While browsing TripAdvisor today, I came across this popup window encouraging me to “like” their Facebook page:

I like the way this is worded: “Did TripAdvisor help you today?”

It seems this approach could quickly grow their fan numbers on Facebook.

What do you think? Is this too pushy, or could you use it on your blog or information site?

Bowen Payson, Online Marketing Manager at Virgin America

I run the online marketing team, responsible for all digital communications from Virgin America
There’s four of us working on social media: 2 from marketing, 2 from corporate communications
My workday is 50% managing content development, 50% on promotional activities generating direct revenue
We’re focused on fare promotions, and also on telling people about our unique amenities
People may say something online, but do something else. On our recent Facebook promotions, for every person that complains, 5 are buying a ticket
We have a matrix approach to promotions: if we only did one type (discount, giveaway, etc) it would burn out the audience. It’s all about creating a mix.
Twitter a year ago was totally different than Twitter today. Facebook is the same way.
Early adopters used be the only ones on some social media; now it’s more mainstream
For me, Twitter is a newsfeed; for others it may be something else
We plan some social media promotions months ahead of time
Our editorial calendar is pretty lose and open, so we can change and update as needed
Our most successful channel in terms of views, clicks, and sales is Twitter
Facebook is growing, but user behavior is different. Facebook can bring a very engaged audience.
Nick Schwartz is our voice on Twitter
If there’s a basic question, Nick takes care of it. If it’s bigger, we work closely with our guest services team to resolve issues.
A big project for us right now is finding the right buzz channels. Last week we launched a promotion around “awkward family photos,” where people send in photos for a chance to win prizes.
It’s great because the photos are viral and funny, but it’s also a good offer for our customers.
Our website is intended to be fun and user-friendly. It’s meant to be relevant and intuitive. We’re using big photos and less text to quickly get the message across.
If I could start over, I would have focused more on search optimization. I’d work on deeper integration of the social media into the website.
One of the best things we ever did was in emails to our Elevate members: including a “tweet this” button in our emails. Different people at different times need different things from email. Sometimes people aren’t buying, but want to share an offer with their friends.
Social media takes a lot of work. What you invest, you get out. You need to invest in people, thought, time and strategy. It’s not like buying traditional media.

See Bowen next week at EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010.

A few colleagues and I are starting a new community to encourage innovation around social responsibility and environmental sustainability.

Here’s the video intro:

This community will start out on this Facebook page: I invite you join here. In fact, I’ll make it super-easy for you by including the Facebook widget here – just click the “like” button below:

A note about Facebook privacy: Joining does not open up your personal network. We’re just using the Facebook Connect platform to get as many people involved as possible. It’s just to let you plug into the community without separate registration.

Once you’ve “liked” our page, please share links, articles, or examples that you think would inspire innovation in this space.

Last May, The Langham Hotel in Hong Kong unwittingly created a firestorm of controversy on the internet. A series of three videos were produced to present the hotel as a safe haven for culture-shocked travelers. After the videos were released, they received a lot of negative criticism as “racist” and “offensive.” The videos were pulled from YouTube, and the hotel had to issue a formal apology.  But as this hotel learned the hard way, you can never completely erase negative buzz online.

Of course, the solution isn’t to avoid all forms of online interaction. Social media can serve as a powerful channel for your staff to serve guests.

The Internet marketing managers at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City have developed a web presence that shows what’s possible when social media is done right. Through a dedicated website, blog, Facebook fan page, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and a Twitter account with over 3,000 followers, the hotel is able to build loyalty and attract attention using social media.

And then there’s the vast majority of hotels that have either a nonexistent or a mediocre social media presence. The problem there is that their social media campaign is so boring it doesn’t attract any attention: negative or positive. They’re simply not on the radar.

This is why a social media policy is so important

A good social media policy serves as a roadmap for encouraging your staff to take part in promoting your hotel online…but also serves as a safeguard against tarnishing your brand’s reputation. It recognizes that social media is by definition a personality-powered platform. It encourages your staff to actively participate in spreading the word about your organization online.

It’s not so much a set of rules as it is a written philosophy to clarify your engagement strategy.

The two parts of a good social media policy

Read more…

Over the past few months, I’ve seen hotels creatively use Facebook to successfully attract new guests and connect with past ones. This has led me to recommend a new situational approach to using Facebook: what works for some hospitality companies may not work for others. It seems you must have clear goals for being on the site before you can succeed.

The Pros & Cons of using Facebook

Pros

• It can serve as a rich media sharing platform for collecting and distributing photos and video of special events at your hotel
• You can extend your page functionality through various applications
• It can serve as a good social media hub, sharing content from various sites around the web
• The new enhanced wall feature encourages interactivity and creates a sort of “lifestream” around your hotel
• Event promotion seems to be something that works very well – considering how people tend to use Facebook
• You can rally people around a cause
• Access to statistics has improved over the past few months, making it easier to track metrics

Cons

• Your potential guests may not be using it
• Your guests may not want to use it to interact with a hotel
• People may even get annoyed by receiving marketing messages from a hotel on Facebook

“I thought Beverly Hilton was an old girlfriend, but then realized I’d been friended by a hotel. #HiltonFail” @simmonet

But perhaps the most powerful argument I hear against using Facebook is that is doesn’t reach people in the decision making stage of the travel planning process. This is something you must consider carefully if you are starting a brand-new Internet marketing campaign with limited resources. You may get a higher return on investment by focusing on online reputation building and search marketing.

Should your hotel have a Facebook presence?

Here are some questions to ask yourself Read more…

To followup on Guillaume’s series on hotels using Twitter, I wanted to examine how hotels are using another popular network: Facebook. While Twitter seems to be getting all the press, a traffic comparison chart from Compete.com may surprise you:

A couple big takeaways from this:

• Facebook reaches nearly four times as many people as Twitter
• Facebook is growing faster than Twitter (especially over the past 3 months)
• Twitter growth has plateaued over the past month (Quantcast even shows a drop)

For these reasons, I wondered how hotels are using Facebook to engage their fans and attract new ones.

Read the whole story: How hotels use (and misuse) Facebook: 5 examples, 14 ideas for you