Social Media was made for the hostel and budget accommodation market – cost-effective and far reaching. And it’s a leveller – you can be a small fish in the big pond yet make more of an impact then the big boys if you do it well. Whatever the size and type of the accommodation business, Social Media must be integrated into all marketing activity!

Embrace social Media and all that comes with it. If you just dabble, you’ll get nowhere fast. Fail to answer that critical tweet or comment on TripAdvisor or other UGC sites and all other marketing efforts you might be proud of could go down the drain.

It’s amazing how many businesses think they have to be on Facebook or Twitter just because everyone else is or it’s the thing to do e.g. if you build it, it will be ‘liked’ automatically. Businesses need to have a fully-integrated marketing strategy so they can meaningfully interact and socialise with their fans and followers.

Too often the Social Media ‘expert’ is someone who has been assigned the task rather than a person who genuinely embraces the medium and all its possible outcomes. Your Social Media specialist needs passion, needs to know your product and services intimately, understand there are objectives and can communicate effectively, with personality.

The excuse that it’s hard to measure the result or get a ROI is frankly rubbish. More and more tools are available to watch impact – search engines now pull results from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and Google Analytics can measure the impact of Social Media. Plus the goal is not just to measure for a specific ROI but to gain engagement. It is a great way to connect with customers, build loyalty and grow your reputation.

So how do you use social media to get results from your marketing efforts?

1) Be active! Add engaging content often and don’t be silent for too long. An average of 10-20 tweets a day is a great start.

2) Share lots! Enable shares from your website, share other’s relevant content on Facebook and retweet tweets from others.

3) Show your social media links on all marketing material from your website to email and even offline such as on posters.

4) Think about the timing. The time to add Facebook posts or tweet is definitely an art form worth playing with. It is said that outside normal business hours gets a higher response.

5) Get engaged. Ask questions, encourage comments and make sure there is an actual personality behind the brand.

Social Media gets results but think about how to weave it throughout your sales & marketing strategy. It will be worth the effort.

Why not follow StayWYSE to keep up to date with all hostel and budget accommodation news.

I saw a story yesterday about Tourism Australia doing more marketing activity aimed at the Youth Market. I loved the quote that the Youth Market was “one of the best and quickest to turn on”. Hallelujah! It’s about time this so often unrecognised sector is being seen for what it is – an important and valuable supplier of inbound visitors and spend.

And Tourism Australia does market to Youth so well – whether it be prominence on their website or via Social Media where their Work & Travel Facebook page has over 64k followers.

It isn’t surprising that the Aussies are out there showing the love to Youth. To be fair, they’ve long recognised the importance of backpackers and young travellers. Their Tourism Export Council has been a big supporter the industry – for goodness sake, they even run a Backpacker & Youth Tourism Conference . I remember 10-15 years ago in my days of business development for an International Student & Youth Travel retailer how amazed I was that the various jaunts up to the UK by Aussie suppliers was highly subsidised by ATEC (and therefore the Government). UK suppliers were envious and well they should be. UKTI has never taken this sector seriously.

The South Africans have made half-hearted attempts at wooing Youth but I firmly believe that it’s the industry and not the Tourist Board that drives that. The same can be said for the Kiwis. If the Tourist Board does any promotion , it’s because of the sheer tenacity of the industry pushing and prodding.

I can think of few other Tourist Boards that do anything of any significance in the Youth sector. There are little pockets of activity with the French and the Germans and perhaps the Thais. My home country, the US, doesn’t regard the sector in any way, shape or form (pity). The closest VisitBritain gets to promoting this great island I live in and love to the Youth Market on their website is a bit of a nod for ‘Study & Learn’ and ‘Budget Accommodation’. It is really disappointing but not surprising. Between the eternally dwindling marketing spend (thanks DCMS) and frankly a lack of interest in the sector, I wouldn’t expect it. Of course I would love to see more recognition of the value of the sector and I’ve spent a good many years keeping up the profile but I have no expectation this will change any time soon.

So let’s see if they a really meant it when Official Tourism Organisations from around the who world met at the last WYSTC said ‘Don’t underestimate youth and student travel,’
as they started planning for a unified strategy addressing the need of the global youth & student travel industry valued at US $136 billion per year! Tourist Boards please take note – Australia seem to be the only serious player around.