Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from “The Digital Marketer” published in the January/February issue of HOTELS.
On Black Friday last November, The Langham Chicago launched its first exclusively social media-driven sale. The response to the 30% savings offer was tremendous, says Social Media Manager Eric Ziegenhagen. Nonetheless, the social sale is unlikely something he will make a habit of repeating.
Instead, Zeigenhagen and most social media and marketing executives agree that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become places where brands interact rather than try to sell room. They agree that the medium is more for connecting and staying front of mind.
For instance, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts recently launched a new wellness program called Energy by Four Seasons. On social media, they introduced it with a 30-day wellness challenge for their followers to try. Four Seasons followers were encouraged to try a different energizing tip or technique and invited to share their experiences via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #30DaysofEnergy. Participant posts were then shared on Four Seasons social media channels.
Social media channels have also become key extensions of much more than just a hotel’s marketing department.
“I think one of the challenges and opportunities now is even figuring out where to put social media on a property’s organizational chart,” says The Langham’s Ziegenhagen. “It used to be marketing, now it’s more operations. It’s becoming an extension of the call center, front desk and concierge.”
Indeed, whether it’s getting a quick response to a complaint or getting saved from a lockout, examples of Twitter being used for unique guest outreach abound. Starwood Hotels, for example, which has a team of about 30 people from its call centers monitoring mentions of its brand on Twitter and Facebook in 11 languages, 24/7, was able to rescue a guest who tweeted he had been locked out on his hotel room’s balcony.
At Omni Hotels & Resorts, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Sales Tom Santora points to an instance in which a customer in Fort Worth, Texas, was tweeting that the Wi-Fi was poor. “They went and found the guy in the lobby and bought him a glass of wine while they reconfigured something,” he says.
Omni also says it has also had good luck with Pinterest, where it started a blog that before the holidays focused on “The Art of Pie,” offering recipes from its different properties and calling for others to share recipes. “It’s more about interaction, awareness,” says Santora, who notes that the blog also helps build out the brand from a search engine optimization perspective. “If there are people out there searching for something pie-related, they are going to bump into Omni.”
In the United States, many hotel companies say Instagram has become a fast favorite. “I think people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter as the amount of content grows and grows,” says Patrick Goddard, president and COO of Trust Hospitality. “Now you have to figure out a way in 15 seconds or less to engage with somebody. So really, Facebook is becoming a bit obsolete as people are turning toward Instagram as a communication tool. It’s very challenging to engage on any other channel. You have to be very targeted.”
With the growing emphasis on visuals, Ziegenhagen says hotels can easily use a good picture without having to worry about coming up with any fancy text that over-describes it. He says people often follow hotels on social media after they had a good time “and just want a continuation of the experience they had while staying there.” Ziegenhagen also likens social media posts to an amenity card rather than a sales pitch. “Advertising says ‘buy now,’ whereas on the property itself you would never tell people what to do – unless there was fire,” he says.
Other good practices, Goddard says, include making the post unique, interesting and “speak to the brand.”
But there are also a lot of don’ts.
“Don’t forget to be relevant,” Goddard says. “Don’t forget to communicate often. Don’t be dull. Don’t be redundant. You don’t want to clog up people’s feeds. You don’t want to post for the sake of posting.”
Contributed by Jeri Clausing