Are you using videos as part of your hotel’s social media marketing mix? If not, you really should be, since visual content routinely drives more engagement than text posts across each of the major social media platforms.
Once you’re regularly including video content within your social media posts, these 4 tips will help you optimise your content to maximise views and engagement.
1: Hook your viewers within 5 seconds
Most viewers will decide whether to keep watching or abandon your video within the first 5 seconds or so, so use this tiny slot of time wisely. You can do this by posing a question that you go on to answer in your video, by offering a teaser of what’s to come, and by introducing your hotel’s unique value proposition.
Don’t forget that as much as 85% of video content on Facebook is viewed with no sound, so keep the camera moving and the visuals eye-catching and interesting. If you can entice your guests to turn on the sound, it will signal to Facebook that people are enjoying your videos.
2: Optimize your videos for social search
While most of your time will be spent making sure the content of your video is just right, once it’s done, there are a few important steps to ensure it actually gets discovered and clicked on.
When publishing to YouTube for example, we always recommend that you upload your video privately, so you can optimise it properly before it gets seen by your guests.
Come up with an engaging description, relevant tags, a script for guests viewing your content with closed captioning and most importantly, an interesting custom thumbnail and title that will provoke curiosity and drive clicks. Adding custom annotations, links and other CTAs within your videos will drive your guests to your other videos and website ready to book. If you can convince them to check out more of your videos, you’ll signal to YouTube that your content is high quality, which is a key step to improving your search ranking on the platform.
3. Engage with your audience
You know one of the best ways to watch your viewership rates grow? Engage with your viewers. Take time to respond to all their comments (both good and bad), ask them questions and encourage them to share their opinions. Fostering the kind of community where viewers can express themselves is integral to subscriber growth. If you’re using Snapchat or Facebook live, you can engage with your guests in real time. Acknowledge viewers who leave a comment or ask a question and let them know that their voices are being heard.
Remember that with live video, new viewers can join you at any point, so it’s a good idea to reintroduce yourself at several points during your broadcast if needed.
4: Use analytics to your advantage
Evaluating the performance of the videos you create will help steer future campaigns towards greater success. You can do this by delving into the analytics/insights section on YouTube or Facebook.
On YouTube, pay close attention to the viewer drop-off rate. Pinpoint the moment your audience seem to be dropping out of your videos – do you notice any common trends that could reveal problems to avoid moving forward? The second most important metric to investigate is the number of views over time. Do you have any videos that are actually steadily increasing in viewership? This could indicate the kind of content that really resonates with your audience.
For similar engagement data on Facebook, use Facebook Insights to find out your post reach, number of views, and percentage of viewers who watched for more than 30 seconds. Use these stats to determine the content type and video length that works best for your hotel on the platform.
Creating great videos and getting them seen by the right people can be a challenge, but the results are worth it when it comes to engaging your guests, showing off your hotel and driving bookings. How does your hotel use video content? Let us know in the comments below!
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