In today’s marketing world, hotels and social media go hand-in-hand. From showing off a nice view, to nurturing sales and helping with customer service. Here are a few trends we see in the world of hotel social media today.
Influencers
Influencers continue to become today’s ‘new celebrities’ and dominate our social media feeds. For good reason, too. The attention tide is facing social media, and successful influencers will introduce your hotel to the correct audience, in the correct way.
The first rule of marketing is to get people talking about you (right?), and an influencer can talk about your hotel, growing your awareness and image, to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.
In my opinion, this trend will continue to grow for some time, although the influencer market is arguably saturated, and we may see its peak soon. You also need to make sure you use the right influencer – if you’re a hotel, an influencer in the car or food space probably won’t have the following you’re after. Hotels should identify their target market and find an influencer whose followers are mostly from said market. Once a suitable influencer(s) has been found, contact them to strike a deal, which could be free, or could cost thousands, depending on the audience, the influencer, and your offering.
Micro-influencers and UGC
Micro-influencers are basically an influencer on a smaller scale. Rather than having 100K followers, they may have 1K, or even less. The advantage is it can be as easy as inviting them in for a coffee to expose your hotel to thousands of people, or even easier, they may be your current guests.
I recommend compiling a list of potential influencers to work with, as well as what you’re willing to offer, and test the success. Or, get an agency like us to do this for you (walked into a shameless plug by accident there).
When it comes to UGC, or user-generated-content, which I have written about before, hotels should place signage somewhere in the guest’s experience which encourages them to engage with the hotel on social media. Whether it’s a card in the room, or the receptionist mentioning your Instagram handle, once guests are regularly posting images or Instagram Stories in your hotel, you have a consistent flow of micro-influencers, of new content, and of increased awareness.
Stories
I often feel like I drone on about stories. Maybe I do, but I think it’s for good reason. A recent study showed that stories are on track to overtake the reach and awareness of traditional feed posts. In other words, potentially, more people will watch your stories, than see your posts. In our monthly reports, we see the reach and impressions of stories grow, often, by around 200% compared to the previous month.
Stories, and story highlights, are a really good way to give viewers an insight into your hotel. For hotels we work with, we add a story highlight for each feature – so, for example, for their pool, spa, gym, team, rooms, guests, and location. We make sure there is a story live (they only last 24 hours, unless you add them to a highlight, where they stay longer) 5 times per week at the very least. We also use the location and hashtag feature, which will grow your views every time.
The beast that is social media means these trends may be old news by this time next year, or maybe even sooner. Staying ahead of future trends requires innovative, ‘out of the box’ thinking, and analysis of what works well in your social media strategy.
This post originally appeared on the Founders Media website and is reproduced with their permission.
