Hraba Hospitality Consulting

Most of you don't have the time for this, but I know some of you are still somewhat alien to the idea of social networking and the more knowledge we have, the better we can utilize the tool.

Why Facebook Pages are important:

These "pages" leverage our brands in multiple ways. In regards to general optimizing of the website, the more our page and our links exist throughout the internet, the higher our page will bump (pardon for being simplistic). But the other side of it is that these pages target consumers MARKEDLY well%u2026 and we can get into an ad campaign later that is cheap, and incredibly specific down to keywords like "eco-hotel", specific regions, and more. In that sense, instead of the ad appearing next to any random facebook account, it appears next to people that have relevant accounts, potentially increasing our conversion rate.

As for the pages%u2026.. since I published them, they have already been getting considerable hits without any effort *at all*. Meaning some of these pages have gotten up to 20+ page views simply for existing. In fact, Fiji has somehow picked up fans. It is remarkable really. I am going to do some very low level advertising experiments with this, and will follow up by the middle of next week.

Why Facebook is important?

Facebook is a place where users are constant "endorsers" of products in front of their friends as the targeted audience: a music video, a political figure, a local café, etc. A user "fan"'s the page, and their friends in their network see this, converting more users into your network. It can allow previous guests to touch base with staff or other guests they met, keep up to date on the resort, or post pictures and stories. It allows other people to simply wait for the right offer to visit, or fantasize from their cubicle.

What is truly incredible is that, for no fee, you can send out a "status update" to all your fans%u2026 specials, important events, etc%u2026 and it goes on their "feed". This is important, as email is possibly in the beginning of its decline (this is another discussion entirely), and the ad will appear directly in front of their eyes, rather than hidden in an email they can ignore or throwaway.

It is also important to think of the size of some of these social networks, and the effect that one popular kingpin individual can have on the community at large. We begin looking at social networking members as individuals with high or low "equity". The "high equity" group leaders are someone worth targeting in hopes they lead their network in the same direction.

The real impact of facebook is that it spins around the ad model where you force feed consumers endless advertising, and you target the people that want to be known as endorsers of your product. In fact, the way that hotels are going, and most businesses in general, print media is rapidly declining. I have a lot of reports with evidence that supports this. Like Here!

With this "individuality" model, endorsing specific products highlights a person's style of individuality, bolstering their equity within their group, helping them become a more important figure for that network (including more profile hits and overall social interest, making that individual become highly desirable to interact with). In the end, you don't have to approach them in the traditional sense with advertising%u2026. The consumer is starting to come to us as it will benefit their standing to be part of *your* network of hotels, etc. When your brand is solid, and your social standing is good, facebook users become unaware that they are advertising for you in a personal effort to set themselves apart as an expressive and individualistic user. In essence, humans are now the vehicles for your brand, and will errantly act as walking billboards reaching more people than any traditional print media could.

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I have done a lot of work on facebook. Here are the links.

Facebook is a closed social network, but these business pages appear in everyday google/yahoo searches.

Look at them, and if you are part of facebook, please "fan" the page. If you have anyone you know that is on facebook, send these to them (cutting off the below explanation please). Upload videos and photos if you have them.

I wanted to keep this short, but a concise explanation of these and why they are important appears below.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Passport-Resorts/31208562731

PASSPORT RESORTS

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Savusavu-Fiji/Fiji-Islands-Resort-Fiji-Vacations-Fiji-Luxury-Resort-Hotel-Eco-Resort/104677890056

JEAN-MICHEL

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Sur-CA/POST-RANCH-Big-Sur-hotel-Big-Sur-lodging-Ventana-Mountains-Eco-Inn-Spa/32703496590

POST RANCH

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sonoma-CA/Sea-Ranch-Lodge-Sonoma-Coast-Hotel-Dog-Friendly-Inn-Mendocino-eco-hotel/31281769323

SEA RANCH

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sausalito-CA/Sausalito-Hotel-National-Park-Lodge-San-Francisco-Hotel-Sausalito-Resort/32504522793

CAVALLO

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hana-HI/Hana-Resort-Maui-Hotel-Maui-Lodging-Maui-Resort-Hawaii-vacation-Maui/32495359821

HANA

It is brand building, long term. That might be all it is. It doesn't cost anything to have a page, and people will stumble across it if you optimize the page properly. What's more you need to be *aware* of what is happening to you online, regardless. BUT%u2026 as for advertising.... I ran some advertising tests that retrieved some fairly meager results.

I don't think this would be a time try new things in regards to social media. There are some sites where advertising might be wise, but we will wait and see quantified results. (I am running some tests with a business I am involved with, and will see if the page hits transform into site hits into bookings).

Google Adwords are probably still the strongest idea%u2026 and simply having a solid, optimized website.

But when you *really* start looking at these sites: Facebook, Yelp, etc%u2026. what is the business model?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/23/modeling-the-real-market-value-of-social-networks/

Because Facebook has some issues now.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/31/facebooks-growing-problem/

It will be interesting to see what happens. A lot of people have been banking on FB%u2026 but it always has been just a part of the overall program in hotel's cases, anyway.

It acts as free, long term brand building for these "endorsers" to further your product. Spending money on these social networks may not be necessary. But ignoring them may be disastrous.

I was forced into facebook, because at the age of 32 email seems to be dying. More communication (maybe not more meaningful) happens on Facebook than my normal email, at this point.

And now, I need to do it for a couple reasons%u2026 one is that it may be killing email. For real.
http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/674

http://mashable.com/2007/08/20/facebook-email/

So that is one reason.

But another is because I need to *understand* this thing from a business end. It is quite rapidly changing so much of business and marketing.

SO%u2026 here I dive deep back into the fray. I have a couple accounts%u2026 one that is for experimenting, one that is me, and one that is a business account. Here are some things I have noted within the first couple days:

People will friend you because you are a friend of a friend. This is interesting. The larger the networks, the better the advertising possibility. If you could successfully get the contact list of a successful facebooker, the leverage there would be astonishing. I assume, at some point, you will hear of facebookers selling their contact list to a corporation. Very unethical, very under the table, and it might have already happened. Think about the Obama page.. if you had all those contacts, you would be able to effectively market to these people.

Speaking of Obama, Facebook groups as well as the newer facebook pages are INCREDIBLE. The marketing potential behind those are epic, and get into a philisophical conversation (more on that soon). I note that many hotels or groups have pages and groups on facebook. Both are great, because it offers an opportunity to directly connect to consumers who *WANT* to be branded.

It is astonishing the level of transparency in regards to consumers%u2026 the fact is that advertising is almost expected and welcomed as long as it is witty, impacting, and earnest with its effectiveness while being self aware. But this leads to a remarkable issue.

Marketing took this default position in the past as creating a rift%u2026 or as marketers like to say "need". The idea was to create this imperative need in someone, so much so that they might feel less human or capable of competing in their social circle without said product. Whether it is targeted at the insecurity of growing old, or filling our technolust driven by the marketing machine%u2026 marketing was dehumanizing and robbed people of self worth. However, things seem to be changing. I am not saying that it grants reprieve to the cynicism embedded in any job that starts with "here%u2026 convince people they want this", but I am saying that it has flip flopped.

The individual is only defined by the brands it wears on its social page. People define themselves with branding and marketing. People squirm in their own skin and rejoice at the opportunity to wear Dior, or Persol, or Chanel. People are voracious to prove they are cool with buttons, patches, labels, logos, and advertising. Even if it is some modern pop culture subgroup like hipsters or burners, they wear their anti-brand as a brand. It gets co-opted to a significant degree. There is a moment you cannot tell if you are talking to someone who started a trend in response to the dehumanizing consumerism, or if they are the response to the marketing trends of consumerism co-opting an explicitly regurgitating this trend. It has happened with jazz vipers, hippies, punks, and so on.

The startling issue is that the majority of consumers are no longer passively accepting marketing like a car whizzing past a route 66 staggered billboard ad campaign

The aspect of modern marketing being that consumers are endorsers for your product or brand%u2026 WILLINGLY wearing this as if it were an emblem on their clothing. The Generation Z kids are not only "me me me", but they are quite willing to leverage their "individuality" for the opportunity to be memetic "endorsers" of products and brands. Think about that%u2026

The facebook user becomes nothing more than an empty vessel to fill with your marketing efforts. There is a certain point that the user is solely defined by their brand loyalty that they constantly advertise. Whether they review a restaurant on yelp, buy something on Amazon, listen to something on Pandora, etc%u2026.

It is fascinating, and incredibly important. In university, my degree in communication went into the idea that information is somewhat autonomous, and the information is the meme, while the human body simply a vessel to transmit these memes.

Think of that%u2026 that information is what is truly alive. In this sense, brands are what are known as memetic. In fact everything is a brand%u2026 your name, your facebook or yelp account, you company title. It all ends up representing you and reflecting on you%u2026 and people carry this brand image of who *you* are with them. But what astonished me is that this ethereal, subjective theory could be viable. I just thought it was something chatted up in dimly lit rooms at 3am over a smoky haze of forced intellectualism.

If facebook (as well as the users themselves through passive acceptance) turns users into "endorsers" or walking billboards (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/advertising/MAR_ADP_ADV/126511-10096762?goback=.ahp), it will be an interesting commentary on what creates our individualism. All of a sudden, "You are what you own" rings true, and what brands we consume are what defines our individuality.

We will be happy and focused on the 10 people we know and our happy vacation photos, while all this meta-marketing and meta-advertising is loosely orchestrated in a way that we aren't even paying attention to. We will live and die, our facebook profiles will go dormant%u2026

But in 2000 years, someone might purchase something at Nordstrom's due to your fossilized review. Or possibly buy Chanel sunglasses because on your summer vacation 300 years ago you looked%u2026 oh%u2026%u2026so%u2026 chic.

Be aware, put your brand out there, and let it build.

The Economist this week bolstered the internet ad model revenue stream as growing and potentially immune to downturn in this economy, in lieu of a failing print and standardized ad media. (you may need an account with the economist) "Internet Advertising will be relatively unscathed during this downturn".

In this article (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4030635.search?query=online+marketing+tools+for+hotels) it states that in 2007, of surveyed hotels, nearly 70% shifted marketing from offline to online %u2026 which is a stunning amount. Because of print media wasting away, and the economic downturn on top of it, it is only going to grow.

However, I do not think the Social Media side is the "be all end all" of the internet. I am highly distrustful of it, in that a networking effect doesn't equate to dollars, and ROI is quite difficult to quantify. Albeit the 2.0 sales people suggest that you can highly target consumers, I still haven't seen evidence indicating it as a clear cut success.

In fact, the big guys are concerned too. CEO Falco from AOL suggested that no one has any idea how to monetize Social Media (http://gigaom.com/2008/04/10/aols-falco-gets-something-right/). The ad model is in question for these 2.0 web outlets: Facebook, Youtube, Yelp, and others. They are not profitable yet, and they have a long way to go. (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_socialnetworks, http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/11/technology/facebook_sandberg.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008041213, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/31/facebooks-growing-problem/)

They have not been able to monetize the massive networking effect that has happened, and the generally accepted problem is this: Marketers are forced to pay the money for the social ads, while the social users are generally uninterested or distrustful of marketing and advertising. A large majority of users ignore or simply "don't see" the ads.. actually mentally blocking them out. Some of gone so far as to intentionally ignore all of the ads, considering them spam.

So, I do not endorse striking out with mitigated advertising schedules on social media channels. The ad model isn't solid, and there is very little quantifiable evidence that it works at all. I must admit, the problem of the original survey (half of CMO's uninterested) is that it *seems* only to appeal to online ad spending, and not brand building. The survey *does* suggest that the word of mouth aspect of social media has a value that far outweighs other methods of communication, so that shows some potential statistical inaccuracy within the study.

Here are some personal thoughts on Facebook. I link it again below, but if you have time you might appreciate it (even longer than this): http://www.squidoo.com/hrabahospitalityconsulting

I think where we spend our online marketing dollars is in aggressive website SEO, comprehensive linking programs, and google keyword accounts, while making sure we also optimize the site for mobile browsing: http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/hotel-mobile-marketing-thoughts/.

*HOWEVER*

There are a number of things about these social media sites that are important to understand:

1) You do not have to spend traditional marketing dollars. You can have free pages, free linking, free SEO just by participating in these sites, boards, and social linking. Every single time you link on one of these sites that is a hugely popular social media venture, their pagerank will make your hotel much more optimized in organic search indexing for google.
2) This is endless brand building. It is free%u2026 and it fits into the concept of social media members as "endorsers" (that is a hyperlink to a lot of personal thoughts on brand building within facebook)
3) It is a one to one relationship with guests%u2026 and you can reach out and build brand and communicate DIRECTLY with them. Whether the guest was thrilled, or the guest was angry%u2026 you can engage them, listen to them, learn from them%u2026 and have a real time read and pulse of the consumer and their needs.
4) You have access to honest, immediate, and helpful operating advice that can also be a PR tool. Many people are reviewing hotels within moments of their first experience. Think of being able to reach an unhappy guest *while* the stay is happening, you have created an opportunity for immediate resolution. If you show that sort of awareness - being "dialed in" - you can take the worst experience and change the guest into a long term branded client. Beyond operational help, it becomes a PR tool.
5) Being an active participant in these online channels helps with overall damage control. When social internet reviewers know you are an active and participating property with online review responses, they are less likely to muckrake or slander the property when upset. Typically, non-online, inactive hotels in the social realm have negative reviews because there is no need for accountability in the reviewer. It is like graffiti.. no one really knows who wrote it, and the people it comments on never see it. But, it can be very damaging if not dealt with, depending on who sees it. Conversely, if a reviewer is aware that you are an active member of any given community... they typically are more earnest and grounded in their complaints or suggestions. They give you more credence, and it becomes a two way professional conversation instead of one person alone, shouting negativity at anyone who will listen.

Just because you decide not to focus on web 2.0 doesn't mean they aren't talking about you. Twitter, events boards, local boards, review sites, blogs, and an endless stream of travel and hospitality chat sites exist that you need to watch over, maintain, respond to, etc. But this, again, isn't in terms of impressions or traditional marketing dollars. It is a Social Media Optimization expert, or on staff representative than can find the labour hours to deal with this phenomenon.

I have an internet marketing plan we could go over at some point more convenient. Pardon the long email, but this stuff is wildly interesting, as well as infinitely complex and hard to follow. Just thought I would share what I am on top of.