Check out my Top 5 Time Saving Social Media Tips for Hospitality Businesses that DIY Social Media
At AVTES we help hospitality business owners and managers to build their businesses with skills and knowledge across all areas of hospitality business. Marketing is one of my areas of expertise and I believe that hospitality businesses can DIY their own social media effectively and efficiently – they just need to right tools and systems. Here, I’m sharing my top 5 time saving social media tips.
Without these tips you will suffer wasting your time, and worry about whether social media is working for your business. But with it, you’ll know how to best use your time, and know social media efforts are working, helping you build your hospitality business.
How much time do you spend doing social media for your business?
Do you wish you could spend less time and get better results?
Social media has transformed the way small businesses can market and interact with their customers and potential customers. But the biggest problem that most business owners have is that it takes up too much of their time and their not sure what’s working, or if indeed, it’s working at all.
And it’s true, social media probably isn’t making you as much money as you make when you’re directly working in your business.
Time is money, as they say, and your time as a business owner or manager is super valuable.
But that old saying “work smart not hard” certainly applies to social media. Follow this list to save time DIY-ing your social media…
1. Have a Plan
What are you trying to achieve by using social media?
There are so many ways to use social media for your business, but not every way will be beneficial to you.
Consider your business goals and align your social media goals to these. Then outline a strategy of how you will achieve that goal (or goals).
Using a social media calendar can help you be more organized with your posts. You can download our social media calendar template.
2. Pick One or Two Social Media Platforms
Which social media platforms do you use?
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Periscope??
Ain’t nobody got time for that. So which one is best? Well it depends…
You need to be where your customers and potential customers are. For most hospitality businesses that is Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are the most common, and the most used by the general public. They also allow you to showcase your business using visuals and video. So – stick to one or two platforms and focus your efforts there.
3. Build a Content Library
If you’re like most businesses, you probably struggle with what to post yeah?
But if you’ve been in business a while, and as a hospitality business, you probably have more content than you realise…
Think about the half-finished blog posts you have saved on your computer, the pictures from last year’s Christmas party, those ‘happy hour’ posters you have around the venue…
But all this stuff is probably kept in different places, am I right? Well you need to consolidate it into a Content Library. A folder on your computer where you keep all your content – photos, flyers, videos, emails, presentations…
And you don’t have to just share your own stuff – consider sharing other relevant content that you’ve seen, or ask your customers to share and tag you in their posts, then you can re-post that!
You can also reuse content you know – and you should. Most content only gets used once, what a waste of time and energy creating it! Especially when most of the time it remains unseen. So don’t be scared of re-posting your content. Just don’t do it all the time.
4. Schedule!
If you manually do your social media posting – STOP!
There is no need to do things manually any more. You can (and should) schedule all your posts in advance using a scheduling tool. There are many, completely free scheduling tools available – Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social…
These tools are like an easy to use computer program that allow you to post text, images, videos, and links to pretty much any social media platform.
5. Know What’s Working
While you don’t need to be checking your stats every 10 minutes, or writing weekly reports, reviewing what’s working and what isn’t is a valuable thing to know about your social media efforts.
Which posts get the most engagement? Great, use these as a template when creating new content.
When do you get more engagement? Great, post more during those times.
You should also measure what’s working, ideally monthly – choose one or two metrics that contribute to your business (and be careful not to get caught up in what’s called ‘vanity metrics’ – while increasing your followers is fun, it may not be contributing anything to your business). Instead consider newsletter sign ups, or bookings and measure how many have come from social media.
What else?
If you’re looking for even more ways to save time and make more money from social media you could get some help…
DELEGATE
Most social media activities can be delegated by the business owner or manager. You probably have somebody on your staff that would love to be involved in social media for your business. Millennials understand social media. They just get it. You might even have someone that has a massive following already. Empower that person to take on some or all of your social media duties.
But remember, before you let them go crazy, you need to include clear boundaries, or guidelines, like what types of things are OK to post and say, and when to call you in (probably with aggressive customer reviews). Also, you’ll need to do regular checks to make sure things are going the way you want them to.
OUTSOURCE
Outsourcing to a freelancer or agency might save you time, but not all of it. You’ll still need to spend time finding someone, advising them about your goals, providing content, reviewing their performance…
LEARN
You can’t be awesome at everything. But it’s a great idea for a business owner or manager to be able to step in to social media. Improve the skills that are slowing your down. Online tutorials and resources, or you could check out our Marketing Toolkit…
With some new skills there is no reason you can’t halve your time spent on social media and get double the results.