Social Media Flow Chart: Blog vs. Facebook vs. Twitter

This flowchart is from my Social Media Strategy eBook. Getting your blog, Facebook and Twitter to work together is a challenge. I think deciding where an idea should go (and just as important, where it shouldn’t go) can be difficult. That’s why I put together this flow chart for deciding on whether your your idea should be blogged, Facebooked or Tweeted. You’ll notice the arrows going from the blog to Facebook to twitter; these mean that what gets posted on your blog can be posted on Facebook which in turn can also be tweeted. Doing the reverse is a bad idea (ever been annoyed by a ton of someone’s tweets in your Facebook news feed?). I’d love to hear your feedback if you have any…

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Expedia on how to grow your ADR without impacting occupancy

In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, Expedia identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. This article uses Manhatten as example, but the observations and recommendations can be applied to any market.

By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York


As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases.
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.

1. Grow your yieldable channels mix
Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole. Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates. In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date. In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.

2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls. Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town. Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy. But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months. By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.

3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf. For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.

4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.

5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.

Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past. As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start. In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy. Reach out and engage your OTA market manager. Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before. Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration.

Social Media revolution

Sidebar Boxes Will Be Removed From Facebook Pages

Facebook has confirmed that the removal of the boxes tab is a sweeping change that will see the disappearance of all profile boxes on the left-hand side of Facebook Pages.

A Facebook spokeswoman told AllFacebook.com: “These boxes will be removed, just as they will be from profiles, and so the page owners will need to move that info to the info page or a custom tab.”
The changes are to take effect the week commencing August 23, along with a new tab width limit if 520 pixels. However, the Facebook Developer Blog and Developer Roadmap were not explicit on the details, so we asked Facebook for some clarification.
We showed them a few examples and here’s what we found out…
Example 1: On the Coca-Cola fan page, the “House Rules” box on the left-hand panel of the Wall tab will no longer be supported.

Example 2: The privacy policy on the AT&T Facebook page – currently in a box on the left-hand side – will no longer be displayed in its current format.

Example 3: The TOMS Shoes Facebook page will keep the image that says “With every purchase. TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for one”. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that this was in a description area rather than a box and would not be going away. She added that Tom’s also had this information on the “Welcome” tab, which was an FBML tab, and would remain.

TripAdvisor launches private-sale site for highly-reviewed hotels

A subsidiary of TripAdvisor has launched SniqueAway.com, a new private-sale site offering special deals at hotels that earn a minimum four-star rating out of five on its review site. The site will be restricted to a limited group of members who will be allowed to invite their friends to take part in the deals.

SniqueAway promises that the deals offered on its site will be offered only to those hotels that earn a minimum four-star rating classification and a minimum four out of five TripAdvisor review rating.
There’s a catch, though: the private-sale site will be restricted to a limited group of members, who will be allowed to invite their own friends to partake of the deals. The site is accepting new members, although there is a waiting list, a site spokeswoman said. Technically, the site is owned by Smarter Travel Media, which in turn is owned by TripAdvisor Media Group and by TripAdvisor LLC.
“We are letting our members decide how big the community becomes, just like we are letting the people tell us which hotels we should feature,” David Krauter, the general manager of SniqueAway, added in an email. “Occasionally, we will let folks off the wait list as well, but access is not immediately guaranteed.”
Get the full story at PCMag.com
Here is SniqueAway.com’s launch press-release:
Smarter Travel Media Partners with TripAdvisor to Launch SniqueAway Private Sale for Travel
BOSTON, September 7, 2010 – Smarter Travel Media, a TripAdvisor Media Group company, launches SniqueAway, where for the first time, private sale meets crowd sourcing approval by creating the first members-only site where each offer is endorsed by the people. All hotels featured on SniqueAway have earned a minimum four-star rating classification (exceptions apply for smaller properties without a star rating) and four out of five review ratings on TripAdvisor. Corresponding hotel reviews are shown alongside limited-time, members- only offers providing a quick view into how other travelers view the hotel making it easy to book a room before they sell out. To build membership, SniqueAway will also rely on the wisdom of the crowd to spread the news, since to be a member, one must be invited by another member. Information on alluring SniqueAway deals at deep discounts can be found at SniqueAway.com and SniqueAway.com/press.
“We‘ve watched and learned and now we‘re ready to party with the players who have proven the private sale model is a winner,‖ said Massimo De Nadai, General Manager for Smarter Travel Media.
Take it from some of the best journalists in the business, the private sale space is getting even hotter:
“Luxury hotels have long aimed for an image of exclusivity — setting prices beyond the reach of most travelers.” (Michelle Higgins, The New York Times) “If you‘re new to the private-sale game, the way it works is that you have to become a member (it‘s free) to view a website‘s sales. Once you‘re in the club, a world of hotel discounts awaits.” (Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times’ Daily Travel & Deals Blog) “They may be the ultimate tool for travelers who want to enjoy luxe for less.” (David Armstrong, TheStreet.com) “For starters, they aim for an image of exclusivity, with ̳invitation only‘ setups and a strategy of preventing their wares from showing up in search-engine results. And they amplify those elements of bargain-focused shopping that some people find fun and exciting.” (Rob Walker, The New York Times Magazine)
“A few years ago Delta Airlines offered surprise getaway fares; every week about midweek the airline would publish a list of destinations and absurdly low prices.” (Jonathan Ramsey, Luxist.com) “Over the past year or two, at least a half-dozen sites have been launched that bring the designer sample sale concept online.” (Carolyn Bigda, David Futrelle, Amanda Gengler, Ismat Sarah Mangla, and George Mannes, Money Magazine) “Visits to a custom category of 17 websites offering Online Flash Sales increased 235% year-over-year for the week ending April 24, 2010.” (Heather Dougherty, Hitwise Webblog)
“The Password is membership.” (Michelle Higgins, The New York Times) “While numerous sites swear numerous oaths about being the finest in sybaritic escapes, as is always the case in these matters, only a few have a worthy insider’s eye on luxury destinations. What’s more, some of them offer insider deals so you can do more with your time away – or maybe do less and feel better about it.” (Jonathan Ramsey, Luxist.com) “The urgency and limited quantities are supposed to stoke desire, and it’s working. Welcome to the sport of private online flash sale shopping.” (Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times) “But hurry – inventory is limited so check upcoming destinations and pick your preferred days before the sale begins.” (Ann Hynek, FOXBusiness.com)
“Hotels like the private sales, which because of the membership requirement, generally don‘t appear in online searches or aggregator sites. This helps maintain the idea of a velvet rope around the deals.” (Michelle Higgins, The New York Times) “Customers like belonging to an exclusive group, and when offered a special deal via a limited-time event, the experience becomes even more exclusive and exciting. The events only run for a limited time and each event has limited inventory, so it is first-come, first-serve.” (Adam Michelson, E-Commerce Times) “Online private sales is a growing business model that is rapidly becoming a staple of online shopping. (They) are quickly gaining millions of users each and attracting significant amounts of venture funding.” (Leena Rao, TechCrunch.com)
“It’s official! Travel ̳sample sales‘ are now a thing.” (JetSetCD, Jaunted.com) “Looking for a hot deal on a hip hotel or luxury resort? What are you waiting for — an invitation?” (Rob Lovitt, MSNBC.com)
Related Link: SniqueAway.com

Top 5 mistakes most hotel social media accounts contain

Social media together with the hospitality industry can make a great pair. Too bad very few hotels actually know how to make that happen. Instead, the hotels’ social media strategies are full of mistakes, which results in countless number of missed opportunities.

No proper signage at the property: Many hotels that have social media presence either hide it in an offline   world on purpose or do so unintentionally. The hotel may have a Twitter and Facebook account, yet when you are staying at the hotel, you would never know. Does it make any sense? No, but it often is the case. Having signs at the front desk, on the flyers, newsletters, feedback cards, receipts etc. would go a long way when it comes to encouraging the existing customers to join the hotels’ social media world. Without the signs, the hotels make the customers dig deep, which is something very few will do.
Doubtful or non-existing widgets on the hotel’s website: Many hotels with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. accounts don’t link them properly to their website. The widgets (small icons) are either not there or hard to notice. Even worse, some hotels don’t even link their social media accounts to the website at all. Talking about hindering your social media strategy.
Let’s copy all other marketing materials: When you look at Four Seasons (twitter.com/fourseasons) for example, all you see are the stiff updates made out of everything you can learn from the website or printed marketing materials. Whoever runs this account doesn’t realize what my Twitter friend, @iconic88, once tweeted: “The power of Twitter is in your sharing, not your selling.” The social media channels are unlike any other marketing channels and have their distinctive advantages, like first-hand contact with existing & potential customers, so copying other marketing messages should be a secondary factor.
Get the full story at OnlineFantastic’s Blog

Marketers Guide to Website Redesign

Keith Moehring is business development manager and consultant at PR 20/20, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Partner. You can follow him on Twitter at @keithmoehring. He also actively contributes to http://www.PR2020.com/blog.
A website is the cornerstone of any marketing campaign. It is the place where customers, prospects, media, competitors, investors, peers and job candidates turn to first when learning more about your organization and its products or services.

Because of this, it’s essential that marketers take a leadership role in any company website redesign project.
To help you avoid any common missteps, we’ve developed a free ebook — “A Marketer’s Guide to Website Redesign.” The ebook details the six main steps involved in the website redesign process, from the perspective of a marketer who doesn’t have a technology background.

1. The Prep

To avoid delays, take the time to gather all necessary information upfront, before it is needed. Items to gather include:

• Analytics tracking codes.
• Logo file in a vector format (i.e. .EPS, .AI, or .CDR).
• Main contact information for current website host.
• Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Center and Yahoo SiteExplorer verification codes.
• Branding guidelines and all relevant collateral documents.

2. Discovery

Collaborate with all website stakeholders (i.e. C-level executives, marketing department, sales department, and IT) to define the most important aspects of your new site, including:

• Buyer personas.
• Site objectives.
• Calls to action.
• Color scheme.
• Page layout and design preferences.
• Site features and functionality.

3. Design & Structure

To help communicate your vision of the new website, develop a comprehensive creative brief, detailing everything you defined in phase two. Your web team will use this as a guide when designing and building out your new site.
At minimum your creative brief should include:

• Graphic sitemap outlining all pages on your site, including main navigation options.
• Page layout and design preferences, with screen shots or URLs of examples.
• Color scheme, including primary, secondary and accent colors.
• Navigation options you want available on the site.

4. Content & Optimization

Visitors don’t come to your site for the cool design or fancy navigation; they come for the content. Develop content that is concise, scannable and engaging. It needs to deliver key messaging quickly and clearly, and then drive visitors to take a desired call to action. To help this content get found, it also needs to be optimized avoid priority keywords.
When developing content, consider the following suggestions:

• Create a keyword map that assigns each page on your site a priority keyword (or two) for which it will be optimized.
• Define the tone and style of your content.
• Assign the development of website copywriting to your team’s strongest writer (avoid using multiple authors).
• Optimize each page after the content has been created.

5. Build Out & Quality Assurance

This is the phase where all your hard work comes to fruition. It includes populating the site with all content, setting up 301 redirects, and completing a thorough review of the site to ensure that everything displays and works properly.
To streamline the upload process:

• Create an upload cheatsheet that will serve as a how-to guide for adding content into your content management system (CMS).
• Before loading content, create all the pages first, and organize them according to your sitemap.
• Upload all images and graphics into a designated folder in the CMS so they are easy to locate when it comes time to add them to a page.
• Put together a team internally to upload all content and formatting into the web pages.
• Perform a quality assurance by checking to make sure all formatting is correct, all links and features work, and that everything displays properly across all browsers.

6. The Launch

Finally, launch the new website and ensure it is being indexed accurately by Google and other search engines. To do this, take the time to:

• Check that all 301 redirects are working.
• Log into each search engine’s webmaster center to confirm all verfication code is installed properly, and then submit your XML sitemap.
• Verify that all analytics tracking code is installed.
• Review Google Webmaster Tools every few days to ensure there are no pages Google had indexed on your old site that it can no longer find.

Porque twitter?

Este video nos explica la esencia de Twitter, y sus usos. Relacionado con el medio empresarial, es una herramienta muy valiosa para conocer los comentarios de los proveedores, clientes y personal de la empresa.

How Sol Melia manages social media

According to Antonio Batanero, senior director distribution and digital marketing, Sol Meliá - The Americas, social media has to be seen as a mix between word of mouth, customer satisfaction, email marketing, CRM, loyalty... and that is what makes social media so difficult to manage.

Should social media be entirely classified as word of mouth strategy?
Word of mouth advertising can be a huge benefit or detriment to a brand, and it is said that social media is literally word of mouth on steroids.
According to Antonio Batanero, senior director distribution and digital marketing, Sol Meliá - The Americas, social media has to be seen as a mix between word of mouth, customer satisfaction, email marketing, CRM, loyalty… and precisely that is what makes social media so difficult to manage for most of the companies.
“It is not clear who should be the responsible (should it be just one?), whom the accountability should fall on and –even more important- deciding upon the right messages,” says Batanero:
Batanero says it is also important to consider each step in the consumer decision path and the moments that most influence their decisions or their touch points; people now go to Facebook or Twitter before booking a hotel the same way they used to go to TripAdvisor. So they will take a look at the photos, videos, comments, etc. but more importantly, they will see if the “language” use by the brand/product is close to the way they communicate with friends and families.
“And at this point, it becomes not just generational but psychographic. Bottom line: word of mouth is friends talking to friends (same language) but in social media word of mouth means people talking to people, brands talking to people, etc. That is what makes channel management and message the two main columns for the social media strategy,” Batanero said.
Batanero spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about organisational issues related to social media strategy:
Using social media in a tactical way, as part of an integrated marketing campaign, is an excellent way to test the waters and begin to see how engagement through social media affects your bottom line. Do you agree with this?
Antonio Batanero: I could not agree more. In fact, it is not just about testing the waters but knowing how your company has been seen in the past and in the present plus taking decisions in order to correct wrong directions. The main benefit of using social media in a tactical way is what would have taken ages to change years ago can now be done in a question of months. For years we have been told to be dynamic as companies but using mostly static tools; now thanks to social media we have access to those dynamic tools. But this may be a double-edged sword.
Most companies are used to tying every aspect of business to an ROI, and currently there are no meaningful financial metrics with social media efforts and that is one of the major challenges with this medium. How do you assess the situation?
Antonio Batanero: We have created our own metrics in order to measure the social media ROI. There are many options that companies can develop to see if the investment (not just in terms of money, but in hours, resources, etc.) is worth it. I always say that not every single company needs to be on Facebook or Twitter. So ROI should be the first step before even thinking on opening an account. Besides those metrics we also have a monthly report property by property where we see what is the volume of comments, which are the most active sites, if there are more positive or negatives comments, which area within the hotel is the most commented, nationalities of the people talking about our hotels, value of the comments depending on where they were posted, if they come from previous clients, no clients, travel agents… we could spend weeks talking about these reports. I really think companies still do not really realise how big this is.
On the other hand, ROI must also be measured by the actions that you take based on customers’ feedback. In other words, if all your fans/followers are giving you tons of feedback on a specific subject of your hotel but you do not do anything to change that in the property, then ROI is extremely negative. If you show people that you care about their suggestions and you are willing to implement them, then… ROI is incalculable.
In many companies, there might not be any social media experts but how can companies nurture internal champion(s) who monitor social media and make it a priority?
Antonio Batanero: Well, I love the companies that have created a position called “Head of Social Media” or similar. That is a big step! In fact, I wish I could start from scratch my career and became one of those “head of social”. Every company should have one (again, just those companies that need social media) since this is no longer about companies reaching customers and has become more customers reaching companies; it is pretty obvious that someone in the marketing departments must be taking a look at what is going on in the social media. These people will be the future social media experts so if you work in a marketing department do not hesitate to claim for that position.
Do you think brands that invested and experimented in this space in 2009, especially during the downturn, are as of now ahead of the curve?
Antonio Batanero: Like in every aspect of marketing, the early bird catches the worm. But more important is how the decision making process has changed since Internet appeared in our lives. For example, it is not the same trying to reach people who are at the beginning of the buying process than reaching those who have already made the decision of buying a product but have not decided yet which brand. Or even those who have decided the brand but have not purchased yet. In a recent report from McKinsey –where they examined the purchase decisions of 20,000 consumers- they analysed the changes from the traditional funnel to the new kind of “circle” process. Turns out that two-thirds of the touch points during the evaluation phase involved customer-driven marketing activities like Internet reviews and friends and family recommendations. That means it is not a matter of being the first but a question of being as dynamic as possible to integrate those touch points within your strategy.
Would it be right to say that traditional online campaigns that are either CPM or CPC based, though familiar, are not necessarily the optimal marketing tactics to use in the social media world?
Antonio Batanero: Social media opens a huge range of metrics that no one used to use before. Creativity is the limit i. e. the ratio of interactions to posts in Facebook (A higher interaction / post ratio indicates that content is more interesting to fans.) or the ratio of views per interaction in Youtube. (A lower ratio is good as it takes fewer views to generate a response.). But those are just a few examples…
What proof or conviction can a marketer bring in front of the senior management to get a buy-in for social media marketing? Is there any tangible way of explaining the utility of social media marketing?
Antonio Batanero: Probably a little bit of different proofs, although there is a clear connection between negative reviews and what the competition is doing out there; you can never go wrong with those two. However, I would say that the way some of the OTA’s have started to consider travellers reviews as part of how they would rank your hotel plus how important reviews are for the rest of the travellers should be enough to consider social media as part of any marketing plan. Also, from a revenue perspective, I read in a recent report that visitors who read hotel reviews on OTA’s websites are twice as likely to book as the ones who don’t.
The best social media outreach usually engages multiple departments within an organisation, ranging from marketing to product to engineering to editorial. How do you assess this approach towards nurturing a team and a culture?
Antonio Batanero: One solution would be creating the “social media committee” that should be a team made up of –ideally- six people: one from the marketing department, one from sales, one from communication & PR department, one from digital marketing/e-commerce, one from operations and one from human resources. And very important: do not build up this team with your junior members or interns. High level positions are a must. If the objective is to align all elements of marketing and present them in the right way to the customer you need first to make sure all those elements are integrated across your organisation. That is when social media becomes so powerful.
Antonio Batanero is scheduled to speak at the Online Marketing Strategies for Travel USA conference, which will take place in Miami (2-3 June).
Related Link: EyeForTravel Online Marketing Strategies for Travel USA 2010

Daniel Edward Craig's Blog

Daniel Edward Craig's Blog