By Katie Scheer

We all need to up our social media game. Why? Because:

  • 72% of online adults use social media (according to Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project).
  • Researching >3,000 hotels revealed that having a social presence is a “must” (as noted in our recent article, Top Hospitality Industry Trends for 2015).

If you aren’t on the “social” bandwagon or don’t have a social media game plan, you now understand that you might be committing business suicide. Clearly, social media is where many of your customers are, and it is a platform for you to build your brand and reputation, engage more with your customers, drive more traffic to your website, and much more. How do you ensure that you are doing it right? Well, we have 4 great tips for you, thanks to a really good article and infographic that Huffington Post created in collaboration with American Express OPEN.

For you to best engage your audience and to get the most out of your social media investment, you should avoid these 4 blunders/mistakes:

Here’s a bit more for you…all of your posts/interactions should be authentic to who your company/hotel is, and we definitely feel that you should balance fun with correctly done self-promotion. What is “correctly done self-promotion”? Our thoughts on two types of advertising you should do:

1. Indirect advertising is posting pictures of your product without a call to action to buy, highlighting a wonderful customer experience, offering freebies such as tips for traveling in your area, and more.

2. Direct advertising should be catered to your audience and should not be too “in their face” or pressurized. DO NOT post and re-post about the same promotion/product on a daily basis.

Now jump onto social media and build your presence; you will be so thankful that you did! We have just recently increased our presence, and the results have been so positive.