The Jamaica Pegasus Hotel has been making good use of its online presence lately and have continuously delivered on quality service, useful offers, informative interactions and are ready to contribute to the online community. Interacting with their audience online, mainly via Facebook and Twitter, they are expanding their global online reach and growing their influence online, especially with the youth.

Building relationships is a vital key to business success and thus far they have been able to reach and impact an audience that they would not otherwise come in contact with on a daily basis. So far they have 2,222 Twitter followers and 921 Facebook fans and they have not hesitated to answer questions and interact. If they were to run traditional radio or TV ads, that would definitely reach a wider mass audience but the return on their advertising investment would be a loss and would not be as long lasting as the interactions and connections they make online.

Let’s take a look at what the Pegasus is doing online and the impact their strategy is having and will continue to have on business.

Lesson 1: Simple & Straightforward Communication

If you have an idea, talk about it, have a great new service or product, promote it, show how great it is and how it is useful to your audience. Its very important, however, to not be spammy but provide value through every conversation online. When you begin to market your services and products people will engage and ask questions. Ensure that all questions are answered and treated as valid, even if it seems beyond the call of duty at first.

Daily, the team at Pegasus engages its followers promoting deals, providing general information and connecting with their followers. Having a following is not for decoration but to extend your service and maintain an active online presence. A dormant page does not produce much results, its time to get interactive.

Suggestion to Pegasus: Sign up for a Plixi image sharing account and post images of dishes and other exciting things happening throughout the day. Users enjoy viewing and sharing images, get them to see precisely what you have to offer daily.

Lesson 2: Give & You Will Receive – Sponsorship & Hosted Events

The Pegasus has most recently sponsored and hosted the first Jamaica Blog Awards as well as their Tweet Up where they allowed their Twitter followers to register and come to a networking event. At this event, they offered their best of prizes, music and cuisine to an audience of approximately 300 mostly young tech-focused, business minded people.

At the Tweet Up especially, many persons were exposed to some of the best of what the hotel had to offer which also gave them a unique opportunity to solidify relationships with their fans. The event itself was a real-time advertisement but without the annoying repeating catch phrases and corny skits. The effectiveness of using social media was also proven when they initially opened up online registration for the event as all 200 online tickets were subscribed within 15 minutes of being made available.

You won’t be trying to buy your prospects but you will be giving something back to your community / audience while making your name stick in their minds. No more free credit giveaways, these can be effective for getting bursts of traffic but are now cheap as the result does not last, regardless of the value of the credit. Try to offer an experience among your freebies and giveaways. Experiences last for a lifetime and if you can relate to your audience’s needs in a very personal way, you’ve got a winner.

Lesson 3: Connect With the Voice of the Community

The voice of the online community is driven by bloggers worldwide and the Pegasus has captured the respect of our local Jamaican bloggers. Events like the Tweet Up had many bloggers in attendance who did not hesitate to publish their reviews and photos of their experiences at the event. The reach that the Pegasus did not initially have, is now multiplied and broadcast to the bloggers’ following. Pegasus is now amplified over the web.

This will also benefit the Pegasus’ search engine authority in that the more bloggers who talk about and link to their website, the better their site will perform in search engines. Google has especially picked up the popularity of Pegasus through the many sites that publish about them and now many general search results about hotels in Jamaica and other services yield the Pegasus.

Identify who the “sneezers” are within your niche / market and get them talking about your product / service. The compound effect will help your business to grow and gain an audience.

Lesson 4: Maintain the Reputation

There will always be bad days that include customer complaints and missed opportunities, the most important aspect is how you deal with adversities. Managing your online presence requires that you pay close attention to what your customers and prospects have to say about your service and business. Deal with criticism and complaints quickly and appropriately and never engage in an online battle regardless of what is being said.

Maintain the upper hand by always being professional, calm and respectful.

The End Result

The end result of the relationships being built will mean more opportunities for building business and increasing sales as well as influence. Most of the persons who have been exposed to Pegasus and their activities will think of them first when they need to stay at a hotel or possibly host an event. Business is no longer about large corporate firms with unapproachable rigid people in business suits but success comes quickly when prospects can easily connect, relate and communicate with a human being.

Social media is free, far reaching and effective; use it to leverage the relationships you have to build a longstanding business, online and off.

Photo credit: Joel Finnigen