Facebook! Use it

[Gibraltar]

we are starting to see that Social Media could be a good way of disseminating , alongside the usual SMS in web marketing.

Twitter seems straightforward enough; Set up an account for the offer, possibly only for Tiwtter followers/fans etc.

Facebook seems a little more complex.

But what do you think should be done.
A. Create more 'pages' for the site individually from my own personal account.
B. Simply post any of the messages on my own company business page.
C. Encourage to set up their own personal account and then own hotel 'page'.

What do you think is best?

[jeremy]

I think this is probably the optimal way to use the various social network platforms at this point .

I do know companies who have been using this or that platform to offer discount codes to those users. One test that I know of that I'll be interested to see the results on is an Events venue where they're not only announcing upcoming concerts and such on their social network accounts.

Without having seen any data previously on this kind of approach, I still think the concept holds promise. The very idea that there's a usually pretty tight time restriction (they're testing giving these folks a week's opportunity to get in early vs just a day or two) could spur more impulse buying.

And then there's the whole buzz aspect that gets people talking...

[joshua]

Hi gibraltar,

It may be rational. However, getting value from youtube, the blogosphere, facebook, myspace etc. is very closely interlinked to giving up a certain amount of direct control over your brand. Facebook is not a good place to put out press releases. Not every company should have a facebook account.

I think that this thread is an example of a growing issue in our history: PPC, SEO, Analytics, etc. These services are a good fit for almost all companies. A consultant can come in, build a site. Create an adwords campaign. Optimise & promote the site. The company/client gets sales, leads, bookings, etc..But the above process works. Almost for every market.
This is not the case with social media. Some businesses cannot get any value from facebook/twitter/youtube/myspace. Many of those who will get value will do so in different ways.

I'm not saying that there will be instances of success here. But they are (almost by definition) not everyone

[phantom]

Thanks for listing these concepts they are really useful.

[Dordhs]

im on it all the time. constantly talking to friends through it, lately it seems like the chat on there isnt as messed up as it used to be  rarly meet new people on there. like people have said before and it will always be true. facebook is only lame if you use it for lame purposes.  or youre old