Are you using social media to connect with your existing customers and potential new guests? We are in the midst of a social marketing revolution, and there are huge new opportunities for growth. Your customers have changed and are now more digitally aware and involved in the research and booking process. They are engaged in every step of the process, and this puts them in the driving seat more than ever before. This article will give you a crash course in social selling on Facebook, and will help you understand the key principles of social media that will enable you to turn social media into sales. Here are 13 ways to make sure your hotel's Facebook presence is on point.

1. YOUR HOTEL'S
FACEBOOK PRESENCE
13 Tips to Optimise
TO DRIVE MORE DIRECT BOOKINGS

2. Social media means dozens of new ways
to connect with potential guests and
drive direct bookings.
Today, we're going to give you a
13-tip crash course in social selling
on one of today's top social channels:
Facebook.

3. Facebook often updates their algorithms to make
sure users are getting the best possible deal.
Unfortunately, that can make it difficult for your
hotel's business page to stand out in all the noise.
In order to be on top of your game, here are
13 tips for optimisation:

4. 1.
High Quality
Photos
1.
High Quality
Photos

5. Ensure your profile and cover photos represent
your brand and are reflective of your hotel's
website.
You don't want a cartoonish profile picture or an
outdated logo on your page; make your
Facebook pictures as polished as your site.

6. Here's a handy
cheat sheet
to make sure all your images
are optimised for every
possible outcome.
(the image dimensions haven't changed since the infographic was created)

7. 2.
About Us
2.
About Us

8. Fill in the About Us section as much as possible,
and ensure you have a link directly back to your
hotel website.
Include information such as how guests can get
in touch, and where you're located.

9. 3. Create
a Vanity
URL
3. Create
a Vanity
URL

10. Create a custom Facebook URL,
e.g. https://www.facebook.com/DublinCityHotel
This gives you the chance to enhance your brand
recognition. It also holds high value in search
rankings, making it easier for guests to find you.

11. 4. Optimise
Your Hotel's
Page for SEO
4. Optimise
Your Hotel's
Page for SEO

12. Facebook social signals can have a lot of
potential for SEO value: use it as a channel to
build traffic and links back to your hotel website.

13. Harness the power of the graph search:
Use keywords in your content and page updates to
let people interested in your content find you.
Graph search is a semantic search platform
introduced to Facebook in 2013, serving keyword
results based on the user's network.
Here's a guide to get the most from it: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-facebook-
graph-search/

14. Take advantage of customized meta titles and
images when you share links in posts.
Facebook will automatically pull in images and
text, but you can choose images to upload and
edit the text to get the results you want.

15. If you find you're stuck for time to generate good
content, consider scheduling your posts to save time.
Post can be scheduled anywhere from 10 minutes to 6
months in advance, so you've got flexibility.
You can schedule posts either directly from your page's
timeline or from the publishing tools section.

16. 5.
Use Interest
Targeting
5.
Use Interest
Targeting

17. Use your fan's interests to target specific parts of your
audience.
To reach specific fans, base your content on your
key personas to include demographic, location and
interest targeting for your organic posts.

18. 6. Use of
the Call-to-Action
Button
6. Use of
the Call-to-Action
Button

19. Customize the call to action button on your Facebook
page, perhaps to drive direct bookings or email
newsletter signups. Here are a few examples hotels
today are using:
Book Now
Shop Now
Watch Video
Contact Us
Sign Up

20. 7. Enable
Ratings &
Reviews
7. Enable
Ratings &
Reviews

21. Reviews let customers engage in a dialogue with you,
and they let you show off some great social proof.
To activate reviews on your Facebook page, you need a
local business listing. Also, have your full business
address featured in the 'About Us' section.

22. 8. Use
Rich Media in
Newsfeed
8. Use
Rich Media in
Newsfeed

23. Create an experience potential guests
want to engage with.
Move away from simple text links with thumbnails. Get
creative! Jazz up your posts with bright imagery and
video clips uploaded directly to Facebook.

24. 9.
Use Apps to
Customize
9.
Use Apps to
Customize

25. Facebook apps let you customize your
page in many ways.
Take a step back, and ask yourself:
"What am I doing that's engaging and
keeping my fans on my Facebook page?"

26. Competition Apps:
Using competition apps allows for tons of flexibility
in the information you can collect from fans. It also
keeps them engaged, and prevents them from
leaving the platform.

27. Email Captures:
Add a sign-up form tab. Offer an incentive for
potential guests to sign up for your newsletter.
Once you've collected your list, use it to retarget
potential guests with special offers and packages to
book direct on your hotel site.

28. 10. Make
Shareable, Fresh
Content
10. Make
Shareable, Fresh
Content

29. A steady stream of shareable content on your website is:
a) Helpful from a social media perspective
(lots of things to share!)
b) Beneficial for your SEO
c) Engages guests that visit your site
Fresh content is a win-win-win.

30. 11. Add
Social Sharing
Icons
11. Add
Social Sharing
Icons

31. Make sure your content is easily shareable to
Facebook and other platforms.
You can add social sharing icons to your website
with easy tools like ShareThis, AddThis or
SumoMe.

32. 12. Look
At Who Your
Audience is
12. Look
At Who Your
Audience is

33. Learn more about the customers that matter to
you before you invest in paid advertising.
Facebook Audience Insights gives you information like:
demographic
location
interests
connections
and more!

34. Think of Audience Insights as a mini Google
Analytics for your Facebook page.
You can customize your target audience
with adverts manager or power editor before
your campaign is live... but Audience
Insights lets you learn more before putting
budget behind it.

35. You can view information about 3 groups:
1. People on Facebook
2. People connected to your page or event
3. People in custom audiences which you may
have already created, e.g. a newsletter database
or a custom audience from your website.

36. Here's how specific you can get:
Let’s say you want to target American male and females
between the ages of 35-44 who are interested in hotels
and travel.
In the example on the next slide, you're currently targeting
70% women and 30% men, 67% of whom are married and
64% of which are educated to college level. Looking at
this further, we can see that 32% of this audience have an
associated management job title.

38. 13.
Use Paid
Advertising
13.
Use Paid
Advertising

39. Facebook advertising should be an
essential part of your hotel's digital
marketing strategy to drive direct
bookings back to your own brand site.

40. The news feed, with it's frequently-updated algorithm, is
at the center of Facebook success.
Facebook serves posts to users that they're likely to
engage with, with means that there's more competition
than ever for marketers hoping to compete for real
estate.
Here's a look at the paid options available to you:

41. BOOSTED POSTS:
Boosting a post is an effective, inexpensive way to get
as much exposure as possible for your content.
It lets relevant people see your posts: you can set a
specific audience to target, for a set budget, over a set
period of time.

42. GHOST POSTS
Unpublished page posts, or 'ghost posts,' are used
solely for advertising. They won't show up on your
hotel's Facebook page or in news feeds, making them
handy if you're posting too frequently.
They let you show your content to a tailored audience,
and let you display a call to action button.

43. CUSTOM AUDIENCES
Facebook’s custom audiences allow you to reach
customers you already have an established relationship
with. These types of campaigns are super-effective, and
avoid the wasted clicks you’d get from a more generic
audience.

44. WEBSITE CUSTOM AUDIENCES
Collect a list of people who have visited specific pages on your
website. You can start collating this list as soon as you add the
Facebook custom audience pixel across your website.
For example, people who have checked availability on your
website but who haven’t proceeded to the booking stage are the
low-hanging fruit, and worth retargeting through Facebook to
entice them to come back to book directly on your website.

45. EMAIL/PHONE NUMBER CUSTOM AUDIENCES
You can upload a list of email addresses or phone numbers directly
to Facebook, and it will automatically match these up with the
relevant Facebook IDs if they are on Facebook.
This is very useful when you use it alongside an existing campaign.
For example, you can retarget people whom you have sent an e-
zine to in the past couple of days, but haven't booked yet.

46. LOOKALIKE CUSTOM AUDIENCES
Lookalike audiences allow you to target and reach new people
who are similar to one of your custom audiences. For example, a
powerful lookalike audience would be people similar to those
who’ve already made a booking on your website. Facebook will
then match up the top % of users to display your ads to.

47. ADVANCED CUSTOM AUDIENCES
There are numerous advanced targeting options that can be
layered on top on one another, gradually making your audience
smaller and more relevant, driving down costs and raising ROI.
You can use single factors or combinations of interests,
behaviours & geo location.

48. Here's a social checklist to make sure your Facebook
page is working as hard as it can:

49. Remember not to oversell on every Facebook post! Keep
the 80/20 rule in mind:
Only 20% of your content should be about your brand.
The other 80% should be dedicated to sharing content
that really matters to your audience and engages with
them in conversations.

50. There are always new ways for you to reach out to
potential guests, and Facebook is just one of the
platforms that you can use to develop long-lasting
relationships.
You need to make an effort to engage with your fans,
listen to what they have to say and get ahead of your
competition.

51. Net Affinity is an award-winning technology company focused
exclusively on the hotel sector.We have collated the brightest,
experienced and passionate team of online marketers, account
managers, designers and developers to ensure our clients'
online success and continued growth.