Social media offers hotels a lot of potential for promoting their brand and building their reputation online. However, it is important to be aware of how to use social media correctly and to avoid making mistakes that will hurt your hotel’s reputation.
Sometimes hotel companies make these errors when they are using social media, with negative results. This can be a real problem for a hotel, because repairing a reputation once it has been damaged is harder than you might think – so it’s better to stay away from these bad social media behaviours in the first place.
So how can you avoid social media blunders when you are managing the accounts of your hotel? Here are five things that you should never do when you are promoting your hotel via social media:
1. Only Posting Your Own Promotional Materials
Social media is not just for broadcasting your message, it should be a two way conversation between you and your customers and you should be providing valuable, informative and entertaining materials that have something to offer the reader.
Instead of only posting messages that promote your hotel, try to alternate with informative blogs about events in the area, tips for travellers, entertaining videos and anything else that your followers might find valuable. It’s good to follow a percentage rule of 30/70, which means that you are posting 30% promotional material and 70% other material that is valuable for your followers.
2. Not Responding to Criticism
Your clients might write comments and criticism on your Facebook wall or send them to you via Twitter and if they do, it’s important to respond to them promptly and thoroughly. If you don’t respond, others will assume that you don’t care about your customers.
Take their feedback into consideration, thank them for bringing the issue to your attention and let them know what you will be doing to solve the problem. This will show your other customers that you care about issues and that you are always working to improve your hotel.
3. Criticizing other Companies
Bashing other companies on social media is not the most professional thing to do and it can really make your hotel look bad. You might have competitors, but your social media page is not the place to attack or criticize them. It will make you look petty and it will cause your customers to lose respect for you. Instead of bashing other companies, make yourself stand out from the rest by focusing on being the very best at what you do.
4. Using Content That Is Not Yours Without Attribution
When you are sharing content on your social media webpages, make sure that when you share something that isn’t yours you give credit where it is due. Sharing content without attributing a source or gaining permission, such as using a photo that another photographer or blogger has taken, is a big breach of social media etiquette. If you get caught you might even be fined for using copyrighted material, which will cause a lot of headaches and problems.
5. Posting Updates With Grammatical Errors and Typos
Before you post something to your social media website, make sure that you check it over carefully for any spelling errors, typos or grammatical mistakes – as well as ensuring any factual information you include is correct. When you post something that is incorrect it will make you look sloppy and your customers will assume that you don’t pay enough attention to detail. They might also assume that you miss out on details when you are running the hotel, which is a bad impression to make.
These are just a few of the mistakes that hotels make when they are promoting themselves on social media. Make sure that you have developed a professional social media strategy so that you will not find yourself making the same errors and giving your hotel a negative image on social media. It can be helpful to hire the assistance of a professional social media consultant so that they can guide you through the tricky world of online marketing, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience yourself.