Written by Ian-Michael Farkas, Local Measure
Tool fatigue is a reality for many and the practice of being always-on also means that there is never any down time for teams managing social media. The most simplistic view of social media management is a platform-centric one, that is to say people are either ‘Facebooking’, ‘Tweeting’ etc. However, a more practical way to understand the time required to manage social media is to break down the types of activities being conducted. Below we look at four key functions:
- Reputation Management and Post-Stay Feedback
Peer recommendations have become increasingly important as people lose trust in traditional sources of authority. Reputation Management software helps by aggregating reviews from hundreds of sites and presents them in a digestible dashboard for hotels to manage in a single interface.
Tools: TripAdvisor, TrustYou, Revinate, Medallia and ReviewPro
- Social Listening and During-Stay Engagement
When you spot a less-than-positive review online following a guest’s visit, it’s often too late to change their minds or erase it from the public eye. Location-based listening tools allow you to be alerted to social posts and respond in real-time. Ideally, your social listening tool will aggregate posts from all the main social channels and display a live, visual feed so you can see at a glance what’s been posted.
Tools: Local Measure is a social listening tool designed for the hospitality and tourism industry.
- Brand Marketing
From creating campaigns, to always-on brand content, marketing teams need to publish and distribute content across websites, emails and social channels. There are many social media management tools that allow you to schedule and publish to your multiple social media accounts from one place.
Tools: Hootsuite, Sprout Social
- Sourcing and Leveraging User Generated Content
Publishing UGC is beneficial in many ways for brands: it provides rich content, often for free, as well as lending credibility and authenticity to a brand. However, finding quality UGC and publishing it promptly can be time consuming. Most tools will gather UGC based on an @mention or use of a branded hashtag.
Tools: Local Measure, Stackla and TINT
As with any new implementation, the most important question to ask is, how will this tool help deliver on your ideal business outcome and customer experience? Once you have targets that are aligned with each of the functions involved in social media management, it becomes clearer what kind of investment is required.