One way to see ROI from your social media efforts is using your hotel’s financially generated reports. For example, our reports will specifically say “Facebook.com” and you can see the revenue from that website. Or another way is to create a simple excel spreadsheet, and that way you can track your followers you gain each week. Now, not that fan base is a direct indication of return-on-investment, but it is one way to track your social media success.

Facebook Graph Search is an absolute game changer for hotels. It used to be, if I wanted to search for a hotel, I would go to Google and find deals. Now, I can go to search right on Facebook and find hotels that my own friends like, find hotels that my own friends have stayed at, and my friends are more powerful than any possible ad. 92% of people trust their friends, just 40% of people trust advertising. So what does this mean for you? You need to optimize your likes on Facebook. Now is the moment where all of those like acquisition campaigns are more important than ever. Literally, the more “likeable” you are, the better.

Because more and more people are looking for information on hotels, destinations and attractions on mobile, you need to have a mobile optimized site – could be through responsive web design or through a mobile application. A mistake that some hotels make is they actually hide the brand; it’s a different experience on the mobile or the tablet versus what you have on the tradition website. And another mistake we tend to see is that the experience is not all mobile, it’s not self-contained so you start on the mobile world then you make the reservation for the restaurant or the spa, you end up going outside of the mobile site into a smaller experience website that’s not as good. And then there’s a lack of coordination sometimes between the apps and the websites, those are things to look out for when you look at your mobile experience for a hotel or destination.

You can find content for social media all around you, if you have a creative eye for it. Even the little things like an upcoming holiday decoration, take a picture of it, edit it up and say “Halloween in the hotel is coming,” or something fun. You can even welcome a large group to your hotel by posting on their Facebook wall or your Facebook wall. Even the smallest things make great social media content, and they can really showcase your hotel’s personality.

Storytelling has always been an important aspect of the hotel marketing program, but the beautiful thing is unlike the days of old where storytelling meant a TV commercial or a glossy brochure, now you can tell your story using social media. You can tell your story with a photo or a short video that you film with an iPhone, or an infographic, or a blog post or even a tweet. How do you find your story? Talk to your customers, talk to your staff, find out what they’re interested in, find out about their experiences with your hotel. Find out about what obstacles they’ve overcome thanks to you, and then tell their story. The best thing about storytelling on the social web, unlike the old days where you might waste a lot of money on a TV commercial that doesn’t resonate, if your story doesn’t resonate with your customers, tell another story tomorrow! It’s that easy. 

In this special edition Hotel E-Marketing Minute IHG’s director of mobile solutions shares what hotels need to focus their mobile strategies on. Bill answers the following questions:

• How are mobile devices (smartphones) being used throughout the guest journey?
• How do smartphone and tablet usage patterns differ?
• What do hotels need to focus their mobile websites on?
• What else does the hotel industry need to know about mobile?

This video has been adapted from the Virtual Roundtable: Making sense of mobile and the multi-screen world

A thing we need to understand is that right now in the world, there are actually more mobile phones in circulation than toothbrushes and we expect by the end of 2013 there will be more mobile circulating than actual people on the planet. And Google estimates that in terms of travel, more than 25% of all searches online for travel are done via a mobile device (whether it’s a smartphone or tablet) so it’s extremely important to realize that from the travel perspective, that’s where people are searching information. It’s more and more mobile.

You should start your social media strategy by answering the key question, “Why?” Once you’ve answered that, you can decide what type of e-marketing you’d like and which strategies you will use. For example, if you’re looking to just increase your fan base, a contest is great idea to gain new followers. However, if you’re looking for more brand reputation or those brand advocates, you’d want to focus on your guests who really enjoy the hotel and try to get them to like your Facebook. That way they’ll share it with other users. So once you’ve identified your goals, you can identify your strategy and what posts you’ll put out there on your social media account.