Social media is difficult territory for some hoteliers, but it is nonetheless a vital part of your hotel’s marketing toolkit. But what are the key things which make people follow (or unfollow) your hotel?

The main reasons people follow your hotel’s social media channels are initially quite straightforward. Whilst their willingness to ‘go the distance’ as a follower will be predicated by more long-term benefits, the primary motivations initially are likely to be:

This is fairly standard of course, but a fondness for you hotel or curiosity in your hotel brand’s offering could be enough to merit an initial ‘like’ or follow. Likewise, if you are innovative with content, run special offers and offer useful, engaging and entertaining social posts, you’ll also win over followers.

Everyone loves the chance to stay in the loop, so if your social media has traditionally been associated with giveaways or competitions, this could also be a contributing factor in gathering followers. If you are looking to build your follower count with engaged consumers, considering a prize draw or giveaway as part of your hotel social media marketing strategy is a great place to start.

Great content helps fuel social media, and a clever content marketing strategy will help you gain more followers as your content is shared far and wide.

Responding to messages and customer enquiries via social media can be hugely beneficial for your overall online reputation management, and also drives more followers.

 

So now we have an idea of what leads your hotel brand to have followers on social media, it’s time to take a look at where your hotel social media strategy might be falling down:

Whilst your ideal hotel guest will want to have some indication of what they’re ‘getting’ from your social media, if you repeat the same posts over and over again with no variety, they’ll soon get bored and switch off. Try mixing up your content strategy to get the best results from your hotel social media marketing.

Is your hotel’s content too obviously trying to ‘sell’ to your potential hotel guests? Whilst this is doubtlessly part of your overall strategy, it’s important to tread carefully and take a subtler approach which focuses on building relationships and trust rather than explicitly selling as the (transparent) top priority.  You may have heard of the 80/20 rule on social media. This means providing interesting entertaining and useful content 80% of the time, and sales driven content just 20% of the time.

If you’re switched off from your audience, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll switch off too and in the world of social media, that means unliking and unfollowing. Got a bad review on Facebook? Respond. Someone said something lovely about a photo on Instagram? Say thank you. Providing your hotel with an interactive, approachable social media presence will pay off in the long term by securing you more leads to convert into guests. Engaging with your followers and responding to their messages much the same was as you would reply to an email, creates a deeper relationship and fosters brand loyalty. This is an easy way not just to keep your social media follower count high, it also goes a long way to boosting direct bookings and repeat visitors.