Many of you now understand the importance of social media and its impact on brand awareness and driving qualified traffic to your website. Some of you have started to see how it can help bolster low revenue periods and affect your bottom line. However, many businesses are still not using social media to its fullest potential.
It’s a new year, and now is a great time to evaluate what went well with last year’s social media marketing strategy and what improvements you can still make. Here are our top social media resolutions to consider.
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Ask questions. Your Facebook and Twitter followers are just waiting for you to ask them their opinions. They can be a great source for gathering research about your brand, but you need to ask them what they think first. Utilize the “Facebook Questions” (link to tutorial about FB questions) feature that allows you to quickly create polls on your Facebook wall.
Appoint a social butterfly. Believe me, there’s someone in your organization or hotel that loves being on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Instead of reprimanding them for wasting company time, leverage their social media interests by appointing them as your official online community manager. Their responsibilities could include posting content, taking photos and videos of company events, and responding to customer questions.
Improve your image. If your Facebook page or Twitter profile has no custom elements to it, then it’s time to start thinking about your image on social networks. How well does your Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, and YouTube page represent your brand?
Take risks. I’ve seen so many companies play it safe with social media – maybe they’re afraid of it or just don’t think it’s the right place to experiment. They’re missing out! Social media profiles are the perfect place to experiment with creative marketing ideas. It’s okay to fail with a social media marketing campaign, because it’s low-cost and sometimes even failures turn into viral marketing successes.
Plan ahead. If your personal New Year’s resolution is to be more organized, why not include your social media campaigns in that? Schedule out which promotions and strategies you want to target for the entire year. This will result in a better quality product, and it allows you to focus on the “whys” and not just the “whens” and “hows” of a campaign.
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If your hotel or small business still doesn’t have a solid presence on Facebook, we strongly encourage you to start talking about it with your sales and marketing staff. There’s a huge gap between knowing the importance of social media marketing and using it effectively. Keeping these New Year resolutions will help you use social media as a legitimate marketing tool to increase revenue and maximize brand exposure.
