Social Networking has eclipsed email in popularity. The latest Nielsen survey (nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf) found that 66.8 percent of the global online population spends time at “Member Communities”, a category that includes both blogs and social networks. That makes social networking about two percent more popular than email, with one in every 11 minutes online globally spent on Facebook, MySpace, etc.
With this being true, why is it that so few hotel salespeople join LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter in a professional manner? How valuable could we in the hospitality industry be to travelers if we blogged about our communities and made sure that our property was the center of the universe when enjoying our destination?
Start small. Join the above tools and build a profile that paints you in a professional, expert way. No photos of you out with your friends. Invite people to be connected to you that make you look by association (you’re know by the company you keep).
A huge number of people are taking part in these online communities. Contribute!
Tags: hotel marketing, hotel sales, hoteletraining, member communities, social networks
