Posting on your Fan Page.

Posted: June 17th, 2010

Question: “Our staff met yesterday to “brainstorm” different ways we can engage in social media and one of the things that we got hung up on was Facebook and how to get staff involved. Currently, posts are made by various staff but always under the corporate identity. We have differing opinions as how to represent ourselves on Facebook. Some feel that all the staff should post under our corporate identity and others feel that those staff who are posting should be identified individually. This turned into a conversation (heated discussion) about setting up accounts for each person. There is lots of concern about linking their personal FB accounts with the corporate account.”

At the end of it … my boss turned to me and said … “why don’t you ask Rodney what he thinks!”

Great question! This is a problem that we encounter over and over so you’re not alone there. Strict social media rules would say that you should be transparent and identify who you are, be personal – Paul Cubbon would argue for this until he’s blue in the face. See The Peak radio station’s page as an example – they do an amazing job of this. It works for their business because each of the people posting have very public, client-facing personalities.

However, Facebook doesn’t make it easy logistically. If you are an admin, your posts appear as the organization. You could set up a second account but Facebook policy says you’re only allowed one account (although, cough, some people have many). They have created a new business account option to solve this problem.

I’m personally on the fence with this one. Transparency is essential when using social media. I think there’s room for both and it should be judged on a per-business or even per-post basis. On our Think Fan Page, you’ll see that we do it on a case by case basis. If I’ve just been meeting with a client, I’ll identify myself. If I’m sharing information, I’ll send it from the company.

Consistency is really important. If you have multiple people posting, there should be very clear guidelines on the voice/personality that you create. Some admins identify themselves in the post itself but this looks strange to me.

A tourism marketing organization on the other hand, to the consumer, is one organization. It’s a little less personal and you’re dealing with a ton of people. That is, at least until they’ve met your staff. How many of the fans you intend to attract will have met someone who works there? This is one of the reasons that establishing a personality (Hotel Dog) is a work-around.

The simplest solution could be to have one person responsible for FB until you have a clear strategy and guidelines on who does what and how they should be doing it. You could always allow users to sign off with their name too if its appropriate. I haven’t seen anyone doing that. Eg:

Think! Social Media [insert message here] – Rodney

Helpful or confusing? How do you do it?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Facebook | No Comments »

Why does a hotel need a Facebook page?

Posted: June 16th, 2010

“We think we are ready to start a fan page. We have noticed lots of companies out there with fan pages and not a ton of followers, but we feel we just need to start somewhere. Any tips on setting it up? ” I thought I’d tackle this one for everyone:

A Facebook Fanpage is nothing more than a simple place to begin an online community. Just because there are 500 million Facebook users, doesn’t mean that they all want you to advertise to them. Don’t forget to think about your target market first and the tools last, based on your objectives and a clear strategy to achieve them. More importantly, forget about attracting a large number of fans or followers. As consumers, we’re already overwhelmed with businesses who we don’t care about trying to get us to ‘Like’ them. Unless I’m passionate about your product or service, its just noise. Attracting a large number of Fans is old advertising mentality: find a large audience and broadcast to them, hoping for a certain level of uptake.

First, you’ve got to think: ‘who would want to follow a hotel on facebook’? Which is another way of asking, who would want to be part of our online community. Your online community is a representation of your offline community so the logical starting point is staff and friends/family of staff. This is how word of mouth travels in the real world. How far you take this depends on how comfortable your team is with connecting their personal life to their work and this is a decision that only you can make.

If you establish solid relationships with repeat visitors, these are your next logical community members. Your goal is to find the people who really love your product and give them a place to interact with you and others. Prospective clients will see this interaction and find it to be a resource. The challenge is encouraging clients to actually take the time and go to the fan page to click Like, and then once you’ve figured that out, the next challenge is getting them to come back again.

What value can your fan page provide to people? What problem can you solve? Why would people go there? Think of this from a consumer perspective yourself – can you think of a hotel that you’ve stayed in that you actually remember?

Make sure you’ve got a remarkable product first, otherwise people will have nothing to talk about. Here’s a good post from William Bakker at Tourism BC about being remarkable. When I dive deep into my memory bank, there’s only one hotel that sticks in my mind. A little island in Fiji where I formed a close relationship with the owner over a beer every day. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels.

Other businesses in your area are also part of your offline community. You can use the @ symbol in facebook posts to engage with your DMO or other businesses in your area. For that feature to work, the admin posting the comment must personally be a fan of the Page you’re trying to interact with. Here’s an example:

Can you remember any hotels you’ve stayed at that you would want to be involved in their community?

Tags: ,
Posted in Facebook | No Comments »

How quickly can we move beyond the gold rush?

Posted: June 5th, 2010

The current revolution in how we communicate that has been branded with the buzz words ‘social media’ is a modern day gold rush. It seems that every second person you meet at a conference is a social media expert. There is no such thing as a social media expert. There are marketing professionals and there are individuals well practiced at communicating. Some of those people have adapted to new communication tools quicker than others. The people and organizations who emerge successfully after the gold rush is over will be nimble enough that they can continue to adapt as this industry continues to mature.

Eventually, ‘social media’ tools will be integrated into every aspect of our working lives. Communicating online will form part of our customer service, help desk and marketing department. Although I’m too young to know, I’m sure there were skeptics of the telephone as a business tool. Perhaps some thought it would lead to a reduction in productivity. Perhaps companies who were early adopters of the telephone found new ways to compete. Now almost everybody carries one in their pocket.

Even if your organization isn’t aggressively seeking new opportunities to improve efficiency and increase marketing performance, it will happen over time by default. Eager young students joining the workforce and rising through the corporate ranks don’t know a life without social media tools.

Staff who are blocked from social networks on work computers are updating their facebook status, tweeting, watching youtube videos and texting from their phone. These tools form part of the next generation’s lives and educations. Some of them are even specialists in how to use these new tools in university courses that the rest of us have never even heard of.

If you value control over your brand, you should articulate clear guidelines for acceptable use of social communication tools and aim to keep them current as new technologies emerge. They won’t distinguish between on and offline tools to achieve their goals.

Companies who block rather than regulate social tools will be viewed as less desirable for employees who are trained to use them. Take note if you’re an employer seeking to attract the best of this new workforce.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

Walk run fly.

Posted: June 2nd, 2010

A good strategy is one that finishes with clear tasks that are capable of implementation.

So many strategies fail to deliver because despite amazing contents, the company isn’t capable of actually implement any of it. Walk – Run – Fly is a cute name for a process that William Bakker devised as the core of our strategy workshops. Walk refers to steps that should be taken today. Run is a road map for what to do next. The Fly phase usually hasn’t been thought of yet (because social media is evolving so quickly) but will become apparent during the Run phase.

In my last post I noted that formulating a strategy requires hard work. Here’s an insight into our strategy process that should help you to formulate your strategy, or revisit it if you already have one.

When we’re creating a social media strategy for clients, we start by examining everything a business could be doing online (the maximum set of opportunities available to your business). Then we analyze activities that you are doing already. Most companies fall somewhere in the Walk phase; either standing still and about to take their first step or they’re walking all over the place.

Next we look at your target market. We figure out who your audience is and break them down using geographic and demographic segmentation. Then we look at what your audience is doing online, i.e. how they actually use social media. There are many different ways people choose to engage themselves and that doesn’t just mean the tools they choose, it’s how they use them. There are tools that help you to analyze these things. You can do a free technographics breakdown on Groundswell’s blog and you can pay for others like Hitwise.

The next thing we need to ascertain is where to focus in the sales funnel to get maximum results right now. Where a prospect or client is in their decision process dictates how you should communicate with them, the content of your message and also the tone of your message. The mistake that most people I’ve seen make is to assume that one message fits all. To be effective, you need to know which part of the funnel to target in order to help prospects move closer to making a purchase decision.

Next, we take a look at your objectives (either outlined in a marketing plan or we extract them from managements craniums) and create a strategy to Walk, Run and then Fly. This is the secret sauce that combines everything outlined above. Implementation is key and yet so often it is overlooked. Allocate small, important and measurable tasks to key people. You must take available resources into account when devising a strategy. Time and money are essential to ability to execute and should constrain the strategy.

How does your social media strategy support your marketing plan?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »