We’re always being told that social media is a 24/7/365 affair, but with summer temperatures at their highest and many of us enjoying our holidays abroad, social media activities can drop down a few notches.
It’s a good time to take a social breather and do a little housekeeping and “behind the scenes” organising. Here’s a little, hospitality-centric, roundup of the latest changes and opportunities:
Facebook is preparing for yet another major change which is going to considerably impact the reach of business pages.
A little while ago, the world’s largest social network announced that it would start to actively prioritise posts from user’s friends in timelines over content from business pages. In other words, even if you run a very active and engaged Facebook page for your hotel or restaurant, you will see the reach of your posts drop further.
For businesses, it appears to spell the end of Facebook as a “free” marketing and audience engagement tool and to further accelerate its move to a paid advertising channel.
As if this wasn’t challenging enough, Instagram, which over the past few years has steadily risen in importance for hotels trying to engage their audiences, also recently implemented what is, perhaps, the biggest change since the start of the service in 2010.
The picture-sharing network introduced a Facebook-style algorithm, which means that posts will no longer be shown in chronological order in users’ timelines, but filtered by quality and engagement.
High quality, popular posts will be shown to more users in your network than other posts and Instagram will take user behavior and preferences into account when displaying posts.
It’s not all bad news, though, because the picture-centric platform also announced that it will roll out detailed analytics over the next few months and introduce better tools for businesses, including improved handling of comments and expanded business profiles.
The new business profiles are said to include a Facebook-style “Contact” button, business categories, and direct links to a business’ map location from the profile page.
Read rest of the article at Hotelier Middle East
