Managing Social Media And Online Reputation On A Brand Level For A Group of Hotels Case Study Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices Index About Apex Hotels 3 How Apex Hotels uses Twitter 4 Different accounts for different purposes 5 Monitoring and responding on Twitter 6 Types of content that work best on Twitter 7 The Apex strategy for Facebook 8 Sourcing Content for Publishing 9 More thoughts on Facebook 10 How Apex Hotels manages online reputation 11 Encouraging guests to share content online 12 Involving everyone in the process 13 Why Apex Hotels chose ReviewPro 14 About ReviewPro 15 Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices About Apex Hotels Apex Hotels is an innovative group of seven city hotels based in the UK. “Knowing our brand position as a group of contemporary, luxurious city-center hotels helped us with our social media strategy and content”, said Sam Weston, who along with Amy Spark, share some of their thoughts on how to manage social media at the brand level for a group of hotels. Managing Guest Satisfaction3 Surveys: Best Practices How Apex Hotels uses Twitter Apex Hotels began using Twitter in March 2009. While this The Apex brand doesn’t have a rigid tone of voice for was a little later in the game than some of their larger Tweeting, despite their account being administered by competitors, they wanted ensure they had the time and three separate individuals. resources available to manage it effectively. “An unmonitored and stagnant Twitter account can do more They do, however, have a clear understanding of what is harm than good for a brand”. acceptable to broadcast, and try to avoid controversial subjects or appearing too opinionated. Messages are Since joining the network, Apex has increasingly used intentionally light, friendly and informative to abide by what Twitter as a method of engaging with guests and like- they see as one of the most overlooked principles of social minded individuals. They also see a big opportunity in media: conversation. engaging with other businesses. “We like to appear approachable to questions and “Twitter offers us an invaluable feedback channel for both enquiries about our hotels, the cities in which we operate positive and negative comments, although I’m pleased to and the products we offer.” say we receive mostly positive feedback! People seem much more inclined to offer feedback in 140 characters than via longer channels. Often, it provides valuable insight into what we’re doing well within Apex, or where we might be able to improve.” Managing Guest Satisfaction4 Surveys: Best Practices Different accounts for different purposes Apex has one main Twitter account that covers all their network (through Affiliate Window and Buy.at). They find hotels: @apexhotels. this to be a very helpful way to communicate latest promotions and offers that these affiliates can promote and “We chose to run one main profile rather than an individual earn additional sales commissions. It also offers a two way account for each hotel to give us the best possible chance channel for them to hear feedback on what offers they’d to reach as many as we can through Twitter. We also like to see from the hotels in the future. wanted to ensure consistency in our brand message: we didn’t want a whole host of people from different areas of Additionally, Apex is experimenting with a Twitter profile for our business having access to Twitter and potentially their sales team – @apexsales. The purpose is to provide causing a PR disaster here and there!” their sales team with an opportunity to engage directly with corporate clients and key industry members within the Apex built a separate Twitter account for their HR team – sales and marketing world. This account enables them to tweet slightly more corporate messages, since the target @apexcareers – which is used to offer advice and guidance to potential applicants. This account also offers audience is familiar with hospitality terminology, meetings recruitment and CV tips. “Engaging with the wider and events promotions, and so on. recruiting world ensures that Apex maintains an excellent standard of service by employing the right people at the “We chose not to tweet this to our main profile too much as very top of their game.” we didn’t want to have an overly corporate-sounding profile, and prefer a more informal, friendly approach.” Amy Spark also maintains a profile – @apexaffiliates – to offer guidance to participants of the Apex Hotels affiliate Managing Guest Satisfaction5 Surveys: Best Practices Monitoring and responding on Twitter Apex Hotels monitors social media channels using various monitor chatter about the cities in which they operate: tools such as ReviewPro to ensure their team is aware of London, Edinburgh and Dundee. This might be as simple what is being said about their brand: acknowledging both as any mention of ‘do you know + Edinburgh’ to more the positives and negatives, and responding where required. targeted hotel and restaurant queries. “It’s easy to ignore the negatives, but in our experience a “An example of what we’ll find could be as simple as ‘whats problem ignored often becomes more difficult to deal with in the weather like in Edinburgh?’ – or it could be detailed the long run and has an almost snowball effect as it gathers questions about attraction prices and opening times.” momentum through re-tweets and social media chatter.” Regardless of whether the person asking the question is At the same time, the team celebrates positive feedback staying at Apex, they will respond if they have the time. The from guests through re-tweets and comments. “It’s a great reason is that even if they’re staying with the competition qualifier for people considering staying at their hotels if this time, they’ll hopefully follow @ApexHotels and perhaps independent comments on Twitter (and of course through remember the Apex brand for next time. various online reviews) reflect our brand positively.” Apex Hotels monitors mentions of their hotel names and specific @mentions too. They created saved searches to Managing Guest Satisfaction6 Surveys: Best Practices Types of content that work best on Twitter Apex finds that gathering content for “Of course, we’re a business too, so we The time of day they try to publish Twitter is often an organic affair – do tweet our offers, although we try to tweets varies. coming from social media discussions keep to a rough ratio of 1:10 (1 offer about the cities they operate within, per 10 tweets). From using Twitter “We do try and tweet during the hotels and hospitality in general. They personally, it seems that many evening on occasion, as well as during also find ideas from within the company companies tweet almost all offers and I the standard 9-5. A good example was – from any department. find, again personally, that I stop the recent bad weather in November “Occasionally events will happen at the reading their tweets in the stream, or and December of last year. With the hotel that we’re unaware of, so we do scan past them. I think originality is weather changing every 10 minutes ask staff to contribute when they see important and the catch of a good and peoples’ travel plans being something that is social media worthy”. tweet, or a different Tweet is often the constantly interrupted, we tweeted a In the near future, Apex is looking at difference between being special offer in the evening so that if establishing ‘champions’ at each acknowledged or ignored”. they were stuck in London, Edinburgh property who will report on local activity or Dundee and didn’t have somewhere and take quick snapshots to post The Apex team tries to tweet every day, to stay, we were on hand to help. online. This will further establish the and they monitor their accounts Flexibility is probably one of the most connection between the on and offline. frequently to ensure messages aren’t useful things with social media. Some left unanswered. Responsibility for brands seem to be constrained by a Competitions on Twitter – asking creating responses is split up among rigid and formulaic approach and followers to re-tweet messages or the team by day so that one person personally I think that can seriously contribute to discussions – has been isn’t left to manage the account impact on the value a company, and the very effective in engaging with themselves. “ people following that company will get followers. “Maybe it’s primarily because out of the relationship, out of the there’s an opportunity to win a break at This provides a little variety and new conversation itself”. one of our hotels, but often it spins into ideas for tweeting. It ensures the discussion between other Twitter content is always fresh, on brand and users.” fun.” Managing Guest Satisfaction7 Surveys: Best Practices The Apex strategy for Facebook Apex Hotels began building their Trackable links are created for both After a few years of experimenting with Facebook presence in early 2009. Facebook and Twitter to see which both social networks, Amy finds they Facebook has, of course, evolved their content is most popular on each. can get away with posting more business profiles significantly since content per day on Twitter than on then – making them work more like “Particularly on Facebook, we find very Facebook. “The nature of Twitter is personal profiles. “We find it has corporate sales messages cause more fast-paced and people are used become a very good way for us to people to ‘unlike’ the page or to receiving lots of short messages. engage with existing guests, along with unsubscribe from updates.