Could Your Employer Shut YOU Out of Your Social Media Accounts?

Recently a dear friend and colleague found herself "reorganized" out of her job.

Aside from the shock of finding out she was no longer gainfully employed, she felt lost without her trustee smartphone and laptop which until then had been provided by her employer. These devices housed all her contacts and passwords to social media sites, including her LinkedIn account.

It was difficult for her to rebuild her contact list so she could let her connections know what happened. In this era when LinkedIn is your Rolodex, your resume, and your daily dose of business news, losing access can be devastating, not to mention time-consuming if you have to rebuild another profile!

That maybe why some people of my connections use a personal email address for their LinkedIn account. That way, if anything happens, they are not prevented from accessing this very important business tool.

If you want to see notices in real time, you can still use your work email address to access; just make sure you keep a record of your passwords outside of your computer or portable device. It's probably a smart thing to do from a security point of you anyway.

Fortunately, my friend remembered her password and was able to get back into her LinkedIn account. She is now happily ensconced in a new venture involving things she had, up until now, put on the back burner.  And she vows never again to be shut out of her social media accounts.

More Twitter Advice for Hotel & Meeting Venue Reps

Continuing on the Twitter theme of my post two weeks ago, I was approached by one of our hotel clients to help their sales managers understand and use Twitter in a meeting and event environment.

This is a new challenge that had been given to the three sales managers, all of whom are seasoned sales people. In our discovery call, I could hear their apprehension about having yet another task on their already long to do list.

What is this going to help them create more leads? What is this going to help them close more business? They wondered. Yet their Director of Sales & Marketing was determined to push them out of their comfort zone to try this new tool.

Not an easy task. But I salute the DOSM for pushing the envelope. Eventually we came to the conclusion that the three sales managers could  probably share one account and, using appropriate time management and the right tool, they could away with monitoring ongoing conversation and each tweeting a few times a week.

They started to warm up to the idea when they realized that meeting attendees could be tweeting, and that they could help their clients by tweeting about the upcoming event, alerting them to pre and post block rates, cut-off dates, and other side activities.

Soon they realized they also could get exposure and build trust with sponsors and other meeting organizers within those audiences.  This could mean referrals and additional group business.

And that is the answer. Twitter strictly as a promotional tool won't take you very far. But if you look at it as a tool that helps you listen to your clients, and enables you to help them meet their meeting objectives, all of a sudden you are not just "salesperson", you are more of a solution provider. And this helps you build trust. And of course building trust helps you build more sales.

My advice to hotel, CVB, and meetings industry supplier sales leaders: don't look at social media as yet another chore. Look at it as an opportunity to help build trust with your prospective and existing clients.

Building Trust on Twitter

Recently I wrote about ways that meetings and hospitality industry suppliers can build trust on their website.

This past Friday I had opportunity to experience a first-hand example of how trust can be built through Twitter. Mind you this was not an encounter with a hospitality company, but I do think there are a lot of similar applications.

This encounter happened as a result of my experiencing difficulties on a new social media tool called Triberr.  I had registered on the tool and was ready to start using it but for some reason I could not get to the screen that would allow me to get started. I reached out to a colleague on Twitter. And one of the cofounder of Triberr, Dino Dogan (@Dino_Dogan) happened to be "listening". And he messaged me immediately! I was so impressed that one of the key executives of the company would do that that it immediately increased my trust in this new tool.

Not only was I able to solve the problem (which appeared to because to my Internet Explorer not working properly) but it got me using the tool immediately.

So how could you use this tool at your hotel, CVB, or convention center to help meeting attendees and meeting planners have a better experience?

Imagine posting something on Twitter and having someone like the general manager or director of sales and marketing, respond almost immediately. Now that would be something that would increase my trust in a supplier!

The advent of social media is definitely changing the way we have had to operate in the meetings industry. It doesn’t guarantee success, but those embrace it just might have more chances to experience it.