Social media is one of the cornerstones of all marketing in 2017, and it’s not going to go away anytime soon. If you’re seeing underwhelming results on your accounts, it can feel like you’re failing at a vital element of hotel social media marketing. Luckily, there are ways in which you can enhance the content you’re putting out on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, to bring that engagement to the level you’ve been hoping for. Check out these four top tips for writing better hotel social media posts.

All the best content in marketing comes from marketers putting themselves in the shoes of the people they’re trying to appeal to. Ask yourself what your followers might want from your social media feeds. Better yet, ask your followers themselves! Conduct a survey on social media asking about the types of content your followers want to see most – is it travel tips? Fun facts about the surrounding area? Client stories or testimonials? Charity involvement? One of the best ways to write better social media posts and elevate your hotel social media marketing is to ask your followers what content they are most likely to respond to.

Before you schedule in your posts for the day, week or month, think about what message you’re trying to convey with each one. If the single message of the post isn’t immediately clear, take it back to the drawing board. If you’re trying to cover too many things in one post, break it down into separate posts. If your message is shrouded by fluffy language or lengthy paragraphs (this is less of a problem on Twitter, which forces marketers to be concise), rewrite the whole thing. Good hotel social media marketing is all about making it easy for your audience to engage, and if they aren’t really sure what they’re ‘liking’, why would they like it in the first place?

Writing one post to be shared across five very different social media platforms simply doesn’t work. Sure, you might have come up with a great idea for a post on Facebook, but what about Twitter’s character limit? Would the imagery accompanying the post be strong enough to stand alone on Pinterest or Instagram?

To get the very best engagement on each platform, you have to create content specifically for that platform. Facebook is great for sharing both news and entertainment, and it’s strongly geared towards video content. Twitter is more news-oriented, and the use of hashtags means you can join trending conversations – more so than on Facebook. Instagram and Pinterest should be used for strong imagery, while LinkedIn is the place to share industry articles (the latest trends in hotel social media marketing, for example, rather than travel tips or client testimonials).  

Phrases with a hard sales message can be off-putting for some social media users, so try to avoid using ‘Buy now!’, ‘Book today!’ or anything overtly promotional in your content. Facebook’s algorithm is also geared to place excessively salesy posts further down the News Feed, so you could end up being penalised for using too much of this type of language.

For more information about hotel social media marketing and strategy, contact the Digital Hotelier team today.