Desert Mountain Properties

Social Media
Proposal
Incorporating Social Media into
Desert Mountain Member
Communications
Prepared by
Crystal Hillis
Sandra Hernadez
Patricia OShea

2010

Social Media Proposal

Incorporating Social Media into Desert Mountain Member
Communications
Prepared for

Bob Jones
Co-President
Desert Mountain Properties
To compliment the current Desert Mountain website and improve
advertising options we recommend setting up social media accounts
for Desert Mountain members. Our recommendation is to open
accounts with Facebook, My Space and Twitter.
The only cost
associated with this proposal is employee time. We recommend the
set up take place during the summer when our member traffic is
reduced. There will be no additional hours needed for employees to set
up these website accounts.

Project Background
Our mission is to make Desert Mountain one of the finest private, residential and
recreational communities in the world, by providing superior service and
outstanding amenities, in an atmosphere of excellence. With our mission
statement in mind, the club manager, retail director, and website administrator
have expressed an interest in expanding existing internet communications to
include social networking websites. The members have also expressed an interest
in being able to view Desert Mountain on social media sites. A small group of
managers met recently to discuss the possibility of social media at Desert
Mountain. Some possible problems that need to be addressed are; how to set it up,
security for DMP's server and network, member security and confidentiality, cost,
and most importantly would members use it. We will also address the benefits to
the club of using social media. Mr. Jones, Co-President, created our team to
research the possibilities and concerns.

Objectives
The management and staff are always striving to bring the Desert Mountain
members the most current and superior services available. To do this we feel it is
necessary to embrace the social media movement. To do this we will need to join

Facebook, My Space and Twitter. Our goal is address the concerns and issues
brought up by the management team.
Set Up
The social media website we recommend have easy to follow instructions on
their site for business to set up pages. This task could be easily completed
by Crystal Hillis our website administrator. Facebook, for example, can be set
up in five simple steps. The websites also have tutorials available to help
make the most out of our social media page. The most time intensive part will
be adding photos and gathering information for our blogs. The same
information can be used to set up each of the three sites. Before the sites
are available to the public the team will preview the site to the senior staff for
approval and suggestions.
Our suggestion for the set up and running of the websites would be Crystal
Hillis, our current website administrator. Assisting her in the project would be
our marketing director Sandra Hernadez and Patricia OShea our technical
writer.
Security
We think using social media to disseminate information and to collect
feedback about club events, schedules and other club news would be a
benefit to club management. The data could be used to evaluate whether
club members feel the club is meeting the desires and expectations of its
clients. Of course our primary concern is ensuring the security of our
members and our own servers.
We have evaluated each of the social media websites. And have found that
each website takes security of their members very seriously. We will use
Facebook as our example, as each social media site has the same basic
security features. Facebook provides simple instructions for anyone who joins
to decide who and how much personal information they want allow others to
see. Only the most basic information is visible to everyone:

Name and profile picture are visible to everyone so real world friends
can recognize you, and so we can display them when you write on
someone's Wall.
Gender is public so we can correctly display your gender (for example,
"Add her as a friend").
Networks are visible to everyone so you can see who else is part of
your network (and will have access to your information) before
choosing "Friends and Networks" for any of your privacy settings.

Other information in this section, including hometown and interests, is visible

by default to help friends and other people you have things in common with
connect with you.

Facebook doesnt share personal information with their advertisers. Ad

targeting is done entirely anonymously.
Some partner sites may have access the same basic information the public
has to personalize the members experience but they can turn off instant
personalization for specific sites or turn it off completely from the
Applications and Websites page.
Members can block people from interacting with them or seeing their
personal information by choosing options in. They can also specify friends
they want to ignore application invites from, see a list of the specific
applications that have been blocked, and contacting you.
"Public search" on the Applications and Websites page controls whether
people who enter a specific name in a search engine will see a preview of a
specific Facebook profile. It also controls whether things members specifically
choose to share with everyone show up in searches on and off Facebook.
Member confidentiality is a concern because we have a very strict privacy
policy that prohibits the club from releasing any information about our
members. We propose adding a disclaimer to each of the social media pages
that lets the members know that this is a public site and their identities are
not private and joining is optional. We will also send out emails to the
membership about the new social media websites. These emails will address
privacy, safety and proper social media etiquette. To further insure member
safety we will provide training classes on social media usage.
To prevent risk to our servers we will continue to prohibit employee use of
social media sites on company computers. The computers of those creating
and updating the social media sites will have their security software
upgraded. This software is currently available to our IT department at no
additional cost. Those employees will also run daily virus scans as directed by
Andrew Heard, Director of IT. Employees with access to the social media
websites will meet with Andrew to discuss safe practices.
Cost
Joining social media websites is free of charge. The only associated cost is in
man hours. We estimate it will take approximately 100 man hours to set up
all three of the social media accounts. The best time to complete this project
would be during the summer. The decrease in member activity during the
summer allows for multiple projects to be completed without interfering in
the daily routine of the staff.
Member Interest
To determine member interest we conducted a survey on the members only
website. The numbers showed that over 37% of our member polled were

some type of social media. Our poll also addressed which social media sites
were being used by members and interest in having Desert Mountain on
social media websites. We also asked the members what information they
would like to see on the social media sites. Finally, we asked the members if
they would be interested in learning more about social media websites. The
majority of members using social media use Facebook, Twitter and My Space.
This information helped us to decide to which sites we want to join. The
members were most interested in seeing information about golf, dining and
spa. They also showed interested in retail and personal stories. While only
28% of the members polled said they would subscribe to Desert Mountain on
a social media site that number may increase with training.

Social Media Survey Results

Do you use social media websites such
as My Space, Facebook, LinkedIn or

137

Twitter?
Yes

52

37.96%

No

85

63.04%

I use the following social websites.

137

Facebook

49

35.77%

My Space

15

10.95%

Twitter

41

29.93%

LinkedIn

20

14.6%

Flixster

.07%

None of the above

85

63.04%

If Desert Mountain joined a social media

group what information would you like

88

to see on their page?

Golf Course Information

78

88.64%

Dining Specials

71

80.68%

Retail Promotions

45

51.14%

Personal Stories

44

50%

Spa Specials

67

76.14%

Event Photography

52

59.1%

Golf Tournament Results

77

87.5%

If Desert Mountain was available on a

social media website would you

131

subscribe to their page.

Yes

37

28.24%

No

48

36.64%

Maybe

46

35.11%

Would you use social media websites if

Desert Mountain provided a free training

128

class?
Yes

25

19.53%

No

83

64.84%

Maybe

20

15.63%

Survey from http://members.desertmountian.com

Benefits
Now that you understand the possibility of having social media, we would like
to tell you how it would benefit Desert Mountain. We currently have two
websites, the public website and the members only website. The public
website is run by Desert Mountain Real Estate and is geared at recruiting new
members. The Club itself runs our website; members.desertmountain.com is
exclusively for our members. We use this website to keep our members
informed about all information about the club. This includes golf, dining, spa
and retail events. We send out weekly emails to keep members informed
about what is happening on the mountain. The website allows members to
make online reservations for dinner and golf. We use it to poll members,
promote events, club billing, and as general gathering place for all
information about Desert Mountain.
To further promote club events we also send out a bi-monthly newsletter, The
Nagonie. In the newsletter members can find information about upcoming
specials and events. There are also human interest piece in the Nagonie as
well. We also promote events with posters and flyers posted around the
property. Even with all of this information we still have members who say
they are not hearing about events. We hope that by having social media
accounts this will give us another avenue to reach members.
We consider social media as a great way to advertise our events and specials.
We can also communicate in real time with our members via social media.
With Twitter we can send out messages about a weather delay on the course
or even the lunch special. This information can be retrieved easily from a cell
phone by members who subscribe to Twitter. This is also a benefit of social
media, real time cell phone access. Our current website isnt cell phone
friendly. Facebook, My Space and Twitter all have cell phone friendly
websites. In fact, they have applications that made for many phones that
make it easy to use social media on the phones.

Recommendation
After reviewing all of the data we believe that it is in best interest of Desert
Mountain to join three social media websites, Facebook, My Space and Twitter.
These websites are easy to use and will require minimal set up. With the advised
security options there is not a major threat to our security or to our members
security. We can use the websites as another form of communication and means of
adverting events to our members.
Crystal Hillis,
Website Administrator

Sandra Hernadez,
Marketing Specialist

Patricia OShea,
Technical Writer
June 20, 2010