Use of UGC on Your Hotel’s Social Media is one of the best ways to build trust with travel shoppers, creating genuine emotional bonds between potential guests and yourself. When done right, UGC allows for real conversations.
Make a point of sharing user-generated content (UGC), such as reviews and testimonials, across social media channels and stories.
1. Encourage Your Guests to Share
Implementing UGC into your hotel’s social media pages is an ideal way to showcase the property and build credibility with prospective guests. Furthermore, UGC can foster emotional bonds with potential guests that can increase conversion rates significantly.
Encourage guests to share content by offering incentives such as discounted room rates or complimentary meals, and creating a custom hashtag for your hotel, which will allow guests to search content more easily. Instagram works great for high-quality images and videos that showcase your property while Facebook provides multiple formats allowing for picture posts, stories, live video streams and polls in order to engage audiences and promote special offers or contests.
Responding quickly and thoughtfully to all mentions, tags, and direct messages is important in showing guests that you care about them and value their feedback – and can also make your brand stand out from competitors.
Any time you use any content created by others – be it photos, videos or reviews – without their express permission, use a UGC rights management solution like Taggbox to help make this process simpler and ensure your content is being used ethically.
As part of your social media strategy, when selecting UGC for use on social media it is essential to take the demographics of your target audience into account when choosing which platforms and creating engaging content that resonates with them. For instance, if your hotel is situated in a romantic destination, using more UGC that showcases its beauty may appeal more strongly with couples and families than an informative piece or video would; vice versa for business travelers.
Finally, it is crucial that you regularly evaluate and assess the performance of your UGC content. Track metrics like impressions, engagement rates and click-through rates to assess what is working and where improvements could be made to your strategy. It may also be beneficial to examine individual posts’ performances to detect patterns; which types of content often perform best among them for instance.
2. Encourage Your Guests to Review
Integration of user-generated content (UGC) into your hotel ad strategy can be an invaluable way to increase engagement. Not only will UGC increase trust with potential guests, it will also improve search engines like Google and Bing rankings for your hotel.
Integrate guest photos, reviews and videos on your website and social media to display authentic hotel experiences. Be sure to use a user generated content (UGC) rights management platform before posting the material online in order to avoid legal complications in the future.
Your guests are often eager to share their experiences at your hotel and can provide invaluable marketing content for it. Make it easier for guests to post photos and videos by providing incentives such as free stays, meals or discounts on future visits. Creating a hashtag so they can use when posting online about it is an ideal way to track user-generated content; make sure it is widely known by publicizing it on your hotel’s website and social media channels.
Respond quickly and politely to any comments, tags or questions your guests have about their experiences at your hotel. Responding swiftly shows your guests’ feedback is valued, while making negative reviews more positive by emphasizing what has been done to address issues and highlight changes that have been implemented.
Another way to encourage guests to share their experiences is through running a contest or giveaway. Contests can create excitement about your hotel while creating a sense of urgency among your audience, increasing engagement. However, it is essential that you first understand who your target audience is and the content that resonates best with them – for instance if your hotel is located near beautiful scenery it might benefit most from promoting photos via Instagram and TikTok while business-centric hotels may find more success by targeting LinkedIn instead. By understanding their motivations and needs you can craft a targeted and effective social media campaign strategy!
3. Encourage Your Guests to Share Photos
If you want to increase engagement on social media, encourage guests to post photos and videos from their hotel stay. This allows guests to connect more naturally with the brand while increasing brand recognition. Offering incentives like contests can get guests engaged; perhaps offering the winner free accommodation for the weekend or simply fame on Instagram for his/her image!
User-generated content is a valuable weapon in hospitality marketing because it validates the quality and value of your services to new customers, while building trust among potential guests who might otherwise hesitate to book rooms based on an advertisement alone.
Integrate authentic guest photos, videos and reviews onto your hotel website and social media, requesting permission before posting it. Doing this shows customers that your hotel values them while encouraging future ones to return for another stay. In addition, user generated content (UGC) is more trustworthy than branded or influencer content, providing an opportunity for increased SEO optimization.
UGC provides an opportunity for your brand to build its personality by featuring team members in each post, so potential guests can witness first-hand who makes up its staff and how hard they work to ensure an excellent guest experience at your property.
Increase your reach by teaming up with travel bloggers and social media influencers. A good influencer should have an established following that can translate to guests; Soneva Jani in Maldives collaborated with YouTubers Kara and Nate to produce a video featuring their overwater bungalow, and this has earned over eight million views!
UGC can be tricky to track. It can be challenging to tell whether guests have used your hotel in their photos or used specific hashtags when posting, and you don’t have control over the type of content that’s shared – an inconvenience, but remember UGC as an affordable and effective marketing strategy for your hotel!
4. Encourage Your Guests to Share Videos
Hotel websites and social media are an opportunity for hotels to showcase their best attributes, including breathtaking views and experiences, amenities, and activities. But it doesn’t stop there: hotels should encourage their guests to share content from their experience, providing an authentic look at the property that can drive conversions. Using user generated content (UGC) as part of paid advertising campaigns can also drive results by using reviews, photos or even videos in ads as testimonials for guests to see!
UGC can be an easy and engaging way to create compelling content that stands out from the competition, making your brand’s mark online and increasing conversion rates. Now more than ever before people rely on authentic stories as sources for buying decisions – making this trend all the more relevant for hotels!
Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok provide an ideal venue to source user-generated content (UGC). There is plenty of UGC available here that is easily searchable via hashtags and location tags in posts; furthermore you may repost content from other accounts (with their consent!) for increased reach.
No matter whether it’s your own hashtag or one provided by a guest, consistency in hashtag usage across your brand is important in allowing guests to easily interact with and find content while also tracking engagement and ROI.
Not only can you encourage guests to post and upload images and videos about their stay, but you could also encourage them to make videos! This could be achieved through contests and giveaways; or by creating a branded hashtag for your hotel and asking guests to include it when posting about themselves online.
Video content can be extremely effective on social media because it provides a more immersive way of showing off a property and appealing to viewers – especially younger generations who prefer watching videos over reading text! If you haven’t begun creating and sharing video, now’s the time!