If you have a hotel and you’re not on Instagram yet, you need to take action. Instagram offers a great opportunity for hotel owners to build more awareness and have a better engagement with travelers.
Here are 10 tips that can help you get started with Instagram and also be sure that you’re effective.
1. Instagram is perfect for travel marketing
Online activity is slowly shifting to mobile devices. Truth is, people are spending most of their time checking the phone. Especially when traveling, people are more probably to use their phone instead of other devices. This can be a wake-up call for hotels to start investing time in mobile apps such as Instagram.
Great photos grab attention, convey a sense of place, inspire people to travel, and don’t require translation.
2. It’s clean and free
Instagram offers a clean and simple news feed with no links and minimum advertising to distract your attention. Other social media environments such as Facebook or Twitter are more cluttered with advertising. When it comes to Instagram, users are a lot more accessible. Studies show that engagement per follower is bigger on Instagram than on Facebook or Twitter.
3. It’s low cost
The process of setting up an Instagram account is very simple. You just need to download the application on your phone and create an account. The name you choose for your account should be the name of your hotel. Make sure you add a short description and a profile picture. From there on you just need to post great photos and be as active as possible.
4. Reach more teens
Most Instagram users are among the teenagers. More than 80% of U.S teens are on Instagram, ahead of Facebook or Twitter. Even though your target market might not be the teenagers, because most of them are not earning money yet, they can have a great influence over other people, like family members and older friends.
5. See what your competition does
First of all, before starting to use Instagram very actively, spend some time learning the ropes of the app, how people and other businesses use it, how users are reacting to different type of photos. Take a close look at your competition, see what are they doing and get inspired if it works. After all, everything comes to engagement, you need to know your target market very well and speak their language through what you post on Instagram.
6. Create stories and promote in real-time
Capture the attention of your users by being authentic and relevant to them. You can create some routines for your Instagram stories. Make something like “weekly hotel tour” on every Friday for example. That means every Friday you create Instagram stories in which you make a tour of your hotel.
Another thing you can do is to talk about what local attractions can your followers go to, also set a day when you speak about that and keep to the schedule. You need to offer value regularly. When doing all that you need to remember that you’re still a business, so be as professional as you can while maintaining a friendly connection with your users.
7. Connect with your guests
People love to look at pictures of scenery, food, and people—and where better to find them than in a hotel? Grab a camera, take a walk around your property, go behind the scenes, and explore the neighborhood. Share photos and videos of staff at work, new menu items, guests enjoying their stay, and local scenery and activities. Be sure to ask for permission before posting people’s photos and tagging them.
Selfies are a great way to get travelers to spread the word about your hotel to friends. Encourage guests to take selfies on the property by making selfie sticks available and designating selfie spots. Display signage to show your account name and related hashtags for tagging photos.
8. Build a community
Engage other users by liking and commenting on their images. Search people that are interested in traveling and topics related to your hotel. Link your Instagram to other social networks and your website. You can hold contests to give your followers an incentive to share your photos. Create unique hashtags for your hotel and use them on your photos and on other channels as well.
9. Use hashtags
Instagram users are #hashtag happy. A hashtag is a word or phrase identified by the # sign used in social media to identify topics, themes, and brands. They are important on Instagram because you can’t add links to posts. Create hashtags for your hotel and campaigns and include them in posts along with other popular and relevant hashtags. Make sure you don’t use them in excess though.
10. Track mentions and performance
Use the “tags” and “places” filters to search for images tagged with your hotel name and related brands. Check your profile regularly to see who has tagged your hotel, and share appropriate photos on Facebook and Twitter. If an image is inappropriate, use the “Report Inappropriate” feature and click “Photo Options” to hide it from your profile. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t offer analytics as for now, but you can use other applications such as Hootsuite to track your performance.
Did you had any experience using Instagram for your business? Please let us know in comments.