The New Facebook Timeline

Posted on March 8, 2012 by eMax_Rick

This past week I received a lot of calls and emails on this subject, and I wanted to give my Hoteliers an overview of the changes that are coming.

Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of Facebook, the popular social media site introduces yet another change: the Timeline. This time, however, Facebook is attempting to make the navigation cleaner, and provide greater flexibility with images, posts, tabs, and more. Hoteliers have until March 30^th to make their changes and get acquainted to the new Timeline.

The primary change with the new Timeline will be the layout, which will feature a more personalized layout with a cover photo, highlighting features, and the ability to edit and update without navigating to a separate page. Though the changes won’t interfere with custom tabs, hotel brands can select their most important tabs and display the top three up front.

What is popularly known as a Facebook Wall, will now become a true timeline. Brands will still be able to control their content, post status updates, and engage in conversation, with the added benefit of sharing milestones. The Milestones allow users to add special events to the timeline; for example, hotels can add notable events such as renovations, special awards, or even times a celebrity stayed at the hotel. Hotels are encouraged to tell their authentic stories and highlight their achievements to educate their potential guests.

Unlike before, with Facebook Timeline, brands will now be able to send and receive private messages, which allows for much deeper consumer interaction. Page managers can take extended customer inquiries off the Timeline and into a private message, which avoids clutter on your timeline, and a good opportunity to get a personalized relationship with the guest.

Finally, Facebook plans to roll out analytics that will give Page administrators visibility regarding real-time activity on their space. Administrators will be able to see what’s happening on their Pages, tweak their content and advertising, check if a post is performing poorly, and then replace it if necessary. The upshot is that the analytics tool will help businesses determine which tab to promote on a day-to-day basis.

Think of this change as your early “spring cleaning” – tidy up your page and do some research on your company’s history. Here’s your chance to get your hotel’s story out there, control the success of your page with the new analytics feature, and, of course, stay at the forefront of the users’ attention. Brands that constantly create engaging updates and share important milestones will continue to be more significant in their market.

Useful Links:

http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

http://mashable.com/2012/02/29/facebook-brand-timelines-changes-marketing/

http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/facebook-timeline-brands-guide/

Don’t Let Automation Kill Your Facebook Engagement

Posted on September 14, 2011 by eMax_Rick

Automated social media platforms have become a popular technique in the hotel industry to manage social media campaigns. The ability to schedule posts in advance is attractive to the hotelier who does not have the time to sit in front of their computer all day looking at Facebook. However, a recent study by Applum found that utilizing these tools actually reduces engagement by more than 80% when compared to manual posts on Facebook.

Applum studied more than 1M Facebook posts across more than 50k Facebook pages. They looked at how fans engage with posts (likes, comments, etc). Across the board, the interaction with automated posts was significantly less than the interaction with manual posts to Facebook. The authors cite several possible reasons:

Facebook Penalizes 3rd Party API’s EdgeRank
When an object is created in Facebook, it is assigned a weight. We believe that Facebook strategically reduced the weight of objects created through the API. The reason behind this strategy would be to encourage more content creation within the Facebook Platform. This ultimately increases the value of their platform while increasing ad impressions.

Facebook Collapses 3rd Party API Updates

When the same 3rd Party Platform has multiple updates within your feed (regardless of the Page or People who created the object), Facebook will collapse the objects and only display a single object. This can potentially kill visibility for objects involved.

Content is not Optimized for Facebook
One of the conveniences of a 3rd Party Platform is that you can simultaneously update Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your blog, and hopefully not MySpace. Unfortunately, this typically requires the social marketer to optimize their content for all the social networks at once. Twitter has character limitations at 140, Facebook allows for many more characters. Some networks allow photos to be attached, while other networks do not. This distracts the social marketer from specifically optimizing their update for Facebook.

What should a hotelier do? Use these automated tools sparingly. There is still a place for these tools; automation is effective for vacations and off hour postings. However, they should not be the primary method you post your content to Facebook.

Hotelier’s should also really consider their content strategy on Facebook. How creative are you being? Are you really engaging your fans? Are you utilizing all of the tools that Facebook makes available? Video? Polls? Photos?

Automation allows you to exist in a comfortable box of simple, regular content updates. To really develop an effective campaign break out and be creative.

Read the full article at:
http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2011/09/does-using-a-third-party-api-decrease-your-engagement-per-post/

8 Cool Facebook Places Campaigns

Posted on August 10, 2011 by eMax_Rick

Almost a year ago Facebook launched Places, their location based service that allows people to “check-in” on Facebook and offers businesses location based marketing opportunities. Although many hotels have embraced social media marketing in 2011, few are utilizing Facebook places to further increase their visibility and revenues.

The website All Facebook recently posted their list of “8 Cool Marketing Campaigns Using Facebook Places”. Here are a couple specific examples you should take notice of:

Discounts for Checkins

Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, Calif. has given away coupons like 25 percent off any single item at Sports Authority or 20 percent off full-priced items at Ann Taylor for checking in at the shopping center.

What could you offer a guest for checking in at your hotel that would also further develop your relationship with them? 25% off their next stay? Buy One Get One Free entrees at the restaurant?

Daily Check-Ins

The University of Kentucky installed big, wooden Facebook icons on its campus to encourage students to check in at different locations around the school every day. Students used them to check in while on campus and at sporting events and the college is hoping it will help boost recruiting efforts for the students’ friends who are still in high school.

How could you use signage to creatively and effectively promote check ins to your guests?

Check In For Charity

Southwest Airlines did a holiday charity campaign last year where they made a $1 donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation per check-in at any Southwest airport, capped off at $300,000. A similar donation program program, with only a fraction of the investment, could increase check ins and affinity for your property.

Facebook Places represents a significant untapped opportunity for most hotels. These examples should give you an idea where you can get started. To read the entire All Facebook article visit:
http://www.allfacebook.com/8-cool-marketing-campaigns-using-facebook-places-2011-08

Google +: 4 Things To Know

Posted on July 21, 2011 by eMax_Rick

Unless you have been on vacation for the entire month, you have probably heard about Google +, Google’s official entry into social networking. The launch has created significant excitement attracting more than 10 million users in just a matter of weeks. But what is Google+ and should you care? Here are 4 important things for a hotelier to understand.

1. Circles
What really makes Google + unique are circles. Circles are groups of people in your life: co-workers, family, fraternity brothers, etc. Unlike Facebook, Circles in Google+ are extremely easy to setup. Even more important, you can easily use Circles to control the content you view and share. A picture from the weekend can be shared only with friends while a company announcement can be shared only with co-workers.

On the viewing side it is easy limit your Stream to display only the content from a particular circle. Want to catch up with those crazy college friends? Select that Circle in your Stream and you see just their updates. You quickly see what is going on without combing through lots of other updates you are not interested in.

2. Feedback is Positive
Those early adopters generally have positive things to say about Google +. Coming to the game late gave Google the advantage of seeing what worked and what did not in the social media space. They have done a good job of identifying the weaknesses of Facebook and Twitter and addressing them in their product. Among the positive comments posted on Mashable by Google + users, the following stood out:

“The clean user interface of Google+, combined with the lack of distracting elements, or so-called features (such as all of the add-on games and apps on FB that clutter up your stream), that I never use, attract me to Google+. This, combined with the Circles feature, choosing who you share with, are the primary draws.”
~ Scott Davis

“If Facebook and Twitter had a baby, they’d call it Google+.”
~ Olaf Wempe

3. It is Too Early to Know Anything
Google + is still just in Beta. Although 10 million users is promising, it is still less than 3% of Facebook’s audience. Plus, there is rampant speculation as to exactly how engaged Google’s current users are. They may have setup profiles on Google +, but the statistics show that they are not returning and interacting regularly. In Beta this is far from unusual, but not promising either. Simply, it is too early to either dismiss Google + or crown them with any awards. We will simply have to wait and see.

4. Google Does Not Allow Businesses, Yet
Google has been very public that it expects to offer business pages within Google + in the near future. However, they are not available now and Google is actually cracking down on those businesses trying to circumvent the rules. For now we are left on the sidelines to see how Google + develops.

Social media continues to present interesting opportunities for hotel marketing. The engagement and ability to connect with guests on their own terms separates social media from other mediums. Google + is an interesting parlay into this space and based on early feedback it is certainly worth paying attention to. To learn more about Google +, try reading Mashable’s Complete Guide.

10 Facebook Tips Most Hoteliers Aren’t Doing

Posted on June 9, 2011 by eMax_Rick

Eye for Travel recently posted a valuable list of the 10 Things Hoteliers Should be doing on Facebook but probably aren’t. It contained lots of good information and mirrored a recent project eMax completed for the Holiday Inn Gateway Centre in Flint, MI.

Here are some of the highlights from the article and examples of how the Holiday Inn implemented Facebook to their advantage:

1. Create a custom URL for your Facebook page

The Holiday Inn set their Facebook page to be: www.facebook.com/HolidayInnGatewayCentreFlint. This gives your Facebook page a URL that is easy to share and makes the URL much more friendly to the search engines. This particular URL also follows Eye For Travel’s suggestion to include the city in the domain.

2. List the hotel on Facebook places

If you visit the Holiday Inn Gateway Centre’s Facebook page, you will find check-ins next to the traditional “Likes”. Check-ins are an effective way to promote your property across the social networks of your guests. Every hotel should be considering how to leverage check-ins in their Facebook marketing.

3. Customize your page with a welcome page

Notice the engaging graphic display that greets visitors when the land on the Facebook page for the Holiday Inn Gateway Centre. First impressions count and a custom Facebook page is far more appealing to a potential guest than the basic Facebook wall.

4. Allow users to book directly from Facebook

Notice the “booking box” at the bottom of the custom welcome page? That widget allows Facebook users to book reservations directly from Facebook. The tool takes them right into the brand.com reservation system where they complete the reservation with confidence. The Holiday Inn Gateway Centre also has a custom Reservations page within their Facebook presence. More opportunities to convert Facebook traffic into actual revenue.

Holiday Inn Gateway Centre's Custom Welcome Page for Facebook

If you are utilizing Facebook to promote your property, consider these tips. They are critical suggestions to improve your engagement and deliver revenue from your efforts.

Interested in learning more about custom Facebook pages and booking widgets? Contact eMax to discuss ideas for your property.