Hospitality Social Media – 9 Reasons You Should Use it

If your hospitality business lacks a social media presence or doesn’t post frequently enough, you’re missing out.

What hospitality social media strategies should you follow?

To build your hospitality social media presence, you should post valuable content that increases trustworthiness and authority while establishing your brand. You should also focus on responding to comments to build relationships. Below are 9 reasons to utilize social media for your hospitality brand.

1. Improve brand awareness
2. Get social proof
3. Build relationships
4. Increase inbound traffic
5. Manage reputation
6. Improve SEO
7. Strengthen trust
8. Increase leads
9. Meet customer expectations

This guide will provide useful tips and strategies, including more details on the methods mentioned above.

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important to Hospitality Brands?

Hospitality is all about serving the customer, so hospitality social media content is merely an extension of that. You can use your social media accounts not only as a place to educate and even entertain your audience, but to accommodate them as well.

How? Here are some methods for your social media strategy.

Post Your Contact Information at the Top of Your Profile

Sure, if you have a completed Google Business Profile, your customers, or would-be customers, can always find your info there. For those who’d rather skip the Google search and are already on social media though, posting your contact information there makes your hospitality business easier to connect with.

Those who visit your social media page will see your website and other social links right at the top of your profile. You can even include a phone number or call-to-action button to message your account so a prospective customer or current customer can contact you. 

Respond to Comments as They Come In

As your social media presence grows, so too will the number of comments you get on each of your posts. While you’ll likely never be able to respond to every single comment, you should do your best to reply to as many as you can. 

If you’re having a hard time determining which comments to reply to, prioritize the ones from customers who are asking questions about your hospitality service as well as any complaints you receive. 

Should an exchange become overwhelmingly negative, you should know when to move it to more personal channels instead. Those can include direct messages or DMs, but might also be a customer service hotline or email address.

Reply to Direct Messages

Speaking of DMs, you must also take the time to address those as they come in. Some customers or prospective customers feel more comfortable sending private messages than they do leaving a comment or writing on your wall.

Once you reply to all your outstanding DMs, you’ll have to refresh periodically to check whether any new messages came in. After all, according to HootSuite, on Twitter, 59 percent of brands tweet a reply to users in 15 minutes or less. Don’t leave customers hanging for too long! 

Track Business Mentions

Here’s another important facet: reviewing your business mentions.

Users on platforms such as Twitter or Facebook might not @ you directly, but they could still talk about you to their friends, family, and colleagues.

By searching and reviewing business mentions, you get an unfiltered view into what your audience thinks of you, good or bad. Your hospitality company can take the bad posts and use them as a launching pad to improve your customer service even further.  

9 Reasons to Utilize Hospitality Social Media

If you’re still not totally convinced that social media is right for your business, here are 9 reasons that social media use is so integral in this industry. 

1. Improve Brand Awareness

What is your hospitality brand? Maybe those in your city or town are aware, and perhaps you’re even known statewide. If you hope to grow to household name status someday, that includes growing your brand so it rolls off the tip of the tongue.

Social media can be a huge vehicle to increase your hospitality brand awareness. Perhaps you partner with an influencer and increase your brand that way.

You can also take the slow-and-steady approach, posting consistently good content that gets people talking and–more importantly–sharing among their own social circles. 

As you begin posting on social media, your hospitality business must establish its brand identity if you haven’t already. That identity includes the usage of a logo, your color scheme, and your tone. 

As a hospitality business, you want a warm and inviting tone that comforts users and makes them feel cared for. Remember that the tone should be easily replicated, as multiple people might handle writing posts and responding to comments and DMs. 

2. Get Social Proof

Social media is a great place to generate social proof for your hospitality brand.

Social proof can influence the actions of others based on what the majority has done. Using the example from the last section, as part of your hospitality social media marketing, let’s say you do work with an influencer.

If that influencer tells everyone to stay at your hotel or visit your restaurant, what do you think will happen? Not every single one of the influencer’s audience members will do it, but enough will that you should see a significant uptick in business.

When customers have a great experience and leave reviews on your social media accounts, these reviews become part of your social proof that can inspire other customers to try your business. 

3. Build Relationships

Hospitality is all about relationships, more so than many other industries. We already talked in the last section about how you can use hospitality social media as a customer service vehicle. 

Many of those points we touched on are used for building relationships with current and prospective customers alike. When you reply to comments and answer DMs, you’re establishing a connection with your audience. 

Even rectifying poor customer service can patch up a relationship with a customer enough that they might be willing to give your hospitality business a second chance. 

4. Increase Inbound Traffic

You might recall how we said you can post a link to your website on your social media profiles, right? That’s one way of several that you can boost inbound traffic to your site.

Your social media profile will include a bio, but since these are often character-restricted, you might not be able to get the full point across in that short bio. If a customer or prospective customer wants to learn more, they can click on your website.

Here’s another way to generate more inbound website traffic from your hospitality social media accounts: cross-post content between your social media and your website, especially your blog. 

If you know what your social media audience likes and you believe they’d appreciate a blog post, then you can share a link to that post on your social media accounts. Your post might display a preview of the blog article, but to read the whole thing, users would have to click on your website.

Once they arrive on your hospitality website, you can use lead magnets to encourage sign-ups to your mailing list. 

5. Manage Reputation

A hospitality business wants as sterling of a reputation as possible, and through social media, that may be doable. 

As we’ve discussed, on some social media platforms such as Facebook, users can leave reviews of your hospitality services. These reviews are independent of your Google Business Profile reviews as well as reviews of your services that might exist elsewhere on the Internet such as on Yelp.

Reviews are either turned on or off on Facebook, so you can’t cherry-pick them. If you’re happy with the level of positive reviews your hospitality business has garnered, then you might choose to display the reviews. 

You can also manage your reputation by addressing negative comments and DMs as they popup, which we’ve touched on. If a customer sees a negative comment and then your quick response where you try to fix the issue, they might feel more confident that if they had an issue too, you’d offer the same level of customer service. 

6. Improve SEO

Social media and SEO might not have an obvious connection, but through social media, you can indirectly influence your SEO. 

How so? In several ways, such as increasing your brand reputation and recognition. You’re also generating more organic traffic, which Google pays attention to. Your posts might have a longer lifespan when you share them across social media, which can also positively affect your SEO efforts.  

7. Strengthen Trust

Trust is everything in a relationship, and that includes professional relationships as well. If your hospitality business is looking to build more trust among your customer base, use social media. 

Increasing your customer service through social media (and other means) remains the best way to encourage trust among your audience. Posting testimonials and reviews is another way to generate more trust.

Sharing high-authority content that’s backed up by research and data can increase trust in your hospitality business as well. 

8. Increase Leads

Every business wants more leads, including hospitality. Through your hospitality social media campaign, you might see an influx of leads come through. 

According to a 2019 survey done by eMarketer, 82 percent of respondents said Facebook is their top social media platform for lead gen. That’s followed by LinkedIn at 48 percent, Instagram at 43 percent, and Twitter at 15 percent.

Here are some social media lead gen tips to try:

• Optimize your social media profiles so they are 100 percent complete. Every six months, double-check that all the info is current as well.
• Host a contest or giveaway, ensuring your prize is one your audience is interested in.
• Cross-post blog content to your social media accounts.
• Use paid social media advertising. 

9. Meet Customer Expectations

The last reason to use social media is to meet the expectations of your customers.

According to comment management resource Status Brew, most customers are willing to wait about an hour for DM replies from a brand on social media. 

That’s not the only expectation your customers have of you. They also expect you to be on social media. More than having a blank profile though, your customers want you to maintain a healthy social media presence. 

Conclusion

Hospitality social media campaigns are a valuable way of building trust, strengthening customer relationships, generating leads, earning more website traffic, and improving your customer service – both organic and paid efforts. 

If you’re struggling with your social media marketing, Mediaboom can help. Our digital marketing experts can grow your leads, brand awareness, and website traffic as well as help with any other goal you’re trying to fulfill through social media. Contact us today to find out how we can help take your brand to the next level through a free, 30-minute online consultation.