So You’re Ready to Get Serious About Social Media?  On-Property Ideas to Build Your Following

So, you want more fans for your hotel’s Facebook page and other social media outlets?  Budget is an issue?  Welcome to the club.  Here are some grassroots efforts you can implement to build your hotel’s social media fan base and help you reach your share of Facebook’s one million users.  The great thing is, these efforts focus on communicating with your guests, which is the foundation of great guest service anyway.

Is someone on your team resisting the social media wave?  If reaching one billion users spending over two hours per day on Facebook is not enticing, perhaps helping them recognize the value of free advertising will convert them.  Using a basically free medium to publicly display your property’s personality, your commitment to guest service, and your special offers and promotions is invaluable.   A Facebook page should be thought of as a mini-website you can update continuously at virtually no cost where you can actually have a conversation with a guest.

One thing has been proven: communicating with your guests in real time, publicly via the Internet is here to stay.  So, let’s look at some ideas to build your audience, make the most of this medium and use it to find new guests.  Some of these ideas are basics but, we often see properties going for the complicated stuff and overlooking the basic steps all the time.  Here are some practical grassroots, no or low cost ways you can build your hotel’s social media fan base:

Include a link to your profiles on all property communications and invite guests to connect:

• Reservation confirmations
• Post-stay email follow-up
• Sales proposals
• At your Internet logon if your brand gives you control of messaging

Direct your service personnel to invite your guests to connect at every interaction

• Check-in/Check-out
• In your restaurant at point of sale
• Your spa
• Include “social media” cards in guest room key packets with incentives for liking your page or checking in. Make these dual purpose – place your TripAdvisor information on one side, Facebook on the other.
• Include “social media” cards in F&B checks.  Consider including a special offer for ‘liking’ your page.

Invite contacts to connect on all Sales and Catering communications:

• Meeting attendee notepads and F&B menus
• Meeting sales kits
• Drink coupons and offers for meeting attendees
• Group landing pages

Display signage in high-traffic and high guest-contact areas:

• Elevator clings
• Point of sale in F&B and sundry outlets
• Signage at the front desk
• Include info on guestroom signage about promotional offers and giveaways they will receive

Hold team “signup” contests to get guests to visit and post on the property’s Facebook page.  Have the guest include the team member’s name in the post.

Let Existing Fans Do the Work for You

Encourage fans to post candid images via Instagram using a #hashtag you designate. When you’re ready, share the image.  This will help drive your Instagram following and drive fans to look for their images on your Facebook page.

Provide guests incentives to connect by liking your page or checking in.  Simple ideas include:

• Like us and receive a discount on your check
• Like us and receive a percentage off your stay
• Check in three times and receive a free appetizer

I know this one has a cost involved, but, consider this part of your advertising budget.  And, with each of these, you’re not spending money until you sell something, so you still win.

These last few are concepts hoteliers have not yet embraced fully.  Last week I attended a Content Strategy meetup in Dallas.  The presenter, industry expert Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, made a key point that I think hoteliers need to really get on board with in order to fully realize their social media potential:  Let your guests do the talking.  They’re in your building every day.  They’re talking about your product.  If you’re doing a great job (and we know you are), invite them to sell for you.  Social media has put the power in their hands, now your task is to let them know you invite their participation, that you welcome it. Give them the tools to tie it all back to you so you can make the best use of all their images, links, discussions, check-ins and posts.  If you aren’t actively participating and taking advantage of these tools, frankly, you’re missing a huge opportunity – approximately 1 billion of them.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by social media?  Not sure how to manage it all?  All Things Hospitality offers customized social media management packages to help hotels manage and get the most of their social media investment.  Interested in the signage and print ideas for finding new fans?  Discount signage and print materials are available for All Things Hospitality Social Media clients.  Click here to contact ATH.

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Facebook is presenting your hotel with a PRIME opportunity to extend your reach, build your fan base and drive your return on investment with Graph Search.  This dynamic new search tool is in limited beta testing in the US now, which is the perfect window of opportunity for hotels to gear up to take advantage of Graph Search’s full launch.

Why Hotels Should Care About Graph Search

Graph Search is a way for Facebook users to search images, people and pages in a highly dynamic way. According to the Facebook site, Graph Search will help you “Find more of what you’re looking for through your friends and connections”. Results are completely individual and driven by users’ friends, location and interests.  A sample search for “People who like cycling and live in Seattle, Washington” would return results like this:

Facebook Graph Search – Sample Friends Image Search

Graph Search can also be used to discover pages, restaurants, hotels, businesses and services that you may like based on your friend’s interactions.  A search for “Restaurants in London my friends have been to” returned these results:

Facebook Graph Search – Sample Places Restaurant Search

This can be very valuable for hotels and restaurants since consumer buying decisions are heavily influenced by recommendations of friends and family.  How can you increase your hotel’s chances of being included in Graph Search results?

Facebook Search Rankings

Facebook currently uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine which posts are displayed in a user’s News Feed. There’s speculation Open Graph will use a similar method to rank search results based on page or app activity including:

• Fan base size and activity level
• Number of check-ins
• Location of the user searching
• Relevancy to the user and the user’s friends

This makes healthy fan activity on your page extremely important. It will increase your chances of being included in Graph Search results.  Now is the time to optimize your page for the full public roll-out of Graph Search.  This list of action steps will help your property prepare.

Update Your About Information

It’s crucial your “About” information is accurate so you’re returned in the correct results. You don’t want your San Antonio, Texas hotel returned in results for San Antonio, Venezuela and excluded from Texas because your address is not correct.

• Verify your location is optimized so you appear in the geographical-based searches correctly
• Check the three categories to which you are associated. Use all three – if you have a food and beverage operation, include those
• Include a detailed description of your services including keywords
• Outline your hours of operation and any other detailed relevant information
• Include information about your meeting/event space and catering services
• Include a link to your vanity or brand website, your property’s TripAdvisor page -any piece of information that will improve your chances of being included in search results

Share, Share, Share

Images still receive the most interaction from fans as shown by numerous research studies.  Here’s one simple graphic from Track Social that drives this point home.

Include images in as many posts as possible. Focus on images that will garner the highest fan engagement. Follow these guidelines:

• Images that originate from you should be high-quality and should reflect brand values
• Look for opportunities to capture candid images that show the personality of your property, staff and guests
• Consider putting several management team members in charge of candid image recon
• Modern mobile phones and apps like Instagram make capturing and editing solid images fairly straightforward
• Encourage your fans to capture and post candid images of them at your property
• Use Instagram hashtags to easily attach the images to your property’s assets and retrieve and use them later when you’re ready (You’ll need an Instagram profile to do this)

Grab and be tagged in lots of great candid guest images and your property will show up in searches all over the place like this…free advertising!

Sample Graph Search – Image Search

Encourage Check-ins

From a hotel and restaurant perspective, the search of Check-ins within Graph Search could be one of its most promising features. This will allow users to identify services and places their friends have visited or liked.

Imagine a couple is planning a weekend getaway to the wine country. They may perform a search like “Hotels in the California wine country my friends have been to”. The more fans you’ve had check in to your California wine country property, the more likely you are to show in the results. Now is the time to drive check-ins. Here are some creative ideas you can implement to encourage fans to check-in to your hotel on Facebook:

• On-property messaging with counter cards, key packet-inserts, elevator signage, etc. Contact All Things Hospitality for cost effective print options on eco-friendly GoGreen paper stocks.
• Use in-room collateral with creative messaging like “Now that you’re settled in, it’s time to check-in”
• Remind guests at every interaction to check-in and like your page – remind them of the incentives to do so
• Provide incentives for check-in – think of the cost as part of your advertising budget…advertising with endless reach that will work for you virally! (Example: We saw a check–in at one property reach over 5,000 users on Facebook in one day BEFORE Graph Search.)
• Visit our blog in the coming weeks for great ideas for driving check-ins

Build Your Fan Base

With the existing EdgeRank algorithm, the more popular your page is, the more likely you are to appear in your fans’ News Feed. Graph Search will work in much the same way, with popularity of your page weighting the results. Focus on building your fan base through creative means. Check back next week for our post “Grass Roots Efforts to Build Your Hotel’s Social Media Fan Base”.

Prep Your Profile Image

Your profile photo will appear in search, so ensure it:

• Has a strong visual connection to your brand
• Does not blend with your cover photo and is 620X620 pixel resolution
• Include a product shot if your brand isn’t well known.
• If you’re a restaurant, include an image that’s representative of your menu or ambiance
• If you’re part of a larger brand like Marriott, include a property-specific term like your location to distinguish you from other locations

Facebook Graph Search – Sample Places Search Result

Graph Search makes engagement more important than ever. Before the launch of Graph Search, encouraging users to interact with you in these key ways will increase the likelihood that you appear in search results for your services. Optimizing your page now will help ensure your success later.

Need help optimizing your page or preparing for the full launch of Graph Search? Need help managing social media in general? Contact All Things Hospitality for a free Facebook page analysis. We offer full service Social Media Management for hotels along with a full line of marketing services for hotels. We would love to help you get your social media house in order!

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Last week Facebook announced big changes to the News Feed.  This can mean good things for hotel and marketers looking to get their message in front Facebook users.  According to Facebook, the new News Feed has removed the clutter with ‘vibrant new visuals to bring the News Feed to life’.  Here are a few tips to help hoteliers optimize your content for the new Facebook News Feed:

The Cover Photo

Of all the changes, we’re most excited about the change to the ‘Like’ story format. This is a prime opportunity to expand your reach each time you gain a new like and deliver strong visual messaging to a large audience. It also makes your cover photo and profile image more important than ever because it will be displayed more often.

Each time a Facebook user likes your page, their friends will see a much larger image of the page in the story, including your cover photo and profile image as shown above. This is intended to drive higher engagement with fans and friends of fans on the story and through page likes.

Implement these action steps to improve your chances of gaining likes:

• Ensure your cover photo is engaging, vibrant and tells a story about your property or business
• Make sure it will mesh well with the text placement and color in the final rollout Facebook deploys. Test it in several views. (Your home page view, a user’s page view, etc.) 
• Test your profile image placement against your cover photo to ensure important elements are not hidden
• Check the categories to which your page is associated since they will now be displayed below your page name

Page Post Changes

In the new News Feed, page posts that feature photos promise larger images that bring the News Feed to life. From a marketing standpoint, this will also deliver more ad space and room for ad copy in your creative, though Facebook is not exploring that topic yet. For practical purposes now, hoteliers can keep these tips in mind to optimize their posts for the new Facebook News Feed:

• Create images using the new width of 552 pixels wide
• The post text will be overlayed on the photo in white requiring a little more thought when selecting the image to be used.
• A dark gradient will be applied so the white text will stand out against the image. Select images that will not be affected by the dark background across the top quarter of the image. 
• Be judicious about the amount of text used in the post copy so you don’t overrun your image with text

Places Will Also See Changes

During the News Feed update announcement, Facebook indicated Places will also see changes. Julie Zhou, director of design at Facebook explained, “We’re giving places the prominence they deserve with a map that tells you where they [the places] are and information about the place that allows you to dive in.”

From what we’ve seen, when a friend checks into a business or store on Facebook, their friends will see additional information about the place in their News Feed and larger map pictures than before.

This is exciting news as we have always seen the check-in as a big area of opportunity for hotels to connect in a more meaningful way with guests and potential guests.  Make sure you’re ready by optimizing your page for places. Not sure how to do this? Contact All Things Hospitality for a free Facebook page analysis.

Upcoming Events Display

When creating events, consider character count limitations for the new layout:

See the Changes in Action

Facebook is famous for on-going tweaks, so you’ll want to watch for minor adjustments here and there. Click here to be added to the waiting list to have your personal page converted to the new layout so you can see your changes on your page and how they’re translating to your fans’ News Feeds.

Not everyone appreciates change as much as others, but, overall we’re excited about the new Facebook News Feed and the opportunity for hotels to make the best use of the changes. We think Facebook is a fantastic medium for connecting with family & friends and for hotels to connect more deeply with their guests and potential guests. Any refresh that reinvigorates or excites users is a good thing and this design shift could help keep Facebook moving in the right direction.  A few tweaks to the way you create your content will help ensure you take advantage of the new Facebook News Feed to keep you connected to your guests and potential guests.

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