Graviti™ Social Media Optimization

Social Media continues to grow in importance as the search engines take these sites into consideration for the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). Hotels that take advantage of this trend are seeing significant benefits in terms of online placement and revenue.

There’s a lot of buzz around social media strategies for marketing purposes for businesses, and the hotel industry is still trying to grapple with how to gain from the newest trends on the internet. We have been experimenting with several different strategies around social media and its relevance to the lodging industry. The outcome of this research is Graviti™, Milestone’s cutting-edge Social Media Optimization Product. Graviti™ packages include combinations of the following products:

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User Generated Content

User Generated Content will be a critical element of Web 2.0 strategies. You will find an increasing number of consumer decisions influenced by user generated comments and reviews. In our opinion, this will be the single largest influencer for consumers looking to make hotel room purchase decisions. This will also become one of the largest differentiators for hotels and will allow good operators to win heavily over the poorly managed hotels. But then, that’s what the internet is about – offering transparency to the consumer so that the better product wins. The first generation of internet applications offered rate transparency across different hotels and the next generation of applications are going to separate good products from the not-so-good ones

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Blog

Blog (also known as a weblog) is essentially a software or online service that allows you to quickly post your thoughts, interact with people, and promote your business or concept online. Blogs are similar to interactive online journals that update your website with fresh and new content that elevates your value and ranking with the search engines. Some of the key benefits of having a blog include the following:

• Higher Ranking – Posting a Blog pings the search engines every time new content is posted. This results in frequent search engine spider visits and much higher optimization and ranking.
• Networking in the community - Blogs help in securing quality links from other relevant Blogs by track backs, comments, etc. Blogs help gain link popularity and drive relevant traffic.
• Blogs help in establishing credibility and trust – Blogs establish a credible platform for online customer interaction.

By creating a blog for your hotel, you will be able to attract visitors looking for things to do in your destination. Milestone recommends developing blogs that are “destination centric” - meaning that they are pages discussing dining, local attractions, transportation, local events, etc. List your hotel as the featured property situated within the destination. With pages of the blog discussing all of the local draws to your surrounding area, you will be positioned to capture demand which you’ve never drawn in before.

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Online Videos

Online videos are one of the fastest growing forms of media on the internet and we have discussed the effectiveness of online videos in several of our previous articles. The online video developed for Search Engines is vastly different from the standard videos. The standard video files are not optimized for search engines. It’s the same parallel as a search engine friendly website vs. a website that is set up as a brochure. A search engine friendly website can be found for different things within the search engines; however, to view a brochure type of website, you have to know the website address to get to that site. The search engine optimized video and standard videos differ from each other in the same way. Whereas the search optimized video can be found by users typing things relevant to your market on the search engines; to find your standard videos, the consumer needs to know the website address for the site where that video is posted. This makes the effectiveness of the 2 videos vastly different.

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Personal Social Networks

Hotels will benefit from utilizing different personal social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace to network with consumers who are interested in the unique things offered by the property. For example, hotels should create their profiles on Facebook and MySpace. If you don’t like the look and feel of the pages, some of these sites will allow you to customize the look and feel to your liking. You can then post photos and videos on these sites. You can also socialize in the groups available on the channels, such as the Event Planners Group, Travel Groups, or even start a new group. This will allow hotels to increase their awareness with consumers interested in similar activities as those offered by the hotel.

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Photo Sharing

There are several photo-sharing websites such as flickr, etc where hotels should create their profiles and share the photos of the hotel and things to do in their market. We have seen tremendous results from sharing these photos. Tagging of the photos under the right categories also assists with search engine optimization, resulting in not only clicks from the photo-sharing websites but also from increased rankings in search engines.

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Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another creative strategy for hotels to enhance their website presence and search engine optimization. Different articles, videos, and the hotels website can be bookmarked using tags on different social bookmarking channels such as Dig, Delicious, etc.

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Articles and Online PR

Hotels can use online articles and online channels to enhance their web presence and increase their search engine optimization. Using online news channels such as Business Wire and PR web to release articles and news information enhances the search engine optimization and web presence for the hotel.

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What is Graviti Lite™?

Graviti LiteTM is Milestone’s Starter Plan for Social Media Optimization for the hospitality industry.  This plan is targeted to hotels that want to engage in social media but are not certain about whether it’s the right strategy, are concerned about the time commitment, and cannot allocate a significant budget to their Social Media Optimization effort.  Key features include:

• Provides the hotel with a presence in the main social media channels – includes enhanced set up on those channels
• Provides guidance on how to maximize gain on social media channels
• Easy dashboard access to all channels
• Online support manual for providing guidance on how to maximize social media channels
• Low budget entry point

What’s Included in the Plan?

•  Social Media Questionnaire
  • Client will need to fill out a Social Media Questionnaire which collects the most important hotel information and top offers and events in the market
    
    
• Keyword Research
  • Milestone will conduct keyword research to determine the top keywords to target for the client’s social media channels

• Design
  • Design Social Media icons and banners to be placed on clients site
  • Create Twitter background design
• Facebook
  • Create Hotel Profile Page and a Fan Page
  • Enhance Profile – Add Hotel Description, Contact Information, & website URL
  • Create 4 custom tabs for the Facebook page (e.g. Location, Services, Hotel Offers, Things to Do).  Write Content, customize with images, and program the tabs to the page
  • Upload custom social icon as the page picture
  • Set up 1 Photo Album (maximum of 8 pictures)
  • Develop incoming feeds (links) from Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube accounts
  • Add 1 Advanced Application: Poll or Reviews as per client preference
  • Cross network the page to shared interest pages – add 2 “Favorite Pages” to the hotel page

•  Twitter
  • Twitter Account Set-up
  • Customized background design uploaded to profile page
  • Customized profile image
  • Post-Set-up actions
    • Enroll into 2 Twitter Directories (Twellow & MrTweet)
    • Link Twitter Profile to Social Landing Page on clients website
    • Follow 5 Tweeps of similar interests (city, attractions, events)
    • Share photos from Flickr account
    • Train client on TweetDeck

• YouTube channel
  • Up to 30 sec  search optimized video from photos.  Hotel and Destination / attraction photos to be provided by the client.
  • Video will show hotel and destination images with music in the background and key messages  floating on the video screen.  Note:  Voice Over video is available as an upgrade option at an extra cost
  • Program Video
  • Profile Set-up in YouTube
  • Client Video uploaded into YouTube Profile
  • Video Tagged in YouTube with relevant Keyword Phrases
  • YouTube Video Player embedded into Client’s website (if website is hosted by Milestone)
  • Video enrolled into 5 additional online video channels
• Flickr
• Flickr Account Set-up
• Post-Setup Actions
  • Set-up 1 Photo Album (Both Property and Attractions Photos can be used – provided by Client -  max of 12 photos)
  • Each Photo will be given a keyword rich title, description, & keyword tags.
  • Each Photo will be Geo-targeted on a map
  • Join one Flickr Photo Group

• Social Media Banner
  • Custom “Join My Social Network /  Be our Buddy” Badge and social media banner.  Be my buddy gives consumers quick access to the social media profiles
  • Social Media Banner needs to go on the client website.
• Social Media Dashboard
  • Social Media Dashboard created
  • Client will be able to access backend of all 4 social channels through Milestones Social Media Dashboard. Backend access is needed for clients to update social channels on a regular basis
• Client Training and Ongoing Social Media Optimization
  • Milestone will provide one-time training to the client on how to manage different social media channels and how to use the channels on an ongoing basis.
  • Online “Channel Management Guide” available from  Social Media dashboard that shows step by step how to setup and use the channels and implement day to day strategies
  • Any subsequent training sessions will be extra and will be charged at $250 per session
  • Any additional support beyond the initial training session will be charged at $150 per hour
  • Alternatively, client can pre-purchase (12 hours) 1-hour per month Social Media Support Session for $1500
  • Milestone will also provide a “Social Media Marketing Guide” that will showcase, different strategies that can be used by the clients to enhance their Social Media Optimization on the above channels 

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