Before you dismiss social media as being ineffective, revisit your strategy, especially now. Are you making these common mistakes?

Social media is an invaluable tool in a property’s arsenal nowadays, as it facilitates immediate feedback and connection with potential guests. Yet it is not uncommon to hear property owners saying social media is ineffective for them.

If you feel the same, revisit our strategy. Are you making one of the common mistakes below? Before you give up on this channel, fix these issues and reassess your social media performance.

1. Not being active

If you believe social media is not right for your demographic, you are wrong. It is a common misconception that social media is only for teenagers and tech-savvy. Social media has penetrated all layers of our society. If you manage to put together an effective social media strategy, you will have an upper hand.

2. Not responding

Social media marketing is meant to be social. That’s what makes it so powerful and so effective. Think of it more as a relationship-building tool than a direct sales platform for at least 80% of the time.

You want to stay on time of engagement on every platform you’re on. That means watching for comments, questions, and messages on public and private posts on every single individual platform.

Respond as promptly as you can, ideally in five hours or less but always within 24 hours, and as thoroughly as possible. If needed, let users know where they can go to find more information or have an issue resolved by your customer support team. Don’t ignore or delete negative comments – address them.

3. Not using great visuals and videos

From using tired stock photos and bad graphics, or even forgetting to include visuals altogether, properties that don’t use imaging and videos to their advantage are missing the mark. Nowhere is a rich and good visual more important than on social media. And, a bad graphic is more than just ugly. With more than 100 million people watching video content on social channels every day, expect greater engagement where used.

4. Bad grammar

iMAgin IF u Had To READ a sentence LIKE this.

Social media users don’t make spelling errors, grammatical mistakes or typos kindly. Don’t let flawed content slip through the cracks. Check, double-check, and triple-check your social media posts before they go live. PS: Use Grammarly – great tool to use to keep on top of these easily avoidable mistakes.

5. Missing call to action

Your killer strategy and engaged potential guests are a wasted effort if you do not provide a clear direction you want them to take – a.k.a. call to action. How do they book or see more about your service? Try to make the path-to-purchase easy and clear with addition of buttons and links. All social channels have buttons to use within posts – make sure you leverage these.

6. Incomplete and outdated profiles

Your beautiful content is of no use if information about your property is less than appealing, or worse still – incomplete. All elements of your social media pages have a job – posts inspire, reviews establish trust, services provide a quick tour of your property, contact information, etc. Every element must be completed as it is only when they all come together is a beautiful story created.

7. Too much brand talk

Would you like to hang out with someone who only talks about himself? Why would people want to follow your social media channels if you only make the conversations about yourself – your news, your events, your rooms, your services, etc. This can get pretty boring, pretty quickly. To succeed in social media, you not only have to speak the language of the audience, but you have to tell them what they want to hear. Make it about them. Make it for them.

8. Not having a plan

Social Media Marketing can be a colossal waste of time without a proper plan of action. Sporadic posts will get you nowhere. You should have specific goals, budgets and a concrete plan of action that outlines what you are trying to accomplish, how you will achieve your goal, how you will measure results, and what resources you will need to allocate.

9. Using too many social media channel

Test all social media channels (if needed), but if any of the networks becoming too difficult to manage or are not generating the engagement you expect, be smart and eliminate them from your strategy.

10. Not identifying your target audience

Understanding who your target audience is critical for social media success. It is important to create guest personas and establishing their content and travel preferences.

Source: https://blog.staah.com/featured/10-social-media-mistakes-hotels-can-avoid-especially-in-times-of-crisis