We were recently reading a story in HotelChatter (http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/1/14/114310/100/hotels/Hotels_That_Twitter_and_Twitter_Well) about hotels that use twitter, and use it well. It got us thinking about all the different ways social media is being used in the hotel industry and made us really think about our own social media strategy. Ever since we’ve jumped on the Twitter/Blog/Social Media train, we’ve seen many of our colleagues, friends, customers join and every day we are connecting with more people. 

We don’t only blog every week because we love the opportunity to rant a little, we blog because our audience wants something new to read each week. We try to keep the information relevant and useful. Just like our Rule #20 of Selling, “Keep your Bloody PowerPoint Slides simple”, it’s important to us to keep our twitter account and blog active, relevant and interesting.  

According to an article on HospitalityNet (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4045836.html), Social media can have a dramatic impact on your brand's reputation. 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog and 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs. We’ve had excellent feedback from partners, customers and even some from competitors that tell us they like reading our blog, so we’re not going to stop anytime soon. A blog/twitter account is an excellent way to go direct to people who are badmouthing or complaining about your product or service and engage them. Go meet them head on and you can often end the problem. We use our blog a lot to praise cool friends we met from the industry or talk about issues that we think are pretty dumb or very interesting, but sometimes you just need to use your blog to stand up for your brand.

At Acentic, we are always about engaging people. We want hotel guests to have an engaging stay at the hotel of their choice, with all the entertainment amenities they could ever dream of. In the social media world, we want to hear feedback from those guests, hotels, and anyone else that may be reading. We want to know what our customers, partners, media, friends and competitors think.

We’re still asking ourselves what the best way to communication via social media is. It is a learning process, but in the meantime, if you’re not already getting in on the action, the real question is Why aren’t you? We aim to be part of the group that HotelChatter says is doing a “Killer job of utilizing the micro blog platform.”