Social Media 101

Social Media 101

December 19, 2019

First things first: Social Media is HUGE, but it’s okay to start small. This is especially the case for small or new businesses. Here are few tips to getting started in the social media world.

Decide on a Target Audience

This might seem obvious, but some businesses forget to decide on their target demographic. With so many different ages, genders, locations, sexes, races, etc. this can be a time consuming process. Nevertheless, it’s absolutely a non-negotiable aspect of starting a social media profile especially when paid advertisements will be occurring at some point. It also helps in determining the type of content you will be posting and the time of day. If you want to target older, retired couples living in Florida, posting at 7PM PST is not going to work because they will never see it. It might seem small and insignificant, but if you’re not bringing in the business, you most likely aren’t targeting the right audience.

Once you decide on the audience, you will now be able to determine which social media networks to utilize most. Teenagers tend to turn towards Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Parents and grandparents primarily use Facebook; the business world seems to live on LinkedIn, while young moms and bloggers gravitate to Pinterest and Tumblr.

Pick a Handle

This is another must-have. It not only has to represent your company, but it HAS to be consistent across all social media platforms. Before assigning any to your companies, make sure the same handle is available for all platforms that your company will embark on. For example, say your hotel name is Hotel Chaplin Yards, but that isn’t available for every channel. Next, you test and try “hotel.chaplinyards” and it works. That means Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. must all have that handle (www.instagram.com/hotel.chaplinyards/). This will help create that consistency and prevent any confusion on which profile is yours or another hotel’s.

Mix It Up

Let’s stick with Hotel Chaplin Yards. Mixing up the content that is posting is pretty important. No one wants to follow and look at the same pictures of a hotel room everyday. Try and post testimonials, employee achievements, awards and events taking place at the location, etc. Testimonials can be pulled from a yelp page or sent in from surveys or emails. Don’t forget about the holidays and funny monthly celebrations. Holidays can keep an Instagram occupied for weeks at a time! There are so many ways to get a good range of content. This is also great because it keeps your current and future guests interested in what’s coming next.

Consistency

Yes, we mentioned it a bit above, but we can’t forget about branding. When creating profiles for a business, the profile photo should be the same and most like a logo. The background image should be consistent as well, whether it’s a company tagline or a universal photo of the business itself. For hotels, this could be a photo of the outside of the hotel or the guest room. Whatever it is on one platform, it should remain the same for all platforms. Same goes for the website. For example, if you find a company on Facebook, click on the link to the website and the website looks completely different, it’s going to be hard to create that brand awareness and most people won’t know if it’s the correct link. Be consistent everywhere.

Need some help on social media? We’ve got you covered. Click here to schedule a Complimentary Brand Consultation.