Social Media is all about living in the moment, whether that means sharing a photo of a meal or a selfie at the hottest event in town. Moments are created every second by users, brands, and, most importantly, your competition. To keep up with what everyone is doing to engage their followers can be intimidating; the internet has 4.2 billion users – 3.03 billion of which are active social media users. That means three out of every four people using the internet have an active social media presence, with a new social media user joining every 15 seconds. Knowing the numbers, ensuring that your content performs well should be top of mind.
A social media manager is dedicated to your accounts – checking in regularly on new reviews, crafting posts that align with your marketing strategy, and responding to concerns that potential guests may have. All of this, and more, is done while having knowledge of the latest updates in social media and travel, as well as the direction that you want to take your content in. Still not convinced you need a dedicated social media manager? Read on.
Social Media Managers Have Time to Strategize For Your Hotel
Having a strategy for posting is the key to success and helps social media managers stay on brand for your hotel. A cohesive strategy, with room for optimization, allows social media managers to publish posts that your fans will enjoy and react to. A successful strategy takes time and energy, as it should be both planned out in advance and timely. Your social media manager will have content prepared to be publish at the click of a button; however, they stay tuned in to what is happening in and around the hotel – and on social media – so they can adapt their content plan accordingly. This also means being on top of the latest and most relevant holidays for your brand, whether that be Renaissance Hotels’ Global Day of Discovery or, if you are a hotel near Disney, Mickey Mouse’s birthday. A great way to keep all of these posts and holidays straight is with a content calendar.
Having a content calendar planned with relevant holidays and local events woven in is important; however, working with a social media at an agency can ensure a holistic strategy across all mediums. By having the same people working on your digital marketing initiatives under one roof, your social media manager can incorporate important dates – like a new website launch or an email marketing blast getting sent out – into their content calendars, ensuring that your hotel’s marketing messaging is perfectly timed.
A Social Media Manager Will Dedicate Time To Learning Your Niche
When working directly with an agency that has experience in the hospitality industry, the social media manager creating content for your accounts will have a firm grasp on related knowledge. Knowledge of which brands use which hashtags, how to appropriately respond to guest reviews, what the recommended colors and fonts for each brand are, along with the latest intel on travel, is at their fingertips. This inspires the content that goes out, from the wording of posts to the style of graphics used.
Additionally, social media managers have existing knowledge of what kind of content does and does not work for hotels. This could be as simple as a blurry photo performing poorly on Facebook, or as complex as certain hashtags performing better than others on Instagram. Beyond knowledge of the workings of social and the travel industry, they also have their agency colleagues who can offer ideas for new content or help to refresh old content. Having the best practices for each social channel at hand helps to create content that performs well, ensuring that monthly reports are something to look forward to.
Monthly Reporting
Once the stream of content has begun, the social media manager can analyze monthly reporting to determine what is and is not working. This is beneficial for both paid and organic efforts, as the two work well in tandem to increase awareness, following, and revenue. With monthly reporting, social media managers can pinpoint successes and misses in order to continue to use ideas that are working well and identify where to decrease efforts.
Social media managers can even drill down as far as what your audience looks like and who should be targeted in these posts, which could vary from site to site. For example, below, you can see the difference between one of our client’s Facebook fans (top image) and their Twitter followers (bottom image). Metrics like this can help guide ad targeting, post content, and the images utilized.
Reputation Management
Reputation management is more than just checking your hotel’s TripAdvisor reviews as often as you can. Since social media managers are practiced in responding to negative comments and tweets, they are also adept at responding to negative reviews and de-escalating situations in a thoughtful way. Responses are tactfully written, sensitive to the hotel’s reputation as well as the guest’s concerns, and posted in a timely manner so that the guest is not left feeling unheard.
So You Think You Need A Social Media Manager?
Having a social media manager can help take your hotel’s content to the next level, from the social realm to your marketing efforts as a whole. Especially when working in tandem with an agency that specializes in the hospitality industry, they have knowledge of the travel industry along with the ideas and help of their peers. Now that you know how having a dedicated social media manager can elevate your social media presence, are you ready to invest in one to enhance your social strategy? Let us know; our team of social experts is always open to offering insight on how we can help your hotel win on social media.
