3 Key Strategies to Grow Your Hotel on Facebook

It’s important now, more than ever, to actively pursue Facebook followers through strategic tactics. Changes in the Facebook algorithm means that as little as six percent of your followers get to see your post without paid advertising. Below are three key tactics to maximize your hotel marketing strategies and engage more fans without having to throw in the big bucks for advertising:

Think outside your property

Good content creation can be difficult to do if you limit yourself. It’s great to talk about your property, but it’s also essential that you remember that your followers do have an interest in other things.

Constant updates about your property that don’t interest your followers will cause you to lose them. At the same time, posting more content that is interesting but not related to your brand message will grow the wrong audience. So how do you segment your audience and get a grasp on what to post? Take a look at what your competitors are doing and see how people respond. Find out what inspires them, what they find funny, what they are more likely to comment on and share, and that is how you can develop a better brand as a whole.

Aim to follow the “80/20 rule”, which is when 80 percent of your content is non-self-promotional and 20 percent or less of your content is used to talk about your property. You will achieve more by being personable with your followers rather than regurgitating the information they can find on your marketing brochure. Social media is about creating dialogue with potential guests, not being shameless in self-promotion. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s best to steer clear of topics that can cause controversy or offend your fans, so religion and political matters are best kept off the table.

Inspire with your content

Images create some of the higher levels of interaction on social media, so you’ll find more comments and shares when you opt to throw in some quality pictures. With the popularity of platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram, it’s obvious that attention is being shifted to video and imagery. The ideal content is a healthy mix of text and appealing photos, with less text-heavy content. 

Many social media followers will browse their news feed throughout the day during their working tasks, including during their commute. This is the perfect time to captivate their attention and visually inspire them to picture themselves spending time at your property. Take advantage of your hotel’s beautiful amenities, scenic location or seasonal pictures to show why your hotel is ideal for a vacation.

A great example of this comes courtesy of Holiday Inn Vanuatu, which often includes social media posts of activities that guests can participate in off-property. Diversity in posts is the key ingredient in keeping your fans interested and asking for more.

Involve your guests!

Encourage your followers and guests to interact by making sure that your call-to-action is clear. If your company is the only one publishing any content on your page, it will not be enticing to new followers. Ask your previous guests to share their images on your page, share images with their friends and invite their friends to like your page. You can also invite your guests to share images from their trips and assign a hashtag, which puts the task of choosing the best images for your social media channels in your own hands.

User-generated content is the biggest social media trend of 2014 and it should be used to its full potential. With the advancement of smartphones and apps, people are always looking for new ways to share their memories. To succeed and grow your following on Facebook, make sure that your marketing efforts are engaging to your users and able to keep up with the shifting trends. Striving to cultivate quality content is what is going to keep you moving forward as a brand, and ultimately what will make or break your brand image.

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