30 Sep 2009, Posted by Peter in Duo Menu, Social Media, Travel, Travel 2.0, 8 Comments

Understandable Social Media Guidelines for Small Accommodation Providers.

So your kids finally left the house, leaving you with a few empty rooms in your house and something you have never really known:  time to yourself.

Your lifelong burning desire for entrepreneurship and your passion and love for being a great host drives you to a logical, feasible and suitable business idea: ‘Your name here’s bed and Breakfast’.

Not quite, Peter?

Well maybe not quite, but regardless of the size of your B&B, Guesthouse or Lodge, using social media to promote your product is quite unique from other industries in many ways. I have noticed that owners of smaller establishments get frustrated and annoyed by the ’so called power of the social media buzz’, because they are attempting to implement it on a level beyond their size and capacity.

In this post I will outline some basic social media strategies for these smaller to medium sized establishments.

Why it is useful to you.

Okay, so I have heard about the buzz, but Is social media really relevant to my 3-room B&B?

Yes. It is just a matter of determining to which extent it will drive business, and where it becomes a waste of your time and resources.

Two of the most powerful features of social media for small accommodation providers are finding clients and retaining relationships. While your website still acts as the information hub and point of sale (in the case of instant booking), it is not necessarily the primary point of contact. By embracing social media, you create more points of contact through which your clients can find out more about yourself, your business, and why they should book beds with you rather than your competitors.

More points of Contact = More Business.

Now we’re talking Pete.

Even more importantly social media provides the ability to give a personal response. While your website will give an automated reply, you can give a personal ‘hello’.

Planning:

Before fiercely jumping online to tweet, blog and vlog, think about what you want to achieve. Decide on an amount of time per week or day that you will allocating to social media marketing, and decide how you will spend that time (social networks can easily rob you from your time once you get so involved in everybody else’s business that you forget to drive your own). Once you have a clear idea of how you will manage your online marketing, you can decide which networks are worth your precious time.

Lets talk Tools.

With social networks launching left right and center it can be hard to decide which ones are relevant to your industry, and more importantly your business. It is up to you to decide how many can maintain and explore. This post however suggests and discusses four key social networking tools: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and Skype.

Recommended 

Creating a personal profile on Facebook means that you can connect with guests on a more personal level, before, after, or even during their stay. This particularly works better for B&B’s and small guest houses, since these generally offer a more personlised and domestic experience. Already on Facebook? Even better. You can easily start integrating this by becoming friends with those guests you built relationships with during their stay. Keep in mind that by sending messages to a group of friends, Facebook can easily be used to communicate updates, rate changes, and well as special offers.

Having a personal profile on Facebook gives you the chance to join groups and easily become part of discussions relevant to your destination and market.  Chances are that some of your local accommodation associations already have established Facebook groups, which can be a great place to network and advertise. When joining these groups and discussion, be careful of hard-selling your product – rather give insightful opinions and honest advice.

Not so much 

It is painful to stumble across a Facebook group or Business page with 3 members, ‘n discussion board with no replies, and 2005’s rates still showing. The problem with groups and pages is that they can easily portray a harmful marketing message, rather than an inviting one. Answer yourself this: why would people join your Facebook group, and what will they find on there? With hundreds of invites suggestions and recommendations floating around Facebook profiles and inboxes, users tend to be way more selective about who and what they join. I am not saying Groups and Pages are all bad. What I am suggesting is to first connect with clients on Facebook through your personal page, and once you feel they are loyal enough to join your group, suggest the move.

Recommended 

People follow others on Twitter for specific reasons. A few of them include:

• receiving information on things that are of value to them
• they know the person/business owner,
• they are loyal to either the person or product
• the person is successful, famous, or attractive

For this post we will be focusing on the first three. Easy now tiger.

Posting interesting and useful information about your destination could create an online following beyond those who use Twitter as their primary source to find hotel rooms. Let’s be honest, except for using useful tools such as Inoqo, we are not entirely there yet. Keep in mind that micro blogging is an effective way to drive traffic to your website through posting a shortened link.

Not so much 

Big hotel chains can afford to fill up their entire Twitter feed with special rates and promotions, without tweeting anything else of value. This is because people will follow and connect with them for exactly that reason – to get good rates. As a small accommodation provider you will sadly limit your online marketing scope by simply following 3000 people and tweeting ‘cheap accommodation’ all day long.

Blogs

Recommended 

Tough one. Mostly because travel blogs are one of the biggest sources of user-generated content, and I am, at this moment, posting a blog myself. Still, I would not encourage small accommodation establishments to run a stand alone blog, as made possible by Wordpress, Blogger, and the like. The reason for this quite simply the same as my advice about Facebook Groups and Pages. Blogs need to be maintained and regularly updated with fresh and interesting information, to keep them from turning into online graveyards, harming your brand with the perception of absence and neglect.

A good solution is to have a blog-based website which you can update with a ‘news’ section. This allows you to have the functionality of a blog within your website.

Not so much  

Build a free blog, load content in such a way that it functions like a watered-down version of your existing site, and then get sour about the lack of activity and popularity.

Recommended 

At the time I wrote this, there were 15, 022, 288 Skype users online. Adding your skype address to your business cards, brochures, and any online material could significantly enhance the way your establishment is run. The best part: free skype-to-skype contact.

Example of good practice: Daddy Long Legs Art Hotel, Cape Town (visit site)

Not so much 

Signing up, displaying your Skype ID on all your promotional material, but never being online.

Wrapping it up

These guidelines are merely aimed at issues I have picked up on among smaller accommodation establishments over the past couple months. I would love to hear thoughts and further initiative. If you want you talk or hear more, drop me a line, catch me here, or simply leave a comment below.

Photo Credit: Plugthespark