5 social tips to try: agency dos and don'ts

Iconsulthotels FZE owner Martin Kubler's dos and don'ts when outsourcing social media activities to an agency

1 Get support when it matters: Even if you don’t want to outsource your social media activities to an agency, consider hiring specialists for research, strategy, and setup purposes, or during special periods such as openings, refurbishments, or flag changes.

2 Be selective: Nobody says that you have to outsource your entire social media activities to an agency. Often, a hybrid approach is far more suitable. You may want to give your social media marketing and advertising activities to an agency, but retain the listening and engaging activities in-house.

3 Pick carefully: A social or digital agency that doesn’t answer tweets, Facebook posts, or replies to comments on their Google+ pages should probably set off alarm bells. So should agencies that have fewer Twitter followers than your average neighbour down the road or who look at you with a blank expression when you ask them about their Instagram followers. I have seen agencies with three (yes, three, one of which was the agency’s boss) Twitter followers enthusiastically retweet clients’ tweets. How much impact does this have, though? Exactly: zero.

4 You get what you pay for: Social media isn’t free. It costs money and requires skills. As always, pay peanuts, get monkeys, or — in the case of social media — get social media activities that do not match the quality and personality of your hotel.

5 Don’t do it if you can’t handle it: Do not waste money hiring an agency, if you are not in a position to consistently supply them with usable content and information. You’ll be surprised how often this happens. One of the main advantages of social media is that you can start small and then grow bigger over time. Handling a social media agency, like handling a PR agency, is a skill that needs to be developed and you need to make sure that you have the right knowledge in-house to supervise the agency’s activities, but also to constantly highlight the importance of supplying the agency with content.