As a regular user of social media platforms, and I appreciate social media as a tool to reach and sway potential consumers of product. Several definitions offered via Hoot Suite are shared below.
Social media is "the process of delivering proactive customer service (finding and responding to brand conversations with the aim of satisfying customer needs before they ask) and reactive customer service (responding to customer-initiated transactions or service inquiries) over social networks." Others find it to be the use of social media networks across all components of the marketing mix: product, price, promotion, and place. Still others find it to be the process of selling products and services directly through social media.
These definitions obviously are marketing oriented. Today with the recent purchase of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk, there is more news and information being shared in the news about social media and where its heading toward in the future. Recently this author was introduced to the social media concepts as framed by Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is a global leader in producing YouTube content and now he is partnering with our university to offer training for producing YouTube content. Additionally, per a recent discussion on National Public Radio discussing Elon Musk and Twitter , noted Mr. Beast, regarding YouTube like content for Twitter. The evolution of social media continues.
My daily use of social media tends to be Facebook and LinkedIn as vehicles for our educational programs and messages. On a personal level, I like social media as a means to connect and remain in contact with old friends and family members that live a distance from my family and myself. The question here is that why would a lodging business use social media and what social media should that be? Obviously from the definitions shared above, social media as a whole tends to be about customer service, marketing and merchandising as it related to the four P's of marketing: product, price, place and promotion.
Social media is an option for lodging companies in their marketing efforts. The framework for decisions on social media is about quality content and which social media platform(s) are the optimal match for lodging businesses and its existing and potential guests, employees, and other stakeholders. Lodging operators are making business decisions when meshing their lodging operators and social media channels. Therefore lodging operators and owners need to examine these channels as business options. To begin this discussion, below is a list of the top twenty social media sites, ranked by Monthly Active Users (MAU).
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Facebook - 2.9 billion MAUs
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YouTube - 2.2 billion MAUs
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WhatsApp - 2 billion MAUs
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Instagram - 2 billion MAUs
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WeChat - 1.26 billion MAUs
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TikTok - 1 billion MAUs
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Sina Weibo - 573 million MAUs
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QQ - 538.91 million MAUs
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Telegram - 550 million MAUs
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Snapchat - 538 million MAUs
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Kuaishou - 519.8 million MAUs
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Qzone - 517 million MAUs
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Twitter - 436 million MAUs
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Reddit - 430 million MAUs
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Quora - 300 million MAUs
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Skype - 300 million MAUs
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Microsoft Teams- 270 million MAUs
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LinkedIn - 250 million MAUs
As a user, this author recognizes eight of the top twenty sites listed, but my perspective may be a mature view of social media.
Toward the end of last year, pandemic restrictions finally started easing up and markets were booming. As we lurch into 2023, things look much more delicate. A looming recession, mounting inflation, declining consumer spending, and workforce reductions across major business sectors have made things precarious for businesses of all sizes. Despite this uncertainty, many social media marketers find themselves in a position of relative security-they're getting larger slices of the overall marketing budgets.
After more than a decade of growing pains, social media marketing has finally matured as a profession. In 2023, successful social marketers will take the time and effort to carefully assess their opportunities, use a scalpel rather than a cleaver, and think about the long-term impact of their short-term actions. Those who do will cement their worth once and for all.
How Should Hotels Approach Social Media?
As previously noted, lodging businesses, their owners and operators need to examine social media as business options. First, they should have a plan in place. What are the business goals for using social media? In terms of assessment, is there a monetary measure and or is the measure focused on social media metrics that document clicks, visits, etc. Additionally, lodging business leaders, once they have clear goals, will need to define their tactical action steps and the objectives that will be pursued.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of social media is what target markets is your business trying to attract. Does your marketing department have demographics on the segments? It can matter if a hotel business is pursuing Gen X versus Gen Y, Baby Boomers, commercial business, tourists and leisure guests or wanting to utilize social media to attract the group and meeting markets. Review of articles on social media highlight social commerce, selling, and more. Additionally, lodging businesses must understand the role their employees will play in utilizing and participating in social media.
To presume that all employees are using the same channels could be a dangerous strategy in that lodging business may not be connecting with people they had intended. This author's business experience in this area is focused on potential students, existing students, alumni, industry partners, faculty and the local community and the university community.
In our workplace we have created a social media coordinator role, this student position works with the director of communications and this author to post related hospitality education content and then decide on the appropriate social media channels, keeping mind who we are targeting. Similarly lodging businesses need similar roles at a professional level to engage guests and prospective guests, employees, vendors and more in various aspects of their business. Lodging operations need to set up a framework for themselves to manage social media and set operating policies for this segment of marketing and operations, how will they manage their social media efforts and how will they assess their efforts, i.e. social media metrics?
The recommendation here is create an overall Social Media Policy for your lodging operations and distribute and educate management, staff and business stakeholders, to know what the social media guidelines will be for their lodging operation. Given the controversies that surround social media, this is easier said than done in some cases. To begin, perhaps some basic business etiquette and ethics standards, that lodging decision makers set are needed. Ethics has long been a point of debate with people. My rule of thumb is: if you don't want to see something on your topic and yourself in the news, stop! Working with social media in addition to knowing policies, issues of mutual respect, honesty and integrity are also important to communicate.
It is also noteworthy that branded concepts and or those lodging operations that are part of hotel management companies may have more social media resources at their disposal, i.e. their franchisor, and or owner. Independent operators do not always have a large infrastructure available to them. Therefore, their efforts will be integrating social media tasks and operations with current duties and responsibilities or be prepared to pay their own way onto the social media stage. A social trends survey found that smaller organizations are the least likely to work with creators; 72% of small businesses (those with less than 100 employees) don't work with creators in any capacity, while nearly 42% of businesses with over 1,000 employees do work with creators. What's more important is finding a creator who can collaborate with you to make inspiring content relevant to your product or service.
Operators also need to answer questions of confidentiality, share examples of appropriate and inappropriate postings and internally make sure users understand the risks for the business and themselves. Questions can also arise could be about privacy settings, commenting on crisis issues, accuracy, the tone of comments as perceived by users, issues of copyright and more. For example can an employee post to a social media platform, represent the hotel business and its ownership? I would argue not without prior approvals and planning.
Cost
A short mention of the costs associated with social media are reflected in the following.
As marketing budgets continue to recover from the pandemic, social media spending is on its way up. Marketers are feeling more confident not just in the return on investment (ROI) of social media, but also in their ability to prove it to even the most skeptical of executives. "Our main challenge is the volatility of pricing, especially on TikTok," says Ruby Soave, head of influencer marketing at Student Beans. "There's such a lack of standardization over how much work should cost that negotiating good prices gets complicated-we treat influencers as a media buy within a media plan, and we price accordingly.
Metrics
I have long been a believer in metrics in the lodging industry as indicators of performance and a guide to better decision making. The most important social media metrics as detailed by hootsuite.com are:
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Reach
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Impressions
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Audience growth rate
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Engagement Rate
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Amplification rate
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Virality rate
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Video views
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Video completion rate
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Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score
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Net promoter score (NPS)
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Click-through rate (CTR)
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Conversion rate
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Cost-per-click (CPC)
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Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
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Social share of voice (SSoV)
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Social sentiment
Going Forward – Trends in Social Media
PRweek.com and others have shared their list(s) of social media trends in 2023.
Also, included in discussions of social media are diverse conversations on the possible demise of "cookies" as related to privacy issues and what impact it will have on social media advertising. The framework for social media as a whole needs to focus on integrity and authenticity, perhaps setting new standards for these channels. Other topics also include decentralized networks, multi-sensory social media, the Metaverse, predictive analytics, substantial environmental efforts by social media.
Themes, such as sustainability, will need to obvious and actually mean something beyond LED bulbs. Sustainability in practice must be a framework that includes the environment, communities and sustainable businesses incorporating hotel human resources, purchasing and operations. Additionally, social media customer service support and an open exchange of social media communities will be important.
Additionally, others have highlighted social media and terms like authenticity, and a greater focus on Tik Tok, personal advertisements on social media, social justice, virtual reality and more. Some social media experts have also taken a more specific and targeted approach looking at trends that focus on social audio, gaming, content and full screen options, artificial intelligence, and more.
Conclusion
Social Media at the University Level
Briefly, given that hospitality business higher education is aligned with the hospitality industry it behooves educational programs to understand social media, its function, goals and usefulness as a tool to market, promote and sell their business. The question is, how can higher education keep up to date in this area. The presumption that the younger generation is totally tech savvy is questionable. I will concede that they, as a group, are better texters than I.
Like all new content and emerging topics, how does hospitality education add another course(s), in this case on social media and perhaps more importantly, how do educators integrate social media into their current course work? The topic is current and social media is more and more prevalent in business, thus becoming an functional operational tool to be used to achieve a hotel's goals and objectives. On the education side, we need to create thoughtful and savvy decision makers that can see the whole concept of a hotel and how tools, like social media, optimally fit into a hotel operation. Universities have technology courses, computer science courses etc., and even some specific coursework, that might include Social Media and Strategic Communication and Social Media Marketing (Examples from this author's institution).
From a practical perspective, not all programs will have a social media course. From an educational methodology perspective, programs that have faculty engaged in outreach projects and or "live" projects in the community can often fund opportunities for educational partnerships that will benefit students and operators.
Hotel operators and owners need to understand enough about social media to know how to promote their properties. To optimize this effort, this may mean hiring a dedicated individual to manage the social media effort. Professionals with this type of expertise could add value to the enterprise. Finally, ezeeabsolute.com offered suggestions and recommendations for social media on a sample of social media channels that could make a hospitality connection. These could be a great place to start your social media program.
Best Social Media Marketing Strategies for Hotels
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Facebook – create a profile, go live, run ads!
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Instagram – reels are the new deal!
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LinkedIn – share the perfect post.
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YouTube – capture and publish best hotel videos
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Twitter – tweet, tweet, short & sweet!
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Pinterest – create impressive boards.
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WhatsApp – reach out to 10x audience.
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Influencers – connect and enhance marketing!
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TripAdvisor – enhance hotel reviews.
Social Media has opened up a new slant on marketing, human interaction and sales for hotels and more. To optimally use these social media tools, know your hotel, your guests and your options. Social media is here for the long term. Additional resources are available at the Search Engine Journal. These same messages apply to destinations and the travel process across the board.
Consumers are and have become more and more savvy about social media, technology and more discerning about making the decisions about where they will go and where they will stay. An optimal social media program for a hotel, partnered with the local destination marketing organization can yield positive results.
By Robert O'Halloran Professor & Director, Hospitality Management, East Carolina University
