Hi, I'm Dave. I have been running Propeller Media Works, an online marketing and web development studio in Burlington VT, since 1997. My primary focus is on digital innovation and trends that apply to web design, and online marketing.
Very recently, the Four Seasons launched a new site that generated buzz about their focus on digital marketing, social marketing, and specifically their embrace of customer reviews. That's been hot on my mind this week, and I've posted quite a bit on it (follow my Google Plus).
So this morning, I came across from this G+ post from Guy Kawasakithat led to the discovery of Terranea Resort outside LA, so I thought I'd check it out.
I can't say that I am crazy about the site. The entry photos are captivating but overall its a bit cluttered. One thing that did catch my eye was a promo for Social Buzz - "read what others are saying".
Do I care what the brand has to say about themselves? No. Do I care what customers have to say? Yes. So I clicked.
Here is why resorts especially care. Four Season’s VP Marketing Susan Helstab explains in this recent USA Today artcile: “In a Four Seasons survey, 33% of guests rate TripAdvisor “very to extremely influential” in their selection of a luxury hotel. In its research, the Toronto-based hotel operator also cites these stats from consulting firm e-tailing group: 92% of internet users read product reviews and 89% say that reviews influence their booking decision.”
On their Guest Reviews page I found a nifty module powered by Revinate.Using the tool, the resort selects favorable reviews to display. I dug a bit deeper into the tool and found that its a pretty powerful reputation management tool for managing these many points where people are talking about the resort. The visitor doesn't really know that these were carefully selected, though they may suspect. The company partnered with TripAdvisor so they get top billing at the top, but there is also access to see all other reviews by other sources such as Yelp, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Google, etc.
The emphasis on reviews carries over to their Facebook page as well.
They use Evinate's Social Buzz app to provide access to guest reviews. Here they're not displaying any, and I'm not sure whether this is a limitation of the app, or oversight on their part. Key is users do have the access to guest reviews. Overall, Terranea's Facebook page provides a case study model for how a resort can make the most of Facebook. All their paths to conversion are all there - book rooms, golf tee times, spa treatments, etc. Very smart... but that's for another post.
Though brands always fear those "angry reviews", studies show that a strong majority of reviews tend to be positive. If you offer a solid product at a fair price, customers will tell others and nothing is stronger than that word of mouth endorsement!
Update on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 11:50AM by
Dave Gibson
Another key reason that I forgot to mention is SEO. Particularly with Google Place reviews. Review ranks don't affect placement, but volume does.
Google Plus may not rock yet, but it will. The combination of revenue potential, resources, brand involvement, influence on search, mobile, and Facebook's disregard for privacy and customer satisfaction will all combine to make Google Plus a powerful and popular social network.
Soon after it launched however, the G+ party was declared a bust. It looked to be just a bunch of geeks standing around a keg of warm stale beer. The calls went out from myself and others that Google + was dead.
You can always find the truth when you follow the money. PC Magazine recently reported, that while Google and Facebook are very close in the race for Unique Visits, Facebook crushes all when it comes to Time On Site. Time On Site reflects where people really Live online. Advertisers will pay more to be where people Live than where people Visit. Google gets that essential point, and even though they may be late to the party, they have the minds, means, and motivation to rock it once they show up.
Brands Are Invited Now
In November 2011, Google + invited Brands to join the party. Brands are quickly giving the network new juice by promoting the social network through placement of the G+ icon along side the Like button everywhere. December’s 55% bump over November may reflect this. Looking ahead, Brands will essentially bring the beer by delivering games and new forms of interaction through custom apps.
Why do brands care? Advertisers are trending away from mass broadcasting and toward more targeted advertising and engagement. Here they will also find a less crowded party with less competition to connect with customers. Another big reason is Search.
SEO & Social Search
The SEO play is obvious: Google + pages turn up in search engine results and the combination of Google Places (map) with Google Plus will enhance those results.
Social Search is a shift toward incorporating the influence of people in our networks into the search results algorithm. As an example your friend hits the +1 for your local bakery. When you search for sticky buns, that bakery will be given more weight.
>Update 1/10/12 > Today Google begins rolling out Social Search - such that it will incorporate stories and conversations that people in your circles share that relate to your search. As published today on Mashable: "Type in a topic of interest, like “Rome,” and along with maps, travel info, historical references, you’ll find a post your friend wrote in Google+ about a recent trip to Rome. That post, though, will only appear if it’s been shared with you or if the post is public."
Privacy
A key differentiator between G+ and Facebook is privacy. This could mark when Facebook’s brazen disregard for the privacy comes back to haunt them. In contrast, Google gets privacy and G+ is more oriented towards managing the flow of inbound and outbound communication (Circles) to control who sees what.
Mobile
Google’s new mobile operating system, Android 4, is designed to integrate with G+. New device owners are encouraged to connect/signup for G+ when they setup the device. The first device coming out on the new platform is Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, and if you pay attention to their ads, you’ll see that they’re featuring its G+ integration as a key feature. Droid is dominating the smartphone/tablet market with about 50% market share.
Apps & APIs
Google will be opening the doors this year for other developers get in and create new functionality for Brands and their customers. APIs are side doors that allow developers to plug in their own apps and extend the functionality of the system. Think games, contests, and other custom applications that engage (this is the cold beer).
Network Effect
The concept has to do with value of a service/product, and that in cases such as the fax machine, the value of the product grows as more people use it. A social network only has value once adoption reaches critical mass. There seems to be no question now that G+ is approaching that tipping point.
Facebook’s Customer Dissatisfaction
Facebook may be popular, but it isn’t loved. In fact, this summer’s American Customer Satisfaction Index report revealed Facebook to be one of the least loved – it ranks at the very bottom along with airlines and credit card companies. Why? I’d speculate that the serious disregard for privacy has hurt Facebook along with the constant changes and feature bloating that irritate users.
In contrast, Google scored very well. I’d suggest that while Google may not be as un-evil as it claims, they do understand the value of customer trust. Their search engine and associated ad platform that delivers billions is based on that trust.
Segmented Broadcasting and Aggregation
Circles *easily* allows you to segment who you broadcast to and who you listen to. Yes, you can create groups in Twitter and Facebook, but they don't let you choose which group you want to broadcasts to ... easily, and certainly not on a per post level. On G+ I can share an article about ski resorts just to my ski resort segment AND I can listen and only hear what those ski resorts are broadcasting. This type of segmentation makes this a great tool for those that currently jump between LinkedIn and Facebook, or those that are uncomfortable with their Facebook mashup of professional and personal friends.
Biggest Challenge: Social Network Fatigue
If the party isn’t awesome, it’s going to be difficult to pull people away from Facebook’s. They may not love it, but it’s where their friends are. It’s a hassle to create a new profile, learn its idiosyncrasies, and build your network. People are sheep and until more friends adopt G+, they’ll follow the heard.
Last Words
Google may not be putting on a killer party yet, but they’re figuring it out and lots of cold beer is on the way. Remember, Google Plus doesn’t need to beat Facebook to be a major social network player, and worth the time of consumers and brands. They can and will present a compelling offering that will be worth the time first for consumers and second for brands. They really must if they want to provide advertisers with placement where people Live versus Visit online.
With Facebook Places jumping into the geo location game that Foursquare pioneered, now is the time for resorts to plant their flag... literally. The goal is to get visitors to "check in" and broadcast to their networks that they are at your resort... ie indirect word of mouth marketing. The most obvious motivation for users to do so is for them to connect to their other friends who might also be at the resort, and with a little imagination I think any resort can come up with additional incentives.
The Vail Resorts family of resorts (Vail, Keystone, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Heavenly) forsaw this opportunity and developed the Epic Mix application - both mobile and desktop. This takes social a few steps further by connecting on-mountain RFID data embedded in lift tickets to track stats and broadcast. The app combines this with social interaction to connect with friends on the mountain, and share experiences out to Facebook, Twitter, and the Epic Mix network. They also pulled the "badge" game concept from Foursquare to reward users for on-mountain accomplishments. Very cool.
You may lack the budget to afford Crispin Porter and the throng of developers needed to build such a custom application. The good news is that you don't need to. There are free tools available.
Facebook Places In August 2010 Facebook launched the location based service. Rather than explain it, here's a good article. The first part is the Places page. Seamingly redundant to Pages, Facebook all on their own setup a Place for every business they could. If you search under your business name, you'll likely find a Place entry in addition to your Page. The first thing you need to do is capture control of your Place. Here is a PDF of the instructions, but note that the process is already different since they published this. Once you do, you can merge your Place and your Page. That is key.
Your goal is to get your customers to habitually pull out their phone and checkin every time they hit the mountain, the restaurant, the spa, the bar... etc. Consider rewards for most checkins, or a separate ticket line for customers who checkin to Facebook Places. Signage Why? Everytime they do, that event is broadcasted to all their friends. Average user has over 300 Facebook fans. You do the math.
Foursquare The joke is that Foursquare has more people in the media using it than real people. Its ahead of its time and will surely die soon. I expect Facebook (who considered buying them earlier this year) with Places will effectively take care of that. I would't invest much in it, but just understand the underlying "badge" plus "location" proof of concept aspect of the service. Badges are earned when users check-in.. for example, the person that checks in the most at a location earns the Mayor Badge. Some locations reward the Mayor with free coffee, 10% off, etc. Imagine similar incentives for most vertical feet, hitting all black diamonds, etc. Expect to see this game concept applied to Facebook Places.
Ok. Be good to your customers and share the love....
In designing our presentation, we both agreed that everyone has had enough forced social cool-aid guzzling, and that we'd assume that our audience understood the value and didn't need to be sold. What they need now are examples of what is working to follow as well as guidance on how to get it done. Mark tee'd up that discussion nicely with a case study on Queensland, Australia's campaign to attract applicants for "the best job in the world" (to be paid to experience Queensland and share it via social media). He followed that up with methods and tools for measuring performance.
The context of my conversation began with an understanding that social media doesn't sit on an island. You just can't talk about social without overlapping into other areas of marketing, as well as other areas of the business. While much is often discussed about the first point of integrated marketing, I wanted to emphasize the role social can play in supporting other departments in addition to marketing/pr : events, HR, operations, customer service. That said, I do believe that the trend is and will continue to be that resorts hire a social media ring-leader to create the content and guide a broader integrated program.
The Integrated Online Marketing Landscape
I often use this chart to illustrate both where we were and where we are now, and the overlapping nature of the channels and methods today. You can't talk about SEO without talking about social media now. You can't talk about traffic building or engagement without social media. Feeds that push and pull content from one channel into the other, and the need for sensitivity to understand the unique audiences of each channel.
Someone Must Own it: Get a Halley
Once someone (like us) sets it all up, brands it, and connects all the feeds, you need someone to drive the program - and infuse it throughout your organization. This is a new breed of skillset that combines media production (both infront and behind the camera) with PR, marketing and customer service. Halley O'Brien at Mountain Creek is your poster girl:
Why? I said I wouldn't talk about why social is key, but if I must, I'll simply remind us that the mission of marketing is to go where the people are and influence them to take an action. The most effective form of marketing is World of Mouth marketing. Social media is an extremely effective channel for connecting with influencers. Our goal is to turn them into brand advocates and for them to market for us.
SO. Slice your print budget (do you really think those brochure racks deliver skier visits?), pull that billboard, do what ever you need to... just get yourself a Halley. Trust me. (after she asks for a raise, I'm going to catch hell from Bill).
I'll show you what she can do though.. take their 5-Pak promotion. So your typical marketing manager might post a press release and even dumb it down for a short post on Facebook, etc. Maybe go so far as create a graphic and post it in the newspaper. Sooo 2000. Halley took that mission to get that message out and made a video that successfully communicates the message in a way that is very funny, ads personality to the brand, and is easy to share virally.
Heard the Cats
With your social media manager in place, your resort then has the opportunity to leverage social to support other departments with their goals. Take customer service. If you check your Facebook wall or Twitter feed, you're likely to find CS questions. The public response to these questions is seen by all - whether the answer is news or not, its demonstrating modern customer service. Operations could broadcast and collect feedback about features or hazards on the mountain. Management can monitor the pulse of the resort and take in valuable feedback. There is no better feedback loop and all departments would benefit from listening.
Take Aways
Set goals and measure
Integrate across your marketing plan and throughout your resort
The easy part is setting it up. You must have people to drive it.
Engage with Influencers and turn them into Brand Advocates
Listen, Test, Adapt continuously
Fear not
MOST IMPORTANT...
You're a resort that your customer love. Every day is an experience that your customers want to share. They have smart phones capable of sharing both media in real-time to all their friends.
Damn good looking dude. Look at him rip.
Average user has 130 Facebook friends. If your Facebook page has 10,000 fans you have a reach of over 3 million through that one channel.
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 9:12AM 
that led to the discovery of Terranea Resort outside LA, so I thought I'd check it out.
Using the tool, the resort selects favorable reviews to display. I dug a bit deeper into the tool and found that its a pretty powerful reputation management tool for managing these many points where people are talking about the resort. The visitor doesn't really know that these were carefully selected, though they may suspect. The company partnered with TripAdvisor so they get top billing at the top, but there is also access to see all other reviews by other sources such as Yelp, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Google, etc.
