Do you work in hospitality? Did you know that you can get one of the biggest returns on investment by investing in social media marketing strategies? It’s not all that surprising when you consider the popularity of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and the fact that you can directly engage with your target market, but so many travel, tourism and hospitality companies are not using social media to its full potential. If you’re one of them, take a look at these tips for boosting business via social media:
Create Compelling Content
Most importantly, if you want to boost business via social media, you need to create compelling content. I the hospitality industry, this means writing posts about local sights, taking pictures of the wonderful locations nearby and actually showing prospects that you care. If you use stock photos, lifeless content and dull writing, no one will be inspired to make a booking.
Engage with Customers
Engaging with customers is so important in the hospitality industry, where people may be coming to stay at your property or eat your food. If they feel like they know you and they like what they see, they will be much more likely to choose you over the competition.
The Right Staff
Making social media work for your hospitality business isn’t as simple as putting profiles up on the main platforms and writing the odd few lines to encourage bookings. You need to have savvy staff who understand internet marketing, are able to create engaging content and who are able to capture the personality of your company with photos and the written word. If you don’t have staff who can do this, training them is one option, as is calling in freelancers or a social media agency to take care of it all for you.
Use Smart Tools
Smart tools such as Hotel PMS Software, which amongst other things can track your prospects and enquiries so that you can deal with them more efficiently; digital cameras which allow you and your employees to create unique content; and newsletter software which enables you to save the details of people who’ve visited your sites and send them out updates, are all essential to boosting business using social media and the internet.
Run Giveaways
For your social media presence to pay off in increased bookings, you need to have lots of people following you, and that isn’t always easy when you’re just starting out with the medium. One thing that makes it a lot easier is running a giveaway. Offer the chance of a free weekend in your hotel or a meal for two in your restaurant to anyone who likes your page or follows you on Twitter and pretty soon you’ll have hundreds if not thousands of followers to impress.
Integrated Marketing Strategies
Although social media will really help to boost your business, in the hospitality industry, brochures, posters and TV ads are all still very effective, and as such you should still use them alongside your online campaigns for the best results.