Nowadays we are spending most of the time on social media and we wish to be able to create the ‘perfect’ content which will attract all the customers and we are starting asking questions like: how to create the content? What should include in the content? How my profile should look like?
This article has the main objective to teach you how to relate on social media, also you’ll find the latest 2016 social media tips:
What is the main goal of the social media page? What is your goal in using a social media platform? We think that the main goal is to convince people paying attention to you. How to do it?
First of all we need to focus on how to optimize your profile:
Choose a neutral name
Before we work on your profile, let’s pick a good screen name. The easiest way in choosing the name – imagine the same name in two-five years from now. Now pick a name.
You probably already have a screen name, but the longer you use a lousy one, the harder it will be to change it later, and the more negative effects it will cause. Our recommendation is that you use a simple and logical screen name. Here is an example: Let’s say your hotel’s name is Strawberry. So – the screen name will be Hotel Strawberry – try to avoid shortness like – H.S or Hotel S. or H. Strawberry, etc… This is not the place for complexity, so make it easy for people to find and remember you.
Optimize for five seconds
As a customer I can be impressed by your page or loosing my time. This decision happens in five seconds. In those seconds you need to decide how would you like to capture my attention. Your profile should inspire – trustworthy and competency. Your Avatar tells a story. What story would you like to transmit to your customer? Inspire with a great story. Bio is an important tool on social media too. You don’t want to mess up using the wrong words. That Bio is a summary of work experience in your business niche.
Focus Avatar on your company
Avatar or the Profile picture as we are used to say d0es two important things. First one – validates who you are. Second – Tells what kind of business you are. What is the impression you would like to share about your business?
Name URL
You can get a vanity URL for your Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn account. That means people will see this kind of link:
https://www.facebook.com/HoteloPro/?fref=ts
If you don’t get a vanity URL, people will see this kind of link, which is much harder to remember:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16223278947…
Here are the instructions for Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Like domain names, it’s too late to get many vanity URLs, but almost anything is better than twenty-one random numbers. Also, coming up with a vanity URL is a good test of your cleverness.
Now that you know how to configure your page it’s time to feed the content monster.
Make a plan
Planning is the most important part. If you define planning as spending six months on hiring an agency to map out and achieve strategic goals for you – you may fail someday. However, most people need a tactical and logical plan to support what they want to accomplish with social media. Follow these three simple steps:
- Figure out how to make money.
- Figure out what kind of people you need to attract to make money.
- Figure out what those people want to read (which is probably different from what you want them to read).
Reshare
Wait, what? Yes, I said it. Reshare others posts it’s not a sin. It’s nice when people like and share your posts. It’s great when people share with you their comments. Sharing your posts is the ultimate compliment, because it means that people are risking their reputations on what you’ve written. But that’s not all – In order to gain more traffic on your page – you may try sharing others posts. Theoretically, you follow people because of the quality of what they share. Therefore, it makes sense to watch what they share, cherry-pick the best stuff, and share it too. If you don’t reshare much of their stuff, it means you’re following the wrong people. For sure you’ll find something interesting to share like a food recipe or some flower decoration for hotel’s rooms. Share what is popular. This may feel like cheating, but it helps feed the Content Monster. There are many ways to discover what’s already popular and to share these stories. For example, something that’s trending on StumbleUpon might not have hit Google+ yet. Don’t worry about sharing something that “everyone” has already seen, because there are billions of people and millions of stories.
These are just some few ideas of how to feed the content monster. Let’s focus our attention on how to create your ‘perfect’ post.
Create and curate content
As we like to say everytime – Content is the king of social media. There are two main types of content: content created by your business, and content created by others and shared by your business. Before creating the content strive to be valuable. Offer to your readers valuable information; analysis; assistance and entertainment.
Be visual
You’re competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don’t capture their interest quickly.
Based by our experience we suggest you that a great post should have two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and one hundred characters on Twitter. Every post should contain a picture, graphic, or video. According to a study by Skyword, “On average, total views [of its clients’ content] increased by 94% if a published article contained a relevant photograph or infographic when compared to articles without an image in the same category.”
Be targeted
Sharing funny pictures may get people’s attention, but if your messaging isn’t relevant to your hotel, it probably won’t help your business. Focus on content that somehow ties back to your hotel, location and travel in general, as well as related topics like food and beverage, shopping and business travel.
Optimize Content
Create content that gets the attention of travelers, answers their questions, add links and calls to action to direct them where to find out more and how to make a booking. At the same time, optimize content for search engine algorithms by labeling it with your hotel name, location and description. For website and content, integrate SEO features like title tags, meta tags, keywords and links. For social media content, use ‘mentions (@) & hashtags (#)’. Hashtags are a beautiful thing. They connect posts from people all over the world and add structure to an otherwise unstructured ecosystem. When you add a hashtag to a post, you are telling people the post is relevant to a shared topic. For example, #hotel on Google+ connects posts that are about hotels.
Be active
By active we suggest to have three to fifteen different posts per day. That’s a guideline. As long as your posts are good, you can share more than that. But if you share one or two crappy posts per day, that’s too much. Some people will complain about the higher volume, but don’t sweat it. They will either get used to the increase or unfollow you. What matters is the net effect: are you adding followers and gaining reshares? As I mentioned before, if you’re not pissing someone off on social media, you’re not using it aggressively enough.
Be promotional
Did you ever tried to be promotional? We hardly ever do this, as a matter of pride and principle, but paying to promote posts on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter can work. This ensures that more people will see your posts. Facebook, in particular, is becoming a“pay to play” platform. For example, you could “pay to promote” a post with a call to action for booking your hotel’s room.
If you refuse to pay to promote your posts (you can’t be serious), you can “pin” your posts to the top of your page on Facebook and Twitter. This means that the post remains as the first visible story at the top of your Timeline. This isn’t as effective as paying for promotion, but it’s free.
We learned about how to create a good social media profile, how to feed the content monster and also how to create your awesome post. Now we are going to look in how to integrate social media and blogging.
Add Share Buttons
Make sharing your blog posts friction-free by adding share buttons to your blog. Here’s how to install the Google+ button and the Facebook Like box.
Entice People to Follow You
Include links to your social-media accounts on your blog so that people can easily follow you. If your blog is interesting, people will follow you on social media, and if your social media is interesting, people will read your blog.
Start an E-mail List
Old school e-mail lists remain a powerful marketing tool. Are you still receiving email newsletters? Good! Why are you not sending too?
We use a product called MailChimp for our e-mail lists.
Here are some tips for creating effective e-mails:
- Create a custom graphic. Pure text is boring, so add one graphic to your e-mail. More than one graphic, however, makes an e-mail look like direct-marketing spam.
- Keep it short. The ideal length of an e-mail is fewer than five sentences that explain who, what, why, and when—in that order.
- Provide a complete signature. A signature is the area at the bottom of an e-mail that contains the writer’s contact information. Be sure you provide your title, e-mail address, and phone number, along with icons that link to your blog and social-media accounts. WiseStamp is one service that creates excellent e-mail signatures.
- Don’t spam people. Obey the guidelines for sending e-mail only to people who request it.
Stand out from the crowd:
Be personal and tell a story! Hotels have so many things to tell; even a fifteen-room motel along the highway can have a great story.
Because we love to inspire and help our readers here are 2 more marketing tips you may take in consideration.
Share your thoughts via Instagram
Instagram is a great way to share information in real-time. What a great way to share special deals or offerings.
Restaurants should send out the regular food and drink specials and hotels should send out any deals for last minute getaways.
Do not send boring surveys
It seems that after every hotel stay, a few days later I get a survey that “will take just a few moments of my time.” They tell us how much they “value your opinion”. It’s just annoying that hotels have a take, take, take attitude. Why not give instead? Share something interesting instead of asking for my valuable time.
If you find this article useful – please let us know in the comments section bellow.