It should come as no surprise to hear that social media is a source of exposure which simply must be used by hoteliers. Facebook is a major part of many businesses’ marketing efforts, and it is easy to see why. The social media giant has become a global phenomenon since launching in 2004.
Today, the site boasts 1.65 billion active users, which is a truly staggering potential audience for your business.However, tapping into this audience is not as simple as posting content and waiting for the bookings to come in. Measuring the success of your posts is vital in honing your social media strategy and discovering exactly what works for your business. After all, what works for one won’t work for everyone, so tailoring your posts to your specific consumer base is something that all hoteliers must keep in mind. Fear not though, because monitoring the success of your Facebook posts is not as difficult as it sounds.
There are, in fact, several supplied metrics which make this task refreshingly straightforward. First and foremost, the primary way in which you can judge how effective a post has been is through the level of engagement received. If after several hours you are still waiting for your first like, then it is safe to assume that the post has not been a hit .However, messages, videos or images that encourage and facilitate debate may rack up likes, comments and shares. This will allow your hotel’s name to be spread to a greater audience, potentially increasing your own online following. It is key that you make a note of posts that generate such a reaction and ensure that you follow this path with future posts. Having said that, you should also keep in mind that there can be too much of a good thing, so hold back from bombarding your followers with posts that are too similar. Next up, we have post clicks. This metric allows you to, as the name suggests, track how many times your post and any links included in the post have been clicked.This allows you to determine whether visitors follow-up their initial interest of clicking the post by then visiting the link.
Again, these results should inform your future social media strategy. Post reach, meanwhile, allows you to find out how many people your post has been shown to. From this you can calculate the percentage of the audience that goes on to click the post and/or link.Last, but by no means least, is book now. This is a metric Facebook has added for hotels. It is located at the top of your Facebook profile and allows consumers to click straight through to your booking details. This is, of course, the Holy Grail for your social media strategy. The whole point of your marketing efforts is to get guests to make bookings, so this is a metric that you will want to pay close attention to. From this you can calculate conversion rates based on how many users go on to book a room after clicking through from Facebook.
