How the Resort Industry is Using Social Media
A growing number of resort and spa destinations are spreading their wings and reaching a wider customer base via social media. With the help of social networking platforms and niche bloggers, vacation spots are broadening their branding efforts from the sand to the slopes, and connecting with potential patrons they may not have reached through traditional advertising. Here's a look at some of the social strategies these getaway companies are employing and what we can learn from their success. Online Dedication Ski resorts in particular are taking advantage of online opportunities to communicate with their communities and reach beyond their usual demographic. Vail Resorts Senior Corporate Communications Manager Amy Kemp says each website, along with both of the company's Twitter accounts (@snowdotcom and @vailmtn) caters to a slightly different audience, but each group shares one thing — a love for skiing and snowboarding. Offline Action Social Media Takeaways from the Getaway Industry
HOW TO: Build a Facebook Landing Page for Your Business
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Facebook is known for its uniformity. You can post all sorts of content, but the actual design and layout of your profile is the same as everyone else's. But with Facebook Fan Pages and the array of apps you can plug into them, there are a few ways you can customize what people see when they land on your Page. You've probably seen custom Fan Pages like those of Best Buy and Victoria's Secret. These are often used to promote deals, call attention to new products, or simply welcome visitors with an attractive branded splash page. More business resources from Mashable:
Facebook Measurement and Analytics
With consumers active in your mobile, social and online properties, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by data. You can stay focused with Webtrends Multi-Channel Measurement, which includes a unified analytics dashboard that shows you customer activity across every digital channel. A team of Webtrends experts will help you interpret your results and transform them into a measurement strategy that’s right for you. This is more than analytics. It’s an all-in-one solution that helps you understand consumer behaviors so you can create relevant experiences for all of your customers. Use less guesswork, get more customers. Technologies may be new and ever-evolving, but some things never change.
Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Just when you thought you had social media figured out, Google has shaken things up with a new entrant into the market: Google Buzz. It’s integrated into Gmail, which means right out of the gate it potentially has an audience of tens of millions of people. As such, it could eventually prove as important to your business as the other services we’ve seen prosper in the past few years. If you’ve spent much time on social media sites, many of the features will look familiar, as Buzz combines elements of Twitter, Facebook, and the quickly rising Foursquare. But there are some subtleties that make Buzz unique, and in turn create opportunities that you should familiarize yourself with –- if not start to take advantage of –- as soon as possible. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. So is it time to jump head first into Buzz?
Developing a Social Strategy: Slides and Webinar Recording –Shar
Yesterday, we had the second in a three part webinar series about social strategy. The first, which you should listen to, focuses on understanding customers though socialgraphics. The following slides and recorded webinar (a bit faint, so be sure turn it up) are intended to be the foundation for companies of all sizes to develop a strategy based on business objectives –not the latest technology. We believe in Open Research and encourage our knowledge to become the foundation for growth of ideas, and encourage you to learn, share on your blog, and put into educational materials. The Social Strategy Trilogy Part 1: Socialgraphics help you to understand your customers Part 2: Developing a Social Strategy (You’re here now) Part 3: Getting your company ready Attend the Final Third Webinar: Getting Your Company Ready To attend the third no cost webinar, we’re accepting registrations (we had over 1100 this second one) so please sign up.
Social Media Today | How 5 Top Companies Win With Twitter
Last week at Socia Media Breakfast, I learned that AT&T has 15 Customer service reps and a full-time analyst dedicated to Twitter. This got me thinking about how businesses organize, scale and manage a large Twitter presence. I looked at 5 case studies for 5 different approaches: 1.) Organize by Customer Services Reps: AT&T AT&T sends ~1,000 tweets per day per rep (15 full-time customer care reps). 2.) Microsoft organizes and scales Twitter by product or business unit. 3.) Whole Foods has a massive Twitter presence with more than 200 total handles. 4.) Although BuddyTV is considerably smaller than the other case studies, they have a large and highly effective Twitter presence. 5.) With their unique (and well publicized) Twelpforce initiative, BestBuy basically put the entire company to work on Twitter. Follow-up Questions How will companies organize and scale social media internally?
Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns -
A couple of years ago I put together this "social network" calculator as a free resource to assess the opportunity cost of recruiting email subscribers and donors online. It was ahead of its time and may still need some tweaking, but the basic assumptions hold true - if you're paying staff to spend time on social networks and the end goal is list-growth or dollars, then this tool is for you. Enter the cost per hour of your staff, and other basic web and email metrics, and you can get a realistic snapshot of how you're doing.I'll preempt the typical response of "well, there are other intangibles and other types of ROI" by saying that if that's your world, that's fine, you're right - there are interesting and good things that happen as a result of social media, and you should do it, but I wouldn't expect a lot of direct response in terms of dollars, and you might want to hold off if you haven't done some of the basics, first. So... let 'er rip. Bring on the peer review. Cheers,
The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
The Internet-era has made establishing trust an increasingly complicated issue. Our finely tuned ability to read facial expressions does not apply to e-mail, and emoticons are, at best, an imperfect substitute for sarcastic inflection (raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten into trouble for typing something that was meant to be a joke). So, how can we establish trust when our online identities are often little more than an avatar and few lines of text? Fortunately, some in the scientific community have taken it upon themselves to help us through the confusion. Through both laboratory studies and field observation of people conversing over the Internet, scientists can survey when participants are likely to trust word-of-mouth or stab an absent colleague in the back. I sat down with a leading figure in this field, Professor Judy Olson, to talk about the essentials of building trust with digital communication. The Psychology of Trust Responsiveness Is Key for Digital Communication Conclusion
