| Why Social Media is important for your establishment?
Social Media can help you to
• Build visibility
• Improve your online reputation
• Build search ranking
• Generate buzz
This article will discuss how establishments can utilize social media to market their properties:
1. User Generated Content
In our opinion, hotel reviews will be the single largest influencing factor for consumers looking to decide where to stay. The most popular channels include: Trip Advisor, WikiTravel, Yahoo Answers, Askville by Amazon, etc. Establishments should also encourage guests who stayed with them to post comments to their own webiste.
2. Blogs
A Blog is essentially a software or online service that allows you to quickly post your thoughts, interact with people, and promote your establishment online. Posting a Blog pings the search engines every time new content is posted. This results in frequent search engine spider visits and much higher optimization and ranking.
Blogs help in securing quality links from other relevant Blogs by track backs, comments, etc. Blogs help gain link popularity and drive relevant traffic. Blogs establish a credible platform for online customer interaction.
By creating a blog for your establishment, you will be able to attract visitors looking for things to do in your destination. We recommend developing blogs that are “destination centric” - meaning that they are pages discussing dining, local attractions, transportation, local events, etc. and to list your establishment as the featured property situated within the destination.
3. Social Networks
Hotels will benefit from utilizing different personal social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace to network with consumers who are interested in the unique things offered by the property.
For example, establishments should create their profiles on Facebook and MySpace.
4. Photo-Sharing
There are several photo-sharing websites such as flickr, etc where establishments should create their profiles and share the photos of the establishment and things to do in their market. We have seen tremendous results from sharing these photos.
5. Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is another creative strategy for establishments to enhance their website presence and search engine optimization. Different articles, videos, and the establishment's website can be bookmarked using tags on different social bookmarking channels such as Digg, deli.ci.ious, etc.
6. Articles and Online PR
Establishments can use online articles and online channels to enhance their web presence and increase their search engine optimization.
Using online news channels such as Business Wire and PR web to release articles and news information enhances the search engine optimization and web presence for the establishment.
We have experimented with all of the strategies described in this article and have found significant increases in the establishment ’s search engine rankings as well as online revenue. Social media channels may not result in direct increases in revenue from the channels, but indirectly do cause the establishment ’s website to generate additional revenue.
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