Earlier, I met this hotelier in my gym who was spending a whopping amount to promote his hotel on social media, but the results were not favorable. When I asked him about his social media strategies, he told me that he has hired a digital marketing agency that posts some photos of the hotel three or four times a week and works on some paid ads. This is certainly not the way a business should be promoted online.
Social media can provide massive boost to a hotel’s revenue only when effective campaigns run on them. The hotelier wasn’t fully aware of social media power and didn’t know about the ever-changing digital marketing strategies. Apart from basics of different social media platforms, I shared five effective social media strategies which are working well in the online promotion of a hotel. Here are they:
Identify: Why Social Media
Social media isn’t just a luxury or necessity because others are doing it. There should be a strong objective behind your hotel’s presence on various social media websites. Apart from that, everything you are posting over these websites must have some reasons. Instead of just throwing photos of your hotel or your website’s links, make a storyline to engage your followers or guests on a post.
Context And Content: Right Words In Right Posts
Planning posts involving images is an effective idea to gain attention, but it should be done in an interesting manner. For example, a story behind the photo can also be posted to make it more realistic. This method can engage people online and make them more curious about your property as well as services linked to it. Apart from photos, a video about the hotel can be posted with some words about it. But make sure that the content is clean, witty and easy-to-understand. Paying attention to every post will not just help your hotel’s social media account in gaining attention, but it can reach more people through like, retweets and share facilities.
Be Loud: Create Buzz To Make Your Presence Noticeable
In addition to posting user-centered posts, people can be engaged on your posts by interacting with them. You can reach several online individuals by interacting with them, asking them questions and responding to their queries. Apart from that, your hotel’s digital marketers should also pay attention to your regular guests and stay in contact with them. This can be done by responding to their posts on your hotel’s page.
Use Hashtags: Create Interest To Make People Plan Posts Around Your Hashtags
When it is about reaching lots of online users at one time, nothing works better than a hashtag. Various social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, allow users to use hashtags and get searched by people interested in searches around the hashtag. Using this feature, you can grab attention of those users too who aren’t your followers yet. Apart from starting a hashtag or planning a post around a viral hashtag, you can create user interest by adding humor to the post.
Schedule Your Posts: Reach More People
People may be on their phones all the time, but it doesn’t mean they are using social media. Plus, all your fans and followers will not be available at one time. For example, if a video is receiving attention of your page’s 40% users at 9 PM on Saturday, it doesn’t mean it will receive same traffic at 11 AM on Monday. So to reach more people, you need to analyze time and days of week when most fans are available on a website. Post every day, but also track people’s engagement. According to several digital marketing researches, weekends are the best time to plan posts as more people will be available online that time. In addition, evening time during weekdays can provide more attention to a post than day time. Schedule your posts as per targeted people of an area.
Making improvements in your social media game can improve your hotel’s overall performance. It will not just help you reach more people online, but gives you an opportunity to turn them into guests.