How to Use Instagram to Market Your Hotel
How to Use Instagram to Market Your Hotel
Instagram is currently one of fastest growing social media sites with over 500 million users and high levels of engagement.Taking advantage of Instagram to market your hotel could really help you gain more reach and get your hotel noticed by potential customers.
Most brands are using Instagram at the moment but hoteliers seem to be behind on the marketing curve with many not using Instagram yet. We’re going to show you how to get ahead of the competition by using Instagram to market your hotel.
Create Your Account
Obviously you can’t post on Instagram until you’ve created an account! This sounds simple enough, but there are a few things to remember:
- Create an Instagram business account. Having a business account is important because it means you can create Instagram ads and monitor your success — things you can’t do with a regular account.
- Fill in your “bio” — this is the small piece of text underneath your username and next to your profile picture. A quick summary of your hotel’s brand (including your location) and a link to your website will suffice. There’s a limit of 150 characters to you’ll need to keep this short.
- Choose a profile picture. A nice exterior shot of your hotel, perhaps, or your hotel’s logo.
Once you’ve set up your account you’re good to go!
Content Ideas
This step could actually go before creating your account because it’s good to have an idea of what to post before you start. It’s also a good idea to have a bank of images ready post so you don’t struggle to think of ideas while your account is live.
Do some research. Take a look at other hotels’ Instagram accounts, see what they’re posting, and pay attention to which images get the most engagement (likes, comments) to give you a good idea of what images will perform best.
Think about your hotel’s branding and image and then carry that over to your Instagram account. You’ll find that most Instagram accounts have a recurring theme or vibe — that is, they will stick to a colour palette and use the same filters throughout to keep their profile looking more “put together” and consistent.
Use existing hotel images from your website of your rooms and facilities, but remember that this isn’t just an online gallery of your rooms — you can post pictures of anything that’s relevant: motivational quotes, pictures of local scenery, shots of your restaurant’s food and so on.
Try and think of things that your audience would find interesting, and don’t divert too much from the hotel theme; keeping things consistent is important so people know what to expect when they follow your account.
Gain Some Followers
Now this is the tricky part. The first 100 or so followers will be pretty simple to attract, but you’ll need to put in more effort if you want to excel and get thousands of followers.
We mentioned earlier that Instagram is a highly engaged community, meaning that users interact more frequently than on other social media sites, so bear this in mind to help build a following.
So where do you start? By engaging with other users! Look for other hotel accounts, then follow their followers, or look for users who have used hashtags like #travel” or #hotel and follow them and like/comment on their photos.
One of the most successful ways of gaining followers is by using a mix of relevant hashtags in your image captions. Hashtags work by categorising Instagram posts: for example, if you shared a picture of a local beach you could use hashtags like #Bournemouth, #beach, #holiday and #travel. This means that anyone searching for those specific hashtags could see your picture. Include relevant hashtags in your image captions and you will attract the right kind of audience.
Another popular way of attracting followers is by running contests and giveaways. People love free stuff, so adding hashtags like #contest, #giveaway and #win could help you draw in some attention. Contests don’t need to be expensive to run — even “tag us in your images and we’ll share our favourite photos” contents are popular because they’re fun for users to get involved with, and people like it when brands recognise and share their content.
Monitor Your Success
It’s important to keep track of your weekly or monthly progress on Instagram so you can judge how successful your efforts are and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Choose a time period for monitoring (weekly, for example) then keep track of your average followers gained, average followers lost, average likes and average comments for that period.
You’ll want to see a steady increase, but if you see any sharp spikes or dips in engagement you can look back and identify what was popular or what wasn’t working.
Want to know more about marketing your hotel on Instagram? Get in touch with us!
