With millions and millions of people across the world having one or more social media accounts, whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other platform, the idea that a business wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity for such great visibility and reach-out is mind blowing. Not only do they provide access to consumers with the greatest of ease, but they’re a tool to be utilized for communication, advertisement, awareness, and connectivity.
With so many ways to use social media to the advantage of a business, let’s look at some of the most effective approaches to harness the power of social media and direct it toward marketing your hotel.
Improving Customer Relationships: The Power of Reviews
Modern consumers rely heavily on online reviews for different business, especially prior to making a decision regarding that business. If 86% of consumers spend the time to read through the posted reviews for various local businesses, it’s hard to dispute that they don’t matter. Facebook’s review section for businesses and companies is an easy way to keep an eye on who leaves reviews and what those reviews are.
Whether it’s Facebook, Yelp, Trip Advisor, or any number of sites that allow consumers the opportunity to review the hotel after having stayed, encouraging guests to write reviews while also monitoring for negative ones is pretty critical when it comes to staying on top of your hotel’s marketing. This becomes especially critical when you learn that 89% of consumers actually read the responses back to comments that businesses give back to those reviews.
According to Digital Authority Partners, not only is it crucial for businesses to encourage all their customers to leave positive reviews after a stay and respond to those reviews, thanking them for selecting that particular business, but it is equally important for those same businesses to respond to negative reviews. Responding to the negativity is an opportunity for hotels to apologize, acknowledge, and amend any issues customers have, which encourages other customers in a positive way.
Producing Material to Engage Customers: The Power of Content
Content is really the loose and broad term that encompasses any material that is posted online by a company or an individual, from pictures, to taglines, to blogs or articles, and the like. In order to improve the SEO visibility and follower engagement on your social media platforms. Develop a strategy and implement a plan to improve the type, quality, and quantity of content that your hotel puts on out on their social media platforms.
With a thriving economy and a high-spending millennial generation, luxury-based content is a trending area, appealing to some of the biggest spending groups. Consider following online trends with vacation content like this, and focus on showcasing the luxurious and elegance and extravagance. Influencers who lead and showcase this type of content are perfect for focusing on this type of luxuriousness. Reaching out and linking up with some of them to help promote this type of content is a great approach to increase the depth of your reach online. Building relationships with them for the purpose of advertisements and promotions and awareness can be highly effective when done correctly.
Blog posts that are updated with frequency and that are well-written mean that when potential customers at your hotel are looking for information, somewhere to stay, vacation ideas, or anything else you can produce content about. Keeping content fresh and updated helps boost SEO visibility and increasing traffic to your hotel’s website, means you’re going to increase visitors to your hotel itself.
Twitter is another great way to for hotels to engage online users, with the hopes of encouraging them to invest in a stay with you. Users love the witty, the funny, the clever, the humorous, and the interesting, so using your account to engage people, rather than just blatantly promote your hotel is going to garner a far greater number of responses.
B2B and Affiliate Marketing: The Power of Partnerships
When it comes to partnerships, it’s important to understand that this has to be a two-way relationship where both partners benefit in some way or another. Consider what local businesses you can establish partnerships between with your hotel (local car transportation, or excursion companies, etc) and consider how you can promote one another’s services on your own social media platforms. Each time either company shares the tag for the other one, there is the potential for a jump in followers, and a jump in followers means more potentially interested customers.
Affiliate marketing is the other basic strategy for utilizing partnerships via social media platforms. With affiliate marketing, certain bloggers, influencers, and social media users can promote your hotel with a special coded link that identifies to them, and when they promote it, the link tracks not only the number of people who click that link, tracing back to your hotel, but it also tracks the number of people who ultimately end up booking with you specifically because of their promotion of that link. Companies pay affiliate marketers a certain percentage or amount for each customer that uses that link to purchase a product, or in this case, a hotel stay, so you only really have to end up paying if it ends up being effective.
Ultimately, how much you put into the social media marketing for your hotel business, directly impacts just how much you’re going to get out of it. Granted, it may seem like anyone can make a Facebook page or an Instagram account to help promote their hotel, but when it comes to things like the Instagram algorithm, or trending hashtags, or effective strategies, it becomes a much more complex concept. Research or hiring professional teams to help focus and direct your hotel’s social media platform often ends up paying off for businesses who are serious about using such a highly-effective, 21st century tool to boost profits and awareness. Don’t fight what works, but figure out how to make it work for you.
This topic is contributed by Julian Gnatenco @ JGBilling