We’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Pinterest lately, but surprisingly little of it comes from within the Innkeeping community. I say it is surprising, because Pinterest seems almost as if it was made for innkeepers – it is easy to use (we jumped in for our Freeport Maine B&B, and were happily pinning away in minutes), plentiful graphics grab the attention of the visitor, and it is so addictive that users stay connected for a long time.

According to comScore, Pinterest ranks just behind Google+ in number of visitors, and third (behind Facebook and Tumblr) in the amount of time a visitor spends on the site. This is very impressive for a site that is not yet open to the public (you can join using a Facebook login, or you can request an invitation on the Pinterest home page).

So what is Pinterest?

Pinterest describes itself as a virtual pinboard, but we think it is being far too modest. From where we sit, Pinterest is a fantastic tool for sharing interests, or ideas, with others. It seems to be a combination of bookmarking sites (like StumbleUpon, Digg, or Reddit) with photo sharing sites (like Flickr, Panoramio, or Photobucket), with the added ability to comment, share, etc., that you find on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Why do people share?

The reasons for sharing seem as varied as the backgrounds of the people sharing. Some are sharing their own memories or activities, much like other sites. But since Pinterest allows (even encourages) sharing of sites you visit (they retain info attributing the original source), you can also share your interests, dreams, and ideas.

Why would an Innkeeper use Pinterest?

There are several reasons to use Pinterest. First, as Heather Allard notes, “If you had the opportunity to make your business part of someone’s vision board, would you do it?” Of course you would.

Second, you can use it to share not only information and photos about your B&B, but about the entire experience of a guest at your property (OK, maybe not the entire experience, but you get the idea). An excellent example is provided by Whole Foods. As noted in a recent ReviewPro article, Whole Foods isn’t just sharing the food, but the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. B&B’s can share the accommodations and the experience, as well.

Several other uses for innkeepers, as well as some basic ‘how to’ information about using Pinterest is shared by Heather Turner in her recent article on Pinterest.

Another benefit of using Pinterest is yet to be realized, but could be among the most valuable of all. According to SearchEngineLand, Pinterest’s traffic has grown 100% since August 2011, and now carries quite significant authority from the perspective of search engine SEO value. They note that every pin of your content is a link to your website. When a Pinterest user repins your content, you get more links. While the value is uncertain, social cues do impact rankings, so it is difficult to conceive of having more social links being a bad thing.

Ready to Pin?

As mentioned at the beginning, Pinterest is very easy to use. However, Heather Turner’s article has some quick steps to get started, and there is a very complete article from BlueGlass, called Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest.

Happy pinning!

This week’s post is a guest post from David Mitchell. David is the founder of webmarketing4hoteliers.com – a website dedicated to B&B owners and Inn Keepers serious about ‘getting more beds filled’ and ‘making more money’ through effective marketing on the internet. For those seeking ‘how to’ information on QR codes, you may want to look at our article on getting started with QR codes.

B&B marketing can be quite a challenge as the competition is always tight no matter what star rating a B&B has or in what country it’s located. Marketing your B&B is no longer just about letters, email flyers and an effective website. A very high number of B&B searches and bookings are completed on Smartphones and Tablet PCs – these are the new ways of the world.

The ‘age’ of the simple “mobile phone” that cannot connect to the internet is nearly over. Smartphone shipments exceeded those of “basic mobile phones” for the first time in the most recent three months and accounted for 52% of the 42m units sold. Professionals, businessmen, students and working Mum’s all have these high tech communication devices. Not like the old Jurassic cellular phones or worse, the pagers, a Smartphone can literally do everything your desktop PC can. You can e-mail, chat, make a phone call, surf on the Web, listen to your kind of music, watch videos, create documents and spreadsheets etc.. and all these features in a machine that’s just about the size of your hand.

The latest mobile marketing trend is the QR code. Abbreviated from Quick Response code, it is similar to a barcode where an information or a text is encoded in it. QR codes can be read when scanned by a Smartphone or a QR barcode reader. This kind of code has made website tracking more convenient where one can be directed to a website by just scanning it on their phones. Here are five ways how B&B’s can use QR codes.

1. Create guest referral cards with QR codes on. Have your customers give out referral cards with a QR code on which leads to a special friends and family rate page.

2. QR codes are the new business cards. Aside from websites, you can place contact details on QR codes too. You don’t have to hand out small pieces of cards to everybody because all you need is your mobile phone. All it takes is to scan the B&B’s code. Other than fast and easy, it saves a whole lot of paper. And no one can make an excuse that they lost your business card or else, they have lost their phones.

3. QR codes rather than commercial slogans. Instead of creating the traditional and sometimes old, catchy phrases, place your B&B’s QR codes on shirts, public places, posters etc. It’s a new way of enticing people. For all they know, they’re on your website already.

4. QR codes make Smartphone usage easier. Instead of typing the contact details and URL on the mobile phone’s keypad, scanning it helps make things easier and faster. No misspelling, no wrong URLs and no frills.

5. Mobile marketing has never been this fun. Using the latest marketing trends for your B&B creates a great impression for your potential customers. It means you’re not only keeping up with technology, but making a statement that you’re keeping ahead in the B&B industry as well.

Webmarketing4hoteliers is a private, members-only, resource for B&B owners who are serious about ‘getting more beds filled’ and ‘making more money’ through effective marketing on the internet. The latest strategies and tactics are catered for – as well as ‘hand-holding’ for complete newcomers. Contact David by email.

A few of you may have noticed that we seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus over the past several weeks. In fact, our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast had a very busy summer, and there wasn’t much time for About the Inn writing. Now that our busy summer and fall foliage seasons are behind us, it appears things will be back on a more even keel, and we hope to be able to publish more regularly.

How do you attract B&B guests? In the past several years, most smaller lodging properties have become aware of the importance of attracting guests through an online presence (oddly, though, some still seem to question the need – or maybe they question the long-term viability – of an internet presence). Gone, or nearly gone, are the days of buying print or television ads in huge volume, in hopes that a few visitors will be enticed to become guests.

For the smaller properties, in particular, this is a good thing, as few can afford the high prices charged for print advertising, let alone the several additional orders of magnitude for television campaigns – all for ads for which there is little hope of tracking their success, and for which industry analysts say the return on investment (ROI) is very small indeed.

So, then, all a small business needs to do is find a way to slap up a small website, and all the marketing is done, right? Unfortunately, many small properties seem to have adopted exactly that strategy, and are beginning to pay the price in reduced occupancy.

Print media (with the exception, to some degree, of direct mail), and for that matter television, tries to sell by sending an uninvited message to a large, but generally arbitrary, audience. The primary reason online marketing is more effective, is because the prospective guest is looking for you. They are, by definition, part of your target market. They are seeking exactly what you are offering: some type of lodging for a temporary purpose.

How do you reach the prospective guest?

It seems like an over simplification, but in order to get the prospective guest, seeking lodging like yours, to connect with your property and make a booking, you need to be found where they are looking. Which means that you need to know where they are looking, and be found there.

Where are they looking?

We usually begin by assuming that the guest has decided to come to your area, and needs to find lodging. This is because there are many, many different ways the prospective guest may decide to come to a region. However, you can play a role in this, by getting information about the area in front of the guest – either by more traditional means such as print or television, or by having that type of information on your web site.

Once the decision is made to come to an area, the question of lodging must arise.

According to WIHP, a hotel marketing firm, there are four distinct steps in the process of deciding on a lodging property: discovery or stimulus (where the guest learns of a hotel and gets interested), zero moment of truth (the guest begins to research the hotel), first moment of truth (guest finds the hotel website and begins to determine if this is what they want), and second moment of truth (guest arrives at the property and is either happy or disappointed). There is little doubt that these steps apply more or less exactly for smaller properties, as well.

Let’s look a bit more closely at these four steps:

1. Discovery or Stimulus

How does the prospective guest find out about a lodging property they may want to consider? WIHP’s data indicates that the most likely source of information is friends or family, followed by online travel agents (known as OTAs, including Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Booking.com, and the like), then TripAdvisor, and then, to a much lesser degree, other sources like Facebook, Travel Agents, Magazines, etc.

Because we’re interested in the smaller lodging properties, we would suggest that bed and breakfast directories could be included with the OTAs, at least for the guest who is interested in considering bed and breakfast lodging.

2. Zero Moment of Truth

How does the guest research the lodging property he/she is interested in? The data from WIHP indicates that nearly 73% will use search engines to find the hotel. Did you pick up on that? Most of our search engine optimization is around industry-specific keywords, but most of our prospective guests are searching by the name of the hotel!

Of the remaining 27% or so, guests will search map pages (9.6%), review sites (7.3%), travel guides (3.0%) and social media sites (0.8%) to find the lodging property.

3. First Moment of Truth

Once the guest arrives on the property’s website, you have between 3 and 7 seconds to help them decide to stay at the property. The average visitor will have looked at 10 other property websites, read reviews, checked rates, and verified the location on a map.

WIHP says the guest wants to know:

• will this save me money?
• will this save me time?
• will this make my life better?

For the property, this translates to:

• Is this the best value I can get?
• Is this located near the points I am interested in?
• Is the comfort going to live up to my standards?

How your website stacks up in answering these questions for the guest determines whether or not they will book.

4. Second Moment of Truth

When the guest arrives they will either be pleased with their selection of your property, or they will be disappointed. In either case, the results are likely to be posted on social media and review sites, and shared with friends and family. In exceptional cases, they may even appear in blog posts.

When you consider the likelihood of these results, whether positive or negative, being shared with friends and family, as well as the review sites and social media connections, you can see that these results will also become part of the Discovery or Stimulus phase of someone else’s search for lodging property. That makes it imperative that the experience be a positive one.

WIHP has provided a video infographic to illustrate these points clearly and concisely. The YouTube version is below.

In upcoming articles we’ll be looking at the ways we can reach the prospective guest in each of the decision-making phases of the booking process.

This is a guest post by Sarah Dolk of Adobe Nido Bed & Breakfast in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I had some fun last night. I had read in a blog about how we can create a custom icon/button/logo for our business that Apple device users (iphone, ipad, and touch), can download to their desktop as an image bookmark, thus creating a simple link to our website for the device user. Wow. So I did it, and I’m going to tell you why and how.

Now that Apple has been named the “Top Company in the US” (be it only for a few days this week), I would think that should spark more people to understand the importance of Apple’s portion of the mobile market.

Although a button can be created for any website on these idevices, the custom icon is more desirable, has a more “finished” appearance, and is much less likely to get accidentally deleted from the user’s desktop, especially if it’s attractive to the eye. The default icon created when there is no custom icon/button present on a website will be just a random square piece of the website’s window. Here is a custom logo from the BBC and a default logo from the innkeeping.org website:

How is this custom button good for an inn or b&b? Let me count the ways…

1 – Branding. Having people find your inn’s website and download the visual image associated with your inn’s website as a bookmark to their mobile desktop so they see it every time they are on that devise is priceless. It is a contestant reminder of your property.

2 – Saved for later. Even if you are not chosen right at that moment for a stay, you were saved for later and that may very well be when the booking happens. You have an advantage if the user, at a later date, sees your button again and the interest in your property is rekindled.

3 – Ease of use. The Apple user who downloads your icon button does not have to open a browser to go to your website, they need only to click you icon button on their desktop and boom – they’re there!

4 – It shows you’re hip. Attracting the Gen X and Y guests is really a must for any inn that wants to thrive and survive in this fast paced ever-changing decade. When this generation sees you are marketing to them, they will respond positively.

5 – Being mobile friendly. Even though the mobile market is small, the Apple share of the mobile market should not be ignored. After all, Apple users are not afraid to drop some bucks – they bought an Apple product, didn’t they? While this is something only available with Apple’s mobile browser (Safari) right now, there is no reason to believe it won’t also become available for Android devices in the future. Everyone likes a one-click path to somewhere!

That was enough reasons for me. I wanted it, so off I went to discover how to do it, and it was very simple if you have access to your web files.

First – you build an icon to match your website using whatever graphic program you use. Use your site’s color scheme, your logo or a part of it, something that represents you well as a visual. Keep it simple. You don’t have to have text in the icon, because the Safari software will pull it from your web page title and label your icon for you, (and the user can change to it what they want anyway).

The button doesn’t have to be fancy or have dimension and drop shadows. The Apple iOS will add dimension or a “glow” to your icon for you. But if you do want to get fancy there is code that can be added that will stop the iOS from messing with it.

The icon should be 57X57 pixels if you will just be adding one standard “fit all” icon, but if you want to get specific – and I did – start out with 114×114 (for iphone 4), and then reduce size and save a 72×72 version (for ipad) and 57×57 (for standard iphone and itouch). It must also be a .png file – very important!

Next – store the logo(s) in the root folder of your website (suggested), or provide the path in your code to where you put the image file, i.e., an image folder on the website, or Picasa, Flickr or whereever it is.

Place this code in the head section, (above the </head> code), on the page(s) you want to be book-markable with your custom icon. Here is the code that is specific for different apple devices:

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”yourimage.png” />
<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” sizes=”72×72″ href=”yourimage.png” />
<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” sizes=”114×114″ href=”yourimage.png” />

Remember to use the full path and filename of your image in place of yourimage in the above code.If you don’t want the Apple iOS to apply the special effects, use apple-touch-icon-precomposed instead of apple-touch-icon for the link rel value.

And – if you want to use one size logo only that’s perfectly OK. Of the three lines of code shown above, use the top line only, which is the default.

I like the idea of people out there having the icon for my inn on their mobile device. Can’t hurt, right?

Perhaps you saw the articles a couple of weeks ago, indicating that Google had officially announced that its Google Analytics product was now able to track social media interaction. As the linked article mentioned, this is a welcome addition to the built-in capability of the Google +1 button to track clicks. However, this bit of news was soon overshadowed by all the buzz surrounding the (as yet, despite being enormous, and frequently discussed) beta of Google+ – the new Google social platform.

We had seen the articles and sort of filed them away for future reference. A friend got in touch last week, however, asking how to implement this, and indicating that the information wasn’t very clear. After reading the official documentation, we certainly had to agree. However, after a bit of testing, we were able to get it to work, and provide the results here, in case you’d like to use Google Analytics to track various social interaction on your website, blog, or whatever.

What we’re trying to accomplish

To be clear, the objective is to add some JavaScript to our website, blog, or whatever, that will allow us to use Google Analytics to track when someone clicks on social media buttons on the page – such as a Facebook Like button, or a Facebook share link, or a Twitter follow or Tweet button, or any other similar item. For those who enjoy figuring this out for themselves, the documentation can be found here.

For the rest of us, there are three pieces of code to insert (We haven’t attempted to use anything but Facebook and Twitter – though the same principle would work with any; also Google +1 forwards data to GA automatically, so there is no need to do anything special for it), and of course a couple of prerequisites.

Prerequisites:

1. You will need to be able to add files to your web server, and edit the page(s) you want the tracking to work on.
2. You must have Google Analytics tracking code on the site (I’m not sure if you have to use async code, but I suspect you do)
3. You must be using the “New” GA – so it will show Social under the Visitors area.
4. Grab the ga_social_tracking.js file from Google and put it in the same location as the page to be tracked (or change the path to the js file in the first script tag under Code step 1).

Code needed to make this work:

1. In the section of the page (I would suggest after the GA code, but don’t know if that is mandatory), add:
   <script src="ga_social_tracking.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>




2. Where you want the buttons to appear, put
   
   
   a. for Twitter
   <a href="http://www.twitter.com/share" data-url="http://www.YOURSITE.com" data-via="YOURTWITTERID" class="twitter-share-button">Tweet</a>
   
   
   You can leave off the data-via line if you don’t want tweets to show up in your twitter feed. Obviously change YOURSITE and YOURTWITTERID to the appropriate values. The Twitter documentation allows for other ways to create a Twitter button. This is just one example. Feel free to play with others, but you may have to make other changes if it doesn’t work the same way as this example.
   
   
   b. for Facebook
   
   
   <fb:like></fb:like>
   
   
   This is the simple version for creating a “simple” Facebook “Like” button. For other types, you can see the Facebook developer documentation. Here is one other example:
   
   
   Put this in place of the <fb:like></fb:like> section above:
   
   
   
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<fb:like href="http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/PAGETOTRACK" send="true" show_faces="false" layout="button_count"></fb:like>
   
   
   Then change YOURDOMAIN.com to your domain, and PAGETOTRACK to the path and page you want to have the button track. Do not omit the div with the fb-root id.




3. Just before the closing body tag on the page, put
   
   
   <script>
_ga.trackSocial();
</script>

Done and done.

Social activities seem to show up in the new Google Analytics within an hour or so.

Let’s face it, Google is obsessed with speed. But don’t take my word for it, look here and here, too. So what can you do about it?

Last week we came across an article noting a security product that “accidentally” makes web sites load 60% faster. We almost passed it by, until we saw that it arose from Project Honey Pot – which we had seen previously. In brief, Project Honey Pot is a project that studies how spammers and hackers operate, and applies that knowledge to defend against them. It turns out that in the process of studying security it was necessary to figure out how to really speed up page load times, so the security monitoring wouldn’t slow down web sites they were monitoring. The result was CloudFlare.

Five Minutes to Faster Page Loading

CloudFlare is proud of their quick signup process. They show a video on the home page, and note that your signup will take less time than watching the video. The only thing you’ll need is a way to notify your web hosting company of a change of two entries (your Domain Name Servers or DNS). Most commercial web hosts have a web-based control panel you can use to make these changes, and CloudFlare has a help page to guide you for many popular web hosting companies. If you use a content management system or blog system (like Drupal or WordPress) there may also be a CloudFlare plugin to help with configuration.

Once you’ve created your CloudFlare account and notified your web host of DNS changes, it takes about 24 hours for the actual changes to take effect, then you’re off to higher speeds – and while you’re at it, much higher security, as well. There is a free plan, a Pro plan and an Enterprise plan, each with different speed and security features.

Give Me the Bottom Line!

We noticed faster load times in far less than the 24 hours stated. In fact, it is almost scary watching a page load. If you’re used to seeing elements appear one or two at a time, prepare to be surprised. When loading a page there was a brief hesitation (maybe 0.5 seconds, at most), then the entire page just appeared! There was no delay of “Waiting for example.com” or “Transferring data from example.com” – just a brief perception of a status-bar notification and the page was loaded.

CloudFlare provides a nice Dashboard with analytics showing the number of page views (be prepared for the number to be higher than shown in your analytics software, as CloudFlare is not measuring using JavaScript, so they are giving accurate numbers of even users without JavaScript enabled), and a breakdown of how many came from visitors, crawlers, and threats.

That’s right, they identify threats. Because of their security emphasis, CloudFlare has a database of known threats and can identify them on the fly, and prevent them from gaining access to your site. Their “Threats” tab on the Dashboard shows details of threats and their sources. Often they block a user who has been known to post spam on other sites. You can grant access to a user you feel is wrongly blocked.

Speed is the Bottom Line

In the week or so that we’ve been using CloudFlare, we’ve observed that the actual speed numbers seem to vary a little – both the numbers given as “Without CloudFlare” and “With CloudFlare”. That seems to correspond to Google’s SiteSpeed measurements, so we presume that the daily changes represent anything from internet traffic delays to hosting server delays – as they vary, page load speed will also vary.

One thing that hasn’t varied is that the page load speed with CloudFlare is much, much faster than without it. the site for our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast has averaged 70-80% faster with CloudFlare.

Oh, and we observed one more, unadvertised benefit: our traffic shown by Google Analytics began to increase noticeably once the page speed improved (though it wasn’t bad before!). We’ve seen better than a 50% increase in traffic to the site, with no change in bounce rate, since installing CloudFlare.

Let’s see, 70-80% faster page load speed, with greater security. Free. What would you do?

Yesterday Google announced that the +1 button is now available for any website to use (just like a Facebook ‘Like’ button, or similar buttons). It raises two questions:

1. Should you be using it?
2. How do you use it?

Both questions are easily answered – though most articles on the topic have not really dealt with them as much as emphasizing the “buzz” (no pun intended) or the absence of a “need” for another “Like” button.

Should you use it?

The short answer is “YES!” Yes, it is yet another social media thing. Yes it is similar to others. But get real. As Lisa Barone has pointed out, the practical effect of the Plus One program is to put everyone in the position of using the button, or being left out. The consequence of being left out is not known yet, but it seems likely that it will have an impact on search placement in some way.

How do you use it?

To use it you will have to create a Google profile if you don’t already have one. If you have a login for GMail, iGoogle, or any other Google service, you probably already have a Google profile.

The instructions to use the button are simply cut-and-paste, if you have access to your website.

1. Copy the first line of code (below) and paste it either inside the <head> tags of your page or near the bottom of your page, before the <body> tag closing. Here is the code:
   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
2. Copy the second line of code (below) and paste it in the page where you would like the button to appear:
   <g:plusone></g:plusone>

There are various options for the size and layout of the button, the link it should “like”, and whether or not to display the count of “plusones”. Knock yourself out.

The basics of creating and using QR codes

Sample QR code linking to our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast

One reason most articles don’t really explain how to make your own QR codes, and how to use them, is that it is a very easy process. There, no need to feel intimidated! Try it yourself if you have a smartphone or other mobile device with a camera. Just activate your Bar Code Reader app, and point your device at the QR code in this article, and see what happens (you may have to download a Barcode Reader app, if you don’t already have one).

OK, What are QR Codes, Again?

Others have described them in detail (see the two articles in the first paragraph, above), so we’ll simply say that QR codes are like a bar code. You can scan or read them with a mobile device’s camera, and they provide a link to something. You decide what the something is – that’s why most of the articles are called “15 way to use QR codes” or similar titles – the possibilities are nearly endless.

So, the way this works is that you put a QR code somewhere (on your business card, in a magazine ad, on a web site, T-shirt, billboard, anywhere in the physical world). The prospective user sees it, reads it via their mobile device, and their device opens the URL embedded in the QR code. They then experience whatever wonderful thing you have placed at that URL. Maybe it is a map, a video, a photo, a great review, or any of the other marketing ideas people have created. Or, create your own.

A Link between Virtual and Physical

Think of a QR code as a way to provide a connection to online information (the virtual) and the real world experience (the physical). If there is something you would like your guests (who are in the real world) to see, but they need to see it in the virtual world, the QR code is your pathway from the real to the virtual.

OK, a bit less esoteric. The QR code is an easy way to get people to find what you want them to see, using their mobile device.

Maybe you want to put a link to your website on your business card. Instead of just writing the URL on the card, you put a QR code (that links to the website, or to a video, or whatever) on the business card. Then the guest can scan the code and go directly to the website.

Getting Started

• First, the planning. Where would you like the guest to go? If you need ideas, read one of the first two articles for a number of suggestions. We’ll assume you have a YouTube video to which you’d like to direct a potential customer, by embedding a link on your business card.
• Copy the URL of the video (for YouTube, click the Share button beneath the video, then use the URL in the “Link to this video” box; don’t use the “Embed” link).
• Choose one of the free QR code creation sites (several are mentioned here, or just search for “QR code generator”) and go to their page for creating a QR code.
• If the QR code generator asks for the content-type of the link, select the correct content-type. For our example we’ll use URL, since we want to direct the user to the URL of our YouTube video.
• Select any other options available, such as the size of the QR code, and click on “Generate” or whatever your generator’s button says to create the code.
• You’ll now see a QR code, looking something like the illustration at the top of the this page (our example links to our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast, so it will be slightly different from a code linking elsewhere).
• The QR code you’ve created is simply an image. Download it or save it in whatever way you ordinarily steal save images. For some QR code generators, you may need to do a screen capture (use a screen capture program, or just use the Print Screen key, and paste the image into a graphic file – some cropping may be needed)
• Put the image wherever you want people to find it. In our example, we’ll add it to our business card when we send it out for printing

That’s all there is to it!

Now get out there and get QR happy!

Will your failed effort to repair your online reputation sink your business?

Stories about bad (and occasionally good) reputation management efforts have become all too common. Still, businesses often don’t get it. You can run, but you can’t hide! You can’t avoid the impact to your reputation by staying away from social media – you just don’t know what’s being said about you (whether positive or negative). We all make mistakes, so the best thing to do is plan how to deal with them. Three recent situations illustrate all three types of reputation problems, and make good lessons on how to (or how not to) deal with them.

The lessons from these stories apply to businesses in any industry, whether large multinationals or small, local businesses.

The Bad

This is kind of a double lesson.

Part 1: First, 7-Eleven posted a joke on their Facebook page that was mildly unkind to mental health. Not a very politically correct thing to do. Especially since this didn’t just show up for a few people, but to the over 700,000 people who “Like” their page. They deleted the post, but that didn’t stop people from talking about it on their Facebook page. No doubt the post was largely unnoticed due to the attention of the news media being captured by the disclosure of the killing of Osama bin Laden. If it had attracted a lot of attention, it could have been a PR nightmare.

Part 2: Next Peter Shankman posted about the 7-Eleven post, commenting about its being in poor taste and pointing out that 7-Eleven may have dodged a bullet because “Monday happened to be a very active news day”. Shankman was criticized by some of his readers as being too “politically correct”, and so posted a follow-up the next day, explaining what he meant, and giving suggestions for the use of humor in your posts. Shankman’s follow-up explanation clearly helped him avoid further criticism.

Even if you found the 7-Eleven post funny, it doesn’t mean that your audience will agree. Even if you disapprove of the post, it doesn’t mean that your audience will agree. Peter Shankman’s advice is good advice – if you have to ask yourself if something would be appropriate, it probably isn’t.

Lessons:

• Be careful (of course!) not to make mistakes, but realize you can’t always anticipate how something will come across
• Know your audience! You are not just chatting with friends, but posting where hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of your customers may see it!
• Realize that your sense of humor may be different than someone else’s, so give yourself a reality check! If you have to ask if something is appropriate, it probably isn’t.
• Ask yourself how this will make your brand look
• Deal with any negative fallout appropriately, and move on

The Ugly

A friend who has many talents, chef, blogger, graphic designer, consultant, to name a few, Heather Turner, recently blogged about her experience with a local fish market. Heather was gracious enough not to mention their name. The post is lengthy, but well worth reading. For the short version, here is my summary:

Heather bought unusually large lobsters for a special occasion, but when she cracked them open, the amount of meat was not just surprisingly small (as a chef, Heather understands, as we do in Maine, that what is inside the lobster is often less than you would guess from the size of the lobster), but very, very, inappropriately small. Heather didn’t expect compensation, but thought the market would want to know about this, so she attempted to contact the fish market, initially without success. She then posted a quick comment on their Facebook wall. The market responded, denying any knowledge of her earlier attempts and asking her to submit information via their web form, which she did.

Heather received an email reply, in essence saying she should understand that there is less meat than shell to a lobster (well, duh!) and they wouldn’t give her a refund (which she had not requested). Heather replied via email and received a call from the family who owned the business, saying they would replace the lobsters for her, and the staff would be notified.

When another special occasion arrived, Heather went to the market to get the replacement lobsters, and was treated rudely and refused the lobsters. She posted a comment on their Facebook page, which they deleted. When she posted another, she was banned from their page.

Wow! Where to begin? This episode is like a crash course in how not to handle customer relationships!

Lessons:

• Even before there was an internet, there was a concept of customer relationships – remember? The customer is always right (OK, they’re not always right, but if you start with that principle, you’re likely to have more customers!).
• Putting your head in the sand doesn’t make the world disappear! It just makes you think it did.
• Just because you deleted the Facebook post, or even banned the user from your page, doesn’t end it! Customers have blogs. Customers have Twitter accounts. Customers have Foursquare accounts. Customers have… You can’t ban them all!
• A company can do a lot more to protect its reputation by responding openly and honestly to criticism (especially criticism that is justified) than by pretending the problem doesn’t exist. People understand that you’re not perfect, but they also see how you deal with problems and make buying decisions based on your handling of them.
• As Heather points out at the start of her blog post, This is a perfect example of an excellent post that came out recently: A Better Business Doctrine – Part 1: A**holes are bad for business which should be required reading for businesses.

The Good

Many posts have been written (as a search for online reputation management will disclose) about disasters, and suggesting ways to deal with them. The best advice usually includes

1. Admit your mistakes
2. Promise to be better
3. If appropriate, offer some type of compensation or incentive to return.

Sometimes, however, the customer is wrong. Then the advice is a little bit different.

Michael Gray recently posted a story about a restaurant that received a scathingly critical review, which went too far. Not only did the author (apparently) omit facts that would give a very different view of the circumstances, but decided that a personal attack on the hostess (who was actually the owner) was also called for.

As Gray observes – the restaurant could have ignored the review, but that would have been a mistake, as it would be out there for future customers to see. While many would take the personal criticism with a grain of salt, the apparently objective statements about the service, attitude, etc., would likely have cost the restaurant business. This owner did exactly the right thing.

• She responded and pointed out that she was the hostess and the owner
• She mentioned the important facts the reviewer had omitted, such as his own late arrival for his reservation, how small the restaurant was, how the seating policy had been explained to the person booking the reservation and acknowledged by them.
• She said she was “sorry [he] felt the need to personally attack [her]” and suggested it was best for everyone that the reviewer had sworn never to return.

Lessons:

• Monitor your reputation – you can’t avoid bad reviews (and you won’t know about the good ones) if you’re not in the game
• Respond to negative reviews – if there is no response the next reader will assume either it is true, or you don’t care; neither is good for you
• Know when to fold ‘em – Don’t use the response to argue with a customer. If they are right, say so. If not, nicely take the high road and point out things they haven’t mentioned that show things in a better light. In any case, don’t prolong the painful discussion.
• Even one small, unhappy, voice can cause a huge reputation problem, especially if that one small voice posts on a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn, Yelp, or any one (or perhaps several) of the multitude of online sites that allow conversations, comments or reviews. If others pick up the complaint, it will be your worst nightmare.
• If you’re not sure, then the customer is right

The Maine Innkeepers Association Educational Seminar for April, 2011, was held on April, 28, 2011, and the subject was Social Media – Beyond the Basics. We gave a brief presentation on Facebook: Beyond the Basics, emphasizing engagement and mentioning, to a lesser extent, optimization and measurement. Here is the video (transcript below):

Transcript:

Hello, this is Scott from AboutTheInn.com. This is a short presentation from on using Facebook, that’s beyond the basics from an event on Social Media put on by the Maine Innkeepers Association that was held on April 27, 2011.

So as we move beyond the basics of Facebook, we’ll be focusing on three areas. The areas will be engagement, to some extent optimization and measurement of the progress, but primarily we’ll be focusing on engagement. We’ll do mostly Facebook, a little bit on Twitter, and to some extent these things all apply to LinkedIn. They also apply to other things where you may find your customers, but most of the principles are uniform – there are some differences and we’ll talk about those as we go along.

So first of all we need to consider just what the goal is. Often times we get absorbed in Facebook or Twitter, or whatever your platform of choice may be, and we think about how we’re going to do it, and how we’re going to find time to do it all, and we really don’t think about what we’re really trying to accomplish. So much as I hate the terminology ‘heads in beds’, that is the bottom line, because when we sell rooms, for lodging properties, that’s how we pay the bills, no matter how we want to characterize it. So we need to consider whether or not we have a plan, and the plan should include engaging guests and then some measurable objectives, as well.

So as we consider those things, the first thing to consider is “Where are our guests?” We know that by sheer numbers, they’re on Facebook, they’re on Twitter, they may be following our Blog, they may be on LinkedIn, they may be on a number of others, including FourSquare, Orcut, Gowalla, or any of a number of others. Certainly you need to focus on any networks where the majority of your guests can be found, and if there are other networks where you think there are a significant number of potential guests, then certainly you need to be present there, as well.

So remember that what we’re really trying to do is to create relationships. You’re trying to use social media to make friends for your lodging property. We’re not talking about just selling, or the hard sell, but we’re looking at creating relationships in the places where the guests are.

The first step, from a Facebook point of view, is to create engagement through your custom welcome page. You can create a custom welcome page – one that is very attractive – usually modeled on your web site, and with attractive graphics and text that draws the user in, and also, as in the example here, you can offer specials and extras for those who ‘Like’ you – things that are not available to everyone. This builds a relationship and makes the user feel that they have an opportunity for something special.

Next add photos and videos – things that tell a story. We had an interesting thing happen at a recent innkeeping show, where one of the keynote speakers mentioned that he was going to use one of our posts as an illustration of telling a story. In this case it was in less than 140 characters. We were in the habit of tweeting our breakfast menu. People liked it, and when we stopped doing it, they got in touch and asked, “What’s for breakfast?” One day we had a young couple get engaged at the inn, so at breakfast we tweeted that the “Cute young couple got engaged last night” and what they were having for breakfast. Story told. People were engaged with it, and passed that tweet around more widely than would have otherwise happened.

Another way to do it is to ask questions. Now, in Twitter you can ask questions and sometimes you get no response other than the echo of your own voice. In Facebook you can ask questions, in the conventional sense, but you also have the ability to use a Facebook Question, which allows you to create a multiple choice question, and you can limit the responses to those you define, or you can allow others to suggest new answers. We’ve done a number of things with this. Sometimes we’re earnestly trying to get feedback from our guests, which is certainly a good thing. For example, we asked them if they preferred sweet dishes for breakfast or savory dishes, and we got some interesting information from that. We also asked them what kind of sweet dishes they like: pancakes or waffles or more involved things, or just what they like. We allowed them to add their own choices and we saw answers that included things we hadn’t even considered. You learn a lot of interesting things by asking questions.

Another thing you can do to create some interaction is to feed your blog to your page, because a lot of your Facebook followers are not necessarily following your blog – unless you feed it to the Facebook page, and Facebook, as a page, is like a big, hungry animal, just waiting to be served. So post your blog to your Facebook group so they can all keep up with your news. And, to encourage interaction, even in your blog you may choose to ask questions or try to get feedback directly, there.

You can also offer specials just to Facebook followers, as was alluded to when we discussed the custom welcome page. You can also sell gift certificates directly from your Facebook page, there is an application that will allow you to do that, or you can create an application, depending on your booking engine, to allow bookings directly from your Facebook page.

From the point of view of optimization, you definitely want to optimize your Facebook page, both your profile information and the business description information available to you. Facebook is its own search engine, so you want to use terminology that your guest or potential guests will be using as they try to find lodging in your area. So just as you would do this on a web page, you not only want to create your vanity URL, but you also want to think of profile attributes as something people might search on.

You’ll also want to be create when you select the name of your page. Think about branded names, like the name of your property, but also non-branded or descriptive names. For a hardware related page, called “Black & Decker”, and that would be interesting if you’re into tools, but a site called “Women with Tools” might get more attention.

Similarly, Siteman Cancer Center started with only a couple of hundred fans, and is now up to a couple of thousand, but compare that to the page “Cancer Sucks”, with 48,000 fans and lots of engagement. Both are basically information and support pages, but there is a big difference. That isn’t a recommendation that you copy this approach, but that you consider the concept of an edgy name that people can identify with. Something to think about.

Be non-commercial in your commercial approach. What I mean is, don’t just try to sell things. It’s been said many times, and I certainly wholeheartedly agree, that, in many ways, social media is like a cocktail party, or a conversation among friends. You carry on a conversation, you don’t just try to sell stuff. You know perfectly well that if you go to a party and you meet, to pick on an industry, an insurance salesman, and his entire conversation at the party is to try to get you to make an appointment or to buy insurance, you aren’t going to enjoy his company unless you desperately need insurance. But if that same salesman makes witty, interesting conversation, perhaps even giving you some helpful information, you may end up making that appointment. That’s the point of view that most people expect in the social media world, so it becomes an important thing.

So think of things to talk about that appeal to large segments of people. In our industry you might say, I need a vacation – well, who doesn’t? Or maybe it’s coffee… Whatever, but keep it on topic. Remember, our focus is heads in beds, but by building relationships. Now there’s nothing wrong with the occasional personal reflection, story or comment, if you’ve established your credibility by being a helpful, knowledgeable, source. People find that interesting and genuine. The problem comes when you show that you aren’t able to separate your personal “persona” from your business accounts. People don’t want to follow you.

Measure your results. In the Facebook world this isn’t just a “check your Google Analytics” comment. In Facebook there is a thing called Facebook Insights. To get to it, go to “Edit Page” and in the left column, click on Insights. There you’ll see Users and a summary and graph and Interactions and another summary and graph. Both also provide more details, and you can view the latest day, week, month, etc. This gives you a good idea of how much you are engaging people, and which posts were the most effective to encourage interaction.

Thanks for listening. I hope you find this useful, and that you’ll continue encouraging engagement among your social networks.