Social Media and Marketing for Hotels | 10 Mistakes to Avoid
What are the most common social media and marketing mistakes a hotel can make?
As a hotel, having a powerful presence on social media is crucial for driving bookings and building your brand. However, it's easy to make mistakes that can impact your chance of success.
So, we’re here to help you, by delving into the nitty-gritty mistakes that hotels often make on social media, and how you can avoid them:
Social Media and Marketing: Not Having a Social Media Strategy
A social media and marketing strategy is one of the most sure-fire ways to be successful on your chosen platform.
Without a strategy in place, it's difficult to know what you're working towards and how to measure your progress.
Make sure you have a plan for what content you want to post, how often you want to post it, and who your target audience is.
Social Media and Marketing: Neglecting Your Visual Content
In a highly visual industry like hospitality, it's important to make sure your social media accounts are filled with high-quality images and videos.
This will help your hotel stand out and give potential guests a better idea of what to expect. Invest in a camera (or speak to our video and photography team!) to take pictures of your hotel, its amenities and its surroundings, that will entice potential guests to book.
Not Dealing With Customer Complaints Effectively
Social media gives customers a direct line to your hotel, so it's important to respond to complaints and negative feedback in a timely and professional manner.
Ignoring complaints or responding poorly can harm your hotel's reputation and turn away potential guests.
It may be a good idea to draft a template, and edit accordingly, to ensure that each reply follows your brand guidelines and is professional.
Best practice is to encourage the complainant to message you details of the problem privately; by moving away from public eyes, you can implement damage-control quickly and effectively.
Over-promoting Your Hotel
While it's important to showcase your hotel's amenities and services, constantly posting about them can come across as self-promotional and turn off potential guests.
Mix up your social media and marketing by posting about local events, travel tips, and other relevant content that will interest your target audience.
Take a look at some previous work we’ve done for our clients; we're pretty good at what we do!
Social Media and Marketing: Not Interacting With Your Followers
Social media is a two-way street, so make sure to engage with your followers by responding to comments and messages, and hosting giveaways and contests.
Building relationships with your followers will help to create a loyal following and increase the chances of them booking with your hotel.
Not Measuring Your Results
It's important to track your social media and marketing performance in order to see what's working and what's not, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Use tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics, and other metrics to track your progress and make data-driven decisions.
Social Media and Marketing: Not Utilising User-Generated Content
Your customers are likely going to be documenting their stay; be it via TikTok, Instagram, or another platform; take note of how many guests are snapping away on their camera throughout the course of their stay.
This is called user-generated content, and is a valuable tool when it comes to social media and marketing.
Encourage your guests to share their experiences at your hotel with hashtags, and then repost their content. This is essentially free advertising, and also doubles as a positive review, reinforcing all the great things you’ve had to say about your hotel!
This is not only a great way to build trust and credibility with potential guests, it's also a brilliant way to generate more content for your own accounts.
Social Media and Marketing Mistakes: Posting Irrelevant Content
As much as it’s good to post about the local area and other content that isn’t directly related to your hotel, it’s important to be careful about what you post.
To streamline your social media and marketing content, try to stick to topics that are relevant to your hotel and your target audience. You should avoid posting about unrelated topics, as this can come across as unprofessional – and may turn off potential guests.
Mistakes to Avoid: Not Being Active Enough
Consistency is key when it comes to social media, so make sure to post regularly and stay active on all of your accounts.
Having a consistent posting schedule will help to keep your followers engaged and increase the chances of them booking with your hotel.
Keep your content fresh, interesting and engaging, to help build relationships with your followers and convert them into guests. Why not take a look at one of our hospitality clients for inspiration?
Social Media Marketing: Not Taking Advantage of Social Media Advertising
Paid social media advertising can be an effective way to reach a larger audience and boost bookings.
Consider investing in targeted social media ads to increase visibility and reach a wider audience – it can help to position yourself as a destination hotel, to encourage guests from further away!
So, avoid these common mistakes and you'll be serving up engagement-like complimentary mimosas at breakfast. Just remember, social media and marketing is like a never-ending game of musical chairs, so make sure you're always staying on top of the latest trends to keep your booking rates high.
If you're feeling like your social media and marketing is in need of a professional touch, then you know what to do: get in touch.
Alternatively, why not read our previous blog to discover how to come up with creative ideas?
