Times are changing – the pound sign is now a hashtag, tweets aren't just for birds, and brands want things shared more than a kindergarten teacher. This past week, the Blue Magnet Interactive team set off to explore several educational seminars hosted by Chicago's Social Media Week to stay on the forefront of the everchanging online social landscape. Our online marketing team is eager to share how their key takeaways from these sessions can translate into successful hotel social media marketing campaigns.
What Social Media Week Chicago 2013 session did you attend?
Kelsey, Matt, and Andrea attended Improving Social Media with SEO to glean insight from other marketing professionals on how to integrate SEO tactics into their social media strategy.
At this session…
Carolyn Shelby gave insider tips on how to optimize your online strategy by using SEO to effectively improve the reach of your social media campaigns. One of the key things Carolyn wanted to emphasize was to constantly use the words for which you want to be found. Whether you're posting a blog, a Facebook post, or even describing a Pinterest 'pin', you must consistently use the same primary keywords in all of your online marketing efforts.
One of the most interesting things I learned at this session is…
Kelsey Nupnau: Google+, Facebook and Pinterest are the top three social media channels that signal cues to the various search engines.
Andrea Mann: When posting social media content on Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest, do not use ambiguous copy! Be descriptive and use the full search term with which you want to be associated. You should be able to take each important keyword out of context and still understand the premise. All social networks have search functionality built in, so by including your full keywords within the copy or description, you are increasing your brand's exposure for relevant searches on that social channel.
So, how can the hotel industry benefit from improving their social media strategy with SEO?
Kelsey Nupnau: If your hotel is allowed to use vanity email addresses based on your vanity (standalone) domain, use them rather than using a gmail or yahoo account. The more exposure you can give to your website's domain name, the better! Also, if your hotel has outstanding photography, get it on Pinterest and be sure to describe each picture well, use the word hotel, and link to a relevant page of your website in case someone wants to click-through to learn more information.
Andrea Mann: Hotels should reinforce their messaging online and offline to be consistent with how they want to be found by shoppers. A hotel marketing team should decide whether they want to brand themselves as the "hotel overlooking Navy Pier" versus the "hotel within walking distance to Navy Pier" and then remain uniform in all marketing efforts. If a hotel coordinates every message sent to shoppers through all of the various online channels, they will create a longer lasting impression and they can eventually impact the way people search for the hotel.
Source: Blue Magnet Interactive Blog
