Social Media for Hotels
It is proven that social media is absolutely necessary in the hotel industry. When you tune into social media, you can start engaging with your guests and future guests. You can also utilize social media to increase bookings, test new specials, roll out new programs and reach your guests. Plus when they engage with you via social media, the engagement process goes viral. What’s best is that overall social media is free to use. Hotel Traffic Builders will help develop a social media plan that will work best for your property. Below are some of the current social media platforms that most hotels utlize and that we can help you with:
This is the leading social media platform. Use Facebook to continually have a dialog with your leads and customers about the hotel, what customers have said about your hotel and post lots of relevant images. For example, does your hotel allow dog guests? If so, make sure that you photograph your canine friends and say something about them.
Google+
This relatively new platform is quickly becoming a dominant player. Whatever that is posted to Google+ is indexed seconds, adding to the localized relevancy of the site. Make sure that whatever event is going on in the local community is posted on your Google+ hotel account. Then, when a last minute booking lead is searching for a hotel, your localized content will often create a booking.
Pinterest can be time consuming but it can have the most impact as a visual social channel. Consider the demographic that is your most valuable booking. Is it the busy Mom who is looking for a getaway, spa-weekend package? If so, you should definitely promote relevant, soothing images on Pinterest.
LinkedIn is used primarily by professional who are networking. If your hotel is booked mainly by business people, you may want to create a company LinkedIn page for your hotel and follow the relevant groups for businesses where you get most of your bookings. For example, if you are serving military contractors, you may wish to join a group so you can follow topics that are being discussed by that group. You can never know too much about your customers.
Foursquare
Foursquare asks mobile users to check in to your hotel or business. Frequent check ins at your hotel can earn badges, rewards and points. Since their friends may see the check ins on their friends social media (like Facebook) this can become an organic referral for you.
Hotels are expanding their social media presence by increasingly using Instagram because it is such a strong visual platform that hotel guests are embracing. Great photo creativity options with their retro filters and snap & upload simplicity has made Instagram extremely popular. Now with a video component, your guests are truly sharing their experiences and even Instagram tours of your hotel with their social contacts. When guests can see the exact experience of other hotel guests this always generated increased booking interest and engagement.
