It has become more important than ever for hotels to maintain a strong online presence. Only having an intuitive, mobile-friendly website with up-to-date information is not enough to gain the attention of travellers. In difficult times like now, finding an effective approach to inspire customers for a visit has become crucial. With the right hotel social media strategy, properties can stay top-of-mind with guests even when there’s low demand.
But…social media is also pretty overwhelming for a lot of hoteliers. Many hotels may waste time on the wrong social media platforms or simply not know what to post.
What mistakes should entrepreneurs and hoteliers, in particular, avoid making when it comes to social media? Let’s find out together.
1. Profiles are incomplete or outdated
There is no need to be present everywhere all at once. To have an effective social media strategy, it is more important to have a focus on just a few important social media platforms. The marketing team should define which platforms deserve putting the effort into. To avoid having unattractive, incomplete and outdated profiles, such questions could be addressed:
- Is the username/profile photo consistent?
- Is the bio brief, but informative?
- Is the profile link working?
- Is contact information up-to-date?
- If it’s not a channel that is used often, are clients redirected to the website or another social account?
2. Social media channels are used only for selling
It is absolutely critical to nurture relationships with clients on social media and presenting offers all the time will definitely not contribute to it…
Here’s the solution:
- 80% of the time, customers should be served with helpful, informative, or entertaining content.
- Remaining 20% can be dedicated to offers and promotions.
3. Not responding to guests
It should be remembered, that hospitality is the business of caring for people. Hotel social media strategy has to involve great customer service.
- Mentions of the hotel name should be actively monitored for a hotel to engage with clients.
- User-generated content should be encouraged, it’s a good idea to invite guests to share their experience on social media.
4. Using low-quality, unattractive images
Users want to see beautiful or creative photos of dreamy destinations, fun events, delicious food. Images have to be in good quality.
- It is recommended to dedicate some time for an «internal» photoshoot.
- It is also helpful to organise a few photo-taking classes for non-marketing employees and to engage all departments of the hotel into content creation.
We can take the Instagram account of the 25 Hours hotel Langstrasse in Zurich (the one that was mentioned in the last post) as a positive example. All images in the profile are in great quality and the captions usually include CTA (call to action).
5. The content is all over the place
Last, but definitely not least…
Without a plan in place, the content will be inconsistent. Spontaneous posts will most likely have spelling mistakes or not working links.
- It is important to spend some time each week developing the content plan and schedule the social media posts. Ideally, it should be a recurring task.
- A content calendar can include the planning of big campaigns (quarterly) and social content (weekly). However, there should still be room for flexibility, as 2020 has shown us, being adaptable is key.
It is not a simple task to manage social media channels effectively, but these 5 mistakes can be easily avoided. Do you have any examples of hotels that you enjoy “following” online? What makes their content special for you?
Let me know in the comments below!
You might be interested:
Social Media Strategy for Hotels: Why These Brands Rise Above the Rest
Top Hotel Social Media Marketing Strategies
Thank you Sofia for this useful post, I belive now businesses need to pay more attention to digital technologies and benefit from the opportunity to strengthen online presence. Images, content startegy and frequency are key aspects.
Absolutely true! Thank you for your comment.
I love the way you organised this blog post, I enjoyed the statistics and visuals. Also, very good recommendation. These can also be extended to every industry nowadays as Instagram is becoming a search engine where we search products and services we consider to buy.
This can apply to any industry, you are right.
Thank you for commenting.
The content in this post can be applied in so many industries, which shows how essential it is to cover all the points you mentioned. It was such an informative and engaging read. Thank you, Sofia for bringing attention to this.
True here, it does not only apply to hotels.
Thank you for your comment!
Hello Sofia. I work as a marketing coordinator for a construction company back in Romania and I have to admit, even for my field, pictures always work well! Even if it’s a picture with the status of a construction site! And the rest of the info is very true and I experienced that just as you said! Thank you for this great article!
Hi Bianca,
Yes, visual content is crucially important in the marketing strategy of almost any industry. Thanks for commenting!