Promote something interesting – ‘The most expensive seafood hamper’ perhaps?

It’s a complete mystery to me why some PRs still promote the same old products without any particular story behind it, bloggers typically don’t have the time or inclination to promote ‘The Latest Hair Straightners’ for example… think a little deeper before you waste hours pushing this story up a very steep hill.

This is a great example where printed and online media differs dramatically. Paid journalists have quotas to meet to fill pages – bloggers don’t necessarily have this sort of pressure to adhere to… it’s what they want when they want – nobody pays them directly (well maybe Google for advertising).

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FACT - 90% of PR’s still don’t get digital, let alone social media

It has to be said that out of all the PRs that contact us to get placement on our own network of consumer blogs (out of an average 100 requests per day), 90% of them really don’t have a clue. TRUE! In fact, it’s annoying me so much that I felt obliged to write this article to share a few home truths from both sides of the fence – as a blogger and a social media marketer.

The ones that DO get it are often from the States… why? ...because they truly seem to want to understand and reap the benefits of this powerful medium and clearly invest more time getting to grips with tools and techniques available to do so. Obviously the PR market is no doubt more competitive there and not forgetting that they were blogging 4 years before many of us here in the UK.

Unfortunately (for the client) most PRs today are driven by tough targets for coverage set by a demanding client who also doesn’t understand digital or social, but just wants to see their brand across as much digital media as possible (“fair enough” I hear you say). For the majority of PRs, quality of online coverage doesn’t even seem important… it seems to be more about quantity and keeping the client happy with numbers. But this is entirely the wrong way to look at it.

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Ten ways a hotel should use social media for marketing

We don’t need to tell you that social media has taken hold of the net and isn’t about to let go, that’s old news. What we do need to tell you is that social media holds the key to new bookings perhaps more than you think.

Here are our top 10 ideas for embracing social media as a hotel:

1 – The twitter concierge service. Set up a twitter page and encourage visitors to your website (through a link) to ask questions and get immediate responses through twitter. Hyatt have done this very successfully.

2 – Share your positive reviews. Post your positive reviews to your blog and set up a twitterfeed so as you also automatically disperse them through twitter and Facebook.

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