The Sol Wave House Leads Twitter Use in the Hospitality Sector

Perhaps precedented by restaurants choosing menus by whatever keyword food items are trending within their followers, hotels have also taken new heights into incorporating social media into their customer experience.

As mentioned in Time Magazine, Spanish hotel Sol Wave House (on the Magaluf Beach of Majorca) has built out a virtual community across their private WiFi network, and Twitter, to enable hotel guests to connect with one another and share their holiday experiences. Seemingly one part hookup network, one part extra convenience, customers can tweet which Bali Bed they're using to what food or drink they would like delivered. The Twitter experience permeates even to events with corresponding hashtags and party suite amenities that match Twitter's branding.

It's unclear how much of this online activity is private versus public, but there is no doubt the Sol Wave House (@SolWaveHouse) would prefer as much as possible to be public. Which, while make some elder generations wary, will seem an extra layer of convenience to a digital generation that would be tweeting, Facebooking or Instagramming their swimsuit selfies anyways.

It will be interesting to see what potential this experience has for others in the hospitality sector, especially more traditional customers that fear the internet and see hotels as incredibly private experiences, but until then -- two mojitos to #BaliBed6 please.

3 Reasons Why Social Media Belongs In-House

Agencies are not your best brand evangelists, your company and your customers are.

They are the people whose hours and dollars are invested into your brand vision. Agencies are still great for many things -- outsourcing campaigns, producing company materials -- but running a company's social strategy is not one of them. Here are three reasons why.

1. It's No Longer About Selling

Starbucks's in-house team has made them
 one of the top social business in the world.

Since the golden age of Mad Men, agencies have held a firm position in the marketing industry as the aficionados of how to connect with business demographics. That is, until the dawn of the Internet and the relationship between a business and their customer fundamentally changed. Before, the relationship was about selling -- shooting adverts and testimonials at people in the hopes they would stick and those people would become customers. Expensive focus groups and polls had to be run to procure the insights that drove market spending. Now, along with developed technology and the expectations of the consumer, this selling relationship has turned into a two-way highway of information where customer feedback is faster, at lower cost and (ideally) acted upon in real time. In social, time is the enemy. Any excess communication between agency-company exposes a brand to more human error and more opportunity for competition to act faster.

2. Social Isn't a Silo Department, It's a Business Model

You can't outsource social media because inherently social media is about conversing directly with your customer. Social media, like customer service and CRM, is an investment and should pervade everything your company does. Say your Hoover vacuum cleaner breaks down and you call the customer service hotline. Upon taking your call you immediately hear a voice from another country. Quickly this tells your customer your business chose a lower cost alternative to solve your customer's needs and in turn lowers the value your brand places on that service. This then puts the customer at a further distance from your brand and widens the opportunity for miscommunication.

What could happen instead, in a social environment with a comparable budget, is the entire foreign customer service agency could be replaced with a small dedicated team of internal social specialists. These specialists would work across free social networks to engage and assist customers and build up a relationship with customers before they even get to the point of frustration. Say your Hoover is losing power and you're noticing it is getting worse and worse, you could tweet to Gary @Hoover and within a few hours (the average Twitter user expects a business to respond within four) you will get a follow up of either the corresponding link to said issue or a personal email address to someone within the company to work with. No longer is the customer and their issues kept at a distance, but brought in as part of the company culture and community.

And this isn't just limited to customer service. Social is an element that links each department to their end result: the customer. The greatest resource a business has is their employees, and when they treat them well, they don't only get top quality work but loyal brand evangelists. Connecting these employees/evangelists with customers should be a no brainer. Entire shows are devoted to how consumer products are made. Expensive television commercials constantly use employee testimonials to introduce customers to their people. It all closes that chasm and brings the consumer closer into investing with their brand and its process.

3. Control, Ownership and Risk

Nike, another top performer in the social space,
 brought their social strategy in-house in 2013 to get closer to fans.

Your brand's social media network is your brand voice. It is your company database of previous, current and potential customers as well as a history of interaction of what works and what hasn't. So the question is: Does this feel like the place you should be shying away from responsibility? Don't you want to control who speaks your company's voice and interact with them personally on what you want? There are great agency account executives out there, but very rarely does adding another person to a conversation help with clarity (let alone budget) of content between two parties.

In the end, if the people within a company care about the people that are their customers, they should want to be the people that own those interactions. These interactions are the human fruits of their labor and they should be analyzed, responded to and championed as true KPIs. It is the next generation of business to answer the needs of the next generation consumer -- and the best way for that to happen is to start from within.

Amazon Gets Social with Pages, Posts and Analytics

It’s a tech trend to find everything in one place: It’s why Facebook invented Graph Search, Google built out Google+, and now Amazon is helping retailers market products from their e-commerce platform.

Essentially, Amazon’s Pages and Posts work intuitively like you would expect them to, as customizable home bases to publish content and update clientele on business announcements. Brands can choose their own URLs free of charge and Amazon Analytics have been built out to measure and tie social interaction to sales. Widgets have also been added to link to social networks along with a special compatibility with Facebook Posts.

While not revolutionary to tech or e-marketing, this is a great step for Amazon toward offering free, in-depth tools to small businesses that can’t afford the powerhouse data firms of Salesforce or Sysomos Inc. It builds on a familiar service and relationship preexisting customers understand and will no doubt be an easy conduit to channel emerging business unfamiliar with social media and analytics.

From Never Enough to Niche: How User Purpose Is Getting Specific

When Facebook was first introduced to college students in 2004, it had a purpose and a target. College students could connect and share images and messages. Over time, the Facebook demographic widened, no longer requiring college emails but opening it up to anyone. This still only appealed to youth, but over time businesses caught on and in turn older generations. Pokes and pictures were followed by gift giving, pages, apps, music, notes and Zynga online games. In 2012 there were over one billion active users from across the globe. And now, everyone hates it. Why?

The service hasn’t necessarily changed. Sure, ads are now a concern, timeline has been introduced and soon Graph Search will supposedly change everything again, but the concept of promoting yourself and sharing content remains the same.

What’s different is the culture surrounding Facebook. They are no longer the only big fish in the tank, and more than that, users are no longer intrigued with simply being somewhere.

Facebook is the early generation of mass adopters. For that reason, they contain everyone, especially those that don’t know why they’re there. From there, more specific platforms were developed for a specific purpose: Twitter focuses on syndicating content in under 140 characters, Instagram beautifies our ugly faces, LinkedIn promotes our professional experience—all of this is in ADDITION to networking.

Networking, the act of connecting and maintaining a presence, is no longer a reason to be somewhere. You need a message or reason for being there. Businesses that have succeeded on social networks know this. And users are not close behind.

There was a time when being everywhere was a must—both for businesses and affluent users of social media. But now there has finally reached a level of saturation in the marketplace. Smart businesses aren’t blindly following competitors onto platforms that don’t contain their target demographic or conform to the restrictions of their brand. Users with clout aren’t on a network because their friends are—they’re there for a focused purpose.

And this purpose can be fun. SnapChat, a photo/video messaging application that automatically deletes after a few seconds, is a perfect example of this. While light-years from the growth issues of Facebook, they’ve zeroed in on a fundamental craving for social sharing without responsibility and exploded their following.  It’s simple, focused and it works.

LinkedIn has been incredibly successful because of how necessary and focused its service is. It has added many widgets to improve connectivity and professional validity but also has done an excellent job listening to their audience when their additions rock the boat too hard.

Usability is clutch, and not losing focus on why your platform exists.

People feel guilty being somewhere without purpose. Without it we dwell on ourselves and call each other narcissists, when really people are and always have been narcissistic; they just don’t want to feel like they are. Purpose gives us that veil.

So where did Facebook go wrong? Who the hell knows, however, it’s notable to mention Facebook has gotten larger and not necessarily more relevant to our lives. Their purpose has remained stagnant while the culture has shifted. And adding more widgets onto its platform has not changed its purpose. In fact, it’s damaged its previous one. By adding so many functions to a platform, it has created an all consuming monster of information that is slow, spammy and above all, segments user purpose. And like any good marketer will tell you, too many choices cost you bottom line.

Chinese Social Media: What You Need to Know

More often than not, the place with the greatest potential to learn is where you'd least expect it. And with a field like social media that thrives on freedom of speech, there is no place more apt for study than China.

Not nearly as well-documented as Twitter or Facebook due to China's closed-door policy, Chinese social networks may very well hold the future of social media due to their significant size and sheer consuming power. The difficult part however is the differences in content-sharing.

Strength in Numbers
According to The Realtime Report as of April 6, 2012 just between China's top three social networks (Tencent's Qzone, Sina Weibo and Renren) there are over 970 million profiles--that's over three times the population of the United States. And these profiles are more active than any other country.

According to a survey from McKinsey & Company, 91 percent of Chinese correspondents said they visited a social media site in the last sixth months, a question that only resulted in 67 percent in the United States and 30 percent in Japan.

Content Sharing
Due to government censorship, the Chinese people hold a significant distrust of large institutions. Instead, word-of-mouth and in turn social media, have taken the lead as public authority. But since even social media are monitored in China--and topics such as politics or world events are kept at bay--consumer gossip and viral media run rampant.

In a study from HP Labs in Palo Alto, California this difference is compared between China's Sina Weibo and Twitter. They found trends exclusively follow media content surrounding jokes, images and videos while Twitter revolves more around world events and news stories.

This could prove beneficial for social media platforms but difficult for advertisers. It would not be outlandish to suspect new more underhanded methods of advertising to be on the horizon as advertisers try to distance themselves from their institutional persona. Needless to say the platforms will want to pander to these deep-pockets as well but if it is similiar to what we are beginning to see from Facebook we know public opinion can shift quick if privacy expectations are not met.

Fortunately there is one constant that crosses all social media studies--the desire to connect. From China's enthusiasm for online dating to their high mobile population, they echo the same emphasis on connectedness and outreach found in every wired country. The only question is how and when that potential goes worldwide.

The Networks to Watch
Mashable lists the top five Chinese social networks to watch.
1. Sina Weibo
This microblog platform houses more than 22% of the online Chinese population and is a major driver in social discourse and consumer activity.
2. Renren
A profile network more similar to Facebook, it began like its American cousin thriving with students and is now branching out to over 147 million users.
3. Tencent
Built on the QQ Instant Messaging service, this platform uses multiple platforms to house the largest Chinese community in terms of sheer registered users. Responsible for Qzone where over 500 million users write blogs and share pictures and music.
4. Douban
A bit more high brow for those inclined to review movies, music and books, Douban's strengths lie in their open format allowing 80% of all site content to be available for non-registered users and their high volume of 80 million registered users per month.
5. Wechat
More than 69% of the Chinese population accesses the Internet from a mobile device. That makes this voice and text app with constantly growing features a platform to watch in the war for Chinese mobile.