Social Media Success Stories – How Mandarin Oriental Just 'gets' Social Media by Seventh Art Media
As social media continues to evolve and grow as a key discipline for marketing and customer communication in the hospitality industry, we strive to learn from the success stories and experiences of the best - the thought leaders who succeed at utilizing social media to drive sales, service and loyalty.
This week, our partners at Seventh Art Media, an award-winning team of social media strategy & content specialists for hotels and resorts, had the unique opportunity to speak with Mac Joseph, Social Media Marketing Manager for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, who shared his thoughts and examples of social media success with us.
Mandarin Oriental defines social media success as a combination of two elements – the quantitative media and financial metrics that are needed for any business objective and what Mr. Joseph calls the “Engagement Factor”, the unquantifiable value created from impacting people’s personal experience with the Mandarin Oriental brand, whether it may be pre-booking, post-stay or anywhere in-between.
Two recent success stories show how Mandarin Oriental and its guests gain from the investment in social media and how their operations reap the benefits across sales & marketing and customer service disciplines.
Mr. Joseph and his team monitor Twitter mentions of Mandarin Oriental (official account handles/links and plain text mentions of their brand) using TweetDeck. Last October they picked up a tweet of a gentleman with travel plans to Las Vegas, asking his Twitter followers about whether he should stay at Mandarin Oriental or another luxury property on the strip. Mandarin Oriental was quick to join the conversation, very politely, and just offering assistance if he may have any questions about their hotel and services. A conversation started and within minutes the potential customer made a reservation for himself and a number of colleagues at Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas. By listening and representing Mandarin Oriental’s focus on personalized services the social media team turned a tweet into a tangible revenue result: inventory sales.
The key to success is a personal approach. Hotels can’t just jump into the online conversation and say “Hey, stay with us”. It is important to do research, look at the user’s profile, review his or her message stream and find out interests and motivations. There is no copy/paste approach; in order to be successful hotels must cater their message to the individual user.
At Mandarin Oriental, opportunities like this come up quite frequently. In addition to activities on a corporate level, Mandarin Oriental’s 26 properties also monitor mentions and key words individually, allowing them to join conversations in subtle ways – always offering assistance and never a hard pitch.
A second similar example shows that Mandarin Oriental goes beyond monitoring brand mentions and includes customer analysis via social media profiles in order to deliver personalized brand interactions that drive social media success. Just last month, Matthew Ferrara, a real estate professional and active social media participant, left a comment on Mandarin Oriental, Miami’s Facebook wall, saying that he was looking forward to his visit of their hotel on the coming weekend. Rather than just replying with a kind but generic ‘Thank You…’, the team at Mandarin Oriental analyzed his Facebook page, saw that Matthew lives in Boston and interpreted his weekend visit as an escape from the freezing winter weather of Massachusetts to the beaches of Miami. So they responded with a personal weather forecast, letting Matthew know how much he could look forward to the warm and sunny weather expected in Miami for that weekend. Mandarin Oriental also “rewarded” his interaction with them on Facebook with a personal note in his room and a special welcome snack (Matthew’s relatively high Klout score of 55 probably didn’t go unnoticed either). So, although this social media and offline interaction did not directly lead to additional sales, Matthew was so excited about this personal service experience with Mandarin Oriental that he wrote an entire blog post about it and became a vocal advocate for the Mandarin Oriental brand.
Lesson to be learned: Mr. Joseph puts it this way “Social media allow us to engage directly with our customers in real-time and add value to their experiences with our brand. In doing so, we can cultivate a loyalty that will transcend our social media channels” This statement very well captures the importance for a hotel to prioritize community quality over quantity when developing a social media strategy.
About Seventh Art Media:
Seventh Art Media is an award-winning team of social media strategy & content specialists for hotels, resorts, and commercial real estate. Seventh Art Media is a division of Seventh Art Group, founded by David Williams and Michel Mein, with offices in New York, London and Dubai. Seventh Art Group’s clients, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Ritz-Carlton, Plaza Hotel New York, The Related Companies, and many more, have entrusted the company with 150 worldwide projects in 22 cities across 4 continents.
The purpose of Seventh Art Media’s publication series for the hospitality industry is to show hotels how to leverage today’s communication culture, build high-performing marketing and customer communication assets, and maximize their social media ROI.
Learn more about how Seventh Art Media can help your hospitality or real estate brand at http://seventhartmedia.com/
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