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These days, Arizona knows what it’s like to be the unpopular kid at school. Thanks to the ease of organizing protests against its new immigration law on social networks, the state is taking a beating on the hallways of Facebook in particular. The calls for boycotts can significantly impact the state’s tourism livelihood. Read here about how its tourism arm is fighting back.
Last week, I took a delightful babymoon with my husband to Key West. When researching hotels for any trip, I heavily rely on Trip Advisor for insight and advice. We chose our hotel based on not only the reviews on Trip Advisor, which gave high ratings, but also because hotel management actively commented on positive and negative posts by users, which demonstrated to me that they took customer service seriously.
Fortunately, those in the hospitality field are recognizing how monitoring and responding to comments on social networks can drive sales and improve perception of customer service. USA Today published this article last month about hotel operators are monitoring online critiques to improve customer service, and in some cases, actually change business practices based on feedback. It’s a smart choice that yields ROI.
It’s taken me five and a half months to feel comfortable enough to go public on the interwebs about being pregnant. During that time, I’ve learned A LOT about social media privacy settings (especially for Facebook) since I wanted to control when and how family, friends, coworkers and clients heard my news.
1. Facebook’s privacy settings still have a long way to go
It’s really agitating that you can’t customize who can post on your wall…it’s either everyone or no one. To protect my wall from rogue pregnancy comments from my family, I blocked some of them from seeing my wall. However, I quickly realized that they could still comment on my status updates. Be forewarned that loophole exists.
2. It takes a little magic out of saying, “I’m pregnant!” when you have to add, “But, DON’T post anything on Facebook because I haven’t told fam/work/friend!” But, the caveat is completely necessary. Admittedly, I went a bit overboard with reminding people of my request. (If I hadn’t, I bet my social blabber friends would have gone turbo with comments before I was able to tell clients.) However, I haven’t had to remove a single post or tweet since everyone respected my wishes to hold out for a while. (Thanks!)
3. I still think social networks are great channels for sharing news
Earlier today, I posted on my personal blog about my new status, and it’s been fun exchanging comments with friends I haven’t seen in a while about this new phase in my life. While it’s always best to share big news in person, I look forward to staying in touch via Facebook, Twitter and my blogs.
