I shared this amazing animated short a few days ago but I feel I sold it short. Nominated for the 84th Academy Awards, this masterpiece has already won numerous awards. It’s an extraordinary work. Fifteen minutes of pure joy and a perfect way to enter the weekend.

Click to View

Have you ever wanted to know in which year Facebook reached its first 100 million registered users? Or when MySpace fell into decline? Or what’s the more popular social networks in Japan? This chart has oodles of information. Memorise it and fame and fortune will might be yours.

Some practical advice from Graham Clark on how to become and remain customer focused in your business. I am particular heartened by his point that customer unfocused businesses are placing too much emphasis on outputs rather than outcomes, something I touched upon with relation to the public relations industry.

I very much like the concept that excellent customer service needs to be system wide, not just point of contact, and that customer focused businesses are relationships based, not looking to slash costs in the name of efficiency. In all, some excellent food for thought.

What do you think? Is your organisation customer focused? How do you do it?

After determining that you need someone to handle your online presence (and you do), the next biggest issue you’re likely to face is how to find a social media manager that is right for your organisation. While it may be tempting to call the least busy Gen-Y member of your staff into your office to inform them that social media community management is now their responsibility it’s important that you establish a clear digital and social media strategy.

Social media marketing is more than just being a digital rockstar. It takes careful crafting by a trained professional. After all, you’d never let your intern handle your traditional marketing strategy, right? (*shiver*).

Here are few quick pointers on what to look for in order to find the best person to assist you establish and maintain a strong and consistent online presence.

No Experts Allowed

The first thing you need to do is when you’re writing your employment opportunity copy is avoid using the words: guru, expert, rockstar, ninja or similar. Straight off the bat these terms will attract the wrong sort of people.

Social media is all about relationships. There are no experts. Those who claim to be are either lying or severely deluded. A social media manager should know this. They should cringe every time they’re called a guru or expert. After all, if you needed relationship advice would you go to someone that called themselves a ninja psychologist?

Once you start receiving CVs have your HR people check their online credentials. How long have they been sharing thought leadership on their blog? Do they have community management experience? When you search for their name (real or online name) do they at least appear on the first page? How many times?

The people that you’re looking for have a long established history of thought leadership and have maintained a strong and visible online presence for years. Don’t be swayed by the number of followers or fans, remember it is relationships that are important. Who are they talking to and how are they talking? Are they even in contact with other thought leaders and social influencers? If your research shows the top Power Influencers joking with and linking to them then they’re the ideal people you want. It means that they’ve managed to establish a relationship with the most innovative of social media thinkers. That their ideas are valuable to even the most thoughtful of thought leaders.

Understanding the Basics

Examine what they’re saying online. Look at their work history. During interviews. Do you see an understanding of:

• Monitoring:

  Do they have a history of establishing and maintaining monitoring regimes? If you’re not monitoring for conversations beyond your usual area of influence how can you know what people are saying about you? Sometimes the conversation comes to you. Sometimes you must go to the conversation.

• Listening:

  Does your prospective social media strategist understand the difference between listening and monitoring? It is not just enough to find the conversations you must understand what is being said. As with any relationship communication is the key. Listening is essential. Without listening how can you form the correct response? A social marketing manager needs to understand the difference.

• ROI:

  Do they understand how to measure a social media return on investment (ROI)? It should never be measured in fans or followers. Ideally they should be able to express it in revenues generated or decreased expenses. They should at least understand how to determine a baseline and to extrapolate a monetary ROI. What is the ROI of their past successes?

Finding a social marketing manager that is able to generate and cultivate an digital strategy for your organisation is not difficult. However, you and they need to understand that as with all relationships they take a significant amount of time to germinate and bear fruit. Quick fixes are rarely long-lasting or satisfying for any concerned. Your social media manger needs to understand that social media is like a marriage: a relationship that strengthens over time. One built upon trust, integrity and fidelity.

Slider image courtesy of SocialisBetter.

Despite being two-and-a-half years old this video by Professor Coombs provides a very good primer on how to deal with a crisis using social media. All of the Professor’s points are still very valid now, the only difference from 2009, when this video was created, is that there are more people than ever that are using social media and are using it to complain, spread rumours and for activism.

Brands need to be prepared in having a detailed crisis management plan of action. They can no longer afford to thrust their heads in the sand and hope that social media is just a fad.

Click to View

The folks at Frugal Dad have compiled a great summary of what we talked about on Twitter last year. In many ways this is the collective consciousness of the social internet. A realtime snapshot of what was important to us in 2011. Some may not find it flattering. Others might find it surprising. But this is us. A collective us. It’s important that we accept that.

After busy Lunar New Year, Republic Day (India) and Australia Day celebrations here’s a chance to unwind and relax. The video above is from the Imaginary Worlds Festival. It features a collection of animated film shorts telling stories set in weird and wonderful universes. Some of the films are a little weird and some are downright crazy, but they are all wonderful. Enjoy.

An awesome TED video that provides a very succinct explanation of why SOPA and PIPA are so horridly bad. These pieces of legislation will be back. They’re only in hiatus until the powers behind them believe the issue has become a unimportant for the public. Eternal vigilance.

Click to View

A great summary of 2011, but unfortunately missing a few highlights and lowlights such as the QANTAS Twitter competition failure and the L’Oreal fake blog.

The hotel industry, like much of the service industries, are very dependent on knowing just what the consumer wants, hopefully before the customer knows it themselves. With wafer thin margins, increasing competition and constantly rising costs hotels need every advantage they can get to win customers and keep them.

Here are three social media tips for improving your guest’s stay and getting them to spread the word about your excellent level of service.

Mobile Site

If you’ve ever been lost in a strange city late at night searching desperately for somewhere to stay after a business meeting has run over time you’ll know the stress and frustration you experience as you scan through the online list of available accommodations only to find that none of them work on your mobile device. Even if the sites are not full of Flash Action Script bells and whistles (and most are) they are image heavy, poorly optimised sites that take forever to load over mobile broadband. Providing a version of your hotel website that is mobile optimised reduces these frustrations.

Mobile devices have actually outsold desktop PCs for over a year, so this is an issue that is going to become more prevalent. It is possible that your existing content management system (CMS) already has mobile site functionality (many do) so there might be only minimal additional costs involved in providing your prospective guest with the option of a text-rich mobile optimised site, whether as a replacement or in addition to your usual site. And because so few hotels offer a mobile optimised site you are already creating a point of difference with your competitors. It is a significant competitive advantage that you can utilised to offer special deals for weary travellers that are just looking for respite after a hard day’s work/travel.

• Pros: Customer focused and broadened market penetration
• Cons: Might be some minor additional establishment costs

Listening

Hotels wishing to fully realise the benefits of social media need to establish a broad-based monitoring program. It is not enough to just monitor for keywords on your established platforms (ie. Twitter, Facebook), conversations about your brand can happen across many platforms. In order to obtain a detailed overview of what is being said about your brand online you can use a range of tools to remain informed, whether it is through paid tools, like Radian6 or Brandtology, or free ones like Social Mention.

Once you have established an extended monitoring program it is important to listen to what the conversants are discussing. Only through listening carefully can we prepare the correct response. I cannot stress how important it is to listen and understand the nuances of the conversation. To a customer there are few things worse than receiving a scripted reply based around a peripheral point. This is especially true when offering customer service or feedback channels. So listen, comprehend and then respond, calmly and professionally. And don’t just respond to negative sentiment, positive feedback can also be responded to even if it’s just a short Thank You.

By listening and responding carefully to feedback and complaints, you move from being just a soulless brand to a real, caring person who is genuinely interested in improving rather than just trying to clear service tickets. Listening will provide you will invaluable and unfiltered insight into how you are perceived by your customers and will offer you practical improvements to increase service levels.

• Pros: Improves customer service and feedback channels. Generates goodwill.
• Cons: Time intensive. Paid tools can be expensive.

Influencers

It’s great when a celebrity or other high-profile figure recommends our services, but the likes of Oprah can’t visit nor recommend every hotel. You can, however, generate goodwill recommendations by targeting selected influencers, both online and offline, and offering them a service level similar to what you would provide to a celebrity.

Targeting influential guests can be achieved through allowing them to record their social networking details with their booking. Sites like Klout, Twitanalyzer or Grader can assist you in determining influencers. From there all it takes is a little research to offer a wealth of information. Is it their birthday or anniversary? Have they’ve just secured a major deal which they have announced on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus? Maybe they’re just feeling low. Offering a little extra personalised service can bring bountiful rewards.

• Pros: Generates recommendations from a broad-based trusted authority at low cost
• Cons: Ongoing research can be time intensive.

As with all social media both expenses and returns must be accurately measured. It is vitally important that each of these implementations provide a practical dollar value return on your investment. Tracking mobile users through the site to sale, recording resolved customer service issues through social media and additional bookings from influencer recommendations can all be used to assist in the measurement and analysis.

By employing these ideas, along with the key concepts from A Social Media Strategy for Restaurants, you can offer new and better levels of service for your hotel guests. It will also provide you with new opportunities to become more customer focused.