharing stories even if you do not talk about your products or services, continue to share by writing reviews about what you bought, where you have been in order to expand your community and reach new “niches”.

- Offering the possibility to download an application for mobile device. It will allow you to be consulted everywhere with a large number of people also. Try to create a simple window that can showcase all you product and services. On the first page, Agoda is

talking about Love and not Like. They definitely try to attract fans - Joining Agoda community will allow the fans to hear first about all the offers.

They define the community by Travel addicts. They let fans participate at 100% in order to feel to be a real member.

Agoda is doing well on Facebook by writing interesting and valuable posts. Offers and possibility to participate to contests are also available on its page. Various posts with a lot of feedbacks.

Agoda has also videos to share about reviews and rewards point competition. Agoda wants to show how its can touch the audience and develop its community.

About Agoda

Agoda totally supports the selected resolution as it contains all the characteristics of a good online company. Agoda shares a lot and write creative posts – it allows the fans to play the game or answer to the quiz. The posts are varied and make sense for all the community. They are not talking to a city or a country in particular.Each follower can answer to the post and get immediate answer by Agoda. On the first page of Facebook, Agoda talks about love and then install a trust between the fan and the company. Agoda shares videos and its own videos. This company is also doing something different: writes blog posts linked to Facebook in order to write reviews about many destinations and in order to let the customers know about these destinations, give their advices, tips or opinions. Agoda is successfully executing this resolution online and even more than this resolution.

About BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas is also supporting well the selected resolution. They are really focusing on offering good deals in order to attract a lot of fans and in order to let the fans talk about it and spread the word. They also create special event dedicated to the Facebook community where you have to show that you are a fan through your mobile device to attend a meet up. BNP community is huge with more than 100,000 fans. The bank is updating its posts very often and make sure to reply to each questions or comments.

Agoda has also a blog in order to write longer posts, write reviews about countries and let the possibility to the fans to post reviews as well.

BNP Paribas can be followed on Twitter and on Facebook. They really adapt the content according to the social media. They also follow interesting users that fans can also follow. On Twitter and Facebook they are talking about good deals to attract the customers and to create a trust.

Their posts are attractive and only applicable for Facebook fans. It makes the community even bigger when you know that prizes are waiting for you. The meet up is a good way for BNP to show their new services in a new store and attract the customers by winning prizes.

BNP replies to each question to make sure that they are not only selling something – they also want to create a community and share as much as they can.

BNP is also promoting good deals, good offers to ask the followers to « like » if they want to be the first who know about the good deals.

Expatriate Lifestyle Magazine is creating his own online community through Facebook. Like the other sites, the magazine is also suggesting to the followers to participate to competition to win a getaway or any other prizes.

Expatriate Lifestyle is also asking open-question in order to get ideas and opinions of its followers.

The magazine replies to each comment to interact with its fans.

Expatriate Lifestyle is sharing all its pictures and tag the people on the picture. It can allow the fans and the tagged people to share more with their friends and spread the word about the creative events.

The magazine is creating events quite often and shares the venues and all the details on Facebook. It allows the followers to ask questions about the invitations and how to get there. The community of expatriate is growing and growing thanks to the events.

About Expatriate Lifestyle

Expatriate Lifestyle is also supported well the resolution that I selected. The magazine develops well information and especially events. It feature photos of each events and tag the people in order to let them follow the actuality on Facebook – and share with their own friends the photos and the experience. Like the two other sites, Expatriate Lifestyle is creating interesting posts and really asks the followers to participate actively to the Facebook page by answering questions. The magazine is also answering to each comment in a friendly way to create a link between the fan and the company.

2. From the article, what role does technology play in a hotel's internet strategy success? If you are an independent, limited budget hotel (or business) what steps would you take to compete effectively online?

Internet is a key factor and plays an important role in a hotel’s internet strategy success. Internet can not be ignored anymore by the companies and they have to play a role on the web in order to develop their images, increase their visibility and reputation, make some more profits and develop a new way to communicate with their customers.

The communication, the link between the fans/followers and the companies have to be stronger and be more developed in order to share even more to extend their brand. Internet allows the hotels to measure the impact that they have on social medias, different networks.Internet never sleeps either the hotel’s exposure on it. Internet has many tools in order to develop the hotel’s image. Every minute a new creative update is posted.

Hotels need to be present everywhere: any social medias, blogs (blogs need to talk about the hotels), any other sites where people can post reviews. The tools on Internet allow the hotels to measure the goals, find the right niche to enlarge the hotel’s community, measure performance and monitor the hotel’s image.

The technology is more than important in order to help the hotels to manage efficiently all the tools to achieve their goals and to establish their success in the long term. Using Facebook and Twitter will definitely encourage fans and followers to visit the hotel page and interact on it. The technology is when you interact on a page, your friends have seen it and can become a fan by sharing the same thing on his page. It can be very fast and more you share information, more you receive feedbacks and more you see the impact of the hotel’s actions on Internet.

The development of mobile device allows the consumers to have a permanent access to Internet and see on real time the information shared by the companies. The information arrives at anytime and the mobile allows it to share even more. This technology definitely makes a huge impact of the hotel’s internet strategy success.

Steps that a limited budget hotel/business or independent would use to compete effectively online are the following:

Set up accounts on social medias and create blogs as much as you can. Create an interactive website and insert all the buttons such as Twitter, Facebook,

Youtube, Flickr…and link your website to all these tools. Be constant in your posts and be creative = make the difference by organizing creative

contests, games…! Show that you are easily reachable in order to let your fans know that you care about

them and by providing the best service that you can. Answer to each post, each negative reviews or feedbacks, try to solve the problem

with the customers in order to show to the other customers that you care about improving your services and products.

Be honest and share your expertise as much as you can to help people. Work with 3rd Party. Make sure to have a high valuable visibility on the search engines such as Google,

Bing.

Share your own videos and photos as much as you can and post it on Youtube, your blog…

Hotel Jardin de Villiers & Etienne Heymann Photographer

An easy way to book with an immediate booking. They also guarantee the best price in order to attract the customers.

Guests have the possibility to follow Jardin de Villiers on a lot of social medias and interact with them.

An easy way to check reviews comments and ranking about the hotel on TripAdvisor.

The hotel is even on Youtube in order to showcase its exterior and interior and share the environment with the people

The hotel has a good referencing as it appears on the first page at the first row – very easy to find for the guests. Good visibility.

Work with 3rd Party for more visibility.

The hotel is available to follow on different social media such as Facebook and Twitter and suggest fans to participate to contest with a win prize, organize events and share a lot of updates with its fans.

The hotel tweets and posts comments. It takes time to answer to each comments in order to interact actively with its fans.

Etienne Heymann is tweeting and posting very often and write interesting posts. He even offers to participate to a small contest with a prize. He also interacts with his fans by answering to each comment.

Social medias: to follow him on 2 different sites (Facebook and Twitter) on the main page of his website. It shows that he shares a lot and tries to interact as much as he can. He wants to install “trust” between his customers and him.

His blog is linked to Facebook in order to let the customers to “like” a blog post or a picture through his blog. He is trying to reach more customers via his blog by telling interesting stories.

This photographer has a blog in addition of his website, Facebook and Twitter. It allows him to share a lot of photos and experiences. His fans/future customers can ask him questions and interact with him very easily.

3. From the Build Your Own Brand video series – what are they KEY elements to online branding, according to Loic LeMeur?

According to Loic Le Meur, the key elements to online branding are:

- Sharing more - and help the people by sharing what you know – share an expertise.

- Creating a community: we should not talk about our products but more about how we can help the people, our community.

- Being present on a lot of social medias: be visible everywhere and also be different on the different social medias: updates as much as you can and be careful of what you share and where: it is not good to use “@...” on Facebook or “Like” on Twitter. Be personalizing and answer to each questions or comments. Tell interesting stories.

- Put these buttons (Facebook, Twitter…) on your site and link your site to these social medias.

- The content needs to be interesting in order to find the right niche.

- Being available for questions

- Most important: use the tools such as “like”, “retweet”, “buzz it” in order to stimulate the audience to answer to the status

- Meet your community and organize meet-up. Create an event and meet your fans that can also invite their friends and then your community can grow. Meeting your fans is also one of the best ways to share more and create a different link with your fans.

- Ask for your fans’ opinion in order to know more about the trend and to question about the new services or the new products that you would like to launch.

- Creating videos and sharing it ! Do not think too much and post it ! - Sharing your presentation

Be a part of the Hyatt

community. Be engaged.

Hyatt answers to all the comments

or questions.

Include photos of the past events

with their followers.

Create events and showcase other events.

On Hyatt main page, buttons to follow them on the Social Medias. Being a

fan and integrate the community.

Suggest the guests to participate to the contest in order to win a prize: the guests need to « like » the page to

participate. They are looking for an engagement.

STA Travel answers to each comments and give advices to any of the fans in order to participate actively to contest or to suggest the page to other friends.

STA Travel asks questions to let

the fans participate.

STA Travel has its own

online community page on its website and

suggests following them

on a lot of different social

medias.

I have selected these examples because they are successfully using the key elements in my view. They are both answering to their fans – they are posting updates very often, they put some photos of their previous events, they also create events.

They also want to create a community: Hyatt who has this slogan on its main page and STA Travel who has a huge page for the online community. And most important they are sharing a lot. Their contents are interesting and they are targeting the right niche for both brands. You can follow them both on a lot of different social medias such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr…These two examples seem very pertinent as it covers all the key elements for a perfect online branding.

4. From the Build Your Own Brand video series – choose any 2 online tools that were mentioned:

Include a text link to each tool

Link to FacebookLink to hotel's blogLink to hotel's blog

Describe how a hotel could use these tools to effectively engage their customers

Facebook and blog are two tools that can definitely engage the customers. For Facebook, the engagement is by:

updating frequently the hotel page in order to share information and suggest new offers or new updates about the hotel itself or its community.

attracting new customers by being creative and offer a unique way of services. organizing contests with prize in order to let the hotel’s fans spread the word to their

friends to capture more customers and to enlarge the hotel visibility. asking the hotel’s fans to participate to its community and share their opinions about a

new services or products that will be launched in the hotel. sharing pictures or videos of events and tag the hotel’s fans. exposing on the hotel website all the buttons (Twitter, Facebook, blog…) in order to

let the customer “like” your hotel and start to be engaged.

The hotel’s blog will help the hotel to have a bigger content and to really expose what’s going on in its community. The blog can have different forms such as “newsletters, questions/answers window, reviews and comments about a topic or about the guest experiences. This blog should be directly dedicated to its customers (current or future).It will allow the customers to leave comments and then the other customers will be able to identify themselves by reading the different stories = they will be a part of the community

The blog can be one of the best solutions to engage customers because the hotel can let them participate actively to the hotel’s life through the blog. This tool can be very effective because you can link your blog to all the other social medias such as Facebook (like I said above),

Twitter (if the hotel wants to open an account there – but it is not my point here), Youtube where you can post videos of anything about your hotel, Flickr or even Google Buzz.

What actions would be needed to put the tools in place, in a hotel?

The action number 1 will be to hire someone who really understand what is online branding, social medias and how to utilize them. This person will need to update effectively the content of Facebook and the blog in order to keep the customers updated and attracted to “be within your community”.

The action 2 will be to create something interesting that can capture the audience and attract the right target. Create an account on Facebook and on wordpress for the blog for instance and link both to the hotel site.

The action 3 will be about creating a good referencing on Google and work with 3rd Party.

The action 4 will be to work actively with all the departments within the hotel in order to know what they would like to share and what they would like to highlight.

The last action will be about how to share all the information internal and external. In intern, the community manager has to let the staffs know about the impact of these tools and invite them to participate to the hotel’s community. In extern, the hotel needs to interact with its customers as much as its can and on a large variety of social medias.

How could the selected tools be utilized across channels

These tools can also be utilized through Youtube for instance by adding videos of events and sharing these videos with a bigger community. Flickr can also be utilized in order to share any picture of the hotel, the services, the facilities and even the guest experiences. The blog can summarize all these new tools in order to cross the information for a bigger impact.

What problems would the use of the selected tools solve

It will solve different problems such as: - reaching more people in the same time- Spread information to the customers who really want to receive this information.- interacting more with the customers: thanks them, be able to answers to their questions and be able to talk to people who give negative reviews or had a bad experience to solve the problem. - Possibility to showcase limited offers very quickly- Being able to measure the hotel impact and its ranking on the web for certain information through Google analytic or tools like Klout.- Being able to show that you care about the guest experiences by taking the time to answer to them and interact through a blog to enlarge the community.

What problems would the selected tools create

The selected tools can create a few problems only such as getting more negative feedbacks or reviews or comments. It can also be a problem to find the right target to the right “niche”.

And the last problem is by giving a lot of information, the hotel shares too much information: the hotel will then “over-share”. The problem for the hotel is to keep the right information in order to be constantly creative and interesting for its fans and its community.

Why did you selected these specific tools

I have selected Facebook because I am convinced that if you utilize it well, it can really help the hotel to develop its community, enlarge its image or its brand for a better visibility. Facebook is the number one with over 500 million users and has a high visibility. I have also selected the blog as it allows to share a lot of things with a large content (not only 140 words maximum for instance), videos, photos that can be linked to all the other tools such as the hotel website first, Youtube, Facebook and so on.

5. Select 5 of of the following terms. Define in your own words – include a screenshot example of each term

Social commerce: Such as Yelp or Blippy – a social commerce website is about sharing what you bought by writing a review and let the people / friends know about this product or service. It also allows the customers to check the reviews before to buy something.

Social Media: All the tools that can allow you to share what you want for any topics or contents with anyone that you want. These tools allow everyone to discuss about something, post any updates, comments about anything, follow the people or the brand that you like and allow to create communities. Social Medias utilize blogs, RSS flux, sharing photos or videos with Youtube, Flickr, sharing on social network as Facebook, Twitter or Myrecyclestuff.com!

Tweets: this term is usually applicable for Twitter. A tweet is a short post of 140 words maximum. It helps you to share your status with the people who are following you. A tweet can be about anything that you want to share with your community.

Location based services: Service that allow you to share with your friends, your community the place where you are – you can also check where are your friends and suggest a meet-up ! It allows people to tell features, get tips and find recommendations left by your friends about the place they were.

Aggregator sites: Help you to centralize all the information you need on one website from different online resources. So you do not need to go on different website to look for the information you want – e.g.: Reviews aggregator sites