There are three points that make the question “Why bother with hotel advertising when social media is free?” slightly absurd: first, social media is not, in and of itself, advertising, and second, social media is not free; and thirdly the two concepts (SM and advertising) are not on the same plain and, as we’ll see, are not interchangeable) As we’ll see, once these contradictions are explained, it is easy to understand why bothering with advertising as well as SM makes a lot of sense.
Hotels that have embarked on do-it-yourself social media activities, such as a Facebook page combined with a twitter account, have found that it takes resources to keep these things current — not necessarily money, but inevitably people. The common approach — Susie in sales is young and understand this stuff, so let’s have Susie do the tweet and Facebook stuff — soon turns out to be problematic.
via Hotel Advertising: Why Bother When Social Media is Free?, by Laurence Bernstein.
