67 – Social Listening 101

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is once again joined by Vice President of Product and Technology, Jason Lee. This time, they're talking about the importance of social listening. Jason and Ryan start the episode by defining social listening and what it means to hoteliers and their business. Jason walks through different social media platforms – like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – and the unique ways guests interact with hotels on each. Jason and Ryan discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using social listening as a guest relations tool. And finally, Jason shares how the TMG development team has prioritized social listening with updates to the TMG OneView® Feed. To learn more about how Travel Media Group is helping hoteliers connect with their guests using social listening or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 67 - Social Listening 101 Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is your host, Ryan Embree. Another great episode today, with a very frequent guest of the show. I've said it before, when we have him on, usually this means new innovations and updates. So I, once again, will welcome Jason Lee, Vice President of Product Development and Technology at Travel Media Group. Jason, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Jason Lee: Ryan, thank you for having me, again. Ryan Embree: I'm super excited to have you on today because we have a really cool subject that I think has just become more and more prevalent, not just in hotels, but just business in general, as social media has really evolved throughout the last couple years and now businesses are kind of catching up to the curve and they're learning how to listen to - in this case, for hotels - travelers online, but just really consumers in general. So what we're going to talk about is social listening. So right off the bat, Jason, let's go ahead and define what social listening is in regards to this episode and what it means to you. Jason Lee: Well, social listening is - it's a little bit different than reputation and it's a little bit different than what we have talked about before, which would be that traditional outbound social media or even responses to social media. So social listening really is about detection and capturing information that past guests or future guests are saying about your location, but they're not saying it to everyone, they're saying it to their audience. So this would be when you're mentioned - so your business is mentioned or your hotel is mentioned in a post or in a tweet or your tagged - and so it could be something as simple as, "I just checked into my room - you know, and then they mention the name of your hotel - and everything looks awesome #greatweekend" or something. So something like that goes out to that person's audience, it is not put on your page. You wouldn't really ever see that if it wasn't for bringing that data to light. So the fact that you were mentioned or tagged is how we pull that information in, but it becomes really valuable information and it's surprising how much of that is out there. How often hotels are mentioned, you know, it positively and negatively. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it's interesting to see, you know, as I talk about the evolution again of social media, where this all stemmed from, obviously social media from the very beginning was supposed to be a person to person interaction, but then all of a sudden users started to realize and businesses alike, at the same time, I can start having a conversation with a busine...