Whether you’re a luxury hotel, boutique hotel, large chain, or an economical motel, social media marketing can absolutely help you increase brand awareness, loyalty and assist you in how to engage with your guests. That’s why I want to share hotel tips with you which will help you with your social media marketing.

I have put these tips together for you to achieve more exposure, increase your hotel guest loyalty and sales. You can immediately start implementing these ideas right after you finish reading all about them.

1. Create and update a blog about nightlife, dinning and suggestions on where your guests can go out and have fun. Don’t try to sell via your blog articles as it ha been proven that users do not favour this technique. Your blog articles must be updated at least once a week. This will help you increase traffic to your hotel website and give you new and fresh content for your social media channels. Remember brands have to become media companies. Once you write your blog article, you will need to create ‘micro’ content to promote that blog, for example, maybe an infographic for your Pinterest, or you could place a quote together with a picture from your hotel and use it on your Instagram. Content marketing is not a campaign, it’s an ongoing process.

2. Use TripAdvisor, Yelp and other review websites to reply to feedback from your guests, even if the reviews are bad. Your potential guests will be reading these reviews and if they see that you don’t reply they will translate this lack of communication as a lack of care for your customers from your side. The best solution is to reply and take the conversation offline. Try to solve any problems guests may have via telephone, skype or email. This will exhibits the fact that you feel compassion towards your clients, and at the end of the day, we all need to care about our clients.

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3. When you create posts on your different social media channels, make sure that you mention other businesses. This will help you increase visibly on social media and your interactions with other people. See what other people are asking and saying about your city and country. If you see a question online and you know the answer, write a blog article and then share the link with the person who asked. The more you create posts, mention other businesses and are involved in giving your potential guests what they are looking for on an online level, the more you will notice and find opportunities that are there for the grabbing. This will increase your hotel website traffic and bookings.

4. Encourage people to check in via Foursquare (Swarm) and Facebook Places. Check for comments on Foursquare and suggestions. Use creative and catchy artwork at your reception desk advertising checking in on social networks.

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5. Be funny and authentic. A sense of humour always works well on social media. Now you don’t have to go and start posting jokes all day long, but you can add humour to your content and jazz things up a bit. Being ordinary is boring – no I will not say it, no I will not say it, oh well, I can’t help myself – think outside the box.

6. Create online campaigns. Campaigns work if you want to attract more people and gain followers. Think of a creative concept to promote your hotel. You don’t have to offer a huge gift, or anything like that, campaigns can be very simple yet effective. You can hire a digital agency to help you do the work as well. Remember, the first #TwitterHotel Sol Wave House in Magaluf? The global media coverage they got was amazing. Something creative and unique will definitely get attention. Because you as a hotel marketer need to get attention for people in order fro them to make reservations, don’t you?

7. Listening is the key, isn’t it? Well, it’s easier said than done. You have to listen to what people are tweeting. There are  enormous opportunities for you to engage with people on Twitter. Search for #Holidays, #Cyprus #UK #VisitCyprus, #London and other hashtags that people use to express their feelings about an upcoming holiday. Use Instagram as well, see what people are posting. When you start listening and then responding accordingly, magic happens, trust me. So use online tools to listen to what people are saying and start responding. You might say it’s a full time job, well yes it is that’s why you need a community manager, so go ahead, hire one. If you need help with the structure and responsibilities let me know, just drop me an email at an@alexnovicov dot com.

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I hope you gained new ideas and insights from this blog. You need to start implementing them now, because the cost of doing nothing is priceless, as I wrote in my other article.

Give me a call if you need help with the above ideas. I travel across Europe on a monthly basis, so you can give me a call at 020-3130 0451 (UK)/ 22- 101 935 (Cyprus) or Skype (vividnetwork).

Do you want to add something else? Please comment below and we can discuss any queries or ideas you may have.

Follow me on Twitter for more tips and ideas.