A Beginner’s Guide to Pinterest for Marketing

Instagram Launches Photo Indexing, Photos of You

By Yoon Song May 6, 2013 Leave a Comment

Instagram has established itself as a piece of a vast digital mosaic that businesses and companies have used to gain insight on how trends emerge. Since acquiring the infamous photo-sharing app in early 2012, Facebook has adapted one of their key tagging tools to Instagram called “Photos of You.”

Until now, the only way you could tag a friend or your favorite restaurant was to add their handle in the comments section. Now, you’re able to tag friends and venues by hovering over the photo itself, much like Facebook.

These photos will then be indexed in its very own profile section on the tagged individual’s profile, allowing anyone to be able to see photos they have been tagged in by simply searching their name. As a result, a convenient listening tool for brands has emerged, creating the ability for businesses to track how they are seen by an online community.

To businesses in the hospitality industry, this means additional real estate for loyal fans to represent the company’s image.

Restaurants will be able to collect real-time data from the photos that are tagged at their venue. They’ll see what dishes are more popular than others, as well as what their customers find favorable in the ambiance or interior decor. What guests find thoughtful or unobtrusive in a hotel suite will now be more accessible to owners to implement solutions.

Instagram will also feature an easy way to untag photos of yourself to mitigate any apprehension from users, leaving only the best photos intact. This adds a level of storytelling that will create meaningful associations between brands and their influencers.

Photos of You streamlines the ability to see photos tagged by anyone in the format of a collage instead of notifications. Additionally, photos taken of you by a friend will not only be seen on their Instagram feed, but now in yours as well. This eliminates the gaps in your activity that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by your followers.

There is great potential for user-generated traffic that will reveal what kinds of photos are tagged. These in turn can be used to pioneer better campaigns that focus on specific demographics and themes. Combined with other Instagram marketing strategies or a social media marketing platform for Instagram, brands can use analytics to leverage Instagram as a business tool.

Will this tagging feature impact the way you use Instagram? Tell us how!

Tagged With: dining, instagram, mobile marketing, restaurant social media, restaurants

7 Important Tips for Restaurant Owners

By Guest Contributor May 3, 2013 1 Comment

Starting and maintaining a restaurant business is no easy task. There are many factors that come into play. The success rate of restaurants is much lower when compared to other industries. The risk involved turns many people off from opening one of their own. The amount of capital to open a physical location requires investors and involves a lot of red tape. If done right though, a restaurant business can become quite a profitable venture. It’s important to know what you’re getting into.

1) Get a Website

The Yellow Pages are dead. People no longer thumb through a thousand page book to find local businesses. Creating an internet presence is paramount to your restaurants success. Some best practices when creating a website for your restaurant:

2) Include Your Menu

Your customers first and foremost want to know what food you serve. Include a text based menu that lists everything you serve. Don’t just throw up a .pdf file of your menu. Search engines can’t read that and it often looks bad on mobile devices.

Hire a search marketing firm. Having a strong presence on Google is like having a free billboard on the world’s busiest highway. The value of being found for free on the internet cannot be overstated.
Have a responsive website – because most everyone has a smartphone these days it’s wise to have a website that scales on mobile devices, allowing visitors to peruse your restaurant and jump from page to page without having to “pinch and zoom”.
State the essentials – include a page that lists the restaurant location and hours. In fact, it would be smart to list them in the header of the website or even on the homepage. Include holiday hours as well.

There are also several advertising channels that are effective for restaurants. Google AdWords has a simple to use interface. And local services like Yelp provide great mobile packages that cater to consumers on the go.

3) Establish A Relationship With an Online Vendor

There are several websites that provide online equipment and supplies ordering like Instawares - an online restaurant equipment and supplies company that carries everything you need to get started with opening your own restaurant. Having a relationship with your vendor allows you to easily order supplies and equipment when you run out. Often times, these companies will setup a workflow where they’ll recognize when you’re out of stock and detect seasonal patterns in your ordering I.E. – if you’re in a summer tourist-town and are only open during those months a reliable restaurant equipment company will call you in the beginning of summer and check if you’re freezers and refrigerators are working properly. There are several items that require more frequent replacement than others, chief amongst them being dinnerware. Finding a reliable source to buy flatware and dinnerware online eases your nerves as glassware and table items are dropped and broken.

4) Listen (and talk back) to Your Customers

This can be said of any industry but with restaurants it’s extremely important to listen to what the market wants. Restaurants tend to be “word of mouth” businesses that carry on the goodwill of its current customers. Thanks to new channels like social networks, online review sites, and restaurant blogs, it’s easier (and cheaper) than ever to listen to what people are saying about your restaurant. These channels include:

Facebook – having a Facebook page for your restaurant is a no-brainer. It’s easy to setup and can be accessed and “liked” by anyone who uses the service. Tie it to your website as well and share updates via your newsfeed. A solid strategy is to blog frequently and mention those posts on your Facebook page. Your effectively killing two birds with one stone by publishing on the web and within Facebook.

Twitter – while many see this as the mouthpiece for teenage girls and celebrities it’s actually a very effective way for you to communicate with your customers. Hashtags and “mentions” are the backbone of Twitter and your restaurant can greatly benefit from proper use of them. If someone lodges a complaint then it’s your duty to address this. Twitter allows you to respond to angry customers in public which shows that you care about what people think about your restaurant.
Pinterest – this is a must for foodies. Restaurants seem to be a natural fit for this image-based social network. And because of its open API many times when people take pictures of their food at restaurants it’s cross published to their other networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Take these criticisms that appear on social networks and work them into your overall marketing/business strategy. While many see social networks as a vehicle for “promotion” they are most effectively used for communication.

5) Keep Track of Your Customers

This can be done through a number of methods. Back in the day (and probably still) restaurants would do giveaways where customers would drop their business cards in a jar out front for a chance to win a free meal. The restaurants would then collect the email information on the cards and add them to a mailing list, offering catering and corporate party information. While this tactic may still work it’s important to identify more effective ways to collect their information. Building a customer database is important and what you do with that information is even more vital. Email marketing is easier and more effective than ever. You should be segmenting lists and creating different personas based on open rates in response to specific promotions.

Set Yourself Apart

Although it’s tempting to offer everything you can possibly cook it’s wise to specialize in one area. If people want variety they will go to a generic restaurant like Applebees or Outback steakhouse where they can get everything from spicy oriental chicken to a porterhouse steak. Be good at one thing and stick to it. Think about the most famous restaurants where you live: their often packed to the gills on weekend nights. Going out to eat is an experience and you need to sell your restaurant as such. You don’t see lines stretching around the block for Olive Garden. What you do see lines for is “Joe’s Steamhouse Lounge” – a restaurant that may specialize in seafood.

6) Service, Service, Service

Speaking of customer complaints. Most unpleasant experiences related to restaurants stem not from undercooked food or cheap wine, but customer service. There are several ways to ensure a quality customer experience:

Hire a good wait staff – do background checks, ask for references and have potential hires sit down with another member of your staff (more perspectives the better). Thoroughly vetting your staff ensures that you won’t be hiring an rotten eggs.
You get what (who) you pay for – this old adage applies to restaurants as well. What do you expect if you’re paying your staff $4/hour?
Know your demographic – if you’re opening a sports=themed restaurant it may be wise to hire more women as waiters, considering that most of your clientele will be men. Likewise if you’re opening a quirky organic breakfast place you may want to aim for a more eclectic waitstaff.

7) Do Competitive Research

Go out and see what your competitors are doing. Eat at other restaurants and take notes. Notice what others are doing right and try to emulate that in your restaurant. Also take notice of things they’re doing wrong and try not to repeat it. Restaurant owners are some of the most creative, business minded people in the world. Creating an experience that’s original and different will have people appreciate your restaurant and keep coming back for more. There’s also something to be learned from restaurant chains as well. There’s several reasons why they’ve grown to such national (and in some cases international) prominence. I.E.- Cracker Barrel. They have a schtick right? When you walk in there’s an old-timey gift shop filled with knick knacks and rocking chairs. They serve “home-cooked” meals. They’re marketing and knick knack store are meant to give people a familiar comfort.

Target The Right Demographic

Understanding where the wallets are is important if you want to last in the restaurant business. If you’re catering towards a lower-income demographic then you want your marketing to reflect that. In most cases though, you want to target consumers with the most money to spend. This way you can spend more on making your restaurant great and offering the best foods and service. If you’re going after an older crowd you must realize that that’s a well which will eventually run dry. Young up-and-comers is the holy grail of demographics because this crowd will form eating habits that they’ll carry over to their social circles and family. That’s why understanding modern marketing principles is necessary to capture this demographic. Young, affluent consumers are extremely savvy thanks to modern technologies like smartphones, iPads, and other connected devices.

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This post was contributed by Clayton Curtis. Clayton works for Instawares, a restaurant equipment and cooking supplies company.

Tagged With: restaurant marketing, restaurants

Customers Seek Reviews for Hotels (INFOGRAPHIC)

By Guest Contributor April 20, 2013 Leave a Comment

The hospitality industry makes on average $425 billion a year, with $255 billion of that annual revenue influenced by review forums.

According to the following infographic on the hospitality industry, 60% of consumers consult some type of customer review forum prior to making a purchase. Many are extremely likely check out reviews on sites such as Google, TripAdvisor, and Orbitz for the following factors:

How many stars does the hotel have?
What sort of rooms are available?
What amenities are included in the room?

Travis Tillotson, Managing Director at Surgo Group notes: the “consumer impact phenomenon” has been rapidly shifting over the past 5 years, and now the direct correlation between purchasing and consumer reviews is no longer just an assumption but an actual measurable statistic, varying from industry to industry. Review Forums come in all shapes and sizes, however, brands need to take more of an active stance on trying to “control the conversation” if they want to compete.

In a recent study by Paragon Poll, 60% of consumers consult some type of review forum prior to making a purchase. Mr. Tillotson states that there are a myriad of ways to accomplish this feat, and they vary from industry to industry; but the bottom line is it seems brands need to be proactive about this industry shift, as no amount of positive “press” can outweigh the voices of the masses. The study done by Paragon Poll shows that 82% of the Hospitality industry is trying their luck with online conversation in review forums.

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This post was contributed by KJ Mason. KJ is a freelance writer, blogger, social media whiz, and contributor to the Growing Social Media blog. Mason enjoys writing and blogging about news on social media platforms, current social trends, plus technology and gadgets. He takes to being involved in communities across social media and finding new blog circles.

Tagged With: hotel reviews

Second Chance Conversion with Travel Remarketing

By Guest Contributor April 17, 2013 2 Comments

How can you target your advertising to people who have visited your website but left without booking? Remarketing is the latest online marketing buzzword that addresses this goal. For marketers of hotels, tours, and travel services, it is an effective way to get a second chance to convert valuable traffic.

Travel remarketing can be applied to text and banner ads as well as email campaigns and social media sites. Regardless of medium, it is the redisplay of your marketing message to warm leads after they have left your website. When you cannot convince a travel consumer to book right away, leverage online marketing techniques to remind them to look and book at a later date.

Should Travel Marketers Do Remarketing With Google AdWords?

The first place travel marketers may choose to add remarketing is via Google AdWords. The remarketing (sometimes called retargeting) feature allows you to configure campaigns to automatically re-display your ads according to defined rules. Of course the more time your ads are displayed and clicked, the more it costs. The expectation is that visitors who were browsing your travel site have shown some interest; therefore they are more likely to be receptive to your now familiar ad.

In practice, it requires thoughtful configuration and testing to get results. For example, you must determine how to identity those people that have shown enough interest based on their browsing behavior. Are you prepared to pay-per-click for repeat traffic with the hope that visitors to your site are more likely to book travel the next time? Also keep in mind that you must be targeting the Google Display Network to deploy this type of travel remarketing.

Can Travel Remarketing be done on Social Media Networks?

Employing social media sharing for indirect remarketing is another approach. If your travel agency or tour information website publishes useful destination content, you likely already include a variety of share-type buttons. When clicked these widgets offer a plethora of icons to instantly share trip ideas on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and too many others to mention in this article.

Since your travel content will be shared publicly, it can be seen again by your target and also by friends and social media connections of your target. Social sharing is also sticky since it remains visible on those social streams now and in the future. By reproducing your content and booking links on social media networks, you are in fact remarketing to a wider audience.

What is Travel Remarketing With Email Booking Reminders?

The third way to add remarketing to your travel website is via email. When a visitor is interested in your travel products but not ready to make a booking, offer to remind them to return via a one-time personal email message. The advantages of offering an email reminder are clear. First it is an automated way for your visitors to remember to come back and continue planning their trip. At the same time it gives your travel business an opportunity to retarget warm leads to encourage more bookings.

Adding email remarketing to your travel site can be done in one of several ways. Choose the option that works best based on your booking conversion process, website platform, and level of technical expertise. Regardless of technology, the email opt-in option should appear on those pages where visitors have to make a decision to book or browse elsewhere. For example on your tour itinerary page, your hotel rates page, or next to an offer for a holiday package. These pages will commonly be listed as exit pages in your Google Analytics reports.

1. Contact Form

A simple email contact form is an easy option if you are comfortable coding html on your site. On those pages that describe your travel products and have a booking call-to-action, add a small html form. It can appear at the bottom of the page or in the sidebar. Keep it simple by only including an email address textbox and submit button.

To make the form function, code in a server side method that accepts the posted information and sends out a pre-formatted email message. Alternatively you can make use of off-the shelf components. Have the form submit the contents to an internal email address. Next configure an auto-responder to email the visitor with your remarketing message and clickable link to book later.

2. Email List Sign-up Form

For those who already offer an email newsletter, you can leverage that technology to engage in travel remarketing. Set up a remarketing list at your email service provider that only requires the email address field. Add the link or sign-up form widget to your site as before. When visitors “sign-up” for the travel remarketing list, it automatically sends out your reminder message which includes a link to return and resume booking later.

To prevent abuse, delete all subscribers on a regular basis and make sure to never to send subsequent email to this one-time only list. This option also requires that you are able to create an email list that does not require double opt-in as that would trigger a second unwanted message.

3. Remarketing Technology

Deploying a pre-built remarketing widget to your travel website is the most effective and powerful option since it is designed for conversion optimization. Many major marketing automation systems offer remarketing tools, however they can be very expensive and are not optimized for hotels, tour operators, and sellers of travel services.

The Book Later Button (disclaimer: the author’s company BookingCounts is the creator of this travel email remarketing app) is a simple and low-cost option for getting more bookings later. The widget is placed near the “Book Now” button to capture visitors that are not ready to book right away. The travel remarketing dashboard allows you to customize the button, configure remarketing settings, edit the reminder email reminder text, and track the results.

Summary

Instead of telling your visitors to “Book Now” or else, leverage remarketing to capture warm leads and get a chance to convert the undecided. Using Google AdWords remarketing is a first step since it can likely be done without any changes to your website. Offering social media sharing widgets is worth doing since it costs nothing and many visitors prefer to share with friends and social connections. Employing email remarketing technology is effective because email is still the highest converting marketing channel for travel.

Consider deploying all three travel remarketing techniques to get your message repeated on search, social, and email. Booking travel is oftentimes a major decision for consumers. Re-marketing is an essential way to sell your hotel, tour, travel agency, or vacation activity after visitors leave your site.

About the Author

This post was contributed by Scott Petoff. Scott shares his passion for optimizing the online booking experience on the BookingCounts.com blog. Published for the independent hotel, B&B, tour operator, travel agency, and vacation activity site, it offers website self-help advice to get more bookings. As founder of this travel software business, he led the development of the Book Later Button (widget + app) for email remarketing.

Tagged With: google advertising, google adwords, travel remarketing

How to Host a Successful Instagram Contest

By Guest Contributor April 15, 2013 11 Comments

Instagram has become “the next big thing” on the social networking scene. It had been steadily gaining in popularity over the last year, but when Facebook acquired it earlier this year, it really gained prominence and became a serious social contender for online marketers. If your business is not already using Instagram for your marketing campaign, it should be.

One of the best ways to use Instagram for marketing your business is to host a contest on the network, helping to build buzz for your brand and drive traffic to your site. There are also new Instagram monitoring platforms to help assess success and metrics.

Here are a few tips for how you can host a successful Instagram contest to promote your brand:

Offer a Great Prize

The first step to success with any contest is to offer a great prize that will get people excited and generate a lot of buzz for your brand. Offer up the best prize that you can afford. Some great options are gift cards, electronic items and vouchers for travel. If you can’t afford to offer a great prize yourself, work together with advertisers to sponsor a prize.

Choose a Complementary Theme

A good Instagram contest is focused around a theme. For instance, you may ask users to submit their best photos of their road trip, or you may ask them to submit their best interpretations of their Pinterest creations. Try to choose a theme that is fun and interesting and that is related in some way to your brand.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are the best way for you to keep track of submissions. Users can tag their photos, and you can click on the hashtag to see all of the entries together. Hashtags also help to create more exposure for your contest and your brand by creating a trending topic that will reach more users. Make sure you pick a very specific hashtag to track your contest, and use your brand in it somehow. Choose a hashtag like #YourCompanyPinterestWinContest instead of #contest or #PinterestContest.

How Do You Celebrate Brooklyn Instagram Contest

Brooklyn Bowl launched an Instagram contest asking users to take a photo of some way to celebrate Brooklyn, and tag it #celebratebklyn and #brooklynbowl to be automatically entered to win 2 free tickets to the show of their choice at Brooklyn Bowl.

Require Follows for Entry

Leverage your contest to get more followers by requiring people to follow you in order to enter. By building up more followers, you’ll generate a lot of new leads for your business and have opportunities to promote yourself to a whole new audience. You may also consider offering additional entries for actions like sharing the contest on their blogs or other social networks, which will also help you to create more awareness for your brand.

Instagram is a great way to promote your brand. As the network grows in prominence, it offers more and more opportunities for creating more exposure for your business or website. You can use these tips to run a successful contest on Instagram to help your business get more exposure and more traffic.

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This post was contributed by Bridget Sandorford. Bridget is a freelance food and culinary writer, where recently she’s been researching baking and pastry schools. In her spare time, she enjoys biking, painting and working on her first cookbook.

Tagged With: instagram, instagram contest, instagram marketing

What Brands Can Learn From Taco Bell

By Debbie Miller April 10, 2013 Leave a Comment

On April 3, I attended the 17th annual Restaurant Industry Conference at UCLA. Hosted by UCLA Extension, the conference focused on brand relevance and evolution. The lunch keynote, Greg Creed, CEO of Taco Bell, discussed how his brand has transformed itself in several essential ways without losing the loyalty of its core customer.

Many of the points that Creed touched upon may serve as valuable insight for a variety of brands.

The humorous Australian opened with a core distinction between what food used to be and what it is now.

Food used to be fuel, but now, it’s an experience.

He addressed two key insights for any brand:

Current customers want you to be more relevant
Potential customers want you to be better (otherwise, they’d already be your customer)

For example, Taco Bell’s journey to be more relevant was encompassed by the Doritos locos tacos, which created the best year they’ve had. He emphasized the significance of being able to both be better and more relevant as well as be able to answer and execute. Creed also mentioned an ambitious goal – the brand hopes to double in size in the next 10 years. This is a bold goal, but they’re being transparent about it so that they’re held accountable.

Creed discussed how Taco Bell has become the first brand to be in the top five in terms of both speed and accuracy. Brand clarity, knowing what your brand stands for, is essential to this. Any business should understand why they exist and what they stand for.

For Taco Bell, success criteria is defined by whether an initiative is uniquely Taco Bell; resonates with and represents all stakeholders; is repeatable; and conveys the essence — in this case, “MAS.”

This helped birth the idea of their Super Bowl commercial (which went against everything they were advised to do), along with the expansion of their breakfast offerings.

He also touched upon the importance of taking care of your staff.

Creed noted that people are going to judge companies based on how they treat their employees, and act accordingly. Taco Bell’s employees were the first to try and share cool ranch tacos. While this cost the company a lot of money, it created brand advocates of employees.

They are also keeping all employees at 30 hours or greater to ensure they have and keep their healthcare benefits. While other brands are publicly cutting hours to avoid healthcare costs, this move was perceived as the “best decision” they could have made in this situation.

Creed closed with this noteworthy quote:

There is no standing still. You’re either going forward or backward. If you’re standing still, you’re going backward, as others are going forward.

What are some of the ways you’re moving forward?

Tagged With: branding, customer experience, restaurant marketing

Make Your Best Fish Face for National Burrito Day

By Debbie Miller April 2, 2013 15 Comments

Rubio’s, the restaurant brand known for fish tacos, unique seafood dishes and a devotion to the ocean, is celebrating National Burrito Day in a big way this Friday, April 5. They are also known for being one of the most active restaurants on social media.

By simply sharing your best ‘fishy face’ on any social network including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, you can receive two seafood burritos for the price of one. Redeem this deal by capturing your ‘fishy face’ and sharing it on any social network, then go to Rubio’s and show the picture when you order to receive this delicious deal.

Rubio’s dedication to seafood cuisine began when Ralph Rubio and his father, Ray, opened the first Rubio’s in 1983 and started the fish taco phenomenon that spread across the nation. The time Ralph Rubio spent developing the fish taco recipe became the basis for everything Rubio’s stands for today: interesting and complex flavors in chef-crafted recipes using fresh ingredients.

I recently interviewed Ralph about their social media strategy and he emphasized the brand’s commitment to educating fans about their fresh seafood initiatives.

Since the first store opened, Rubio’s has sold more than 170 million Original Fish Tacos®. Today, Rubio’s menu, which serves 85 percent sustainable seafood, has grown from The Original Fish Taco^®to include additional recipes inspired by the sea that feature sustainable shrimp, Atlantic salmon, Regal Springs® tilapia and mahi mahi. In addition to certified sustainable seafood, Rubio’s offers grilled marinated chicken and steak, salads, handmade guacamole, “no fried” pinto beans^sm and a variety of salsas that are prepared daily.

For more information on Rubio’s, its menu options, to find a location near you or to learn more about the National Burrito Day promo visit: http://rubios.com. Those who like to follow restaurants on social media can also join in the conversation and be among the first to hear about upcoming events and celebrations, on Facebook at http://facebook.com/rubios and Twitter at http://twitter.com/rubiostweets.

Rubio’s generously provided some ‘eat free’ cards for which we did a giveaway last week — Congrats to our winners, Pattie and Jenny!

Social Media Marketing Platform for Instagram

By Debbie Miller March 26, 2013 7 Comments

With detailed reports on audience growth, audience geography, engagement and the ability to identify tags that are relevant to their products and services and influencing contributors posting on them, brands now have a unique platform to professionally fine-tune their content and engagement strategy on Instagram.

If you’ve been wondering how to track on Instagram, you’re now in luck! Nitrogram, the all-in-one Instagram marketing suite, just got an update that makes it even easier to leverage Instagram for business.

The platform allows brands to boost Instagram community management by engaging in meaningful ways with fans, as a result of improved analytics and engagement capabilities.

The importance of user generated content that can help increase brands’ presence on Instagram is central to Nitrogram.

For example, an analysis of the #chanel hashtag with Nitrogram identifies Kim Kardashian as the author of #chanel’s most liked photos, all featuring their jewelry and bags.

As the third most-followed user on Instagram, Kardashian has a great reach on the photo sharing network. But she isn’t alone, as other influential bloggers and individuals take to sharing about their favorite products on Instagram.

Even though Chanel has yet to officially join the platform, 150k photos were posted over the past month with the #chanel hashtag, totaling 7.4 million likes. It’s Instagram communities like these that Nitrogram’s reports can help uncover and better reach out to.

Brands have started leveraging this opportunity in earned media through photo contests, up to 50 of which are launched daily on Instagram. Nitrogram also helps brands manage their contests from start to finish, keeping track of submissions and analysing their impact.

After having reached the important milestone of 100 million active users in February 2013, Instagram is confirming its importance as a stand-alone platform that brands and digital professionals need to pay attention to. Nitrogram helps them make sense of and better leverage the millions of photos shared on the social network everyday.

What do you think may be the biggest benefit to having this kind of insight to your users?

Tagged With: analytics, instagram, tracking

The Social Media Hospitality Experience

By Guest Contributor March 11, 2013 Leave a Comment

This first-hand experience was contributed by Albert Qian. Albert is a web and social media program manager born and raised in Silicon Valley. He believes that social media has the power to connect people and facilitate the sharing of personal stories that can change lives and perspectives.

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in a very unique social media experience. Through the Irvine Company, I was able to help market Crescent Village, a new apartment community in San Jose, through social media. Over the five-day experience, my friends, fans, and followers were treated to photos, status updates, and blog posts about living in one of the most luxurious units I had ever had the opportunity to live in.

The use of social media played a big part in this event. For photos, I used both Facebook and Instagram. For location-based check-ins, I used Foursquare, and for blogging and status updates, I used WordPress, Twitter, and Facebook status updates.

There are no doubt numerous social networks available to market a social media experience – new apps such as Vine are good for documenting short bits of content for audiences, but the core philosophies remain for any social media marketer.

Social media experiences should be visual: Instagram and Facebook photos were always my best bet when it came to engagement. Humans after all are very visual folks and respond well to visual cues. Seeing something as opposed to reading is always preferable, and for many, seeing the features and amenities of Crescent Village were very tempting.
Location, location, location: Location is a very big key in social media, and even more so for living. Checking in mattered to me because Crescent Village was a short ten-minute walk to my office and I wanted to show friends and followers just how close it was to live to work and the benefits. When marketing your brand in hospitality show how close you are to the places that matter to your audience. This always makes the experience better.
In friends we trust: Facebook was my biggest asset in being able to show the world how great a place Crescent Village was to live because that’s where I have friends who trust me the most. When marketing your hospitality brand consider the networks and audience where you are trusted the most. When you have that trust people are more likely to approach you and ask about your experience, or come to the experience itself as many friends did.
Social networking doesn’t just leave itself to social media: In the end also get your friends involved. Friends were always happy to come over and join for the fun as evidenced on Wednesday and Friday at Crescent Village where we had a group tour of the complex and a business meeting, respectively. Having friends create content, tweet, and Facebook about their experience is just as important because you cannot build relationships unless you are present in real life. As a hospitality brand, build up your trust and social capital by holding events and networking with others. This is sometimes the best way to build a relationship.

What other brands have you seen go out of their way to establish relationships through social media?

Tagged With: hospitality, social media

Four Ways Hotels Can Use Instagram

By Guest Contributor February 26, 2013 17 Comments

Instagram has quickly grown to be a powerful marketing tool for all types of businesses. Its user base has grown exponentially, and now that Facebook has acquired it, the potential for its use has grown even more.

Hotels and other businesses in the hospitality industry are uniquely positioned to use Instagram to market themselves because of the visual and creative nature of the medium. Not sure where to get started? Here are a few ideas for using Instagram to market your hotel:

Share Photos of the Rooms and Amenities

Obviously, the first place to start is to share stunning photos of your hotel and its amenities. Showcase the rooms and suites. Highlight the amenities such as the fitness room and swimming pool. Feature the mouth-watering dishes from your hotel restaurant. Catch the staff in action providing exceptional service for your guests.

The key is to take and share only the very best photos. Be creative and take a unique vantage point that will not only pique your followers’ interest but will also show off your hotel’s best features and make them want to visit.

Create a Virtual Tour

Let’s face it: Guests don’t come to your hotel because they want to stay at your hotel, they come to your hotel because it’s the best one in the region that they want to visit. Show them why they want to come spend a while in your town by creating a virtual tour. Take photos of the landmarks and notable sights in your city and region. If you are located in a big city, create a tour of the “hidden” side of your city — sights and features that most don’t know about.

As always, your focus should also be on creating beautiful pictures that will capture your followers’ attention. Though they may look like snapshots, any photos you share should be taken with the care of a professional.

Create a Virtual Treasure Hunt

Make your guests’ stay at your hotel a fun one by creating a virtual treasure hunt including your hotel and the surrounding area. Leave clues that will take them past little-known parts of the city or that will highlight features of your hotel. Create clues that will be both easy and hard to appeal to players of all ages and all abilities.

Make it fun and competitive by offering an array of prizes. Just for fun, a “prize” could be a guestbook where everyone that completes an easy hunt can sign their name and leave a note. A more competitive prize could be something like a free meal at your restaurant or a free night in your hotel to someone who completes a harder trail.

Hold a Contest

You don’t have to take all the photos on your Instagram account. Hold a contest and ask your visitors to share their best photos of your hotel, their stay at your hotel, or their trip in the surrounding area. Include creative prompts to get the best photos possible. Offer a really great prize to generate a lot of buzz and to get a lot of entries.

The more entries you get, the more photos you’ll have for future marketing endeavors, and the more exposure you are likely to generate for your brand.

Instagram is a great way to market your hotel, and it offers a lot of creative possibilities. These are just a few ways you can get started with the network to market your hotel. Think outside the box, and the sky’s the limit for other marketing possibilities!

How do you use Instagram to market your hotel? Share your tips in the comments!

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This post was contributed by Chloe Trogden. Chloe runs www.collegegrant.net, which serves as an up-to-date financial aid guide for thousands of people all over the world. Her leisure activities include camping, swimming and playing her guitar.

Tagged With: instagram, instagram for hotels

A Beginner’s Guide to Pinterest for Marketing

By Guest Contributor February 15, 2013 Leave a Comment

Pinterest actually launched in 2010, even though it took off the start of last year as users the world over went pin crazy. Just take a look at this impressive growth graph!

Now the website has over 11 million users and is still growing, with some of the most popular pin boards including holiday destinations, interiors inspiration and recipes – perfect for those in the hospitality industry.

While businesses like fashion brands and home decor stockists do do very well on Pinterest, there’s a place for those in the hotel, bed and breakfast and restaurant industry too, provided you go about it strategically.

A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Pinterest is a very visual social network. Images are the main focus, with just enough room for a clever caption and none at all for status updates and messages to friends. This makes it a fantastic tool for the hospitality sector where beautiful, high quality images of premises, food and surroundings are rife.

If you’re still uploading lower quality pictures, the best thing to do is invest in a good camera. It doesn’t even have to be an SLR as compact digital cameras are being increasingly manufactured to produce better quality images for less. You’d be surprised by the difference a professional looking photograph can make to a potential customer.

Pinterest users love sharing images that capture not just their eye but their imagination, and are the ones most likely to be shared by their own followers too, therefore being passed on to a much wider audience and increasing the original pinner’s visibility.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Although Pinterest does differ from other social networks in a few ways, the key best practices of not being too salesy and mixing up your content to cater for different visitor tastes still remains, just like Visit Savannah does.

For a decent variety, for each board you create to showcase your business, create another that showcases inspiration for the same subject. For example, when creating a board full of images of your beautiful rooms start an additional one named something like ‘Hotel room inspiration.’ The same goes for things like the food you cook and recipe inspiration, and your business’ location or what to do there and your own dream holiday destinations.

You could even create a board that reveals what goes on behind the scenes at your establishment and is full of images of your chefs hard at work, your guests enjoying a mouth-watering breakfast or even a few snaps from a staff day out.

One of the most effective boards to create though – provided you also function as a wedding or reception venue – is for wedding inspiration. It’s one of the most popular categories on Pinterest and, if you mix in lovely pins of what you think the perfect wedding could involve with a few images of your own venue, the board is sure to capture the imagination of users and show them you’ll be able to make their dream day a reality.

Another popular category is ‘DIY & Crafts’ which, if you approach it creatively, is a great one for users in the hospitality industry to exploit. If you’re able to take advantage of the wedding theme you could repin tutorials for DIY bouquet arrangements or even create one yourself! And if not, try tutorials for making your own table arrangements, folding napkins creatively or even how to make your own face masks to leave in guests’ bathrooms.

As a little extra tactic, you could also try to pin images seasonally, posting lovely shots of your Christmas lights and decorations during the festive period, pinning recipes for the perfect autumn meal and even images of spring flowers popping up around your premises. You just need to think outside the box!

Traffic Control

Pinterest is a great source of website traffic, and if you pin according to the previous guidelines and offer equally as interesting and engaging content on your website, the probability of turning that traffic into business becomes even greater.

Image credit: Shareaholic

But how exactly do you get them to your site from Pinterest? Well, first you need to download the ‘Pin It’ button from the ‘About’ section of your Pinterest homepage.

Once you’ve done that, use it to pin (attractive and relevant) images from your website to your chosen board, and when users click that image on Pinterest they’ll be taken straight to the page that you pinned it from.

Blog posts are perfect, establishing you as an industry authority and creating a sense of trust among potential customers, nurturing them towards making a booking. It’s also good practice to post links, where relevant, in your image captions and profile bio to increase site awareness in a low friction way, letting users make the choice to click through when they feel like it.

Social media users also love contests, and you can really get creative when using Pinterest. Visit Santa Barbara recently ran an effective Pinterst content tying in various aspects of the city.

Sharing is Caring

For all Pinterest’s subtle differences to other social networks, it’s still a social network and requires you to interact with other users for it to really work. You should be liking, repinning and commenting on content regularly to raise awareness of your business and build up relationships with other users, proving to them that you aren’t just about the sale; you’re about the actual customer too.

Another great way to get involved is by joining community boards. These are boards that multiple users can pin to and can be identified by the little symbol of three people next to where it says ‘[x number] pins’ on the board in question. They’re also a great way to develop relationships with other users as you’ll need to send a nice email or leave a comment requesting to be added, preferably telling the board’s owner that you love the content that’s on there.

Community boards are also a great way for hospitality businesses just starting out on Pinterest to quickly pick up followers, provided you don’t spam the board with irrelevant pins and get kicked off that is!

Pinterest can be an incredibly valuable tool in your marketing efforts for your hotel, restaurant, destination or venue, if you do it right. The key thing to remember is that the businesses that succeed are those who really get involved with what’s going on and use the platform as much more than just another sales pitch.

Remember: show your human side, give something back to users, don’t forget to have fun and, most importantly, bear in mind the simple rules of Pinterest etiquette – be respectful, be authentic, credit your sources and run promotions in the correct manner.

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This post was contributed by Michelle Pegg, a true social media advocate who enjoys reading and blogging about the hospitality industry, textiles and linens. She is the Assurance & Compliance Manager at Hilden Linens, UK suppliers of linen to the hospitality industry. Follow her on Twitter: @PeggMichelle

Tagged With: creative marketing, destination marketing, marketing on pinterest, pinterest, pinterest contests