The when and how
So now you know which department is responsible for social media — PR and marketing — the next question is, how long should they be spending on it?
If you’re finding yourself spending all day browsing Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you should probably get out more. According to our experts, it is not necessary, nor healthy.
You should sit yourself down with a cup of tea and dedicate around one hour every day to managing the hotel’s social media platforms, plus some extra time on the side to do the all-important yet all-to-often-neglected planning.
“Usually the biggest issue is there’s no planning,” says Parsons. “I still don’t understand why any department of the hotel doesn’t have social media content prepared in advance.
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When it comes to anything else, it’s planned months in advance. But with social media it seems to be a last-minute ditch. It should be planned in line with other marketing campaigns.
“The amount of time spent on social media can be reduced if hoteliers start planning. Spend 30 minutes in the morning reviewing what’s been said, what content needs to be distributed and then again in the afternoon.”
This method is not the only method, however. It depends how far you want to take social media. Le Méridien Dubai online marketing manager Madiha Zakir, who Parsons describes as one of the most active hoteliers on social media in the region, says she does not have fixed timings to manage the platforms.
“Le Méridien Dubai accounts are always open on my desktop and smart phone throughout the day. I do however spend more time on Le Méridien Dubai’s Twitter profile assisting our guests with any query or responding to their feedback regarding their stay or dining experience,” she says.
Similarly, Starwood Hotels & Resorts senior manager – digital field marketing for the Middle East Jitendra Jain says it is difficult to put an exact time spend on social media.
“Our guests are active on social media throughout the day and night; at all hours, so we want to interact with them as much as possible. With the resources we have in place, we are able to continue an ongoing dialogue with our guests across our social media platforms,” he says.
Being a large international hotel operator, Starwood benefits from having a digital marketing team, in-house hotel social media champions and often uses social media consultants.
But monitoring social media can be made easier with cheap, some even free, tools such as Hootsuite.com, a social media dashboard allowing hotels to monitor, respond and manage their social media accounts from a single website.
The platform enables companies to utilise the built-in link shortening and tracking tools, as well as providing the ability to be able to pre-schedule posts at a time of convenience. Furthermore, its inbuilt reporting functionality provides a great way for hotels to be able to see what is working for them across their different social media accounts.
Or, try Social Mention, a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.
The site allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your hotel, even your neighbour’s hotel, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time.
If you do not like what they are saying, skip to the ‘When things go wrong’ part of this article.
To effectively plan — and pre-schedule posts, on your newly-downloaded Hootsuite account — you first need to learn how to engineer a social media hit. Think ‘viral’. Or at least try to post something interesting.
“Everything is social. Social Media can be used as a marketing, customer service or distribution channel. It is part of our everyday life now and the key to a hotel’s success is unique content. You have to ask yourself, ‘what sets you apart from your competitors?’ ‘What are your fans more interested in… rooms or F&B content?’
Parsons breaks down social media content into three core categories, so you’ve got informational, conversational and incentivise types of content.
“So if you’re posting informational content, you might want to tell people if you have recently won an award, expose them to what is happening at your hotel,” he says.
“Then you’ve got conversational when people give you feedback. So chef may be creating a new menu and they can’t decide between tomato soup and mushroom soup so you ask your fans what they would like to see on your menu.”
And finally there are the incentive posts, or bribes, aimed at luring guests to your hotel with a special offer or a competition, for example.
Do not forget to link back to your website, Parsons — like your fans — gets angry when he sees hotel incentive posts minus a web address or even contact details, and he becomes even more infuriated when your staff are apparently clueless that such an offer exists when you telephone the hotel to book it.
“Too many hotels, when they’re promoting offers, they’re not linking to their website so how are they going to monitor return on investment for room bookings. It’s crazy,” complains Parsons.
“And when it comes to dining, put a phone number and in preparation make sure the people that answer the phone know in advance what offer has been on social media”.
QUICK CASE STUDY 2:
The Hotel: Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates, UAE
The Leader: Jitendra Jain, senior manager, digital field marketing Middle East, Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Objective
Sheraton is our largest brand and most popular brand in the world. It was important for us to build our own platform to resonate with the Sheraton brand and also operate as per our social media guidelines.
Strategy
At Starwood we have our own social media guidelines and best practices, which we used to activate the platforms for Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates.
It’s been a complete team effort, between Starwood’s digital marketing team, the hotels in-house social media champion and a social media consultant, to develop a social media presence for the hotel.
The Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates hotel is a new hotel for us, so it is important to first build awareness of the hotel across all major social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.
We are reaching out to our Sheraton customers, our loyal SPG members, global travellers and residents of the GCC, to introduce the hotel, its signature Sheraton experiences and other offerings.
All associates are aware of the changes at the hotel, which include the new social media platforms, in addition to other communication tools.
Results
Since the launch of the Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates social media platforms, we have significantly increased awareness of the hotel and its features. Our focus in the coming months will be to continue building that awareness and to highlight our upcoming offers and services.
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