Through my monitoring of Roger Smith Hotel via Radian6 I noticed Roger Smith Hotel is using a platform called Revinate to monitor all their social media and create a customized metrics dashboard around it.
Alert from Radian6 that told me about Revinate.
Tweeting for travel Author: laurasmith Posted on: Jul 30, 2010 02:29 PM Facebook fan pages — with 14.2 percent having no page to manage at all. Forty-two percent don’t use Twitter and if they do, only 25 percent tweet for less than an hour a week. The Roger Smith Hotel in New York recently adopted Revinate, which is a tool to facilitate active social media management strictly for the…
Link http://blog.collinsonmedia.com/?p=45
I got very curious about Revinate since I just spoke to Brian Simpson a few days ago at the At Marketing Lessons of the Grateful Dead By David Meerman Scott, Book Signing and Tweetup! which I wrote about previously – he had not mentioned Revinate in our conversation (but Radian6 picked it up – ha!).
The use of platforms like Revinate fits in well with my prediction that Social Monitoring would go more Niche and Vertical this year and next - and that, in fact, might be the only viable way to improve the quality of the monitoring and derive actionable insights from it. Because it’s about the hotel only – and the interface is customized for people who own and run hotels – they can simplify and delve into Social Media in a more useful way, than perhaps, a general insights or market research tool that has overlapping functionality – but is too far removed from how a hotel actually works.
Here’s what I said at the end of 2009:
1. As highlighted by OurSocialTimes – Social Media Monitoring will go niche, in a big way, in 2010 - the first few entrants already emerged – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I wrote about one of them in a post titled stories I didn’t write about, yet …, a monitoring tool for pharma was released in Nov 09, called ScanBuzz - the first platform for life sciences companies that monitors online mentions of their brands and products in the social networking arena. Another entrant I just became aware of today, HotGrinds, a monitoring platform built around the hotel and pharma verticals – I’ll do a post on HotGrinds soon, I expect many Social Media Monitoring platforms to specialize because the sentiment and textual analysis is fairly poor now, but improves quite a bit when it’s focused on one area or vertical.
Take Competitors – doing a meaningful comparison with Roger Smith Hotel will mean going Geo-Local – it will be hotels in Manhattan at the same or similar daily rate plus hotels within a 6 block radius – (like the Hemsley or Pod, or any number of hotels nearby) – the platform sounds like it’s built for those kinds of comparisons. ClickZ has an article on Hotels using Social Media Monitoring that came out recently, btw.
The Roger Smith Hotel in New York may be one of the few hotels that has a designated driver. Brian Simpson, director of social hospitality, said social media “allows us to put the people side back into the business.” With the majority of hotel visitors booking through travel sites, he says, the only way he formerly could connect with guests was by bumping into them in the hallway. “Now, with social media, we can build a relationship with guests before they arrive, find out that they’re here and meet them.”
To handle the plethora of channels social media provides, the Roger Smith uses Revinate, a social media management service. Revinate is a new player, coming out of beta last November with a roster of approximately 400 customers.
While there are more than a dozen social media listening services out there, Revinate aims to differentiate itself with its focus on hotels. “Review site comments are so critical to hotels, and they’re everywhere… It’s an incredible amount of work to not only stay on top but also to respond,” said VP of marketing Michelle Wohl.
Now, I wonder who is working on the Social Media Monitoring platform for Restaurants? I think we need one there – just as much as for hotels, perhaps even more, and there are many similarities in terms of reviews, etc.
I’ll be asking Brian Simpson more about Revinate then next time we get a chance to talk AND I’ll also contact Revinate myself to get a hands on demo which I can review here at Webmetricsguru.com (though I don’t run a hotel – so I don’t know exactly how much I’m going to be able to monitor with it, personally).
