Hospitality Marketing The Podcast 281

Hospitality Marketing The Podcast Show 281 Transcripts (English U.S.)

Announcer — Welcome to this week in Hospitality Marketing. The podcast show number 281 with your host, Loren Gray.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to hospitality marketing The podcast. I am your host, Loren Gray, and this is episode number 281. So each week we spent around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. We also do a quick recap of our weekly live video show this week in Hospitality Marketing, which also airs every Friday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern US time so that let’s get started

Announcer — Now, today’s new resource tool.

So our tool for this week, and were strangely enough, have created a pattern that this is the second week. We’re only talking about one tool, but it’s important enough to really just highlighted by itself. And there’s a platform called Hash Tags for likes DOT ceo Now. At first I thought I was relatively fluent In the world of hashtag usage. I’ve used a variety of tools to determine what popularity there are with hashtag hashtags what they’re being used for, what audiences are connected to them, um, also to using it as a methodology of communication.

For those unfamiliar with hashtag, hashtags are means of identifying and work identified group of listeners within the mainstream. The floodgates, as it were of social dialogue, hash tags are used to identify in context what it is you might think you’re contributing to. Now I’ve used as a sort of rite of of research tools to determine hashtags how influences used them. How well influencers show up for Hashtags, whether there’s context to the hashtag. I’ve used, uh, tools that geographically showed what Hashtags were being used based on region ality popularity on that day and that time to see what people were using to identify their conversations with over relatively successful.

So I felt very, very comfortable in the space until I came across this platform of all things in absolute. We’ll go figure for those that know me. I’m an absolutely fiend, and this hashtag for likes really helped identify the fact that I knew some but by far not as much as I should in relationships. Toe hashtag you c hashtag are used not just differently for each of what they’re for, but they’re also contextually used differently. And then you add the complexities of multi platforms as to what Hashtags, or for you would think that hashtag are a very concise usage of words to determine.

Topic Lee what you referred to. But as with anything in language, the direct interpretation definition isn’t always the intended use. Sometimes there’s paradox to that. Sometimes there’s, uh, insinuations, uh, sarcasm. Sometimes there’s truth. Sometimes there’s humor, and the Hashtags have used inappropriately. You may find yourself in a conversation. Do you think is valid for what you’re trying to share? Is a business when in fact you’ve become comical because you really walked into the conversation ignorant to what the conversation was about? So proper hashtag research and the usage of Hashtags has come into its own as a viable Nene’s of tool to determine.

Are you stepping into a good place? So you’re stepping into a bad place, and I say that from the fact that you can determine that there’s a variety of hashtag differences between what’s used on instagram, what’s used in Facebook, even although not as prevalent as another platforms what’s used on Twitter and ironically, as new in this, as with Ticktock. Not that you necessarily, maybe, uh, advertising in tech talk. Um, I’m not a fan of ticktock at this point for advertising, because it is a medium that often it has yet to get ruined by marketers.

Let’s put that way, although I think Walmart buying ticktock has stepped into that world of that happening. But so there is nuances to hashtag. There’s nuances is to the popularity. There’s qualifiers as to whether or not something has a life longevity to it, or is is trending or is popular or is is contextual. There’s lots of differences to that, and there’s also strategies, associate id um, with exactly why and when you would use hashtags if usable and viable, and hashtags for likes, which is literally that hashtags for likes dot c o addresses to some detail those aspects, um, creating campaigns around what conversations you want to join before it was, decide what you wanted to talk about it and see what hashtag will be related to it.

Now you should look for what hashtag you might be able to contribute to in the process of engaging those people that are following it, which is kind of going from the the tail wagging the dog to the dog leading the tail where you are now looking for reasons to join Because I’ve noticed for me I pick hashtag that I think are relevant to what I’m doing. Hashtag hospitality podcast hashtag hospitality broadcast for the live shore of the podcast. When you look those up, they have a long longevity.

They they have, ah, life cycle to them. They’re they’re they’re used, but they’re not popular. They don’t have a lot of volume to them. So even though I’m quantifying what my content is by adding that hashtag, I’m really not helping in its distribution, which is ultimately what you’re trying to do with Hashtags. You’re trying to increase the conversion of interest. You can post anything you want to on social platforms. We all know this and gosh knows people abuse that nameless says they may be, but yellow inherent orange and skin.

But using them for your business, you want to hit an audience that it resonates with. You want to join a hashtag that that you hope has the potential off drawing attention to you for all the right reasons for the people that may be associated with that. Hashtag. It’s like a context of sorts. Ah, bookmark to it as it were. You don’t go into, uh, a retailer’s convention when your hospitality person, unless you want to know more about retail hashtag there like that. You do you want to pick a hashtag that’s relevant to what you’re trying to share or contribute or participate in or be seen from?

Not just because, um, you think it’s relevant, but because it is relevant and you need to research to do that. So the tool is hash tags for likes DOT CEO, and that is our tool for review this week.

Announcer — Now for this week’s hospitality technique.

So our technique this week obviously is related to our tool, and it is listening, joining and participating in the coming conversations. So what do I mean? In relationship to that is, we always try to our tools. Hashtags for likes is a great way to begin to determine not what you think you know, but to determine what it is you need to know toe, identify by information and data what you’re assuming you think you know all too often and I know this from first hand client experiences myself with business, Whatever it may be, we may think we know exactly who we want to talk to when we go through exercises that we’ve talked about demographics and persona, building and identifying market segmentation is and make assumptions as to where they’re coming from and why they’re traveling, where they’re going to and what we can participate in.

And then we launched these campaigns related to them, and it doesn’t happen that way. Expected toe happen or not in the volume that we need for it to happen successfully and we’re sitting there, scratching is going, What do we dio? Well, unfortunately, some companies just throw out the idea, saying, Well, it was a bad idea of this. Throw it out. Smart companies say Maybe it was a good idea just at the wrong time, and they put it on the shelf. Better companies say, Before we do all this, let’s see if we’re right.

So we listen. First we listen to the audience is we think we want to participate with we research whom it is that we think we want to talk to. Where are they at? What are they listening and talking and engaging with. That’s where tools like Hashtags for like helps you with that. It helps identify what whom you think you’re talking to. You may have, like I said, a clear persona who you want the door based on historical data base and everything that you can find for data internally for yourself.

But you may not find this fishing audience size, and you may begin to realize that you were catering to an audience that was so much more so much smaller than audience you could acquire. Should you look differently that again, it’s kind of a self fulfilling, fulfilling circle. If you Onley sell to the people that you’ve sold to thin, the only people that will buy from you, the people that are like them and them as well anybody else that may be interested in your product. You’re not even talking to for them to even know you exist, which in itself is a way of validating uses of medicines.

But that’s a whole another conversation. Instead, here you begin to research and validate. Am I right? Are the demographics and the personas that I have identified? Are they legitimate and audience size are the legitimate and interest can I contribute to their conversations are what they’re talking about, something that I can help or understand. Better to know how to talk to them. It’s not so much maybe just joining a conversation because you can contribute. OK, which is the next step after listening. Joining. Okay, um, you may find that you have nothing to contribute.

So even by joining all you’re really doing is listening and understanding what it is that’s of concern. Pain points, categories of things that might be of interest. And you can then say, Well, I can’t really contribute anything to this level of conversation or to the context of what they’re talking about. But I now have a better sense of what it is that they’re looking to do or looking toe want to do or looking to where to go so I can retailer my content, my messaging, my information to resonate better with them.

So even though I’ve started listening to a different audiences via hashtag research or other means, but we’re focusing on hash tagging today and I join that conversation and go through the process of discovery what they’re dealing with, I may not participate in that conversation for lack of value other than coming in as a sales pitch guy going. Oh, hey, you guys were talking about my destination. Well, I got hotel rooms. I could tell you may not be the right time. They may not be interested. There’s lots of factors that just make it ill placed for you to join and participate in the conversation. Join?

Yes. Listen, yes, Understand, yes. But to participate really requires a contribution, a value to what you have into what they’re doing. Hashtags is, as I said, putting a lens on an area of the deluge of conversation that is ongoing all the time, about everything in every way, from everywhere it’s identifying, plucking out the parts that may be of interest or relevancy to you. By doing that. As I said, you listen first to see what is being said in the areas that you think you’re interested in, and then seeing how they relate to other things, you see other hashtags where the hashtag you may be following, maybe associate with other hashtags.

You were aware off research. Those see how much volume of traffics with those who’s following them, where they following from? Why are they following it? What are they contributing to? That should be an ongoing discovery process to this point and then from that, join those conversations by tracking and listening to those things. And then, should you find it that you can participate in that dialogue constructively, positively, without negative repercussions as to being ill fitted, then participate in that dialogue so that you could begin to be a part of the active discovery of conversations that are going to very quickly evolve as we move through our timeline.

We’re in a dark, dark tale with covert these days, and we dive darker times ahead of us most probability from what everyone is saying, and there will be an emergence, hopefully with the vaccine usage, which we all have to be an advocate of in our industry that will bring our industry back. Getting people vaccinated will help in the rebirth of our industry by defying that doing the stupidity of not men. I’ll say it’s clearly stupidity off not wearing a mask and not put distancing and not washing your hands and ignoring the CDC warnings and everything else that people are doing.

So I’m gonna go the restaurant to support them. You’re going to close them down, not support them. Because as you continue to help with the spread of what is going on, you’re only exacerbating the circumstances. This will not go away until we find means of controlling it via the vaccine. Via that said, the mask wearing via and watching distancing to begin to deteriorate its spread. So you’re killing the industry, thinking that you’re helping it by going out and doing all these silly, stupid, stupid things. I’m so stupid things by not wearing masks and what have you And yes, I’ve been pretty adamant about that.

So here, in this process of hashtag king of listening, joining and participating, you begin to quantify and maybe re evaluate your personas, reevaluate your demographics and maybe be even exposed to other markets you didn’t consider might be of interest. Because the markets have changed. The purpose of travel has changed. The types of people that are able to or willing to or have to travel have changed, and they will continue to evolve as mawr mawr safety comes into the marketplaces Mawr mawr knowledge of where they can why they can how they can should they can do.

They need to travel and identifying them and where they’re talking and how they’re talking and what they’re talking about. And then whether you need to participate in that conversation by sharing with them what you feel is a positive influence on the conversation. By adding to the conversation. By that point, you will constantly be in the forefront of being aware, being knowledgeable and being contributing to those conversations and a positive business positive way for using tools like Hashtags and what hashtag for likes and and other tools. But we’ll talk about Hashtags for likes today only for that.

So our technique this week listening, joining and participating in the coming conversations by using things like hashtag for likes DOT Co is a tool. So they have it now.

Announcer — This week’s hospitality news that you should know.

So our news and show review. Honestly, it’s Christmas Christmas, Dag, uh, for continuity, consistency. We were having this show today s Oh, you know, you don’t get to say that you’ve been doing it without a missed a week for seven years or in seven years without doing it. Regardless, whether it lands on a day like Christmas Day.

So I honestly do not expect any of my co host to join thinking it’s Christmas Day. Family friends holiday. What have you? Uh, it’s always a pleasure. When any time any of my co host joined, there’s no obligation from them. There’s certainly no guilting into it. On dso the fact that I had Adele Gutman from a spy reputation marketing first joined that Mr Robert Cole with Rock Cheetah and Mr Stewart. But the fuel travel was a very welcome Christmas present of collaboration, I figured. Well, you know, we’re not gonna bore everyone to death.

I’ll go through a great curated list from Robert, which he gives us each week from Rock Cheater, which you can always sign up for yourself. At Bentley B i t l Y forward slash rock Cheetah Doc. It’s gonna be Rock Cheetah. Lower case, no space. So it’s billy forward slash rock Cheetah Lower case. No space. Um, I was just gonna go through a list which everybody Merry Christmas help. They have a great holiday day, and yet we end up running the whole show for the whole two hours that we normally run uh, Mr Robert Cole and I could probably talk paint off the wall if we really wanted to.

We get we have that ability. Although, Miss Adele, what was a wonderful contributor to the spirit of Christmas and guest service, as she always is, And Mr Stuart Butler always into the drive to improve what we do in hospitality for the spirit of hospitality. So it was wonderful to have them, Aziz Well and true joy to have them. We, uh, we talked about being friendly or whether there was gonna be emergence from this of having now a new re found appreciation for the more simpler things, Uh, guest walking in your front door when it’s so a little bit more infrequent that has been in times past.

On addition of a new team member or old teamwork. Remember coming back where Perhaps we were just working in circles around each other. But now the appreciation was an extra pair of hands. That hand came back to do some of the work that you were doing if you were there before them or vice versa. If you’re coming in to help appreciation for being back, um, whether that was going to carry forward as we go through the transition of our industry. Um And then, of course, we talked about, you know, the historical predictions that were made through the process of our times, still current with cove in, and how close and accurate they were and whether they were based on relevancy or prognostication.

So we had fun conversations with that as well. Um, we talked about the idiocy of the new rule that are costing waiters, maybe potentially $700 more from Trump as to allowing employees to take more money from the tips of their workers. And it was orbit into the cost of business, which we went through our own personal histories of how idiot idiot base that is to do that if it kills motivation, desire ing service. By doing that, we also talked about the fun boop of the day. Yeah, the trump rule thing was the the Rot Row and the boop, which is the positive is, should be living in a hotel.

And there was some amazingly beautiful examples of hotels around the world that we probably all would enviously live at. Should we be given the opportunity because of the location and the amenities and just the beauty that they are in and are s It was fun conversations. And again, we lasted the entire two hours. By doing that, there was a article in his list Roberts list, which I thought very fascinating because it’s a progression of technology. A lot of technology, Excuse me has been moving forward and some and we’ve all pointed out in previous podcast and a very accelerated way due to Kobe.

I mean, obviously, you know, up until Covic go to meetings and so forth were like unnecessary backwater evil of Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll get on the computer screen with you, but it was nine times out of 10. Most sometimes didn’t have a camera on or it was confusing or what have you, and, uh, it matured quickly. We know that technology is going forward. This articles from Google photos map and as Google photos map view at view, add satellite layer and integrates your travel timeline. Now, I’ve done numerous presentations for each of his rocket program where I was highlighting the track ability.

What Google does, where you’ve been, how long you were there, what may have done while you were there, you know? Did you walk? Did you drive? What have you But this is now a new added layer of data that’s being put into it where you’re now able to use Google maps and it will show you were you were And what pictures may have taken along that process of where you went to, uh, in a helpful way in there. You know what they’re presenting it as is a helpful way of sharing.

Uh oh. Hey, you were there. This is a picture, if you wanna go click on it. Now, for those of us with apple phones, you know that there has been a map and then there’s a geography associated with where you took the pictures from locations. The pictures, unlike Google, Apple is saying that’s your data. And because of that, uh, you know, it’s not shared to market or be shared in usage or anything like that. Google does not make that same promise. Google has the fly. I told you that you are surrendering that for the benefit of the optimization of the platform.

Um and so that data is eventually cumulatively useful. Uh, to me is a marketer thio them as research. And what have you to sell more stuff to me is a market, or for where, if they know where you went and what you’ve done, which they known that already. But now add the pictures that you take and those pictures can be used as to was in my building was in the building of my competitors. Was it a destination? Was in an event was what? For whatever reason, you can get a lot, as they say, a picture’s worth 1000 words.

While that picture can share Ah, lot of what you were doing and in the context of what you were doing it for, that could never be just handled by the geographic location of where you’ve been or whether you’re walking or driving. This adds a new dimension of understanding and depth all under the auspices, that it is to improve you as the user to have a bit of a better memory. As to pictures of where you were more precisely about having a guest. Well, isn’t that New York?

Was that maybe my central park or whatever? No, it’ll show you right on the map. So as much as I applaud this aspect of Wow, this is really cool. I also have to take the other half, which is Whoa, That’s a little spooky, too, because that means that there’s a little bit mawr data, a lot more data that Google now has about me doing whatever it is that I’m doing, just simply because I’m using their platform to do it or using their platform while I use another platform.

They get that information as well. So again, uh, the article note in our in our show notes for the podcast, as always, and that is Google Photos map view at satellite layer and integrate your travel timeline. Uh, it’s also in Rock Cheetahs newsletter, which you’ll find as well, which you can subscribe to for free at diddly b i t dot l y forward slash rock cheetah All lower case. No space. So there remember you can find us on Google Play apple iTunes I heart radio soundcloud stitcher Spotify, Pandora tuned in podcast.

The list goes on. Actually 39 platforms and counting. We’re even on Amazon’s Alexa Google assistant, and Siri just simply asked to play the hospitality marketing podcast, and we’ll play back for you and no matter which one you may use. If you like the show, please rate us and leave a comment that helps others find to discover our content. It also gives us great feedback as to whether we’re hitting content that you like to hear about. If there’s other things you’d like to hear more about, that you can send us a note on.

And if we’re doing something wrong, please let us know. We always were looking to make this as useful and is enjoyable for those that have taken the time to listen to us each week. So if this is your first time hearing us, you could course subscribe to our show on any of those 39 platforms. And if for an archive of all of our previous podcast, you can go to hospitality, digital marketing dot com, forward slash podcasts. And don’t forget eyes. Always are live video talk show that you can join and participate in every Friday at 11:30 a.m.

Eastern US time called This Week in Hospitality Marketing the live show, and for that you could simply go to hospitality. Digital marketing dot com forward slash live look for show number 281 that Christmas edition. Uh, just much of the podcast, their Christmas edition to our in 81 you can play back either those along with all the show notes, links and conversations that we had for the entire show and podcast as well, so that thank you for the privilege of your time, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. And for some of my more close, my dear friends are happy Festivus.

For some of us, Dave grievances is down upon us. We must do shows of strength for those that member Jerry Seinfeld. That’s where all that came from. But for everyone, this is a time to be happy. We have a lot to be happy for. There’s many that have had suffered tremendous loss and tragedies, and we must always look forward to the happier times. So we wish everyone that has suffered through this year that better times there could be ahead. Uh, look forward to those things. Do not let it take you down.

We’ve had many times talking about positive mental health and need for that. Please take every cautionary tale to make sure that you’re positive of mind and in spirit, and I think positively especially today, Christmas Day, whether you celebrating Christmas or not. Any holiday you sell around this time, just it’s the joy of the holiday that must be focused on it this time and the positiveness about that. So for that, we look forward to talking to, you know, years. They actually, uh, next week until then. Thank you so very much.

Announcer — You have been listening to this week in hospitality Marketing, the podcast show 281. Brought to you by hospitality digital marketing and in support of the HSMAI Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International. All right, reserved copyright 2020.