5 Bad Social Media Habits Itâ€™s Time to Break

Posted on Apr 6th 2016 in Social Media

Everyone has a bad habit (or two) that they just can’t quite break, whether it’s biting our fingernails, checking Facebook every 5 minutes or hitting the snooze button too often in the morning. The same is true when it comes to social media marketing. Except in that case, a bad habit can actually damage your online reputation and have a knock-on impact on your booking rates.

When used correctly, platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer a massive opportunity to engage your community, expand your online reach and influence your guests’ booking decisions. If you want to be one of those businesses that excels at social media, make sure you’re not guilty of any of these 5 damaging but easily avoidable social media marketing habits.

1. Automating Too Much

When you’re confronted with a mounting heap of tasks at the start of each working day, it can be tempting to turn to automation software as a quick fix. But while these tools are undeniably useful, they’re best used in moderation.

Depending on the automation tools your hotel uses to publish social content, you’ll notice that there are frequently problems with the ways that images and text are displayed across different platforms. These formatting issues mean that you’re not creating the best possible user experience for your guests. On top of this, taking a few moments to customise your content depending on the platform you’re publishing to can really make a difference when it comes to audience engagement.

2. Neglecting your Community

Your social followers are made up of previous guests, potential guests, key figures in the hospitality industry, and yes, perhaps a few trolls too.

If someone takes the time to engage with your hotel on social media it’s essential that you respond in a prompt and timely manner. True, not every comment requires a response, but if you’re not checking in on your community and joining in the conversation on a regular basis, your audience numbers will soon start to dwindle.

3. Talking Only About Yourself

Social media offers a great way to keep your audience up to date with any changes or developments going on at your hotel. But that’s not all it should be used for. The brands that are using social media most successfully are using it to provide real value to their audience. They are using it to solve their customers’ problems, discover their opinions, encourage conversations and show off the more personal, less corporate side of their business. If your last 5 updates were all related to the great expansion plans your hotel has for the near future, you’re doing it wrong.

4. Not Embracing Visuals

Your audience is inundated with content from a huge array of brands across numerous different social networks. If you want to have any chance at all of getting noticed amidst this ocean of content, it’s vital that you get creative with visuals.

Choosing the right eye-catching image to accompany your text posts can be the difference between your guests clicking on your post to engage with your hotel, or scrolling past your content entirely. Try running purely visual based campaigns, (a contest asking guests to share holiday photos around a theme is ideal) and don’t forget to optimise images for each platform you use.

5. Forgetting to Advertise

With such huge competition for your guests’ attention, social advertising has become an increasingly important component of any social media strategy. It’s not possible to reach your whole social audience organically, but by budgeting a little for advertising, you can achieve pretty good exposure.

With this in mind, we recommend that you reserve a small portion of your marketing budget to spend on boosting your most important posts and ads each month.

Quick fixes and bad habits you might once have been able to get away with will no longer cut it with today’s super savvy social media audience. There’s still plenty of great ways to interact and engage with your audience, you just have to be slightly more sophisticated in your approach.

Is your hotel guilty of any of these bad social media habits? Let us know in the comments below!