The Marketing Duo Behind New York's Social Media Hotel

There's a blog. A Facebook fan page. A YouTube Channel. Over 3,000 Twitter followers. A Flickr photostream. And two guys behind all these efforts, both of whom winnowed their way into overseeing online marketing for the property following stints in food and beverage services at the hotel.

We caught up with Adam Wallace, the hotel's new media marketing manager, and his sidekick Brian Simpson, whose official title is still assistant food and beverage director, to find out how they built a family-run, independent hotel into a digital force to be reckoned with.

Adam Wallace: The Roger Smith Hotel has been here since the early '30s. It's a family-run, family-operated hotel. Our current president and CEO, James Knowles, is a painter and sculptor, so there's a lot of art elements to what we do, both online and offline. He's very interested in building relationships with people and communities -- always has been. The art component is also a priority. That led to creation of an art gallery on the corner of 47th and Lexington called The LAB Gallery, and artwork is displayed throughout the hotel. About three years ago he, together with myself, created a video-based website for the hotel. That has sort of evolved into a whole social media program. Last fall, Brian got involved. He came with a lot of experience in Twitter, a lot of online relationships and a lot of knowledge. We started a blog, Roger Smith Life. I do photography, content production and video. Having Brian here with so many Twitter connections, well, really what's been exciting in the last eight to 10 months is seeing community built here. We've had great success with people coming and staying at the hotel, with booking rooms and events related to social media, and really a sense of community here in the New York social media scene.

Q: You're leading into my next question. Could you tell me some of the goals of the hotel's social media campaigns?

AW: Room sales, obviously. We're looking to see if we can generate revenue from this, which we have. There are lots of people coming to town for whom we're part of their online lives, we're part of their streams on Twitter, on Facebook, so we're the people they end up thinking about. Last winter we started a Facebook and a Twitter promotional rate. We want people with whom we're connected online to come stay with us. We value those customers because one, we know they're going to talk about it; but more important they're going to maintain a relationship with us. And they're real people. We meet with them in person and maintain relationships. Those people talk about our brand. They built our online reputation, not us. So, rooms is big, events has been huge and is another of our goals. We're running more social media events. We've done stuff with Social Media Breakfast, a national organization, with Social Media Club, we had a Mashable party, an event with Gary Vaynerchuk last week. There's the restaurant, where the community part comes in.

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Source - Econsultancy