It’s easy to get lost amid all the Farmville posts, tweets and apps, but there’s no doubt social media is more important than ever to a hotel’s bottom line. One bad review at an online travel agent site can kill bookings. A good review can be just as effective as thousands spent on marketing and advertising.

Trying to figure out how to manage all the social media outlets is the challenge for owners and operators, but a recently launched technology company based in San Francisco believes it has the answer. Revinate offers what it calls a social media solution, a system that monitors and gathers reviews and ratings from OTAs, blogs and social media sites, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TripAdvisor, Yelp and more.

An analysis of the reviews and a detailed scorecard compiles information from all the sites to give owners and operators a daily report through an online dashboard on what’s being said about their property. The same information is also provided for the hotel’s competitive set.

What kind of actions can be taken?
JAY: Some actions are internal—sort of harnessing social media as a very unique and measurable form of guest satisfaction—to see what people like and don’t like about the hotel and you can make internal improvements from there. Another set of actions includes outbound items, where you can write from the dashboard to respond or to post comments and then engage on the social networks to build followers and increase exposure to stimulate and drive demand.

To get a handle on the new company, and what hoteliers should be doing with social media, I chatted with Revinate co-founders Jay Ashton and Marc Heyneker. The duo came up with the idea for the product in early 2009 and spent most of the year developing it and doing a beta test with several clients. The company’s official launch came earlier this month and it now lists Kimpton Hotels and Joie de Vivre Hotels as its biggest clients. White Lodging is currently implementing Revinate across its portfolio and Ashton and Heyneker say the initial response has been overwhelming.

Briefly explain what Revinate does?
JAY: Our application monitors the entire Internet, focusing on online reviews, social media sites and collects everything into one easy-to-use dashboard so you get a comprehensive picture of the discussion already happening online. You get very powerful analytics and reporting on that stream of social media. It’s designed to help (hotel owners and operators) not just listen and monitor, but to act.

Is this the new form of guest satisfaction?
JAY: The old way of measuring guest satisfaction was by surveys, email, customer response cards. Those are still important for hotels, especially for brand relationships, but social media guest satisfaction is more important today because other people are seeing it. It’s public and influencing where people stay.

How do you track it?
JAY: We have a scorecard that measures the ratings from all the sites and track them over time. We also track competitors, which is great as a benchmark and provide some really cool competitive intelligence. It’s almost like spying on the guest survey cards from across the street.

Will the scorecard replace the old way of tracking guest satisfaction?
JAY: Hotels will always want that direct feedback from people inside the property. It’s not going to die or go away. The social media measurement of guest satisfaction will become more important. It’s more open, more immediate, more honest and has the impact of being public.

Who at the property level should be using these services or the ones tracking and dealing with online social media?
MARC: The first to ride it out of the gate are usually the GMs and directors of sales, but if they have PR people, other marketing people, loyalty-program people, we very quickly see those people using this.
JAY: And even the revenue managers.

When should hotels response to online criticism or praise?
JAY: There’s definitely an art involved. You can’t just blindly jump in willy-nilly without understanding the landscape. Smart hotels aren’t trying to respond to everything. Some people who write reviews are professional complainers, have a bone to pick and aren’t providing constructive criticism. They’re just pissed off and completely negative. In most cases, it’s not even worth responding to. The greatest opportunities are to those that are fair and balanced, where you can say ‘We appreciate your feedback, we have issues and we’re listening and here’s what we’re going to do…’

On the positive side, reviews are a great opportunity to respond, but you don’t want to respond to every one. It’s a great chance to reinforce what makes the property great. One in four reviews is a good target to respond to.

Should you use social media for sales and promotional efforts?
JAY: We caution that it’s a mistake to jump into this game without a clear understanding. Social media can’t be used exclusively as a sales channel. If all a hotel does is push out special rates and try to drive demand, it will backfire. That’s not what people want.

How do you protect against or deal with fraudulent reviews at these social media sites?
JAY: Primarily the review sites themselves are making huge investments in protecting against fraud. We’re not going to do any better, so we’re relying on them. We work closely with clients to tell them it’s the kiss of death, even to sort of bribe guests is a major mistake. It’s great to encourage, but when you start to bribe guests that crosses the line.

What are the next social media sites that hotels need to be ready for?
JAY: We’re looking at some of these location-based mobile services like Foursquare and Gowalla that are really growing … Very cool services that could have interesting implications for hotels.

Do you think Twitter is here to stay or is it a passing fad?
JAY: Not in the foreseeable future. All signs point to an increase in usage and another shift we’ve seen in the past couple weeks is the usage of Facebook is growing even more than the usage of Google. It goes to show people are relying on social networks more than traditional search engines for discovery. It’s going to shift the importance from something like search engine optimization to something more like social media optimization.