I've been asked many times about social media networks and if it's worth the time to develop.
The short answer is yes it is worth it.
You have to ask yourself a simple question and that is do you have spare time to make extra money? Let's reflect on a different industry for a second.
Have you ever received thank you cards, mailers or other forms of advertisement from someone that you've done business with in the past? Of course you have.
Well this is the old way of networking and keeping past relationships alive.
The new age is social networking and it works.
Let's take Facebook for example.
If you were to set up an account and have all your past and present guests add you as a friend, it's free to contact them at any time and you can do so for free.
When else will you get free advertising opportunities like that? All you have to do is ask your guests for their email address when they check in and send them an invite.
A great idea is to send all of your added friends special discount offers when you are off season.
Again this is all free and really simple to do.
How much time will this take to set up? Well to simply set up an account is only minutes.
To build up a quality list of people added onto your account could be fast if you already have a list of emails from guests.
If not, then it might take some time but there is no better time than now in this economy.
I'm sure if you are hungry for the business then you can make time to set this up.
Have your front desk staff trained to ask for emails.
It's almost too simple and people are still not doing this.
Get in the game and start social networking.
You never know, along with increase in business you might make great deals from finding the right person through your network.