Get the best results from social media takes more than posting updates; hoteliers must monitor mentions and examine data to assess what works well and what doesn’t.
Travellers enjoy seeing photos and videos, so share tips, recommendations, and stories with them. Such posts tend to perform better than ones with solely sales-focused goals.
1. Understand your target audience
An hotel’s target audience can be difficult to identify and pinpoint; each audience group has different interests and requirements. Therefore, it is vital that hotels understand their target audience in order to create an effective social media strategy which engages these consumers and drives bookings.
Social media listening tools provide a great way to gain a deep insight into your target audience. These tools allow you to monitor conversations and content that pertains to your industry, identify the key words used, and potentially identify opportunities or pain points from within the target group – such as people complaining of long wait times in hotels or customer service departments; this data could allow you to set specific goals designed to improve and increase satisfaction among your target group.
Social media listening can also help you keep an eye on the marketing strategies of your competitors and the success of their marketing strategies. By monitoring their posts, topics, and levels of engagement you can get a good sense of what tactics work well for them and implement these at your hotel.
If your competitors are posting engaging videos to promote special offers, creating similar strategies at your hotel could drive traffic as well as boost direct bookings.
As part of your social media listening efforts, it is crucial that you stay vigilant against false positives – situations in which search results for your brand appear even though users did not mention it directly. A general guideline suggests aiming to limit these results to under 5% for accurate data collection.
Always remember that the ultimate aim of marketing strategies should be connecting with and building relationships with their target audiences, especially on social media where consumers often interact directly with brands on an intimate level. By employing social media listening tools to understand who your target audiences are and create and share relevant content that meets their needs and goals, marketing becomes much simpler for brands and consumers alike.
2. Create a social media strategy
Successful social media implementation for your hotel relies on approaching it as a serious marketing strategy. As social media is continually evolving, creating and adhering to an action plan is key. Dedicate time each week for monitoring social media channels most effective at reaching target audiences as this will determine when and what types of content should be shared online.
Hoteliers often turn to social media as a tool for communicating directly with their guests and followers, offering great customer service while building loyalty among guests and followers alike. Social media allows hotels to promote new or exciting products or services as well as events happening nearby – it can even help monitor customer feedback and respond quickly if any problems arise.
Successful social media strategies require creating and maintaining an easily identifiable persona for your brand across all social channels, to help maintain its integrity while avoiding viral trends that do not align with your goals. A clear definition of your persona on social media also serves as a guide for the tone and style of posts shared via these channels.
An essential aspect of any social media strategy is creating a community on your chosen platforms. This can be accomplished by following similar pages, engaging with them, and posting relevant content. Furthermore, encouraging followers to follow back can increase reach significantly.
Finally, it is critical that your hotel monitor social media for mentions of themselves and respond immediately. This can be accomplished either with a monitoring plan or using tools offering customer sentiment analysis. Furthermore, responding promptly to both positive and negative comments demonstrates your appreciation of customers.
Finally, social media should be used to tell your hotel’s story and cultivate an emotional bond between itself and its target audience. You can do this by posting high-quality imagery and videos that showcase the amenities, stunning locale, and beautiful property itself. By posting behind-the-scenes and guest-generated posts as well as providing humanizing content such as behind-the-scenes photos or guest reviews you can further humanize your brand while creating an environment in which followers feel at home with your brand.
3. Monitor social media for mentions of your hotel
For successful social media marketing, it is vitally important that you monitor social media for mentions of your hotel. This enables you to respond immediately when compliments, complaints or questions about its services arise and gain insight into customer perceptions which is vital for building up its reputation.
Hootsuite provides an effective tool for this. Their Mentions tab makes it easy to monitor all Twitter mentions of your hotel at one time. Furthermore, you can set up keyword monitoring streams so that any time your hotel or destination is mentioned online you are immediately alerted.
Mentionlytics, a paid service that monitors social media platforms and news websites for mentions of your brand, allows you to monitor keywords across languages and detect sentiment analysis. Finally, NetBase provides both a free version as well as paid upgrades that provide more comprehensive customer data.
After compiling a list of your hotel’s mentions, it’s crucial to create an action plan for responding. This could involve anything from thank-yous for positive mentions to offering special offers to loyal guests; issuing an apology when needed; linking self-help/FAQ pages/how-to videos that provide answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ).
As well as monitoring your own social media activity, it is a good idea to keep an eye on that of competitors’ as this can help keep ahead of them and learn from both their successes and failures.
Integration of social media into your hotel marketing can be an excellent way to cultivate customer loyalty and boost revenue, yet still maintain customer value. When creating campaigns using social media for hotel marketing purposes, remember to focus on providing value rather than simply pushing products. By listening and understanding audience needs through listening posts on social media you can create highly successful campaigns which drive results – whether yours is a small boutique hotel or international chain using this strategy can help your hotel increase revenues while building customer trust.
4. Respond to mentions
Social media marketing is an indispensable asset for hotels as they look to attract and retain guests. Through engaging social media posts that show off unique offerings, hotels can build connections with influencers, leverage user-generated content, and connect with influencers – all key strategies in increasing online visibility and driving direct bookings.
Engaging your target audience on social media is one of the best ways to build trust with potential guests and increase customer satisfaction. Responding promptly and professionally can also build trust between yourself and potential guests while showing that you care about providing excellent service while resolving any potential issues that may arise. It’s also crucial that any negative reviews be addressed promptly as this demonstrates commitment to providing exceptional service while simultaneously showing commitment towards excellence in service delivery and mitigating any possible problems that might arise.
Hotel marketers can utilize social media to promote their services and facilities as well as collaborate with local businesses to expand brand exposure. Furthermore, targeted social media advertising reaches specific demographics or geographic areas so as to maximize marketing spend.
Hotels can use behind-the-scenes content, photos and videos from staff and facilities to humanize their brand and create an atmosphere of authenticity, as well as short form video content that engages their target market. Instagram Stories and Boomerang are two popular formats used by hospitality brands that help them showcase amenities and facilities while Boomerang turns a series of photos into a mini video that is entertaining for their target audiences.
Hotels should also create a unique hashtag for their property and encourage guests to use it when sharing about their stay online, helping build brand recognition and SEO. In addition, hotels could collaborate with nearby restaurants, attractions or tour operators to offer special packages or promotions which not only increase online visibility but also demonstrate commitment to providing an outstanding travel experience for guests.