Using blogs and video, social media ‘guests’ give hotel a surge

The Balsams hotel in New Hampshire lets online observers see what a stay is like through text posts and videos from ‘Inn-Bedded’ guests.

How do you effectively describe a had-to-be-there moment? Those moments when, as you’re telling your friends a story you find interesting or hilarious, they meet you with glassy stares, and the only thing you can say is, “I guess you had to be there.”

That’s the challenge the partners at BobDonPaul faced in trying to promote the Balsams, a New Hampshire resort where so many of the moments are had-to-be-there moments.

“We had a particularly difficult challenge. The uniqueness of this hotel was difficult to describe through traditional advertising,” says partner Bob Manley. “It was very difficult for us to tell particular customers what they would get.”

The way BobDonPaul decided to describe what awaited guests at the Balsams was through the eyes of an “inn-bedded resorter,” someone who would stay at the hotel and communicate everything that happened to him or her through tweets, Facebook posts, blogging and videos.

Since the first inn-bedded resorter took up residence in the hotel in summer 2010, traffic to the hotel’s website has doubled, and so has its number of Facebook fans.

The New Hampshire primary

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