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The importance of hotel facebook page design
While your hotel’s website is your best sales representative, your hotel’s facebook page is your best Public Relations representative. Therefore, it is critically important to arm your hotel facebook page with the proper tools to engage your facebook fans. Below are five simple tips to turn your facebook page into a successful PR machine.
5 Tips for a strong hotel facebook page
- Designing the page differentiates from competition: For obvious reasons the most visible characteristic of a hotel facebook page is the logo, as the hotel page design is facebook’s. Display your logo in an unexpected way. Provide a strong hotel overview page that’s both informational and fun. When creating your new hotel facebook page ensure that it reflects the colors, textures and the experiences that the property offers but also matches with facebook’s style.
- Tagging photos spreads the word: Studies indicate that images are the second factor right behind pricing in terms of influencing the choice of property to stay in. With today’s technology, taking a good picture is easier than ever. Facebook is great at sharing pictures and engaging users – every day 100 million photos are tagged on facebook. So, ask your guests if you can take pictures with them, then tag them on facebook. Your property will be seen by many of their friends.
- “The Hotel” menu item engage users: Having an easy-to-use and user-friendly navigation on your hotel facebook page is a decisive factor for how engaged your visitors are going to be. Bad navigation and usability can lead to visitors abandoning your facebook page. Keep it simple. Don’t try to overwhelm people with lots of options: 3 or 4 menu items are enough: hotel overview, rooms, special offers and a map are probably enough.
- Promotions and sweepstakes stimulate visitors to come back: It is important to provide social incentives to website visitors so they choose your property over the competition. Creating special offers on your facebook page and offering sweepstakes will create a loyal following. Also, it can help you sell distress inventory in a way that it doesn’t cannibalize your regular sales and you can optimize your search engine ranking by offering fresh content on the website.
- What happens on facebook, stays on facebook: In most facebook pages, there is very little “spillover” traffic to the hotel website. Hence, you should provide directly on your hotel facebook page the ability for travelers to check rates and availabilities for the travel dates, and book. Moreover, many travelers nowadays have flexible dates and are actively bargain hunting and willing to trade off some convenience for a better price or package. Make sure your calendar overview displays a longer-term view of the rates and availabilities so travels can choose the perfect vacation or business trip according to their needs and possibilities.
For a few examples facebook pages:
If you want to learn more about what GuestCentric can do to improve your hotel facebook page, do chat to one of our specialists online or sign up for our Coffee with GuestCentric webinar.
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[...] For the full article visit: http://www.guestcentric.com/5-tips-for-a-strong-hotel-facebook-page/ [...]
Great suggestions, especially on tagging photos.
To point 4, Facebook has very stringent rules on competitions and sweepstakes on its platform. Liking a page to be eligible for a prize violates Facebook’s promotions guidelines. Furthermore organising a promotion can only be done using a Facebook app.
To check the rules, here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Some great points are mentioned in this article. One additonal option for a hotel Facebook page that can put your hotel above the competition is allowing a fan to make a hotel reservation directly from your Facebook page. [edited for commercial content]
Try to visit “villa dall’Antonia” on facebook, it’s my template for iframe + wordpress facebook pages. We’re releasing this kind of products in italy. It doesn’t actually have the news and offers native section, may be it is a lack
I’m tired of facebook! It’ hard enough running one website…. Learning how to differentiate Facebook from your actual website is….. tiring.
John
@john The fact that you don’t want to deal with this is exactly the reason why we built our Facebook solution that enables you to use the exact same content on your website and on your facebook page. Let me know if you need any help!
Excellent post! Definitely agree on the use of contest/promotions. In addition to the benefits listed in the post, the increased page activity and interactions created by promotions held on Facebook positively impacts the page’s EdgeRank, which means that content from the page is likely to be shown to more Facebook users more often!
Alicia – You’re right about Facebook’s promotions guidelines. It’s also important to make sure an attorney reviews the rules, terms and conditions so that the contest or sweepstakes sponsor and administrator don’t run into unintended issues.
We successfully run Facebook promotions for clients all the time leveraging a custom Facebook app – but it’s important that you get it right to make the biggest impact for the client and to stay out of trouble.
Some good suggestions here. The key element on Facebook however is BE HUMAN, cut the “officialness” out of your communications on social networks. Respond, make good mistakes (touchy concept) and be human.
Nobody wants to follow a FB page that’s all about self-promotion and as stiff as an official website.
[...] These trends clearly point out that Facebook’s growth years are behind us, and that after the hunting years, now it’s the time for harvesters to settle in. While sweepstakes may still be fairly successful on Facebook in the short-term, to make a Facebook page successful it has to be an engaging experience (more on this at 5 tips for a strong Facebook page. [...]
[...] While sweepstakes may still be fairly successful on Facebook in the short-term, to make a Facebook page successful it has to be an engaging experience (more on this at five tips for a strong Facebook page). [...]
[...] These trends clearly point out that Facebook’s growth years are behind us, and that after the hunting years, now it’s the time for harvesters to settle in. While sweepstakes may still be fairly successful on Facebook in the short-term, to make a Facebook page successful it has to be an engaging experience (more on this at 5 tips for a strong Facebook page. [...]
[...] Read full article here Tweet Filed Under: Facebook [...]
[...] These trends clearly point out that Facebook’s growth years are behind us, and that after the hunting years, now it’s the time for harvesters to settle in. While sweepstakes may still be fairly successful on Facebook in the short-term, to make a Facebook page successful it has to be an engaging experience (more on this at 5 tips for a strong Facebook page. [...]