Mediaboss Marketing

27 April 2012

According to a survey by USA Today, the No. 1 choice for consumers contacting hotels via social networks is to find local info. Users are looking for recommendations on things to do, restaurants and bars in the destination, and a concierge that is able to reply to requests on social networks is seen as a way to enhance the consumers experience. The survey points the direction of what hotel social marketing should be about.

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What do consumers want out of hotel social marketing? According to a survey by USA Today, the No. 1 choice for consumers contacting hotels via social networks is to find local info. Users are looking for recommendations on things to do, restaurants and bars in the destination, and a concierge that is able to reply to requests on social networks is seen as a way to enhance the consumers experience. The survey points the direction of what hotel social marketing should be about.

This survey got me thinking about certain digital marketing best practices that hotels should adhere to when engaging consumers on social networks. This article points out five simple tips for hoteliers that want to infuse their social presence with an engagement shot by turning their social presence into a social concierge.

Tip 1- Use your staff to describe whats happening in your neighborhood No one better than your staff knows whats happening in your neighborhood. Whether its the trendy restaurant, or the cool new bar for singles, your Facebook page and twitter stream will come alive as you discuss whats happening. Other locals may flock to your posts and enhance them with valuable information. This local, hard-to-get information is what hotel social marketing should be about, as this is what users are looking for.

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Is The Social Concierge The Answer To Hotel Social Marketing?

Are you already promoting your products and services on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, etc. You have one more platform called Pinterest. Take your SME to the next level with the help of Pinterest

Businesses that went social with their products and services tasted success. In fact, popular social sites such as Google+ and Facebook are offering exclusive schemes for businesses in general and SMEs in particular to cash in on the opportunity. And that's when social media marketing gathered momentum.

Well, social media marketing has now become the order of the day. It has created a buzz across the globe, though many in India still don't know how to use this effectively for their growth and expansion.

However, the story in the West and other developed markets are different. They are already grappling on social sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, etc and their success stories are awe-inspiring.

They have now started experimenting with new social sites like Pinterest.

Recently launched, Pinterest has now become the fastest social site to cross the 10 million unique visitor-mark in history. A comScore survey says this innovative social site had registered an average growth of 52 per cent from January to February, 2012, and garnered a mind-blowing 17.8 million users.

This success has evoked a keen interest among businesses around the globe, as they sensed a huge opportunity. As a matter of fact, a few industries in the US have already begun to use it.

The registration process is simple. To join Pinterest, one needs to apply or be invited by somebody. Users can create online virtual pin boards, to which they can pin images. Multiple boards can be created and sorted by their content, and comments can be added. Users can browse through the various boards and follow their creators, and can like images or re-pin them to their own boards.

According to a top executive with a social media consultancy in the US, Pinterest provides a channel to interested consumers and can drive traffic back to a businesss website. It is visual-based and it makes it distinctive from other social sites.

In the country, Pinterest hit the bull's-eye, as its visual nature made it particularly appealing to visual-based businesses, such as weddings websites. The same feature has proved to be popular with the graphic design community, too, for it provides a simple way of visually communicating with clients.

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(P)interest-ed in social media marketing?

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Today Useful Social Media announced that 20 leading brands will be meeting in London to debate the key issues surrounding B2B marketing and social media. Expert marketers are flying in from the US and Europe to discuss where social media fits in with marketing in the current climate.

Senior marketers from BAE Systems* Dell* General Electric* SAGE* Cisco* IBM* HP* BT* Siemens* CME Group* will be examining the benchmarks, business influencer strategy and lead generation capabilities of social media for B2B businesses.

It is the first time the UK has seen leading brands debating exclusively B2B social media and breaks the growing trend of B2C focused marketing summits.

Founder of Useful Social Media Nick Johnson stated: This is the first time the UK has seen an exclusively B2B social media summit. Most touch on the issue but very few get to the real core of the topic. We are certain this will finally get to the heart of the biggest problems facing marketers and deliver answers.

For more information on both B2B social media and the summit please visit http://www.usefulsocialmedia.com/btob or contact will.taylor@usefulsocialmedia.com

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Useful Social Media announce UK’s first B2B Social Media Marketing Summit

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Extole (www.extole.com), the leading Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) Social Marketing Platform, today announced that it has been named a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD). To be selected, Extole went through a rigorous application process and was selected based on its proven ability to build integrated Facebook apps for its C2C Social Marketing Platform.

Extole C2C Social Marketing solutions power social referrals, promotions and analytics for over 200 brands and agenices across Retail, eCommerce, Media, Technology, Entertainment, Automotive, and more. The Extole platform enables brands and agenices to tap into the power of their brand advocates and gain deep social insights with a cross-channel approach to social marketing that ties into leading social networks, including Facebook.

Consumer sharing on Facebook is more than doubling annually, making it all the more important for brands to harness the power of their consumers to help influence advocacy. At Extole, we are dedicated to ensuring our platform seamlessly integrates with Facebook, while offering the best solutions to power C2C Social Marketing, said Brad Klaus, CEO of Extole. Were thrilled to be a part of Facebook PMD program and look forward to giving brands and agencies new and exciting ways to engage and interact with their consumers.

The mission of the Facebook PMD program is to help developers build products that make social marketing easier and more effective. Facebook recognized Extole for its work in the Apps category for services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations customized or self service. Extole was previously a part of the Preferred Developer Consultant Program (PDC), which was merged with the Marketing API Program (MAP), to create the new PMD program to better represent the various technologies in the Facebook ecosystem and to recognize companies that develop holistic solutions.

About Extole

Extole is the leading Consumer-to-Consumer Social Marketing Platform, enabling brands and agencies to turn their customers into social advocates. Extole powers social referral programs, promotions, testimonials, and robust social analytics for more than 200 brands, helping them grow sales, increase traffic and awareness, and gain critical insights. Customers include Kate Spade New York, J. Hilburn, AAA, Shutterfly, New York Times, and SkyMall. Extole is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit http://www.extole.com

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Extole Selected as Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) Based on Proven Ability to Build Facebook Apps

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Social media campaigns are proving vital in reaching disparate populations to promote family planning and safe sex in developing countries according to DKT International. Social media has become an integral weapon in the U.S. marketers arsenal and the Washington, D.C.-based social marketing organization is successfully leveraging these powerful new tools for social change in international family planning.

DKT focuses on family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention and is no stranger to employing innovative and groundbreaking tactics to reach communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A family planning Facebook page in Mozambique reaches 9,500 Mozambicans and is a key educational and promotional tool to reach women. In part as a result, DKT provided family planning to more than 97,000 couples in 2011, an increase of a marked 153%. In Ethiopia, online videos and TV commercials feature footage of native tribes interacting with condomstruly revolutionary.

In Brazil, the Condom Tester Program invites Prudence condom users via Facebook ads, blogs, mens magazine ads and Google ads to submit sexual adventure tales for the opportunity to win a year of free condoms. In addition to submitting his story, the condom tester is encouraged to pin where the adventure took place and share the story on social networks including Facebook. Nearing the end of its fourth season, the 2012 contest has sparked 88,000 website visits and 2,400 stories submitted from countries around the world including the U.S., Canada, Mxico, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, Japan and many European nations.

DKT Turkey, a commercial company established to engage the private sector in increased condom use, created a new website, Facebook page, Google Adwords, e-newsletter, viral marketing, banner advertisements and advertisements on a Turkish gay and lesbian rights organization website to promote DKTs own brand of Fiesta condoms. Fiesta condoms experienced twice the growth of a lower-priced condom brand not bolstered by digital media and reported an above-average proportion of online condom sales.

DKT has been effective in reaching people through social media in the Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Turkey to promote safer sex and family planning on a significant scale. In Turkey specifically, a modest investment of $50,000 in social media programming helped sell 350,000 condoms, says Chris Purdy, Executive Vice President ofDKT International. With the growing availability and use of the internet and social media globally, our experience demonstrates that family planning organizations might consider incorporating these technologies into their educational, outreach and marketing programs.

Since 1989, DKT International has provided safe and affordable options for family planning and HIV prevention through social marketing and serves more than 22 million couples annually, establishing it as the largest private provider of family planning products and services in the developing world. http://www.dktinternational.org

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Social Media Sells Safe Sex and Family Planning