The easy life of being Director of Public Relations at a hotel chain - part.1

I don't think we recognize enough how easier the job of Public Relations is in the 21st century.

Before the emergence of blogs, video sharing sites and other social media sites, you either had to rely on a 3rd party PR company to bring journalists to write and talk about your brand or you had to fight on your own to make sure every press release get read and covered by the same journalists.

These days, you have other options to get public attention.

Let's say you are a Director of Public Relations of a new hotel chain, you want to make sure you reach an audience very quickly and that people start to engage with your brand from the moment the hotel is opened.

How to do this:

1. You create a blog where you share how the brand was created and how you build a team at a hotel and how the development is going

2. You create a Twitter account related to your brand to make sure it is easy to remember and also SEO friendly

3. You create a YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Blip.tv, MetaCafe accounts with your brand as a username (don't forget to use TubeMogul to upload your videos in one go across all these video sharing sites)

4. You create a Facebook account where customers can become fans of your brand and share their experience

5. You create a Deezer and Last.fm account and share the relevant tunes related musically to your brand

Last but not least, you engage with all these above by being active and not passively throwing information to your audience. And then your brand is recognized and you haven't started to get recognition from traditional media.

So when you do start?

Comments

[Guy Cras]

I am sorry to have disagree on this one. Blogs, twitters, youtube, facebooks, deezer and alike are fun toys for internauts, not a good medium to make a brand known.
The number of friends on Facebook has no relation (imo) to the recognisability with your potential guests. It is just the number of friends on facebook.
If you would spend the effort you do daily on making friends on facebook, by distributing stickers of your hotel on the street corner, it would have exactly the same effect.
Its not quantity but quality, that is important.
You' better go spamming your potential relations, instead of "playing" on facebook ;-)

[Claude]

@ Guillaume

easy life !!!! huuummmm.
Ok for the free tools, but you need to have a real conversation in the Web2.0 space. And that, it's another story for many brands in travel industry or not.

[twitter.com/foxychops]

@hotelblogs,

Hiya, I'm not with you on this one. Just because you have all those tools at your disposal doesn't make the job any easier. And, in fact it opens up a whole can of worms in terms of having to track and try to manage who is saying what, where and when.

Social media must be a hotel PR director's nightmare unless they've learnt how to engage in it really effectively.

[Guillaume Thevenot]

@guy cras: plenty of online brands get only known via these channels with no paper flyers and traditional marketing tactics. So are you saying if you are a hotel, you can't make a brand online because they are too many people, therefore difficult to target. By the way, I am talking about Public Relations here not distribution marketing.

@Claude: you are absolutely right, I think the job is easy to throw messages at people online but on the flip side, you need to spend more time to engage in the conversation. But honestly, can you name one hotel brand who gets overwhelmed with comments, video responses and so on? I think not.

@Linda Fox: Same response given to Claude. The difficult part is after you've published your messages, your brand ...you need to control what's going on and maybe moderate. But I believe there are plenty of tools to make your life easy. For instance, Twitter can be better used with TweetDeck or Seesmic to make sure people don't deteriorate your brand on this medium. In one click you get to know in the last 14 days who talks about your brand and can respond directly within once click. But you are absolutely right, there is a learning curve for Director of PR in this 21st century.

@Lori- thanks for the posting but this is not the place for that.

[Guy Cras]

@Guillaume
You and I were not speaking of established brands that set up a sort of media campaign.
Talking about NEW BRANDS of Hotels(or comparable) that get ONLY KNOWN through online ?
Ok I would like to see an example of them and their campaign seen explained.

[Anuj]

thats sound great about media campaigan, and i think every new or old brand need to do that.

media online

[Ricky Paredes]

Let me ask you something, I have never worked at a Hotel, but have been as customer; I am a customer oriented person and like to take care of people.

Don`t you think that travelers like me who like to take care of customers but have never worked at hotels should have the opportunity

regards

[Guillaume Thevenot]

@Anuj - well, not sure they need this if their brand is already established

@Ricky Paredes - well i guess you have plenty of online platform to express yourself. And I guess TripAdvisor and co were made for you then. Customers who care about their peers, other customers.

[Romantic bed and breakfasts]

Public Relations used to be so difficult task in hotel industry making new customers and retaining old existing customers.Now by the use of social media it is nothing else.Your blog can market your brand so easily and other social media sites play an important role in bringing clients.

[car hire rio de janeiro]

@Guy Cras
Social sites are good for marketing campaign's

[port douglas hotels]

Social media is actually about a direct relationship, conversation, engagement etc between a consumer and a brand.

[car hire valencia airport]

Public relations are important but for a start hotel manager should start with internal marketing - to learn staff how to provide good service are essential!