14 Best Hotel Social Media Marketing Tips to Help Increase Bookings

The hotel and hospitality industry in the early 2000s is far different from what it is now, with the advances of technology and social media marketing, the way we market to customers has changed.

About 68% of guests want to speed up the check-in process by using their smartphones. And 90% of Instagram users follow a business Instagram account and have the disposable income to make purchases.

Using social media effectively can not only help to solidify your hotel’s brand presence but drive a steady stream of income and bookings your way. Hotel brands can no longer ignore that customers are expecting them to be social media and tech-savvy in this fast-paced world.

Today I’ll be showing you 15 best hotel social media marketing tips to increase bookings.

1. Create a Social Media Marketing Plan

For you to master your hotel’s social media, you’ll need to create a social media plan. A poorly planned social media campaign can leave the wrong impression on customers and potential followers. Not to mention, it could mean losing money instead of making it.

A good social media marketing plan has a clear goal and objective. Trying to achieve too many things at once will only confuse. You can choose the following goals for your next social media marketing plan:

Get feedback from customers
Building email marketing lists
Increasing website traffic
Improving overall brand engagement
Directly driving sales
Increasing product purchases

If you’re still not sure how to put together a goal for a social media marketing plan you can download this free
11-step template: social media marketing plan. It’s filled with all the things you need to plan for your hotel social media marketing strategy effectively.

2. Set Key Performance Indicators

Once you have your marketing plan and goals in place, it’s time to select your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). KPI’s help you to measure your social media marketing efforts; this includes clicks, shares, likes, comments, profile visits, and bookings.

Here are a few more examples of social media KPI’s you can use for your social media marketing plan:

For example, if you want to increase engagement, your KPI could be to increase comments on your social media pages. When posting on social media, make a note of which post has the most comments and make a note of the content so that you can replicate that effect.

Hotel Example: The Beekman Hotel

3. Update Your Hotel’s Social Media Profiles

If you currently have social media platforms, then it’s time for you to update them. Nothing turns customers away faster than outdated information on your social media profiles.

Here are three effortless ways you can update your social media profiles with examples from Moxy Hotel:

1. Update your display image or profile picture: Most people will see your profile picture before they recognize your username. Choose from your hotel’s logo, CEO, or an employee representative to be the face of your social media profile.

2. Add a description to your bio: Think of your social media bio as an elevator pitch to convince your followers to book a stay at your hotel. Here’s a free guide on how to write every kind of social media bio.

3. Add your contact information: Remember to add your website and contact information on your social media pages. You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to reach out to you online.

4. Manage and Increase Bookings with Your Social Media Platforms

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram now allow you to incorporate booking software and apps to your profile to make your customer’s booking journey seamless.

All Facebook business profiles now come with CTA’s (Call to Actions). You can add the following call-to-action buttons to your business account on Instagram:

Book: Book an appointment.
Reserve: Make a reservation at a restaurant.
Get Tickets: Get tickets for an event.

You can also add a booking feature on Instagram as well. You can add Instagram approved third-party apps like Appointments by Square, Appointy, GenBook, GetSquire, Gettimely, GlossGenius, Gopanache, MyTime, Eventbrite, and more.

5. Use Instagram to Build a Community for Your Hotel

The selfie inspired platform has turned into a multi-billion dollar platform for business, brand awareness, and community building. It doesn’t matter if your hotel is a large corporate chain or a local business. Instagram is a must if you plan to master social media marketing.

Here are some reasons why adding Instagram to your social media toolbox:

More than one in ten users are using Instagram specifically to shop or find new products.
Around 81% of people use Instagram to help research products and services.
200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily.

When it comes to Instagram, it’s all about content, engagement, and value proposition. Nothing else matters. Popular brands increase in followers because they follow these three key aspects, along with adding their brand’s personality in the mix.

Hotel Example: Refinery Hotel

It would help if you also thought about adding content to Instagram stories. Approximately 62% of people say they have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Stories.

Dive deep into the world of Instagram with these helpful guides:

6. Use Pinterest to Drive Hotel Bookings

Pinterest is another social media platform that hotels should consider using to market their brand. Compared to Instagram and Facebook, high-income and educated US households are twice as likely to use Pinterest as low-income and less educated US households.

Not to mention 90% of weekly users use Pinterest to make purchase decisions, so if you’re looking for customers who are willing to pay your prices regardless of the cost.

Making Pinterest is a worthy social media investment.

Hotel Example: Langham Hotel’s

Keep in mind that it is all about the long game, unlike other social media platforms where you’d see instant results, Pinterest’s growth and impact happens over time.

Pinterest is, after all, a medium; all pins must have a link associated with it so that users can learn more about your hotel or products. This is perfect for driving traffic to your hotel’s website or blog.

Ready to start your Pinterest takeover? Here are some step-by-step guides to help:

7.Use Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Facebook may not be as youthful as Instagram, but Facebook ads are still one of the best ways to increase sales and conversions. An average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month.

The key is to send people to specific pages of your website rather than using ads to drive direct traffic to your site.

You’ll have a better change converting viewers into customers when your ad, message, CTA, and landing page has to have a specific message.

Here are some examples of high converting Facebook ads for hotels and travel.

8. Invest in Apps and Editing Tools to Create Amazing Content

Social media users have become accustomed to seeing quality content from brands. To keep up, you’ll have to invest in some editing tools to make your social media content more appealing.

Merely taking a picture and posting it isn’t enough anymore. You have to add a little bit of magic to show your content at its best.

Here are some social media apps you should start investing in to edit your content:

Best Social Media Apps for Video

1. VSCO

Available: for Android & IOS

VSCO is a personal favorite for influencers looking for filters and editing tools for images to post on their feed. Did you know they also offer video editing features for Instagram stories as well?

2.Filmmaker Pro

Available: for IOS

This app is made for anyone who wants to edit videos a bit more technical than iMovie or Clips. Once you’ve uploaded your video to the app, you can edit videos in landscape (16:9), portrait (9:16) (Instagram story size), and square (1:1) (Instagram feed). You’re not limited to videos. You can also edit photos for your Instagram stories.

3. InShot

Available: for Android & iOS

This app allows you to place your video in different ratios so you can easily resize, crop, or take your design further and use a colored background, built-in templates, or photo collages to make your video pop on Instagram.

Best Social Media Apps for Pictures

1. Canva

Available: Desktop, Andriod & iOS

This tool is a personal favorite of mine when it comes to creating content and Instagram stories for Wishpond’s own Instagram.

Canva allows you to create graphics, videos, and GIFs, all tailored for your Instagram story. Choose from several beautiful templates with an easy-to-use editor to drag, drop, filter, and design your Instagram story as you like.

2. Adobe Spark Post

Anything Adobe puts its name on either has a steep learning curve, is a creative’s go-to, is a gateway to exceptional content or all of the above.

That being said, if you’re looking for something a bit more technical to get all the little details right, Adobe Spark Post is your app. It allows you to add not just filters but effects, sizing, coloring, and editing tools on par with Photoshop and Lightroom. You can also convert photos into GIFs or videos ready to upload to your Instagram stories.

3. Unfold

Available: iOS or Android

Unfold has been on the rise since 2017 and has been named by Refinery 29 as “the must use Instagram story app.”

9. Partner with Other Brands for Co-Promotions

A co-promotion is when two brands combine marketing efforts to promote each other’s services. Reach out the businesses or brands in your area that compliment your hotel’s brand and host a co-promotion campaign.

Your co-promotion could be with a local spa, travel agency, or theme park, where you provide your services at a discounted price to attract customers to book a stay.

Once you found a business to work with, start promoting your offer on social media, in ads, and even offline.

Here are some more creative hotel promotion ideas you can try.

10. Show Off Customer Reviews & Testimonials on Social Media

First impressions begin online,and what customers find about you through search and comments can make or break that impression. For customers who have never experienced your hotel, it’s important to show off your best customer reviews and testimonials to persuade them to choose you over your competitors.

Dimensional Research found that 90% of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 % said negative online reviews influenced buying decisions.

Hotel Example: The William Vale Hotel

When it comes to customer reviews on social media here are three key tips you should follow:

Ask for it: If you want to get the ball rolling, ask customers to leave reviews during or as they’re about to check out from your hotel. You can also send a follow-up email to remind customers just in case it slipped their minds.

Monitor and regulate it: Take the time to check-in and read reviews, don’t make the assumptions that it’ll always be good. You want to check your social media mentions as well. Never be the last to know what your online community is saying about your hotel.

Don’t ignore negative reviews: Some negative reviews come from impossible to please customers, while others are from customers you can learn from and find ways to improve your hotel. After all, no resort or hotel is genuinely perfect. There may be departments or workflows that need to change that you might not be well aware of when you’re busy with other projects.

11. Host a Giveaway on Social Media

Giveaways do more for your hotel than they do for the winners. It’s one of the top ten best ways to grow your following and increase brand awareness. Instagram accounts that hold contests grow their followers 70% faster on average compared to accounts who don’t have contests and giveaways added to their social media strategy.

Giveaways give you a chance to engage and learn about your customers if done right.

The best time to host a giveaway is to capitalize on holidays and seasons. If a holiday is coming up, you can create a giveaway targeted towards people looking for gifts or prizes.

Holidays come a lot sooner than you think, by October you have your hands full with Thanksgiving, Halloween, Black Friday and Christmas.

Need help with your next contest ?

Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you create a high converting Facebook contest today.

Here are three things to consider when hosting your hotel’s giveaway:

1. Use a striking image for your contest post

You need to use a powerful image to grab people’s attention and be curious enough to read your post and enter. You can use the tools I mentioned earlier, like Canva or Venngage, to create a giveaway post.

2. Set a start and end date for your giveaway.

The best duration for your campaign is 25 days to 60 days. This gives your giveaway enough time for followers to find, share, and enter for their chance to win. You should also place the date you’ll be announcing the winner of your giveaway. Stating this in your caption allows contestants to know when to check your social media profile along with their own for any good or bad news.

3. Have detailed and clear entry rules and methods.

Leave no stone unturned. You need to make your rules fool-proof, to protect you from an angry contestant’s remarks or legal challenges. Each social media platform has its own rules and guidelines for hosting contests or giveaways, mainly Facebook and Instagram. Read them carefully and add their disclaimers in your caption.

Here are some fun giveaway guides to help you from start to finish:

12. Partner with Lifestyle or Travel Influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the top marketing trends brands should be used to supercharge their marketing. Influencer marketing is predicted to be worth $15-20 billion by 2022.

London blogger and influencer Eva often post about her travel adventures. When she visited the Ruby Lucy Hotel & Bar, she posted a full review of her stay, endorsing the hotel to her 44k followers.

When you work with an influencer, you’re promoting your products and services to a wider audience, instead of the followers already committed to your hotel, you’ll tap into thousands of new each influencer has to offer you.

Hotels work best with travel or lifestyle influencers rather than influencers from other niches. Travel influencer’s followers are already engaged to learn the latest spots and locations they can visit for themselves.

With the right influencer, you can start a long-term partnership to grow your outreach continually. Here are some detailed guides to master influencer marketing:

13. Post Consistently by Scheduling Your Social Media Content

As you grow your hotel’s social media marketing, you’ll begin to see that posting consistently will do you more good than posting now and then. Social media users want routines, and once they know you’ll be posting daily or once a week, they’ll expect it from you going forward.

Set a routine for your followers so they can anticipate your post. That’s why you’ll need to schedule your content. Scheduling your content once a month gives you free time to check in on your social media once a week and worry about other things, it’ll also allow you to post consistently.

Here are the best social media scheduling tools and platforms for your hotel:

Buffer

CrowdFire

Hootsuite

Sprout Social

14. Do a Social Media Audit

Once you’ve set your social media goals, posted content, and engaged with your followers, it’s time for you to do a social media audit.

A social media audit allows you to take a look at your results if you’ve met your KPI’s and what actions you’ll continue to use to get to your main goal. You want to make sure that you track these five metrics to track your hotel’s lead generation. Try to do a social media audit monthly or quarterly, too soon, and you won’t give your content enough time to gather results.

At the end of the day, you want your social media ROI (Return on Investments) to be greater than the cost it takes to run ads, pay influencers and social media tools.

Download this free Social Media Checklist (with a free template) to track your social media growth and keep good marketing habits!

Summary

Growing your hotel’s social media presence and followers will take time and work. No number of ads or shortcuts can help you to develop a massive following. The key is to be consistent and create engaging content.

Social media is more about community than ever before, and people want to follow and buy from a brand that they can trust and create unforgettable experiences.

Customers start investing in your hotel before they click “book now,” it starts from the moment they search for your brand’s name online or an Instagram post that they can’t help but love.

Here’s a quick recap of the 14 best hotel social media marketing tips to increase books:

Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
Set Key Performance Indicators
3.Update Your Hotel’s Social Media Profiles
Manage and Increase Bookings with Your Social Media Platforms
Use Instagram to Build a Community for Your Hotel
Use Pinterest to Drive Hotel Bookings
Use Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Invest in Apps and Editing Tools to Create Amazing Content
Partner with Other Brands for Co-Promotions
Show Off Customer Reviews & Testimonials on Social Media1
Host a Giveaway on Social Media
Partner with Lifestyle or Travel Influencers
Post Consistently by Scheduling Your Social Media Content
Do a Social Media Audit

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