Search engine experts both within the lodging industry and outside it have already written on the previews of the new Google Maps, announced in May. Most have described the ways the appearance will change, some expressing concern, others joy. Few have taken a hard look at what the new Google Maps will mean about your Google+ Local Listing. If you’re not actively using Google+ Local, you will have to change that, for your business to survive.

Is there such a thing as a secure password? It seems like every month or so there is a similar announcement. Last month Yahoo! was hacked, with hackers exposing something like 450,000 user passwords. The month before that, it was LinkedIn where 6 million user passwords were exposed. And these are just the latest episodes. You (the user) has no control over the security (or lack of it) by an online service such as Yahoo!

We’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Pinterestlately, but surprisingly little of it comes from within the Innkeeping community. I say it is surprising, because Pinterest seems almost as if it was made for innkeepers – it is easy to use (we jumped in for our Freeport Maine B&B, and were happily pinning awayin minutes), plentiful graphics grab the attention of the visitor, and it is so addictive that users stay connected for a long time.

This week’s post is a guest post from David Mitchell. David is the founder of webmarketing4hoteliers.com– a website dedicated to B&B owners and Inn Keepers serious about ‘getting more beds filled’ and ‘making more money’ through effective marketing on the internet. For those seeking ‘how to’ information on QR codes, you may want to look at our article on getting started with QR codes. B&B marketing can be quite a challenge as the competition is always tight no matter what star rating a B&B has or in what country it’s located.

A few of you may have noticed that we seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus over the past several weeks. In fact, our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast had a very busy summer, and there wasn’t much time for About the Inn writing. Now that our busy summer and fall foliage seasons are behind us, it appears things will be back on a more even keel, and we hope to be able to publish more regularly.

This is a guest post by Sarah Dolk of Adobe Nido Bed & Breakfast in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had some fun last night. I had read in a blog about how we can create a custom icon/button/logo for our business that Apple device users (iphone, ipad, and touch), can download to their desktop as an image bookmark, thus creating a simple link to our website for the device user.

Perhaps you saw the articlesa couple of weeks ago, indicating that Google had officially announced that its Google Analytics product was now able to track social media interaction. As the linked article mentioned, this is a welcome addition to the built-in capability of the Google +1 button to track clicks. However, this bit of news was soon overshadowed by all the buzz surrounding the (as yet, despite being enormous, and frequently discussed) beta of Google+ – the new Google social platform.

Let’s face it, Google is obsessed with speed. But don’t take my word for it, look here and here, too. So what can you do about it? Last week we came across an article noting a security product that “accidentally” makes web sites load 60% faster. We almost passed it by, until we saw that it arose from Project Honey Pot – which we had seen previously. In brief, Project Honey Pot is a project that studies how spammers and hackers operate, and applies that knowledge to defend against them.

Yesterday Google announced that the +1 button is now available for any website to use (just like a Facebook ‘Like’ button, or similar buttons). It raises two questions: Should you be using it? How do you use it? Both questions are easily answered – though most articles on the topic have not really dealt with them as much as emphasizing the “buzz” (no pun intended) or the absence of a “need” for another “Like” button.

The basics of creating and using QR codes One reason most articles don’t really explain how to make your own QR codes, and how to use them, is that it is a very easy process. There, no need to feel intimidated! Try it yourself if you have a smartphone or other mobile device with a camera. Just activate your Bar Code Reader app, and point your device at the QR code in this article, and see what happens (you may have to download a Barcode Reader app, if you don’t already have one).

Will your failed effort to repair your online reputation sink your business? Stories about bad (and occasionally good) reputation management efforts have become all too common. Still, businesses often don’t get it. You can run, but you can’t hide! You can’t avoid the impact to your reputation by staying away from social media – you just don’t know what’s being said about you (whether positive or negative). We all make mistakes, so the best thing to do is plan how to deal with them.

The Maine Innkeepers Association Educational Seminar for April, 2011, was held on April, 28, 2011, and the subject was Social Media – Beyond the Basics. We gave a brief presentation on Facebook: Beyond the Basics, emphasizing engagement and mentioning, to a lesser extent, optimization and measurement. Here is the video (transcript below): Transcript: Hello, this is Scott from AboutTheInn.com. This is a short presentation from on using Facebook, that’s beyond the basics from an event on Social Media put on by the Maine Innkeepers Association that was held on April 27, 2011.

Many B&B’s, small lodging properties, and other small businesses have taken advantage of Facebook to reach their clientele, and have made themselves look very professional doing so, with custom pages on their Facebook page. Most of these custom pages were built using Facebook’s FBML app, which was quite feasible for developers, but somewhat intimidating for the non-technical person. In early February Facebook announced that they would be eliminating the FBML apps on March 11, 2011 (though existing apps will not be removed, thank goodness!

Yet another Facebook change! After the “accidental” slip of Facebook pages a few weeks ago cause so much uproar (navigation moved to small text on the left side of pages, no more ability to designate the landing tab, etc.), we suspected that a major change to the appearance of pages was about to appear. Last night it did. Page admins will have received an email telling them about the wonderful new “features” and encouraging the admin to switch to the new layout now.

From conversations with innkeepers at some recent conferences, we know that innkeepers understand that web analytics are important, and they are searching for ways to use and understand them, but are not finding that to be an easy task. We were looking at tools that provided some additional capabilities for Google Analytics, and came across GA Evolution, and think it may help some innkeepers get useful results, without overwhelming amounts of raw data.

First some background – if you already know what this is about you can jump ahead to the how-to section. Many (perhaps most?) businesses these days have a Facebook page (once known as a fan page), where those interested can “Like” them, and interact with the business. Not too long ago Facebook added Place pages. These are not quite the same as Google’s Place pages, but have much in common with them.

As if you needed another reason to claim your Google Place page, the most compelling reason yet has now appeared. It is ridiculously easy (unless or until Google has fixed it) for a scammer to claim someone else’s Place Page if they have a mailing address in the same town as the business. Don’t believe me? Mike Blumenthaluncovered the way to do it, and it is quoted in detail at Search Engine Roundtable.

We tweeted the TechCruch story about the site which, if you visited while logged in to a Google account, sent you an email proving it had just harvested your email information. Scary, isn’t it? Well, the screenshotof the website, itself (no, we didn’t visit it to see if it was true – besides, it was down by the time we got there . . . ) got us thinking about security and how this occurred.

Recently the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII)asked me to do a webinar on building a dashboard to aid in online reputation monitoring. I had read a really good article on the topica year or so ago, so put some of that information to good use, added a bit of my own, and created the presentation. The presentation (slightly adapted) is below. One note from the audio (which isn’t included) is that at the time of the presentation the TweetBeep.

Instead of re-writing the article, we will simply mention and link to the great informationprovided by our friends at Acorn Internet Servicesshowing a comparison of statistics on bookings from before there were Google Place Pages and currently, and also noting which directories produce bookings. This is obtained from Acorn’s customers who use Acorn’s Intell-A-Keepertracking software. We will comment more on this topic before long. Enjoy this useful information!

If you’re like me, you’ve used Google Analytics for quite some time, and find the wealth of information quite useful. One area that has always been a bit frustrating, and not as useful as it seems it should be, is the Site Overlay report. When you would click on this report, a window would open showing the home page of the site, then an overlay would appear (making the site page fade a bit), with some statistics on different links, showing how frequently they were clicked.

What is Google Instant? Search results while you’re typing. Not the little drop-down thingie that anticipates what you’ll type, but actual results (complete with local map, for appropriate searches) that change as you type. See the screen shot below for an example. Notice that while the user has typed in “bed and” Google suggest has added “breakfast” and the search results are for the full term “bed and breakfast”. If you change the third word to bath, the results change.

In recent weeks others in the travel and tourism industry have been highly critical of review site TripAdvisor for various shortcomings in its administration of its online lodging reviews (and other reviews, as well). The concerns expressed are world-wide, not simply the complaints of a few, in a small part of the world. This post is an attempt to gather and synthesize the concerns, to try to identify the core problem, and to suggest improvement.

As review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and others, supplemented by the more specifically-targeted sites like the bed and breakfast directory reviews, become so very important to small lodging properties, Google did not miss out, and began adding reviews from many of these sites on their “Place Page” (formerly Local Business Center) for the business reviewed. Google’s next step was to add the ability to review a property directly on the Place Page.

Not so many years ago, as the use of the internet technologies was maturing, there was a lot of talk about the leveling of the playing field, allowing the smaller businesses to compete with the larger. You don’t hear so much about that, these days. As businesses of all sizes have turned to internet marketing and social media to build relationships with customers and potential customers, the scales have reverted to the same imbalance as in traditional marketing.

Amid all the frenzy of keeping up with Twitter and Facebook and now Foursquare and YouTube and Blogging and sorting out which directories to list on, and responding to the never-ending flow of emails from directories telling you to hurry and post your latest specials for this month, your latest photos, your latest hot deals, your best recipes and oh, yes, did you remember that you actually have a business to run?

When you think about it, attempting to provide security in a medium (social media) where the objective is to share (at least to some degree) personal aspects of your life, doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that Mark Zukerberg of Facebook famously declared that privacy is dead. But is it? Should it be that way? Even with Facebook moving the goal posts every few weeks, and changing the way you control access to your data, and sometimes defaulting to very poor choices, you still have some opportunities to control what you share outside your circle of friends (real friends, I mean, not just Facebook “friends”).

As if you haven’t heard enough about getting started with Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and you need to claim your Google Place Page (formerly Local Business Center listing), here we go again, with more changes to the way we market our businesses. Those who are on Twitter will have noticed that the web pages for posting have recently shown a link asking if you want to add your location to your posts.

What holds you back from using social media (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or others) to market your property? We’ve address some of the barriers in earlier posts (see, for example, What Good is Social Media?, or click the Social Media link in the tag cloud below right), but another barrier is time. One of the commonly asked questions is, “How much time do you spend on social media?” The answer is (and should be) different for different people.

Wouldn’t it be great if Google would tell you which changes will help with search results? Don’t you wish your site ranked better in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs)? Wouldn’t it be great if you could find out from Google (well, let’s not forget Bing, Yahoo! and the others, but after all, their share of the market is tiny compared to GOOG) whether or not certain changes will really make any difference?

A few months ago we wrote about the importance of tracking the sources of reservations, and mentioned that we would be testing the Intell-A-Keeper software available from Acorn Internet Services. While the high season bookings will get busier in the coming weeks, we thought it was time for an update on that process. The results are both interesting and enlightening We have been using Intell-A-Keeper (IAK) since January, and find that the results are both interesting and enlightening.

We’re used to seeing Google link (in the so-called organic search engine results pages – SERPs) to our home page, and sometimes to other popular pages on our lodging web site. But wouldn’t it be great if they linked directly to your availability or booking page? Well, now you can have them do just that (though not from the SERPs – for that the page is on its own for establishing popularity)!

Last week Google announced that its Local Business Center pages would be called Place Pages, and that they had added several new features to them. Now they have followed that up with an announcement that Place Pages now have a mobile version, at least on Android phones (such as the Google G1, Motorola Droid, and several others) and iPhones. Before this announcement, smartphones with good web browsing abilities could see much of the standard Place Pages, so in that sense this isn’t an earth-shaking announcement.

This post describes a Facebook app that uses FBML, which is no longer permitted for new apps on Facebook. The updated post, using static iframes, is located here (posting June 5, 2012). Some innkeepers frequently question the value of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, as being too time-consuming, all entertainment, annoying, or simply not producing any return on the time invested. We recently came across an idea from a large hotel chain that many bed and breakfasts can put to work immediately.

A few weeks ago, at the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) annual conference in Austin, Texas, we did a presentation called Managing Your Online Reputation. If the ideas expressed there (guests posting video, reviews, photos, etc., on Facebook and other social media sites before even leaving the property) are not enough to motivate you to take some steps toward monitoring what is being said online about your business, perhaps this latest scam will.

After attending the PAII conference in Austin, Texas in early March, we’ve been on a long road trip to see family and take care of some personal issues. In the course of those travels an interesting lesson arose for all of us. We were driving down the Interstate, with an approximate idea of our destination, and wanted to find a bed and breakfast for the night. However, our actual destination was a local attraction, with the area B&B’s scattered among a number of nearby small towns.

At this week’s 2010 PAII Innkeeping Conference, we presented a workshop on Reputation Management. The slides from that presentation are below. Some of the attendees at the session had specific questions, and the audio will reflect those questions and answers. The audio will be available for purchase from the PAII website. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment.

First effort at liveblogging -coffee: check; power plug: check; table: sort of… This is the Thursday morning, March 11, “Challenge the Experts” session with PAII’s Executive Director Jay Karen, Eric Goldreyer (former owner of BedAndBreakfast.com), Carol Edmondson or Innkeeping Specialists, Tim Brady(introduced as internet guru) of 40 Putney Road B&B, and Ellen Grinsfelder of the Inn and Spa at Cedar Falls, moderated by Dave Hiler of Hiler Hospitality. First, we start with announcements and a story about a horse dying (it’s Texas).

This week we attended the PAII Innkeeping Conference in Austin, Texas. Our first presentation was “How to Select Guest Management Software” on Tuesday afternoon (changed from its original time on Wednesday afternoon). Since it seemed that many were not aware of the schedule change, we wanted to make the slides available for viewing here. During the presentation we also gave access to a Google Documents spreadsheet to help in comparing different Property Management Systems, and evaluating them according to your own priorities.

Recently I had an opportunity to chat with a number of innkeepers about using analytics on their web sites. I wassomewhat surprised that there were so many who were not using any type of analytics program, and of those who were using it, I was surprised how many were unsure of what it could do for them, or how to do more. We talked primarily about Google Analytics, but discussed others, as well.

Even as many B&B’s and small lodging properties are jumping on the social media bandwagon, experimenting with Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and many other social media avenues, a sizeable number of innkeepers are digging in their heels, figuratively at least, objecting that there is little evidence that participating in < put social media network here > actually provides real reservations. So, when all is said and done, is there any measurable return on investment (ROI) from social media?

Have you ever considered creating audio podcasts (voice readings of your blog) for your blog? I have, but the time it would take to record and post them kept me from preparing them myself, and I wasn’t willing to incur the cost of a commercial podcasting service. Then I saw a post by one of my favorite SEO experts, Ann Smarty, on using the free service from Odiogofor podcasting. The voice is quite natural sounding, for the most part.

I have a bit more technology background than many B&B owners. Ruth and I started a small ISP (waaaaay back in 1996, when the internet was almost all dialup), and took it national. I did all the IT, system administration, and all that geeky stuff. Later I worked for a giant software company as a hands-on technical consultant and later taught customers how to customize and use the software. As a result of this background, I’m not overly impressed when I read articles about the important but not-very-interesting computer tasks that most people don’t do, but should, and that I do routinely.

A few years ago computers for innkeeping meant a web site, email, a bit of web browsing, and a Word Processing program. If you were adventurous, perhaps you would add online availability/booking and a rudimentary reservation management system on your desktop. But those were simpler days. Today there are literally dozens of different guest management platforms available, some web-based, some install on your computer. Web sites are no longer optional, but are the primary marketing medium for most inns.