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Often, we think of our offline lives as distinct from our online presence, but social media is real life. Look no further than the hotels you stay in, the restaurants where you dine, the airlines you fly on and the theme parks you take your family to for proof. More often than not, there’s a Twitter and Facebook account — possibly even a Foursquare presence — behind the venue in question.

Because social media is a platform for the customer’s voice — and that voice can be heard by anyone in the world — the hospitality industry as a whole has embraced social media in a huge way.

Hospitality businesses of all sizes — from the biggest hotel chain to the little neighborhood cafe — have found their own unique way to harness the power of Facebook and the distribution possibilities made available via Twitter.

Personalizing Customer Service

Customer service is the most obvious way for the hospitality industry to use social media, and Twitter is the perfect vehicle for resolving customer issues or making a guest’s day with a simple “thanks for visiting” tweet.

But the best in the business are going above and beyond in the customer service arena. For example, the Wynn Las Vegas and Encore hotels use social media sites like Twitter and Foursquare to improve their customer service efforts and better meet the needs of their guests.

As the E-strategy Development Manger for the hotels, Jade Bailey makes sure that her team greets and caters to guests who check in there on Foursquare or tweet about being somewhere on the property, both on social sites and in person. The team has also seeded Foursquare with numerous tips inside the hotel, enlightening guests on the fascinating stories behind some of the more lustrous decorative embellishments.

Smaller businesses are going the extra mile as well. CoffeeGroundz — an independent coffee shop in Houston, Texas — uses Twitter as a way to make its customer service more personalized than its bigger competitors.

The store’s general manager is credited with making CoffeeGroundz one of the first businesses to take to-go orders via Twitter, an effort that began in October 2008. In addition to to-go orders, the boutique coffee spot now also accepts table and event reservations via direct message on Twitter.

Storytelling

At the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, social media has become immersed within the hotel’s unique culture. At its core, the Roger Smith Hotel is about storytelling — with a focus on art and people — and social media has become the way in which the hotel can share these stories and create new ones.

In fact, Brian Simpson, the hotel’s director of hospitality, says that while the hotel certainly attempts to connect the dots between social media and sales, ROI is not the focus of the team’s social endeavors. “We’re less concerned about how many rooms are booked because of social media, and more focused on telling stories and connecting people … you can’t pay a marketing firm to make those connections.”

It’s this type of open thinking that keeps The Roger Smith at the forefront of the social media curve.

Simpson primarily relies on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the hotel blog to distribute and collect stories, but also recognizes the value of location-centric social networks like Foursquare and Pegshot. He approaches each social site with a different strategy, saying, “We take all of these stories and figure out which social media networks support them best.”

Simpson points to an event back in 2009 as a catalyst for some of its creativity. The artsy hotel then hosted a Social Media Breakfast, which led to interest from other social media and web groups, and ultimately inspired Simpson to actively immerse himself in the social media culture.

Because The Roger Smith is independent, Simpson found ways to bend the rules for groups and startups, making the hotel inviting to all types of social media event organizers. For Simpson, exposure is key and hosting these events helps get the hotel’s name out there. Today, the hotel is essentially the social media-friendly hotel of New York; events are booked for each night of the week and its become the official hotel of many a New York web conference.

“We’ve made social media a part of the hotel,” says Simpson. “If we stopped doing social media, the culture wouldn’t change, but the stories that get told about us would change, and that would change the perception of the hotel.”

With storytelling at the center of everything the Roger Smith does online and off, Simpson is also looking for the next great way to engage current and potential guests. He says, “now that everyone’s on Twitter, and everyone has a Facebook Page, our objective is to find out what’s next and stay ahead of the curve.”

The hotel is also being extremely avant garde with its approach to installation art. They’ve commandeered an art studio on Lexington Avenue outside the hotel and turned it into an experimental space where art meets social media. The space is dubbed the RS Pop-Up Shop, or RS POP, and it’s open to up-and-coming designers and artists who want to showcase their work with social media flair.

Each selected RS POP participant is heavily supported with social media exposure, so artists and designers are featured both in the art studio and online via the hotel’s social media channels.

Disclosure: The Roger Smith Hotel has hosted Mashable events.

Making Good with Mom

Mom is a very important person in the hospitality space. She books the hotels, makes travel arrangements and handles most of the money matters. Mom is often the decision maker for the family.

As the former Vice President, Public Relations/New Media at Universal Orlando Resort, Cynthia Gordon developed The Universal Mom Squad to make Mom’s experience at the park second to none.

Gordon says, “Hands down the best way to reach moms is online and through mom bloggers. Let’s face it, mom bloggers are a full-fledged Internet phenomenon. You have 42 million women online, with nearly half of those visiting blogs to get advice and recommendations. Mom bloggers have powerful voices and their opinions are valued by their readers.”

She credits Disney for its social media outreach efforts saying it “took the lead in courting mom bloggers and inviting them to experience their parks’ new attractions and services.”

Gordon is referencing the Walt Disney World Moms Panel — 43 hand-picked moms, and a few dads in the mix — who serve as online advisers and help answer park-related questions on behalf of Walt Disney World. The moms answer submitted questions and the inquisitive can browse through topics, search for answers, submit their own question or learn more about the panel. The program started in 2008 and new moms are added to the group each year.

Another hospitality brand catering to moms is the Royal Caribbean International cruise line. The company recently took the opportunity to invite a group of moms participating in the weekly hashtag Twitter event #gno (Girls Night Out) aboard its Oasis of the Seas cruise ship to host one of its Twitter parties while at sea.

The moms aboard the ship engaged with other moms the world round, spreading the message that cruise vacations are ideal for fun, family travel — there’s no cooking, cleaning or child care concerns to worry about. As the host, Royal Caribbean was a part of the thousands of tweets generated during the two-hour Twitter party.

Employee Education

Often, social media is siloed to an individual department. This situation sets the customer up for failure. Imagine an eager customer — aware of a company’s social media presence — who ventures out in the real-world and encounters employees with zero knowledge of their own company’s Twitter account or Facebook Page. The end result defeats the entire purpose of social media.

If social media is on the menu, then everyone from the doorman and the bartender to the CEO should know about it. Those in the know should make it a point to educate staff on their own social media presence and promotions, as well as encourage employees to embrace social technologies for their own personal use.

Simpson says this is what helps set the Roger Smith Hotel apart from its bigger competitors. He works with his social media partner Adam Wallace to maintain the Roger Smith accounts, but the two of them have also prioritized educating the hotel’s 100+ member staff. Together, they’ve inspired nearly a quarter of the team to take up tweeting by teaching them that it’s just about conversation.

As such, one of the hotel’s bartenders has developed his own following on Twitter. Simpson says that often the bartender will tweet while working his shift and even offer to pick up a drink for the first few patrons who stop by.

In connecting the dots between social media, management and staff, the hotel can ensure that guests’ expectations are superseded, and not deflated, when they walk in the door.

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Tags: business, coffeegroundz, disney, facebook, foursquare, MARKETING, real results, roger smith hotel, royal caribbean, small business, social media, social media marketing, twitter

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: The Hotlist

Quick Pitch: The Hotlist is the first geo-social aggregator that shows people what’s happening today, tomorrow and beyond among their personal networks.

Genius Idea: The Hotlist is a Facebook-integrated web app that shows you a visual map of upcoming events in your area and across your social network. It highlights what events your friends are attending and what events have the most buzz.

We like how seamlessly The Hotlist integrates with Facebook. It culls your friends and group data and compares it to all of the publicly listed events happening across the network. You can see what’s going on in your area or add other cities that you want to check out.

We did run into one small bug — The Hotlist had my location listed as New York, even though that’s not what my Facebook profile says. I imagine this happened in part because the app was developed at NYU. Still, it was easy enough to add our city to the list and browse from there.

You can filter listings by groups of friends and event types, which is an easy way to get an overview of what’s going on. By default it lists the events that are either the most popular or that are being attended by your friends.

A nice touch is that once you select an event, you can not only see who is attending from your Friends or Friend of Friends list, but you can read a detailed description of the event and then access Twitter and Yelp reviews about the venue.

It also breaks down attendees by gender, which is cool if you want to avoid a sausage fest (or if you want to seek one out).

Right now the service is only usable if you have a Facebook account — but we actually think building off of the Facebook events calendar is a smart move. I would love it if the iPhone app for the Hotlist (which is in development) could connect to both Foursquare and Facebook — because that would be a killer match for mobile.

How do you find out about what events are happening near you? Let us know!

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Tags: calendar, Events, facebook, foursquare, geolocation, the hotlist

This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

Listen up, journalists — your cellphone is more than just a channel by which to reach sources, your editor and sustenance (you have the local Thai joint on speed dial, don’t front): It’s an essential tool for both local news-gathering and dissemination.

Mashable talked to reporters, publications and experts in the field to get the lowdown on how your cell is affecting local news coverage. We might not be able to get you to change your ring tone — “Poker Face,” really? — but we hope we can change how you’re using your iPhone, Droid, Palm or BlackBerry.

Read on for some actionable ideas for how you can make your mobile more than just another channel by which your mother can nag you about how you should have been a lawyer instead.

An Army of Citizen Journalists

If the recent spat of natural disasters and uprisings have proven anything, it’s that when it comes to local news coverage, audience engagement is truly an asset. Although the advent of the mojo (mobile journalist) is truly upon us — journalists are increasingly using mobile phones to collect video and photos and even to file stories — we also have a veritable army of citizen journalists out there armed with their own increasingly more advanced reporting tools: mobile phones. And, as we have seen, they’re more than eager to help a journo out.

Take, for example, the meteorite that zoomed over the Midwest back in April. Immediately after the event transpired, news stations took to Twitter in an attempt to get TwitPics and footage of the occurrence. Among the most successful was local Wisconsin news outlet, WISCTV_News3, who garnered an ample collection of cellphone pictures and YouTube videos.

According to News Director Colin Benedict, the rapid influx of content was due, in part, to the strong relationship the station already had with its viewers. “We use Twitter and Facebook every single day in our newscast,” he says. “Because when those big events happen, you have to have that relationship built already. We need to be in these spaces because that’s where our viewers are.”

Although the station doesn’t yet have a smartphone app -– it’s working on it –- it does have a distinct advantage when snagging this citizen footage: familiarity.

Parker Polidor — the president of Cell Journalist, a platform that allows folks to easily submit video from cellphones and other devices to local news stations –- would agree. Cell Journalist has 85 clients countrywide, and was instrumental in furnishing user footage during the flooding in Nashville, Tennessee, at the beginning of May.

“On a local TV level, this is where [local media] has a distinct advantage over all other forms of media,” he says. “When they issue the on-air call to action, they get flooded with content –- no pun intended. Over the course of that weekend, we received a little over 40,000 pieces of content submitted here in Nashville and a couple thousand in Memphis.”

By submitting footage like this to local stations, viewers and consumers feel like they’re a part of the story. “Any time a user sees their content on air, that gives them motivation to submit more content,” Polidor says. So, it would behoove the local reporter, station or paper to use social media to connect with these walking camera men and women, who make for excellent sources of information when disaster strikes.

Using Geolocation to Crowdsource

There is a distinct untapped market here when it comes to mobile crowdsourcing: geolocation (i.e. tools like Foursquare, Gowalla, etc). Your first thought here might be: “Why do I care who’s checking in at Chipotle at any given moment?” And we would agree — for the most part. But think about how tools like these could be used creatively. For example, Tracy Swartz, a journalist for Chicago’s RedEye paper, has found a novel use for Foursquare: She’s a transit reporter, so she scours checkins at various subway stations for news about delays, fare jumpers and track conditions.

This is only one way in which a journalist has figured out how to use the location-based tool. Now think how helpful Foursquare could be for a food reviewer (I’ve seen people mention things like vermin in checkins at various restaurants and bars), a crime reporter (I can easily see someone reporting gang activity or shots fired via a Foursquare checkin) or even an entertainment reporter (tons of people usually equates to something cool –- find out which concerts and music venues are racking up the checkins and proceed accordingly).

As more and more people get hip to Foursquare in your community –- 40 million checkins ain’t bad –- we would suggest becoming early adopters. Download this tool and start digging -– at the very least, you’ll score a mayorship and some serious street cred among the tech cool kids.

Putting Mobile First

I have a vivid memory of my grad school dean holding up his cellphone during various assemblies, imploring us to start thinking about how we’re going to get the news on “this,” rather than “this” –- the latter “this” being a newspaper. Back then, my immediate reaction was: “Ha, what? Who wants to read a story on a tiny screen?” Well, two years later, and I’m eating that thought bubble.

Although smartphone use is not as widespread among the majority of average consumers as it is within, say, the tech community — of the top five mobile phone manufacturers, only Motorola and RIM have made significant inroads in the smartphone space in the U.S. –- it is growing. And with more and more handsets and form factors on the market, the mobile space is indeed important when it comes to news dissemination (hell, the iPad sold one million units in the first month — that’s a huge market for mobile offerings right there). Still, at present, the space is a true work in progress.

Reporters and publications have to start thinking of the news in terms of “mobile first” –- i.e. Thinking about how to distribute content via mobile devices first, said Stephen Buttry, director of community engagement for TBD.com (a soon-to-be-launched digital local news operation covering the Washington area for Allbritton Communications).

“News organizations need to move quickly, and looking back on our history with the web, we know their tendency is not to move quickly,” he says. “It was easily 10 years or more into the history of news on the web that we even started hearing ‘web-first.’ … If we don’t make mobile our first priority, we’re going to screw it up like we did with the web.”

Folks like David Beard, editor of The Boston Globe’s Boston.com, have seen firsthand how quickly the news delivery landscape has changed. “When I took this job maybe two years ago, I was mostly the browser guy,” he says. “We had e-mail alerts and text alerts and not much more. Now we’re on five or six different platforms.”

Currently, Boston.com has two iPhone apps — a news app and a photo blog app called The Big Picture — and Beard says they’re doing fairly well. “We’re up triple the mobile pageviews this year from last year at this time,” he explains. Boston.com is also currently working on an iPad app.

Still, the local website, like myriad other sites, has a lot of obstacles to overcome when it comes to making inroads in the mobile space: deciding whether or not to adapt to more than one platform (Android, Palm, etc), as well as weathering the battle between Adobe and Apple.

(It would be an entire other feature at this juncture to get into the whole Flash vs. HTML debate, but suffice it to say that many publications are trying to figure out the best way to get video on mobile handsets. According to Jeff Whatcott, SVP of marketing at popular video platform Brightcove, “When the iPad came out… we actually had so many requests coming in from so many customers that we decided it would be most efficient to just book a hotel room in New York, and we did the same thing in London, to get all of our customers together. That was something we haven’t seen before.”)

Still, folks like Buttry are not impressed with most local news apps –- which aren’t really that different from their mobile sites (which are essentially the website shrunk down to fit a smaller screen). Yet he sees any local news site with an app as moving in the right direction. “I’m glad that they’re getting their feet wet,” he says. “Because those are skills and experiences they need to develop. And if the first one is pretty lame, that’s OK –- don’t stop there. Because the first news story you wrote was pretty lame.”

Taking Advantage of Location-Aware Abilities

Again, however, having an app is only the beginning of the story. What we have not yet fully realized is the location-aware nature of the mobile phone and how vital that is when it comes to delivering local news.

According to Amy L. Webb, CEO and principal of Webbmedia Group, LLC, “If you encode your content correctly –- to really be able to deliver people real-time news that’s about where they are at that moment — that’s hyperlocal news that makes sense. The problem is that most news organizations aren’t thinking that way. They’re still thinking in terms of zip codes.” What she means is that we have the ability to tie news to exact street corners, and we should be taking advantage of that.

Recently, we’ve seen several brands and publications making partnerships with Foursquare in an attempt to make ample use of geo-location. The Wall Street Journal is probably the most notable example of late. Basically, the paper’s partnership with the location-based service allows readers to collect badges for checking in at various New York locations, but –- more interestingly –- it also seeks to integrate news consumption into the game.

For example, the publication has added tips to places like Yankee Stadium that include facts about the location as well as links to stories. In fact, just the other week, The Wall Street Journal broke the news about a suspicious package found in Times Square via a Foursquare tip. Essentially, the publication is bringing us the news in a whole new way –- instead of reading stories for pleasure or leisure (via the printed page) or searching for information (via the web), The WSJ is making news dissemination about discovery.

Of course, it may be prudent at this point to recall that Foursquare only has around one million members, so it’s probably not the best way to reach your entire audience at present, but it’s this kind of innovation that people like Webb hope to see more publications experimenting with.

The same goes for aggregators on mobile platforms, which seek to bring a location-specific array of news to consumers. EveryBlock –- which is basically the granddaddy of location-based news aggregators –- has matured and developed over the years, adding a location-aware iPhone app that delivers a selection of local news to your handset. Newer services, like Fwix –- whose iPad app has been a huge success –- are seeking to do the same thing.

These services seek to provide users with the most information — from the most sources — about a given location. “Local news has to come from a ton of different sources,” says Fwix founder Darian Shirazi. “It just can’t come from one source anymore. We’ve been a central location to collect all that news together.” EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty would agree, “The more location-specific news there is, the better position we’re in, because we aggregate all that,” he says. “We love the fact that Twitter has launched geo-coding Tweets, because, in theory, it means there’s more geo-coded news out there.”

Still, the question, again, becomes: Will the average person use such a service? Webb doesn’t think so. “I think that people want local content for sure –- we know that they do,” she says. “The problem is that they want it in a way that makes sense to them. You can aggregate all you want, but at the end of the day, people want accessible, critical, niche local content that makes sense to them that’s relevant that depends on where they are.”

What All This Means for You, The Journalist

The fact of the matter is: Mobile technology is moving at a breakneck speed. Handsets that are hot at one moment may be completely incompatible with all the newest software a couple of months down the road. So the takeaway here is that you have to be aware of the changing landscape and adjust accordingly, but you don’t have to be a tech fiend.

When it comes to innovations and services like geo-location and the iPad and various and sundry apps, make sure that they are on your radar. Use the ones that suit your needs and at least test out the others. Casting an eye to the horizon –- while also keeping your feet square on terra firma –- is essential to staying relevant in the local news game.

This post is part of a Mashable series providing analysis of how mobile use impacts journalism. The series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive our blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad. Learn more at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, oonal, petesaloutos

[img credit: tomsun, nan palmero, edans, CarbonNYC]

Tags: android, foursquare, iphone, journalism, Journalist, media, Mobile 2.0, mobile media series, social media, twitter