Travel & Hospitality Archives | Sprout Social Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Fri, 10 Nov 2023 19:32:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Travel & Hospitality Archives | Sprout Social 32 32 Social media and hospitality: How 3 brands are serving 5-star experiences https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-and-hospitality/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-and-hospitality/#comments Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:18:37 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=76457 Exceptional guest experiences are the hallmark of best-in-class hospitality. These experiences extend to all customer interactions, especially those on social media. New generations of Read more...

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]]> Exceptional guest experiences are the hallmark of best-in-class hospitality. These experiences extend to all customer interactions, especially those on social media. New generations of consumers choose social as their communication channel of choice, and turn to their favorite networks to plan everything from their next restaurant reservation to a complete travel itinerary.

Malissa Tabbey, Manager of Enterprise Social Media Strategy and Analytics at Vail Resorts, creates memorable social experiences with this in mind. “[Our social media approach] is always guest-first…We want to enable people to create an unforgettable, personalized resort experience.”

In this era of the hospitality industry, every customer exchange on social is your chance to make a lasting impression. With the right tactics and tools, a hospitality social media marketing strategy can help you increase brand awareness, gain new customers and supercharge long-term loyalty. Keep reading for actionable tips from hospitality brands taking customer satisfaction to the next level on social.

The evolution of social media for hospitality brands

A few years ago, lockdown measures forced consumers inside. New protocol challenged restaurants, bars, hotels, resorts, airlines, event spaces and tourism agencies to rethink how they connect with their audiences. Companies turned to social to share updates, address queries, respond to feedback and provide personalized experiences more frequently.

People grew accustomed to having a direct line of communication with the hospitality brands they love, and their definition of outstanding service evolved. Now when brands take too long to respond on social, 36% of consumers will share their negative experience with friends and family, while 31% won’t complete their purchase, according to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™.

A screenshot of a Tweet sent to Loews Hotels by a happy customer who made a pillow of one of their vacation photos. Loews Hotel responded that they loved the pillow, and look forward to welcoming them back to the resort.

These elevated expectations explain why having a robust social media strategy is more important for hospitality brands than ever before. Directly engaging with customers on social fosters trust, strengthens relationships and demonstrates a deep commitment to satisfaction that edges out the competition.

But it’s not just about having an extensive content calendar or responding to customer care needs—brands must also reflect the changing social media landscape. Consumer preferences for human-focused, video-centric content push hospitality brands to relate to their audience on social differently, demanding more from the people behind brand accounts.

Experimenting with these formats puts hospitality brands at an advantage, allowing followers to see places and experiences firsthand before booking a trip.

@flyallegiant

Hiding in ‘plane’ sight… 🫣

♬ Goofy Ahh Beat – Obma

With all that’s changed in the past few years, one thing has remained constant: the number of global social media users is on a steep incline, with 5.85 billion users expected by 2027. By investing in a comprehensive global social media strategy, brands can reach a broad audience and attract new customers worldwide.

3 unforgettable hospitality social media strategies in action

Here are four specific ways world-famous hospitality brands use social to generate new business and build customer loyalty.

Vail Resorts leans into local appeal

With 40+ mountain resorts around the world, Vail Resorts juggles a mosaic of accounts across regions and countries. Their social team is faced with the challenge of reaching distinct audiences—from global visitors to local residents.

As Tabbey explains, “We lean into the uniqueness of each resort brand. Our resorts offer different experiences—including urban, luxury and adventure—and different benefits, like picturesque hikes or family-focused activities.”

Simply posting an aesthetic mountain photo isn’t enough to stand out in their competitive landscape, or to showcase the local appeal of their resort locations. Tabbey describes standing out in the “slopes of sameness” a challenge a lot of travel-based hospitality companies face.

To help their resorts shine, Vail Resorts tailors their content to specific audiences by featuring events, amenities, landscapes and local charm. For example, some resorts orient their content calendar around events happening on their grounds and in the local community.

A screenshot of a Facebook post from Mount Sunapee Resort. The post contains a video of a team member named Sarah explaining events coming up in the summer months, and the caption provides viewers with a list of all the events and a link to sign up.

While others highlight iconic adventures and breathtaking views.

Apply it: Dedicate time and resources to understanding all of your global audiences, and how these key demographics might vary by brand. Learn more about what they want from their experience with your brand. Invest your resources developing content your audience wants to engage with, and show up on channels they use most.

“Vail Resorts uses audience demographics from each social media platform to inform our strategy. Our different resorts—destination, urban, local and regional—all lean into each social platform’s unique content types and audience demographics to reach the intended user. They all approach each app uniquely based on their brand. Some take a heavier video first approach to inspire, while others lean into photography and community management to connect,” describes Tabbey.

Use our guide to social media demographics by platform to understand how your network strategy might vary by brand.

Loews Hotels has a knack for surprising-and-delighting

Loews Hotels & Co. has 26 hotels across the US and Canada, spanning multiple states and provinces. Their social team uses social listening to keep up with their growing global audience and analyze relevant conversations happening online. With social listening, they find unique ways to personalize their social customer care efforts.

“We use social listening to look for a lot of different things,” says their social team. “The happiest of them all, obviously, is identifying opportunities to surprise and delight our guests.”

They told us about a time they helped a Twitter user plan her vacation. In the initial Tweet, the user asked for recommendations about a theme park in Orlando. Without being tagged or mentioned, the Loews team jumped at the chance to serve as an on-demand concierge by sending her the information she needed. The result of their random act of kindness? Increased brand awareness and deeper customer loyalty.

Apply it: Use social listening to enable an unmatched, omnichannel guest experience that merges online and physical customer care. Follow Loews’ lead and use an advanced social listening solution like Sprout Social to tap into global conversations that would be a good fit for scaling your surprise-and-delight tactics. With Sprout, proprietary AI-driven technology does the heavy lifting for you so you can spend more time planning unforgettable experiences.

A screenshot of Sprout's Performance Summary tool which demonstrates key metrics (like volume, engagements and impressions) related to a Topic.

Allegiant Air achieves real-time reputation management

Las Vegas-based airline Allegiant Air uses social media to keep their reputation flying high. As Allegiant’s Customer Relations Manager Alyssa Salazar put it, “Having social media allows us to respond to and help retain our customers, as well as build brand loyalty.”

For Allegiant, a crucial step of reputation management is surfacing positive feedback, and repurposing it as user-generated content (UGC). Featuring happy customers on your profile drives other users to celebrate your brand and leave positive reviews. The comments section of the brand’s recent post is proof of that.

@flyallegiant

Cheers to living a #NonstopLife full of adventure in FortLauderdale!

♬ original sound – Allegiant Air

The comment section of a TikTok from Allegiant Air that features happy customers who flew Allegiant on their recent trip. In the comments section, users are sharing their love for Allegiant, with one user even volunteering to have the airline repost their content.

Apply it: Surface customers who love your brand, while identifying opportunities to make the customer experience even better.

Sprout’s platform is an integral part of Allegiant’s brand loyalty efforts. The Customer Relations team uses Sprout to streamline their feedback collection process by using internal tags to capture available UGC as it comes into the Smart Inbox. For example, adding a tag like “UGC opportunity” makes it easy to quickly find reshareable content.

A screenshot of Sprout's Smart Inbox filtered for the tags coffee and latte. Only messages with those tags appear in the inbox.

Managing brand reputation with Sprout goes beyond social media. In the platform, you can monitor and engage with review sites like Google My Business, TripAdvisor and Yelp. Sprout’s review management tools unifies posts from these platforms into a single stream, so you can stay organized and informed.

Deliver a first-class experience for your customers on social

Social media hospitality efforts are a non-negotiable part of a customer-first strategy—from creating content that hits the right notes for all your global audiences, to having the right tools and processes in place to handle an influx of customer inquiries. Apply the best practices described by the brands in this article to deliver elevated customer experiences, which will increase new business growth and bolster customer loyalty.

To do this, you must remember your customers expect a stellar brand experience 24/7. Use our customer experience audit template to ensure your channels are top-notch.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-and-hospitality/feed/ 1 Sprout Social helps keep NJ TRANSIT’s social strategy on track https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/nj-transit/ Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:00:48 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=149825/ In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted the transportation industry, but the nature of the unprecedented pandemic made it all the more important to keep customers informed Read more...

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]]> In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted the transportation industry, but the nature of the unprecedented pandemic made it all the more important to keep customers informed and safe. The previous year, NJ TRANSIT served nearly one million daily riders across its trains, buses and light rail each day. Those customers rely on these services and, through the upheaval of 2020, social media was the first place they turned with questions and concerns about their trips.

Customer experience is at the heart of the NJ TRANSIT brand. “Our company’s goal is to give customers the best experience possible through social media so they have everything they need for an enjoyable trip,” said Carol Mack, NJ TRANSIT’s Director of Events and Social Media. To deliver a great customer experience, NJ TRANSIT needed a social media management solution that would help them optimize customer care efforts, streamline response management and provide timely updates about their services. They needed Sprout Social.

When people think of transit, we don’t want them to think of just equipment and stations so we use social to give our employees a voice and to humanize them to the public.
Carol Mack
Director of Events & Social Media, NJ TRANSIT

Supporting cross-functional strategies 

While NJ TRANSIT uses Instagram as their primary platform for branding and LinkedIn is for more professional purposes, they’re most engaged with their customers on Facebook and Twitter. What’s unique about their Twitter strategy is that in addition to their main NJ TRANSIT Twitter account, they also run 14 accounts that are each dedicated to a specific transit line.

Their content strategy for each line account is simple: provide real-time updates for travelers. Having service-specific accounts keeps important, relevant information organized and accessible for transit riders. It also means that the NJ TRANSIT social team can focus their corporate Twitter handle on their brand messaging, news, initiatives and anything else that’s important to the customer.

Another important characteristic of NJ TRANSIT’s customer care and social strategies is how they draw attention to the people behind their brand. “When people think of transit, we don’t want them to think of just equipment and stations so we use social to give our employees a voice and to humanize them to the public,” said Mack.

For example, the NJ TRANSIT Police Department does much more than provide high-quality safety and security for the transit system. They also have an outreach program staffed by five outreach officers throughout the state that helps connect the homeless with necessary social and medical services, as well as housing opportunities. The police department’s Twitter account gives them a platform to share those lesser-known efforts, which has made a major impact on humanizing the department.

The Police Department has an intelligence division that uses Sprout’s powerful Listening features to monitor conversations across social. Using keywords and location-based searches provides the department with timely access to conversations occurring across the transit system. This intelligence gathering allows them to deploy resources to maintain the safety of our customers and employees systemwide.

Highlighting their people and initiatives also helps shape NJ TRANSIT’s employer brand and influence recruitment. “Hiring qualified people is very important to us. We’ve taken extra efforts to make sure we use social media to help our human resources department get the best talent that they can,” said Mack. “When we started using social to assist with hiring bus operators, we saw a 60% increase in resumes.”

We work directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox and it’s straightforward just like a Twitter stream, so it’s also very easy to get people up to speed on how to use it.
Kevin Minott
Senior Communications Coordinator, NJ TRANSIT

Keep your wheels turning on social

While the content strategies differ between the line accounts, the police department account and their main account, the entire NJ TRANSIT social team uses Sprout’s Smart Inbox to monitor each account in a single feed. Before using Sprout, the team would have to log in natively to each line account to respond to customers, which negatively impacted response time—an important metric for the team’s customer service strategy.

The confusing, disorganized user interface of their former platform negatively impacted response time. “We work directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox and it’s straightforward just like a Twitter stream, so it’s also very easy to get people up to speed on how to use it,” said Kevin Minott, NJ TRANSIT’s Senior Communications Coordinator. “I was able to get our SVP of communications and customer experience up and running on Sprout in just one day.”

I am in love with the Task feature. It ensures that all the information we need in order to respond stays with the right message.
Carol Mack
Director of Events & Social Media, NJ TRANSIT

Don’t lose your train of thought

Whether customers are asking about a technical issue or need information about a schedule change, they want to know they’re being heard. The NJ TRANSIT social team works to respond and communicate with empathy and accuracy, which often requires collaboration with other departments. For example, they are currently working with their IT department to build a comprehensive response team in Sprout. Sprout’s Tasks feature in the Inbox helps make that collaboration seamless.

If, for instance, they receive a message on social about a problem with their mobile app, the social team can assign a Task to the IT Sprout user. Then, that person will look into the issue and provide context or an answer to the social team in Sprout. The social team will polish the copy and respond to the customer.

“I am in love with the Task feature. It ensures that all the information we need in order to respond stays with the right message, ” said Mack. “Before using Sprout, we’d have to copy and paste from the platform we had into email and vice versa.” For someone like Mack, who gets around 400 emails a day, keeping that thread of information separate within Sprout is essential.

The results are in

According to the Sprout Social Index™, 30% of customers expect a response from a brand in the first 24 hours of sending their message. In the first half of 2021, NJ TRANSIT exceeded those expectations maintaining an average first reply time of 30 minutes.

It’s not just the Smart Inbox that speeds up processes for the NJ TRANSIT team. “Sprout has amazing analytics tools that we didn’t have access to with our last management platform. Now, we run engagement reports for our senior vice president of communications and customer service, monthly reports for our board, weekly communication reports, response reports and more,” said Minott. “Sprout has allowed us to do this with ease.”

“To give you an idea, Kevin used to spend three days on reports that now take three hours,” Mack continued. “We used to have to calculate response time manually because in our old platform, it would count us as being non-responsive when we were offline. With Sprout, we can put work hours in so the Engagement Report calculates our real response rate for us.”

Sprout Social, at your service 

Customer care and experience are what NJ TRANSIT’s brand is all about. When selecting a new social media management platform, they were looking for a software and team that would give them the same level of support. High-quality customer care was an important deciding factor in their decision to work with Sprout.

“Where Sprout came out on top was understanding us and treating us as individuals. They didn’t give us a one-size-fits-all approach or treat us like anyone else. We’re a transportation agency, so we have different needs, and that understanding of who we are really matters,” said Mack. “Every time we reach out, Sprout gives us the same customer care that we were promised from the first time we spoke to them. They really are just 100% there for us.”

Our team of experts will always respect your unique needs and treat your business with care. Start a free, 30-day trial today or request a demo to get a customized tour from our team.

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]]> Social Spotlight: Hilton’s pandemic strategy proves the business value of social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/#respond Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:20:17 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=149886/ Overview For more than a century, Hilton has built its reputation on raising the standards of the guest experience. In fact, many of the Read more...

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]]> Overview

For more than a century, Hilton has built its reputation on raising the standards of the guest experience. In fact, many of the staple offerings in the hospitality industry today—room service, the minibar, central reservations systems—were once Hilton innovations.

And even though it’s been four decades since minibars made their glorious debut, Hilton continues to innovate. Several years ago, they introduced their Hilton Honors app and Digital Key technology to provide guests with a contactless check in/check out experience. Their Five Feet to Fitness™ offering includes 11 different fitness equipment and accessory options so guests can work out in the privacy of their room. And their recent CleanStay program promises guests more rigorous cleaning and inspection protocols in the wake of the pandemic.

As an industry pioneer, many brands look to Hilton as a shining example of how to address the evolving needs of today’s traveler, and rise to the challenge of reinventing the hospitality experience.

Challenge

While the effects of the pandemic have been devastating across the board, one of the hardest hit industries was Travel and Hospitality. Like most hotels, resorts and other travel destinations, the initial challenge for Hilton was managing the fallout from cancellations.

But as time went on, the challenge became (and still remains) the general sentiment toward travel. In addition to the everyday challenge of standing out among other hotel choices, Hilton also needed to overcome new hesitations and objections about travel during a pandemic. Their business depended on it. So, what did they do? In short, they listened.

Strategy

Hilton’s strategy to inspire renewed trust and confidence in both travel and their brand appears to include three insight-driven pillars: product innovation, marketing creative and customer connection. Let’s unpack each pillar and discover how your brand can use social insights to drive similar business strategies.

Product innovation

During a pandemic, travelers’ priorities change. When they’re searching for a hotel, they care less about amenities and service, and more about cleanliness and protection. In order to compete with the comfort and safety of people’s own homes, Hilton created a program that would ensure the same diligence and care in cleaning their hotel rooms. In partnership with trusted household cleaning brand, Lysol, the brand launched Hilton CleanStay in select hotels.

Most notably, the program featured the Hilton CleanStay seal, a product innovation that let guests know their room was professionally deep cleaned since the last guest—and that no one had entered their room since that cleaning.

To promote the program, Hilton shared the announcement on its social channels, as well as a video showing the cleaning protocols in action. Judging by some of the comments, this program had a direct affect on loyalty and revenue.

Using social to drive product innovation: 

Insights gleaned from social can tell a brand a lot about what their audience is thinking, feeling, wanting, needing, using, doing, etc. Although a desire for clean rooms may have been a no-brainer in the context of the pandemic, the knowledge of which cleaning brands Hilton’s audience trusted most and the desire for a visual cue could have come from social listening.

By listening to social conversations that included keywords like cleaning, hotels, virus protection, etc, Hilton may have discovered the insights that folks trust Lysol, and don’t always trust someone’s word that something’s been cleaned—leading to their choice in brand partnership and the innovation of the physical seal.

With a sophisticated listening tool, your team can set up queries to monitor specific topics and keywords, as well as sentiments toward your brand and others. These insights might just reveal a gap in the market or new opportunity to create something new for your customers.

Marketing creative

In October of 2020, Hilton announced its global marketing campaign, “To New Memories.” The initiative was driven by a customer survey revealing that nearly nine in 10 travelers say travel memories are some of the happiest of their lives, 95% of those who travel are missing it and 90% believe we are currently experiencing a travel memory deficit.

The campaign was created to reignite people’s passion for travel by reminding them of what vacations, adventures and getaways feel like. It appealed to Hilton’s audience’s emotions at a time when they were missing travel and the memories it created the most. Long story short: They used FOMO to inspire desire and action.

Using social to drive marketing creative:

For folks who aren’t as motivated by the promise of a clean room, Hilton went a layer deeper with this campaign by appealing to the emotions of their audience. In order to do that, they first had to find out how their audience was feeling.

While Hilton used an actual customer survey to glean insights around travel sentiment, not every brand has similar resources. That’s the beauty of social listening. You don’t need a lot of time or money to discover what your audience is feeling at any given time. People are telling us everything we need to know on a daily basis through their social activity. We just need to make sure we’re listening.

And when it comes to marketing campaigns, that emotional insight and connection is what will lead to messaging and creative that resonates deeply enough to inspire your audience to take action. It’s the difference between selling them on what you’re offering—and why you’re offering it. The “why” is always more impactful.

Customer connection

With so many folks working from home during the pandemic, Hilton identified an opportunity to provide their guests with a distraction-free environment for more productive remote working. The initiative is called Workspaces and offers day-use rooms that include a spacious desk, ergonomic chair and enhanced WiFi.

To promote Workspaces on social, Hilton asked their followers to send them a photo of themselves in their everyday workspace using #UpgradeYourView, and in return they’d upgrade it to reflect the “travel background of their dreams.”

Even though it was only a day-long initiative, the images created were highly-shareable, and gave the brand the opportunity to engage with their audience, promote their new program and stay top of mind during a decline in travel.

Specific Hilton hotel chains and locations have also mastered the art of genuine customer connection. When power outages in Texas displaced an elderly man from his home, his granddaughter checked him into a local hotel, which the family jokingly nicknamed “Waldorf Astoria.” When a real Waldorf Astoria property—one of Hilton’s most prestigious and luxurious chains—learned of his story, they reached out with a personal invitation to stay with them once travel restrictions lightened up.

Knowing that might be a while, the hotel decided to bring their signature luxury experience directly to him by sending him a Waldorf Astoria “care package,” including a bathrobe, slippers, luggage tag and more to use while he plans his trip.

These surprise and delight moments create lasting connections not only with the guests directly involved, but also with everyone who happens to hear about it. In this case, the story made it onto the local Texas news, giving the hotel some free, brand-building publicity. And of course, the story then makes for great content to share across their own channels.

Using social to drive customer connection:

It would be difficult to stumble upon these moments without a sophisticated social listening solution. People don’t always use your brand’s handle when mentioning you in their social conversations. By monitoring certain relevant keywords, the Rome Waldorf Astoria location was able to bless this man beyond anything he ever expected, and positively impact their brand perception in the process.

Travel and hospitality brands aren’t the only ones who can benefit from surprise and delight opportunities. Any time your team can add value to or solve a problem for members of your audience, you are building your brand and directly impacting your business through customer connection.

And there’s just no better way to do it than with social listening.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/feed/ 0 How to sell on Pinterest: A step-by-step guide for brands https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/#comments Tue, 12 May 2020 18:13:27 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=117087/ What started out as a platform for finding new recipes and DIY ideas has turned into a major shopping search engine. In fact, 89% Read more...

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]]> What started out as a platform for finding new recipes and DIY ideas has turned into a major shopping search engine. In fact, 89% of US pinners use Pinterest to research purchasing decisions.

And with Pinterest boasting 320 million monthly active users, that is a lot of people going to this one platform just to shop.

This is all the more reason why your brand should make the most of this platform and, most importantly, learn how to sell on Pinterest.

Why you should sell on Pinterest

We’ve already covered that 89% of US pinners on the platform are using it specifically to plan out purchases and research products, but that’s not all you need to know.

Nearly half of all users are logging onto the site just to shop. Forty-seven percent to be exact. That’s about 150 million potential new customers buying your products.

So find your target audience, get your products in front of them and wait for those dollar signs to start rolling in, right?

Of course, it’s not quite that easy. In fact, the next section is the steps you need to take before you start selling on Pinterest.

Getting your brand ready to sell on Pinterest

We know you’re excited about the prospect of leveraging all of those shoppers on Pinterest. But before you take any action, read these four quick steps to help you get your brand ready for selling.

1. Determine your target audience

It’s always important to have a good understanding of a social media platform’s demographics before starting a new campaign.

Putting together a customer persona will help you make sure you know exactly who you need to be targeting on the platform. This will consist of your target audience’s optimal income, job criteria, lifestyle and more.

2. Set up a business account

Having a Pinterest business account is very different from having a personal account. You get access to more features, such as analytics, ads and other necessary elements for selling on Pinterest.

If you created your account as a personal profile, don’t worry. You can easily switch to a business account by logging into your existing profile and converting it.

Otherwise create a new Pinterest business account right off the bat. Just head over to Pinterest and sign up!

3. Brand your account

Each one of your business’s social media profiles should be immediately discernible to your customers and followers, and your Pinterest profile is no different.

To brand your profile, make sure your profile photo is a high-res logo or headshot of yourself (if you are the face of your business) and that it matches your other profiles, your bio is optimized, your cover boards match your brand, contact information is current and more.

You can learn all about how to properly brand your Pinterest profile by checking out our 5-step Pinterest marketing strategy.

4. Link and verify your website

The final step in prepping your Pinterest business profile is to link and verify your business website.

Adding your website through profile settings is simple enough, but then you need to claim your website. To do this, add a meta tag or upload an HTML file to your website. You can learn more about how to do this directly from Pinterest.

You can only verify and claim one website for each Pinterest business account, so make sure it’s your main site that you make sales from or else you won’t be able to create a shop and link products.

How to sell on Pinterest

Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s get into the important stuff – how to sell on Pinterest and start making money.

We have eight top tips for selling on Pinterest and really turning this visual platform into a new revenue stream.

Let’s dive in.

1. Create stunning visuals

First things first. Pinterest is a visual platform. Even before we dive into several types of Pins that can help increase sales, you need to make sure that your Pins are actually visually appealing and make someone want to click.

This means you need:

  • High-quality photography
  • Beautifully designed graphics
  • Optimally sized visuals
  • Bold colors and fonts
  • Graphics that match your branding

At least, that’s the starting point. We’ll show you a few examples of high-quality pins to show you what we mean.

One great way to stand out is by taking professional photography of your product in use, like all of these furniture companies did with coffee tables.

how to sell on pinterest - example of professional photography pins

You can also create a beautiful, branded graphic Pin like the one below that draws users in and entices them to save, click on and purchase what you’re promoting.

how to sell on pinterest - example of branded graphic pin

Or you can do a mix of both, where you create a graphic or text overlay alongside a professional photo, providing information on a product and a product photo.

how to sell on pinterest - example of graphic and photo pin

2. Focus on Pinterest SEO

Pinterest is a visual search engine, which means it has its own search engine optimization rules and algorithms.

Focus on industry keywords and use them strategically in your Pin titles and descriptions, as well as your in board titles and descriptions.

Make sure that you’re incorporating your keywords properly and naturally to help ensure your Pinterest SEO will work. This will expand the reach of your Pinterest content, increasing the likelihood that someone will buy.

3. Use Rich Pins

Rich Pins extract extra data and information from your website to display alongside the normal pin info (like photo, title, description, etc.).

It pulls in the price and product descriptions so that users are able to view this information within Pinterest itself. On mobile, users will even be able to click a blue Shop button to head right to your product and check out.

If the shop offers this info, these Pins will even let you know whether or not the product is in stock.

Here is an example of a product Rich Pin from Etsy.

how to sell on pinterest - example of a product rich pin

These types of Rich Pins work once you claim your website on Pinterest (see the “Getting your brand ready to sell on Pinterest” section). So take advantage of the platforms offering to draw in more sales.

4. Use promoted Pins

Want to push your Pins to the top instead rather than relying solely on your Pinterest SEO. Invest in promoted Pins!

These can be anything – a lead magnet, a blog post or a product.

Promoted product Pins can be helpful for generating more sales as they simply take the user directly to your website.

As you see below with Crate and Barrel’s promoted Pin, users will easily be able to see which company is promoting pins so they know which site they’ll be taken to.

how to sell on pinterest - promoted pin example

When creating promoted Pins, you’ll be able to target by interest, age and gender. You can create entire campaigns or quick ads for a one-off promotion.

5. Organize Pins into Catalogs

Catalogs are an excellent Pinterest business account feature to use if you have products to promote — which is likely true if you’re a brand or business!

As long as you have a data source of all your products and their attributes, you should be able to upload the file into Pinterest. Once the data source is approved, any product you add to your website will also automatically create product Pins which you can then use to create shopping ads.

One thing to note: If it turns out you do not have the right data source to create Catalogs, then you’ll have to use Rich Pins instead (tip #4 above!).

6. Tag products in Shop the Look Pins

Shop the Look Pins are a great way to link to several products at once in a single Pin. Whether it’s an outfit or home decor post, each product available for purchase in the photo is shown via a white dot that users can click on to see more.

Source

You can share photos of your models wearing an outfit of your latest collection or a room filled with your furniture or similar products to promote more products on the platform.

The process for Shop the Look Pins is manual, and once your Pin is linked to your claimed website, you can tag as many products as you’d like.

7. Share user-generated content (UGC)

Found a celeb or well-known influencer using your product? Use that to your advantage!

Better yet, set up influencer marketing campaigns to consistently generate content you can share on Pinterest and entice your audience to buy.

You can even use UGC as Shop the Look Pins or promote these photos to grab user attention even more. Social proof is everything, and if a user sees someone they follow wearing your products, they’re much more likely to buy.

8. Incorporate content marketing

Blog posts that are geared towards conversions are perfect to share on Pinterest. Think gift guides, product roundups or tutorials.

Mothers Day Gift Guide on Pinterest as an opportunity to curate and sell products

These are great pieces of content to save and promote on the site that will generate clicks, and if you put your content together properly, conversions.

Start selling on Pinterest

Learn even more about how to sell on Pinterest by checking out more Sprout Social Insights, like this post all about Pinterest ad targeting. Then get started creating content, saving to boards, promoting and targeting, then watch the sales roll in.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/feed/ 1 Your guide to Pinterest ad targeting success https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/#respond Mon, 17 Feb 2020 13:16:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=134043/ A huge part of social media advertising is making sure you’re targeting the right audience. Each social media platform has their own targeting capabilities, Read more...

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]]> A huge part of social media advertising is making sure you’re targeting the right audience. Each social media platform has their own targeting capabilities, and it’s important to know the best ways to target your people on each.

While you might know a lot about creating great Pinterest ads, are you showing them to the right people?

Understanding how Pinterest ad targeting works is key to creating great ads that generate the most buzz, awareness, traffic and conversions for your buck.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about Pinterest advertising targeting and how you can put together the most effective Pinterest ads for your business.

Why use Pinterest advertising

Pinterest has over 320 million monthly active users, which gives you a large audience for your ads. Plus, 89% of pinners are using the platform to shop for future purchases, making the chance for conversion that much higher.

Pinterest ads show up natively in feeds, seamlessly fitting in with other content. This further increases the chances that users will click and convert, making Pinterest ads extremely powerful and effective.

Why your Pinterest ad targeting matters

Targeting your Pinterest ads is important because it helps you to find the best audience for your product, service or content.

Ensuring that you’re targeting people with interests, search behavior and demographics that match your business matters so that your ads are where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Placing your content in front of the people who may actually want to see it is the first step to creating successful Pinterest ads.

Let’s jump into the various targeting types and how you can ensure you find the right audience for your ads.

Pinterest ad campaign objectives

When you’re getting started with your Pinterest ad, the first step is to choose your ad objective. This is similar to other platforms like Facebook, where you need to first state the goal you’re hoping to achieve with your ad before moving forward.

In Pinterest, there are six different campaign objectives for you to choose from.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest campaign objectives

Brand awareness

This is the perfect way to just get the word out there about your brand. Brand awareness ads are top of funnel ads that simply help people learn that your business exists. You can lead to top level landing pages to introduce people that click through to what you do.

Video views

You can run video ads on Pinterest, and choosing this objective will help to put your video in front of the most people possible. It’s another awareness type ad, giving you the best chance to put your business front and center for new people.

Traffic

This is the best objective for you if your goal is to send traffic to a certain post, landing page, product or service. It’s more than just getting people to see your ad, but isn’t quite to the point of driving sales and conversions.

App install

If your brand is trying to promote an app and get Pinterest users to install it on their mobile devices, Pinterest has an ad objective just for you. Create an app install ad to see how successful it is for you.

Conversions

You need a verified Pinterest tag installed on your website in order to utilize this ad objective, but it’s a great way to track conversions from your ads. Use this objective to increase conversions like signups and purchases through your Pinterest ads.

Catalog sales

You will have to upload a data source of products to use the catalog sales conversion, but it’s a great way to showcase your products on Pinterest and increase sales. Once your data source is approved, product pins are automatically created and you can then sort products and create ads.

Pinterest ad targeting options

As soon as you choose your Pinterest ad objective, you move onto the targeting section. When selecting your targeting, you want to be as precise as possible to ensure the right audience finds your ads.

There are three main targeting categories to work with when pinpointing who to show your ad to – audience, interest and keyword targeting – plus a few extended targeting options to narrow your audience down even further.

Audience targeting

Audience targeting is where you can create an audience based on your website visitors, email list or existing Pinterest audiences.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest audience targeting

Once you click to create a new audience, you’re taken to a new dashboard to get started. Click the red Create audience button at the top to choose the type of audience you want to create.

pinterest ad targeting - types of audiences to create

Targeting a group of people gets you a basic audience before narrowing it down even further based on the specific ad, content or product/service you’re promoting.

After you select the group of people you want to target, click Next and name your audience. Then complete the rest of the steps before moving onto the next targeting option.

Interest targeting

The next Pinterest ad targeting option is based on your audience’s interests. What do they like? What types of pins are they saving?

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest interest targeting

Everyone uses the Pinterest platform in ways that are completely unique to their own personal interests. That’s why creating Pinterest ads by interest in the perfect way to target your specific customer base as well as people who are interested in your products or services.

As an example, if you’re selling wedding veils and accessories, selecting interests like “wedding” and “women’s fashion” could be beneficial for targeting the right audience.

Keyword targeting

The third main category is keyword targeting, which focuses on specific words or phrases that your target audience is searching on the platform.

Since Pinterest is a type of search engine, think of Pinterest keyword targeting being similar to Google and Bing ads. It will show your ads based on the search terms and keywords people are typing in.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest keyword targeting

Pinterest recommends using a minimum of 25 keywords, and it’s important to keep them relevant to your specific ad and not only to your business. You want your ads to appear when people are searching for the most similar keywords so that your ad answers their search query.

Not only can you add keywords that you want your ad to appear for, but you can set certain keywords and phrases that you don’t want your ads to appear for.

There are a few different types of keyword matches to use for Pinterest ad targeting:

  • Broad match: Reach the widest audience by having your keywords match similar searches.
  • Phrase match or exact match: Narrow in on a more specific keyword search.
  • Negative match: Choose keywords that you don’t want your ads to appear for.

The negative keyword matches are helpful when your product or service has a name that is similar to another and not accurate industry. By using negative keyword matches, your ads won’t appear in those industry topic results where they aren’t useful.

Other Pinterest ad targeting options

While audience, interest and keyword targeting are the most important categories to focus on, there are other targeting options that you don’t want to forget either.

You can set certain parameters and demographics when you’re trying to cater to a specific audience, like you see below.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest demographics

There are also certain ad placements that you can set to determine where you want your ads to appear. You can choose all locations, only when people browse through their home feeds or only when people search for something on the platform.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest ad placements

And then there are Pinterest extended targeting options. With this targeting option, you allow Pinterest to use their algorithm and tools to automatically target your ad to the audience that it thinks will perform best.

This targeting option is unique to Pinterest, as no other social media platform offers an automatic targeting option. And it can be a great way for beginners with little to no ad experience to still see a great return on their Pinterest ads.

Get started with Pinterest ads

Knowing how to get your Pinterest ads in front of the right audience can make a different to your digital marketing campaign. Learn more about Pinterest advertising and creating a picture perfect Pinterest marketing strategy on our blog. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to learn more about social media and Pinterest marketing strategies.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/feed/ 0 How to set up a travel social media marketing strategy https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/#respond Tue, 17 Dec 2019 13:18:26 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=93749/ We’ve all seen the social posts: selfies from a beach vacation, airplane wings en route to a faraway destination and delicious meals in a Read more...

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]]> We’ve all seen the social posts: selfies from a beach vacation, airplane wings en route to a faraway destination and delicious meals in a different city. Through all the changes and growth that social media has experienced in the last decade, some things stay the same. Vacations are posted about in all of their stages: planning, sourcing recommendations and the trip itself. Social media plays an important role in all of this and travel companies should recognize it or risk stagnation.

Whether you’re a luggage company or a hotel, our tips should give you some ideas to test out on social. You’ll notice that a lot of the ideas are centered around content and that is because travel lends itself to a more visual audience. People want to see what the experience will be like and they need to see it often. Read on to find out how to take advantage of social media to get the message out about your travel or hospitality brand.

Basics: Set yourself up for success

If you’re starting your strategy from scratch or just looking to update your current one, taking a look at the resources available to you is always step one. You can’t manage four different social networks by yourself if you have a large and active audience. Responding to comments alone would take up a lot of your time. So what kind of resources are we talking about?

Staff is the most obvious one. How many people do you need for your company to successfully meet goals for sourcing and creating content, posting, managing comments and DMs and keep an eye out for complaints? Is your company large enough that you need a 24-hour watch on social media? Managing a single-location company is far more different than managing a multi-location one, especially if it spans multiple time zones.

The next basic resource to pay attention to is skill. This ties closely to staff because you want to make sure you have all the right skillsets to execute your strategy. And if you don’t, then you’ll need to be comfortable outsourcing. Social media managers tend to have a lot of different skills, including excellent communication and writing.

Third, get your budget in order. Ads are an important part of the travel industry. If you’re running flash deals on social media, ads are the way to go and you need to make sure you have the budget to promote them.

Lastly, document your strategy with goals. Without clear social media goals per network, your strategy will flounder. The best way to set these up is to evaluate your current audiences and see how they’re using each network. For example, if your customers like to use Twitter for direct customer service, set up goals on response time and a feedback loop of how well your responses are performing. Have a response plan in place for common questions and complaints.

Setup might take a while and you’ll go through several iterations in trial and error, but having a basic plan in place will save you wasted effort in the long run. Having a total picture of the resources available to you will help you know if you should be active on that additional social network or not.

Plan posts for each portion of the purchase cycle

For more expensive getaways and items, the purchase cycle will be longer. For travel brands, this means you’re playing the long game and need to make sure you have posts targeted for each stage.

At the beginning of 2019, Pinterest released their travel personas and trend report. It noted that “69% of Travel Pinners use Pinterest to discover travel services when deciding what to book.” The Pinners typically booked within two months of starting research and research included everything from what to bring to what to do.

carnival cruising tips pinterest board

Instead of directly promoting their services to customers, cruise company Carnival created a “Cruising Tips” Pinterest board for those still thinking about going on a cruise or have recently booked. The guides are a nice mix of what to expect when you go on a cruise to how to stick to your exercise routine.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a hotel or a travel backpack company. The principles of targeting consumers at each part of the purchase cycle remain the same. Don’t forget that you’re not done when they’ve made the purchase. You want to keep them constantly engaged and reminded of your product or service.

Understand different generations

Millennials and the younger Generation Z groups have more spending power now but to market to them, you’ll need to understand their social media use. An Expedia study of millennial and Gen Z travel behaviors found that they were heavily influenced by social media.

expedia study

Eighty-four percent of Gen Z and 77% of millennials surveyed had been influenced by social media when planning their travel. More than 70% surveyed were open to help and inspiration during the planning process.

expedia study on travel and social

Both Gen Z and millennials named appealing imagery and deals as the two most informative pieces of social media content. Photos and videos maybe costly to create and produce but they will be worth it in the long run.

To ease the content sourcing pain, include user-generated content from past customers. This works particularly well for high-ticket purchases. Potential customers get to see what they’ll be buying through the lens of someone who’s already been. It establishes credibility to your brand so you’re not the only ones talking about you.

Marriott Hotels consistently uses user-generated content to promote its various hotel locations. They give glimpses into what it’s like to stay at a location. While some photos and videos on your account will be staged, you can bring in additional authenticity by reposting ones created by their guests.

Respond to reviews

Reputation management is important in travel and this doesn’t mean only responding to complaints. According to a Harvard Business Review study with TripAdvisor, it found that once hotels started responding to reviews, they saw a drop in the amount of short negative reviews. Knowing that management was reading and responding to reviews made for more thoughtful posts.

In a 2019 study, TripAdvisor noted that 81% of respondents frequently rely on reviews before booking a hotel. Travel purchases represent a major investment of money, time and even the emotional expectations people place on anticipating a great vacation, so your audience depends on feedback from reviews and social media to figure out how to spend their money and effort. This is why staying engaged and responsive on both social networks and review sites is key to building a travel brand’s presence.

Sprout review management

To make it easier on yourself, use Sprout’s new review management tool to respond to reviews on Google My Business, Facebook and TripAdvisor all in one place.

The next essential step is to create an online review management strategy. This involves coming up with tone, vocabulary and common scenarios that might need addressing.

how reviews influence decisions to use local business

Online reviews do influence consumer behaviors so it’s best to approach them like any compliment or complaint you might have in person. Be sure to respond in a timely manner, listen to what they’re saying, offer a resolution if you’re able to and e sure to avoid a defensive tone. Pretend that you’re being recorded and the video will be posted publicly for eternity–this will help you avoid lashing back at difficult customer feedback in the heat of the moment. Future customers will read your responses, so how you respond is important.

Divide & conquer

For multi-location businesses, it’s sometimes best to create separate accounts for your national and local brands. The national brands can amplify local messaging and connect with loyal brand advocates while the local brands can address in-the-moment customer service queries and promote their immediate area.

Following the lead of other large corporations, you may even set up a separate account to address customer service inquiries. All of this is up to your company and your available resources. For whichever circumstances you fall under, Sprout makes it easy for enterprise companies to post in a cohesive and collaborative manner. Divide your local branches up into groups but still give them access to your Sprout Asset Library.

Ace Hotel does a good job of creating a cohesive national brand presence while their local accounts focus on what’s happening in that location or city. Each local account also runs promotions to make following them more appealing to those who are thinking of booking.

Conclusion

The travel industry is large and encompasses many different types of companies. But whether you’re a single-location vacation rental or a multi-location global company, travelers still want to hear from you. Your best bet is to plan carefully and get creative. Take inspiration from other companies and be sure to invest in a strategy and professional imagery.

idyllcove social presence

Idyllcove Vacation Cabin is a great example of one location doing their best at promotion. The shots posted are always on brand even when they’re user-generated content. To help potential visitors cement their decision, they created a highlight that tours the cabin. And the Guest Snaps highlight makes use of user-generated Story content.

Airbnb, on the other hand, is on the opposite end of the vacation rental spectrum. The company uses Instagram to highlight its many available places to book and what you can expect out of each one. In the above example, you can not only picture yourself there but you also get ideas on what you can do while you’re staying there.

Whatever your specialization is in the travel industry, the basic tenets are the same: get your basics down, respond to reviews in a timely and gentle manner and don’t forget the newer generation.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/feed/ 0 Customer success is the new sales https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:00:24 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/adapt/?p=961 Sales without success can fall flat. But success without sales can still be a thriving business.

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]]> I stayed at Hyatt’s Andaz hotel on my last trip to London. My room wasn’t quite ready when I’d arrived. A minor inconvenience, but they’d set me up with everything I needed in the gym to refresh while they stored my luggage.

Before I’d even finished an impromptu workout, my room was ready. And not only ready, it was stocked with healthy snacks to make my stay sweeter. The cherry on top was a personalized email they sent me after check-out, making sure I’d enjoyed my time with them and asking me to share any feedback.

This level of personalization isn’t reserved for the hospitality industry. It is the new world of customer experience we live and play in. And if your business isn’t playing on this level, it’s not playing at all.

Sales has long served as the foundation for growing companies, bridging the gap between customer needs and products or services. But social ushered in the era of the consumer, giving way to a new growth engine: customer success.

Historically, customer success has been defined as strictly a business function; a designated team responsible for ensuring customers get the most value out of the solution you’re providing to them. But it’s more than a function, it’s a philosophy:

How do you ensure your customers are getting maximum value in every interaction with your company?

 

By that definition, every person in your organization is accountable for customer success. And that’s the way we have to look at it or we risk not meeting our consumers’ increasingly high expectations.

Sales without success can fall flat. But success without sales can still be a thriving business, especially with the rise of product-led growth models. Companies that haven’t evolved to meet this standard are the ones ripe for disruption. The value that an integrated customer success philosophy brings to your business isn’t just stronger customer relationships, it’s also the positive impact it has on customer adoption, loyalty and the bottom line.

It’s a human thing

Today, people’s access to information has drastically changed buying behavior. Customers have already done their research before you even know they’re a prospect. Comparing competitors, scouring social, reading reviews—by the time people connect with your business, they’ve already gone through stages of awareness and evaluation, even some consideration.

This is where the emphasis on connection and relationship building starts to evolve in business models. When trust is high, people are more likely to take risks and engage in a sale. It makes you think about the emergence of subscription-based businesses. In the old transactional world, I’d already achieved the majority of my financial success with you after you’d paid one lump sum up front. But in this environment, success requires that we meet (and exceed) our customers’ needs every single day because they now have choice and flexibility.

By 2020, all new entrants and 80% of tech solution providers will have adopted the subscription-based model, making the reality of disruption that much more relevant to our jobs today. The onus is on us as salespeople to understand more about the customer and constantly bring them deeper levels of value than anything they can find on the homepage.

The perks

Customer success affects every aspect of your business, from revenue to customer adoption to brand loyalty.

The more you help customers succeed early on, the more likely they are to grow with you in the long term. As you continue to evolve your offering, engaged customers are more likely to consume those new features and services because they’ve built a level of trust with you.

But it’s not simply about trust. It’s about anticipating and staying ahead of changing needs. The very function of success ensures your customer stays your customer, no matter what breaks, changes or evolves.

This level of long-term relationship building is vital to the bottom line. It’s easier to sell to current customers than it is to new customers—sales cycles are lower, the value of those deals is greater and it comes with a lower customer acquisition cost. But it goes beyond that.

From a brand perspective, voice of the customer (and the access we have to it today) is so powerful. Twenty years ago a customer looking for a peer-to-peer review of a product or service would have to turn to his or her personal networks. Today, that person can go online and find feedback on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor—there are countless public hubs where the relationships you’ve built can shine and inform more potential customers than ever before.

The pitfalls

If you don’t change the mentality of your organization, you’re forfeiting your success. Every member of your team needs to understand the philosophy of focusing on the customer.

At Sprout we realized this from our own experience with customer onboarding. We pride ourselves on customers being able to get into a trial, connect their profiles and start using our platform within minutes. But we also made assumptions about how simple that was on the customer’s end.

We came to recognize that as we continued to add more value and sophistication in the platform, our customers weren’t organically using all of these new capabilities. So if we’re not investing in onboarding and training services for all of our customers, they may never reach the level of value that they came to us for. That realization was a great driver for us to set the goal of onboarding 100% of customers so everyone (regardless of spend or size) has access to resources that will maximize their time spent in our product.

We learned that if we put that effort in, the customer’s rate of success goes through the roof and they’re even more likely to find unexpected value in our product.

A new frontier

If I was to start over in my career, I would go into customer success. There are books and resources and experts galore in every other business function, but there’s still plenty of room to pioneer in this one. The definition of a great customer success strategy is still evolving, and that’s exciting.

The demand for this kind of customer care is only growing. Every company is now faced with rethinking their business model and prioritizing customer success. Because being easy to do business with is table stakes. It’s about being a joy to do business with that makes the difference. Beyond technical support, customer success is the miracle of all your business functions coming together with one overall goal: making your customers wildly successful.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/feed/ 0 How Loews Hotels & Co succeeds at scale with Sprout Social’s all-in-one platform https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/loews-hotels/ Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:05:46 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=129546/ With 24 hotels and counting throughout the US and Canada, Loews Hotels & Co understands how vital the human touch is to delivering exceptional Read more...

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]]> With 24 hotels and counting throughout the US and Canada, Loews Hotels & Co understands how vital the human touch is to delivering exceptional experiences to its guests.

At the same time, the company knows first-hand the important role technology plays in helping a company of its size stay organized, create time efficiencies and discover valuable business intelligence.

That’s why Loews utilizes Sprout Social to connect with customers on their communication channel of choice: social media.

Having a platform which would allow us to collaborate, to have visibility into what’s happening at the hotels and have analytics all in a one-stop shop, that was one of the main reasons we went to Sprout.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Confronting complexity

Director of Social Media & Content Strategy Simon Kopec oversees the company’s social media team, working with a marketing manager who focuses on analytics and tactical execution across Loews’ primary social accounts.

However, each property also has its own dedicated social media specialist.

“For example, for our Loews Hotels @ Universal Orlando properties, social is handled by three individuals across what’s soon to be seven hotels,” Kopec said. “They have a single Instagram account that goes across all hotels, and each hotel has its own independent Facebook Page. Of course, there are situations with certain hotels where they may have additional social accounts running at the same time, so it’s all about partnership and collaboration efforts across all our hotels.”

Properties are split into two sub-categories: those under the core Loews consumer brand and Immersive Destinations, which are branded collaborations.

“All our hotels take the strategy outlined by the brand and are able to pull down from that,” Kopec said. “In terms of the tactical components, we do have variances when it comes to each hotel’s target audiences and marketing communication priorities.”

With Sprout we are able to get all our social messages in a single location, and not only see who we need to respond to, but know what actions have already been taken by other team members.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Supporting collaboration, driving adoption

With social specialists who handle multiple hotels and report into several entities, tools that support streamlined collaboration and communication are essential.

“We wanted a tool that could bring us together—that was one of the top priorities we were looking for in terms of a social media management platform,” Kopec said. “Having a platform which would allow us to collaborate, to have visibility into what’s happening at the hotels and have analytics all in a one-stop shop, that was one of the main reasons we went to Sprout.”

Ease of use was exceptionally important to Loews Hotels & Co as well. Regular promotions are the norm and using a platform that could be easily adopted by new team members was a must.

“It was important for us to cater to the various needs of our users, from the social media pro to a more novice lead to a new hire,” Kopec said. “Our workflows and how we gather content from different properties, it’s all through Sprout.”

Beyond a user-friendly interface and approval functionalities, Sprout’s collaboration tools also enable Loews to assign tasks across different teams, route incoming messages for proper and immediate response and measure workflow efficiency by analyzing how long it takes team members to complete tasks.

Previously we had a social management tool and a separate analytics tool. Having everything live in a single location, that was a big value proposition for us.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Streamlining engagement, simplifying workflow

Engaging with potential and current guests is as important to Loews Hotels & Co as maintaining oversight and optimizing efficiency.

“Our hotels are in the epicenter of their destinations, and we really want to build communities around them—it’s part of the ethos of the company,” Kopec said. “Whether it’s answering customer service questions or responding to an inquiry, we want to make sure we’re visible, available and relevant on the social channels our customers are using.”

This focus on customer care is vital, as social is the No. 1 channel for addressing customer service issues among Millennials, and the No. 2 channel overall. Additionally, 50% of consumers will boycott a brand if they receive poor responses on social, and 38% expect brands to respond to their inquiries within 5 hours.

Loews Hotels image

“With Sprout we are able to get all our social messages in a single location, and not only see who we need to respond to, but know what actions have already been taken by other team members,” Kopec said. “That level of collaboration and visibility across multiple people wasn’t something we had before and was something we were really looking for.”

In addition to helping the company stay on top of incoming social messages, Sprout’s Smart Inbox empowers Loews Hotels & Co to monitor keywords, hashtags and locations to discover unique engagement opportunities. Along with Sprout’s publishing, analytics, listening and advocacy tools, these features helped the company consolidate the number of different softwares it was using in favor of an all-in-one approach.

“Previously we had a social management tool and a separate analytics tool,” Kopec said. “Having everything live in a single location, that was a big value proposition for us.”

We use social listening to look for a lot of different things. The happiest of them all, obviously, is identifying opportunities to surprise and delight our guests.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Identifying opportunities, serving customers

Social listening in particular has been a major focal point for Loews Hotels & Co.

Using Sprout’s Advanced Listening tool, companies are able to tap into the world’s largest and most diverse focus group to evaluate brand health, discover competitive insights, access industry intelligence and more, all by analyzing publicly available social conversations.

“We use social listening to look for a lot of different things,” Kopec said. “The happiest of them all, obviously, is identifying opportunities to surprise and delight our guests.”

Kopec shared a recent example in which a woman tweeted at her friend about visiting a theme park in Orlando, asking for recommendations.

“We found the message using Advanced Listening, and we sent her a tweet with a number of links to our blog specifically about the travel needs she had mentioned,” Kopec said. “Included were articles about restaurants that are available within the park, an article about new attractions, some tips and tricks on how to get through the lines quicker, and which attractions to visit at which times.”

For enterprise-level companies with many team members, it’s important to find companies like Sprout that are there to support you. I can count on Sprout to be a reliable vendor, great supplier and true collaborator.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Crafting strategy, strengthening scalability

Loews Hotels & Co relies on Sprout for more than software, however.

The Sprout Social Professional Services team provides customers with actionable insights, strategic recommendations and critical data to help them thrive both on and off social. In the case of Loews, this took the form of “report cards” for individual properties.

“We knew that on a quarterly basis we wanted to provide social leads and our field teams with easy-to-understand benchmarks in terms of what’s working best at their hotels,” Kopec said. “We worked with the Professional Services team to identify the key indicators we should be looking for.”

The company also turned to Professional Services for assistance with quarterly marketing campaign analysis to evaluate performance.

“The team at Sprout helped us realize we could maximize even more potential, walking us through what data might be useful based on their expertise,” Kopec said. “It’s not just the data, but the knowledge and experience and best practices Sprout brings, not only from an industry perspective, but from outside it as well.”

Loews Hotels image

For enterprise companies, it’s not enough for software partners to provide valuable tools and services. They must also deliver them at scale.

“Sprout offers hands-on support, and is eager and willing to train our team,” Kopec said. “For enterprise-level companies with many team members, it’s important to find companies like Sprout that are there to support you. I can count on Sprout to be a reliable vendor, great supplier and true collaborator.”

At the end of the day, beyond all the bells and whistles, Loews Hotels & Co knows social media is about real-life connection.

“All this technology is a way to enable human behavior at our hotels,” Kopec said. “Removing humanity through tech is not what we’re about. It always comes down to how we can make your experience better. Everything we do, especially in the digital world, is looked at through the lens of: How is this going to improve the human experience?”

With the help of Sprout Social, Loews Hotels & Co will continue to empower its teams to deliver that human touch.

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]]> Social media marketing for franchise businesses https://sproutsocial.com/insights/franchise-social-media-marketing/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/franchise-social-media-marketing/#respond Thu, 13 Dec 2018 22:50:14 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=121170/ There are nearly 1 million franchise operations in the United States, employing about 9 million people. It’s a huge part of the US economy, Read more...

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]]> There are nearly 1 million franchise operations in the United States, employing about 9 million people. It’s a huge part of the US economy, raking in over $800 billion per year.

Add in the rise of tech and digital marketing, and with that much bank up for grabs, franchise social media marketing is a revenue channel that can’t be overlooked.

What is a franchise?

For anyone unfamiliar with franchising, a franchise is a business that lends its name, logo, and full-on support to others who buy into the franchise and open their own location or branch.

For example, McDonald’s is a franchise corporation, and each McDonald’s location is owned by separate individuals who bought the franchise license. In exchange, McDonald’s corporate helps the new owners choose a business location, order supplies, and market the new location.

Franchisor: the owner of the corporation or umbrella business. In our example above, McDonalds corporate is the franchisor. The franchisor maintains certain bits of control over the franchise branches, like branding.

Franchisee: the owner of one of the locations under the umbrella corporation. The franchisee pays a one-time fee to the corporate owner, usually to cover the costs of onboarding and getting the new business set up (a new McDonalds location costs about $1 million). Then, they pay a percentage of their profits or revenue, depending on the arrangement, to the franchisor in exchange for their ongoing support and use of the brand.

Franchisor social media challenges

Franchises are complex structures, often involving hundreds of chains across the U.S. or globally. And, social media marketing isn’t an easy job either, with multiple platforms and content schedules to manage. When you add in the different needs of franchisors and franchisees, challenges can frequently arise when trying to align social media goals between the two.

Common challenges franchisors face

The overarching problem for franchisors is control, or more specifically, determining what to control vs. what not to control. Too little control and you lose brand authority, too much control and you won’t attract customers specific to your different locations and branches.

Establishing social media guidelines and budget

This is the first step for a franchise looking to unify their brand’s voice while keeping each branch unique enough to draw local audiences.

The first step in establishing social guidelines is to establish a brand or voice. Your brand/voice won’t come overnight—in fact, it’ll evolve as your company grows. But, a great starting point (if you don’t have an established brand already) is to put together a mission statement.

Next, you’ll decide how you want to “sound” on social. Will your company use emojis and appeal to the millennial masses? Or, will you opt for a more professional tone? You may even consider some humor or sarcasm, like the Wendy’s franchise is popular for:

Wendys twitter example

 

After you’ve got your mission and brand defined, you can focus on setting goals. You need to know specifically what you want to accomplish with social media. Here are a few questions you can answer to get a head start:

  • What segments and personas are you targeting? Marketing to millennials is much different than marketing to businesses. Marketing to women is different than marketing to men. Defining your audiences in detail will help you determine your strategy.
  • What types of content will you share? Will you share video and photo content? And if so, are you focused on product images, inspirational lifestyle content or other types of visuals? Will you share blog posts? Behind-the-scenes pics on Instagram that show off your company culture? Make a list of all the types of content you plan to share.
  • How often will you and your branches share each type of content? It’s important to be consistent. And, you need to establish how often each type of content should be shared. Learn more about content types here.
  • Who will manage social media for your team? This can vary depending on the size of your business. In some cases, each branch may have a corporate manager and someone responsible for social. For franchisors with fewer branches, there may be one social media manager at HQ that covers everything.
  • How will the different channels be set up? Will your franchisor social media username be YourCompany while your franchise locations are YourCompanyLocation? Consider what makes sense for your business and your audience’s expectations.
  • How will you measure results and optimize your efforts? It’s important to track your progress and make changes that increase engagement. The best way to do this is to put your social profiles into a management tool like Sprout.

Once you have answered these questions, you should be able to start piecing together a solid social media plan and social media brand guidelines for your company. You need to set goals and guidelines for your franchisees. Both your goals and your overall plan can inform one another. For example, you can consider how many times per day you’d like your franchises to post, and what your engagement goals are per post.

Calculating return on investment (ROI)

Anytime a business invests money into a software solution (like a social media management tool) or resources (like employees), they need to know what the returns of those expenses will be.

Calculating return from social media can be a challenge even when you’ve got just one, corporate brand to track. Throw multiple franchise locations into the mix, each with different social accounts, and it becomes a much bigger challenge.

Here are a few tricks for franchisors that’ll help track social media ROI for both corporate HQ and branches.

  1. Set tangible, reachable goals for social media. For example, you might want 1,000 new email subscribers this quarter. Or, you might want to direct 10,000 customers to your website from Instagram.
  2. Give individual social managers tactical goals. For example, instead of telling your locations’ social managers to get 1,000 new email subscribers, tell them to share your subscribe link in a certain number of posts per day.
  3. Measure your output. This one may seem obvious, but you need all of your social accounts in one platform so that you can monitor and measure progress from each account.

Check out our guide to learn more about calculating social media ROI.

Common challenges franchisees face

Franchisees have social media challenges just like their franchisors. Besides adhering to brand guidelines and meeting social media goals, franchisees need to stand out from the other branches—and stand out from competitors.

Standing out from competitors

Breaking through the noise is one of the biggest challenges for any brand on social media. When it comes to grabbing attention with your posts vs. the posts of your competitors, it’s best to keep an eye on the performance of your posts and use tools that give you an edge on what your users are looking for on social.

This is when it’s important to monitor not only your hashtags, but also brand keywords that your followers are using. For example, looking at our example ‘Sprout Coffee’ franchise, you might monitor Sprout Coffee mentions for both corporate and specific locations, like #SproutCoffee and #SproutCoffeeBrooklyn.

sprout inbox filtered by brand keywords

Differentiating from other franchise locations

How is your coffee shop going to differentiate from all the other coffee shops in your vicinity? And at the same time, differentiate from all the other locations in your franchise? This can get particularly challenging when a franchise is operating in a single region, such as one with locations that are all within New York City.

To stand out amongst branches, it’s best to get a sense for what the folks in your neighborhood prefer.

  • Monitor your social analytics to get a feel for what’s resonating with your particular following.
  • Use neighborhood hashtags instead of city hashtags to feature your specific branch if there are multiple branches in your city. If your franchise is nation-wide and limited to one per city, stand out in your city by using it in the hashtags instead. Check out this example of Burn Boot Camp in Davie, Florida using brand colors and style, but tagging for their specific audience and offering a location-specific coupon:
burn bootcamp example
  • Use a tone appropriate for your customer base. For example, a Sprout Coffee location in New England is going to use a much different style than a Sprout Coffee in Brooklyn, whether it’s referencing local traditions, sports team or visuals connected to their neighborhood.
  • You can even use search engines to gather information on the demographics (average age, average income, etc.) of your specific location and use that to tailor your branch’s tone.

Limited bandwidth and staff

Small shops don’t have the same resources as big, corporate headquarters. So, franchisees may not have the time or money to devote themselves fully to social media. Plus, when resources are strapped, teams are small, and often don’t include someone with the skillset to crush it on social media.

To battle limited resources, consider:

  • Using an experienced freelancer to manage social media efforts. Just make sure that they’re working in a platform like Sprout under an account that you own. Data is invaluable. And you need to own that data should the freelancer not work out. You can find social media freelancers on sites like Upwork or by asking around for recommendations. It’s best to get someone with experience with your particular audience or market.
  • Managing your social media calendar with social media software. Sprout’s scheduler makes it easy for you to schedule your content well in advance. You can also use ViralPost to let Sprout identify the best posting times for your content.
compose and schedule in Sprout Social

Keeping social media cohesive between franchisees and franchisors

In addition to building out brand guidelines for social media and creating a plan with actionable goals, there are a few solutions that will ease the problem of aligning the corporate, umbrella brand with franchise locations.

Solution 1. Map umbrella goals and individual branch goals

The easiest way to maximize your social media engagement across corporate and branch locations is to create a plan for both parties.

The corporate plan should contain:

  • Brand guidelines: your corporate logo, colors and mission statement, as well as general style and tone guidelines (such as what types of humor are acceptable).
  • Overall goals: you might include an overall company KPI like total followers or total shares, and how much each location is expected to contribute to that goal (i.e. each team contributes 10%). You might even reward the best franchise.
  • Actionable goals: Make sure you set actionable goals that define your posting strategy like posting x times per day or sharing 3 articles per week.

The branch plans should contain:

  • Individual goals for the specific location: how many new followers they’re expected to generate, how many posts per day, which channels should they be active on, etc.
  • Regional best practices: check out what competitors in the area are doing. What’s working for them? Gathering specific info like top hashtags and special offers will help pinpoint a local strategy.

Check out this example of Dickey’s BBQ. The corporate account posts images and videos that are well branded and engaging while the franchises post about local events.

dickeys bbq corporate

dickeys bbq franchise

Solution 2. Create a publishing workflow

Social media is the perfect platform for telling a unique story. You can start small with one or two accounts where you set the tone, then scale out to include more locations as you grow or as you onboard current branches.

Use a tool for social media management that has scheduling features to ease the burden of posting all day every day. These tools are scalable, too. This means you can start with one account such as the corporate account, and add users, like franchise locations, as you grow.

This saves a ton of time and resources, and so, as mentioned above, it will ease the burden on smaller franchises that don’t have the bandwidth or talent to manage social media. You can easily schedule posts across multiple accounts and channels with Sprout’s scheduling tool. Finally, workflows that include the option to require authorization on posts help maintain consistency in brand voice and help you avoid social media crises.

Solution 3. Measure and optimize your efforts

As cliche as it is to say at this point: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. So, you need to have both your corporate and franchise locations set up with social media analytics.

Plus, tagging and brand keywords can help organize your posts and find how people are reacting to them. You can use tagging to group posts by specific campaigns and traits, including by individual franchise locations vs. the national franchisor account.

sprout tag report

 

A franchisor might want monthly or quarterly reports on the performance of each branch’s social media. Sprout provides highly readable reports that let you monitor your overall strategy and pinpoint any particular areas of improvement each branch could make. They can also be put together quickly, meaning that franchisees can keep on top of their social media performance with limited time.

Conclusion

Social media is no easy feat—and it’s especially not easy when you’re managing or overseeing many accounts in various locations.

Scheduling out your content calendar can ease the burden on bandwidth. With a plan and set goals that are aligned across all levels of your company, neither the franchise nor franchisees will be flying blind.

Check out our guide to maximizing your franchise strategy for more tips to boost your marketing efforts.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/franchise-social-media-marketing/feed/ 0 The ultimate social media for museums guide https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-museums/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-museums/#respond Wed, 25 Jul 2018 18:50:39 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=117864/ A challenge for every organization that grows a year older is how to stay relevant with the technology of today. Museums are a hotbed Read more...

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]]> A challenge for every organization that grows a year older is how to stay relevant with the technology of today. Museums are a hotbed of content by definition. Social media for museums lets you digitize all of that for online consumption and visitor interaction. This will keep you at the top of followers’ minds.

The Broad Museum often shares photos from their exhibits with the accompanying information. It gives followers insight on the exhibit, entices potential visitors and reengages those who have already seen it.

In addition to finding new members, there are many people who visit museums while on vacation. Targeting people who plan for their trips and are more likely to post about it is an excellent strategy.

types of milestones consumers share on social media

The Q4 2017 Sprout Social Index found that consumers share and include brands in their shares most often during holidays and travel/vacation. On vacation, 60% would share about it while 43% would include the brand. That’s a large percentage of people who would mention your museum if they visit during a vacation.

In terms of planning, Pinterest’s own studies found that 40+ million people in the US are on Pinterest every month for travel ideas. Furthermore, 49% who spend $1000 or more on travel are on Pinterest. Even just optimizing your website for Pinterest can go a long way.

We’ve divided this guide up into three parts. You can skip ahead if you’re looking more for strategies and inspiration.

Part One: The Basics

This wouldn’t be a worthwhile guide if we didn’t take you through the basics first. Whether you’re starting from scratch on a new social network or taking over from someone else, it never hurts to audit your pages.

Profile Details

All the details matter in social media, especially when people are quickly perusing instead of methodically reading. If you can make information like your hours easier to access, then you won’t risk losing potential visitors. Why make them click through your website when you could easily display it in your social media profile where they already are?

Facebook

Facebook allows a lot of room for customization on their Pages. We’re not going to go into every detail that the network allows you to do, so we encourage you to explore your Settings.

However, in your About section, you should list all the necessary information that a potential visitor would want to know:

  • Relevant categories: there are several different types of museums that you can set as a category
  • Address
  • Price
  • Phone number
  • Other social accounts
  • Mission statement
  • Milestones

If you have a special exhibition that’s happening, pin a post about it to the top of your profile. Events are a common occurrence at museums. Create event pages for them and encourage your Fans to be notified when new ones pop up.

In addition, here are some features you may have missed:

  • Add information about your Wi-Fi network
  • Turn your response hours on. Do you use Messenger a lot? Put up an automated away message during your closed hours.
  • Turn your reviews on or add a TripAdvisor tab
  • Verify your Page so it shows up higher in search results
  • Add a Shop so you can link your online gift store to Facebook
New York Transit Museum Facebook

The New York Transit Museum added a lot of details to their profile. They’ve added a Donate call-to-action button, gave their hours and turned on reviews. If you click further into their About tab, they let you know they have street parking available and provide a few public transit options.

Instagram

On Instagram, you should switch your account to a business profile. This gives you access to features like buttons for directions. In your Instagram bio, where you can give a snippet about yourself, you’ll be able to link hashtags and any other accounts. This is especially helpful if you have a brand that has multiple Instagram accounts. The final advantage of switching to a business account is that you can access analytics and advertise within the network.

Museum of Fine Arts in Houston switched their Instagram account to a business profile. In doing so, they were able to add more details about their museum, like giving a phone number, email and directions. Additionally, they added their brand hashtags into their bio so all of their followers know which ones to use.

Twitter

On Twitter, your bio space is similarly condensed like on Instagram. It may take a while to get the right combination of words but you can fit hours into it. Alternatively, you can utilize your cover photo to include some necessary admission information.

Twitter offers a few more options in terms of branding. You can choose a brand color, change your cover photo and keep a Tweet pinned to the top. Keep in mind that Twitter offers a night mode, so your profile photo should look good against both white and a dark gray background.

reading museum twitter profile

The Reading Museum squeezes in information about both their admission prices and their opening hours in the biography section.

Pinterest

When starting out on Pinterest, you should switch your profile over to a business profile. This allows you to access analytics and set up advertising. Your profile gives you some space to enter a website, location, some text for your biography and how you want your profile cover to look.

For your Boards, you’ll want to make the names relevant to your brand and easy for search results. There’s additional space in the Boards’ description to add more keywords.

corning museum glass pinterest profile

The Corning Museum of Glass linked their website to their Pinterest profile. On their profile, you see relevant glass Boards, and on the Activity tab, you see what people have Pinned from their website.

Audit Your Strategy

Set aside a few hours to focus on taking an unbiased look at how your networks have performed. A social media audit tool (template included in this post) gives you the opportunity to examine everything from your current demographics to your most-shared content.

top engaged posts

If you’re reevaluating your strategy, an audit is where you should begin the process.

Part Two: Strategy

Your museum’s social media team is part of your marketing team. This means that your social media manager needs to be dialed into what’s happening in your events department, your research department and your special exhibitions. Depending on how your strategy is designed, you may find that your museum will use social media as a megaphone to all of the activities that are happening.

Core Demographics Template

To have an idea on how to get started on designing a strategy, check out our handy post and checklist.

Set Up Your Goals

What are you hoping to accomplish with each network? If you’re using social media primarily as an educational tool, then your posts will be centered around your pieces with some sprinkling of promotions.

Every network can have its own goals. A media-heavy platform like Instagram may benefit from more educational posts whereas a quick platform like Twitter may be better for sassy meme references. Understand the limits of each network, too. Facebook and Twitter are great for links while in Instagram, you can only link in an Instagram Story.

To begin with, here are some common goals that museums may want from social media:

  • Increase brand awareness: You want as many people to know about you as possible
  • Increase admission and membership sales: More people need to know what membership benefits are and you also want to capture those who vacation in your city
  • Educate: Museums are first and foremost places to learn. That means there’s an endless supply of content to post about.
  • Promote other features: Do you offer event space? Will you be hosting an artist talk or collaborating with a community business? All the neat projects that your organization undertakes can be posted onto social media.

Create an Internal Communication Strategy

The bigger your museum is, the more you’ll need a robust internal communication strategy. How will your social media team receive information about what’s happening around the museum? Chances are that the team is small and it won’t do them any good if every employee suddenly sends them the coolest thing happening in their day.

Instead, create channels of communication. What are the top three things happening in every department each week and can these be delivered by one person? The communication method can be as simple as an email or in-person meeting or as robust as a form.

One way you can make it easy for employees to tell their own stories about the museum is through Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform. Employee Advocacy surfaces pre-approved stories that employees can then share on their social accounts with their own unique spin. This means your content will reach more audiences through employees’ networks, and you’ll be empowering them to relate these stories to their own experiences working at the museum.

An example of the Sprout EA curation tool

The side benefit of having a great internal communication program is that you’re able to share important social posts with the team. Employee advocacy will only amplify the content that you post. According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, the most important business outcome of an employee advocacy program is increasing brand awareness. Knowing what’s happening in the company can help your employees be better at their jobs, and helps them share good company news with their networks, which increases your brand’s reach.

Write Social Media Guidelines

Do you have a large, interactive audience online? It may be time for you to create and publish a set of community guidelines. Having this available will help guide how you moderate posts and comments. Community guidelines usually outline what you don’t tolerate and what can be grounds for being blocked or reported.

Take a page from the Guggenheim Museum. Their social media guidelines are linked to from all of their social pages.

Set Up or Link Related Brands

Your Events team may find it necessary and interesting to start their own social media accounts. Before this happens, ensure that everyone has an understanding of the museum’s brand guidelines and voice. Each department or account may take on a different tone but the overall feel of the accounts should remain similar.

If possible, utilize your bio’s space to link to other associated accounts. Or at the very least, include the parent account in the associated accounts’ bios. It ensures some continuity between accounts and lessens the confusion for followers.

Sue the T-Rex in the Field Museum operates their own account with 41.3k followers. They’re sarcastic, entertaining and interact often with their followers. Given that Sue is such a draw for Field Museum visitors, it makes sense for it to have a separate account and unique personality.

Find Your Voice

The way you write identifies you to your followers and fans. On social media, museums have a chance to be more entertaining than you may be allowed on an artist label. Creating and documenting your brand voice help you determine what you can and can’t post. Every organization has its own lexicon and writing it all down lets you stay consistent from print to web.

The Philbrook Museum uses Twitter to showcase their museum’s current highlights and also to breathe a little entertainment into their timeline. They’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves or participate whatever is ridiculous on Twitter that day.

Establish Photo Guidelines

Along with your brand voice, you’ll need to give thought to how you want to present your images. Will they be ultra-minimalistic or will they be more casual, behind-the-scenes shots? Are there images you don’t want to show?

To start you off, you can think about the below:

  • What colors (if any) do you want to highlight?
  • What will the image subjects be? Are they all paintings?
  • What angles will be best? Will every pottery piece be taken with a white background and at eye level?
  • For Instagram, will how your grid look matter to you?
  • If people will be included, will they be cropped closely around the face? Do they need to look straight at the camera?
  • What filters or tones do you want to use?

The Centre Pompidou uses the 3-column Instagram grid format in a distinctive way. Doing this helps them create a theme within three posts and encourages their followers to check their profile page on a consistent basis.

Centre Pompidou Instagram

Unify Your Marketing

Your social media content doesn’t need to live in its own bubble. Where ever possible, make sure people know that you’re on social media. This can mean a variety of things. To start, your website should at the very least have your social media handles in the footer or header.

If you’d like to go a step further, you can embed your Instagram streams and optimize your website for Pinterest. When you have blog posts or news items on your site, ensure that your images are optimized for the networks that you’re on and have descriptive excerpts.

At exhibits, especially special showings, create and display branded hashtags. If you encourage use of these hashtags while visitors are walking around, track them to engage with them. Use hashtags to highlight special exhibits, events or your gift shop.

When Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum was being moved, the display included the hashtag and encouraged visitors to watch the process. What could’ve been a boring exhibit relocation instead became an interactive and involved process.

Plan Your Content

Now that you have your internal communications ready and flowing with information, it’s time to plan your content. Based on the goals you’ve established earlier, decide on what types of content you want to publish and how often. How often will you talk about membership benefits and how often will you participate in fun holiday trends? Will you post any user-generated content?

Social publishing tools like Sprout make it easier to push out content consistently

To help manage what you’re pushing out across multiple networks, use a tool like Sprout Social to easily schedule and see what’s going out when. You can even have draft posts show up on your calendar.

You may also find it necessary to set aside time each week or month for photoshoots. Depending on detailed your image guidelines are, a smartphone photo might not cut it.

Monitor Your Efforts

With your new strategy and planned posts, the next item to focus on is engagement and analytics. You will find that the more your posts resonate with your followers, the more people will want to interact with you. This brings you to another issue: how will you monitor messages and hashtags?

Let’s say you decided to launch a campaign on Twitter. You’ve asked people to interact with the campaign by using a branded hashtag. They might reply to you and/or use the hashtag. Are you going to keep two Twitter windows open so you don’t miss a Tweet? What if someone misspells the hashtag – will you be able to find the Tweet?

Sprout Social Smart Inbox

Make it easier on yourself to invest in an all-in-one tool that helps you monitor and easily respond to messages across multiple networks. This management tool is especially handy if you have multiple accounts on the same network. Sprout’s Inbox feature puts search results and brand messages in one view so you’ll never have to click away to find a hashtag search result.

The final step in establishing a strategy is always to look at your analytics and reevaluate content or decisions. You can use analytics to see how well you’re reaching your brand awareness goals or if a campaign was successful.

Twitter Content & Engagement Habits

In addition to standard network reports, Sprout offers engagement reports, competitor analyses and campaign reports. Find a reporting solution that works for your organization’s needs.

Part Three: Inspiration

Your head is probably whirling with information now. To end this guide, we’d like to share some marketing tactics that we’ve seen in social media for museums. Some of these ideas might help inspire your next post.

Add Branded Instagram Highlights

The Palais de Tokyo Instagram profile page utilizes the Highlights feature to talk about what’s important to them.

Palais de Tokyo Instagram Page

You’ll notice that each Highlight has its own branded cover. You can use Highlights to answer commonly asked questions, share about special exhibits and give behind-the-scenes tours.

Highlight Your Employees & Volunteers

The Tate dedicated a whole week to their volunteers, sharing fun facts about them and a photo. Highlighting the people who make the museum special (besides the artists and creatives) makes them feel more empowered and invested in the organization. It’s employee recognition.

You can incorporate this as an ongoing series and highlight people in a variety of ways. Perhaps one week it’s a single department and another week it’s about the interns.

Engage on the Hashtag Holidays

There are many fun hashtag holidays that occur and it’s up to you to decide which ones to participate in. At first glance, World Emoji Day doesn’t seem like it would be relevant to a museum. However, the Royal Ontario Museum found a way to capitalize on the hashtag and create entertaining content for their followers. Followers responded with their favorite emoji and the museum answered with a corresponding art piece.

Plan ahead to find the most relevant hashtag holidays for you. It may take some creative thinking but you may find that your museums’ collections match up to even the most absurd of days.

Reply with Relevant Information

When people visit and mention your brand, use it as a way to educate them. This does take some finesse since not all posts are meant to be responded to with facts. The J. Paul Getty Museum found a way to interact with a fan’s Tweet and responded with pun and more information on the included painting.

Not every museum has digital archives readily available. However, search engines and your own exhibits are steps away and you can easily educate followers when it’s relevant do so.

Partner with Local Institutions

Forty-two museums in New York City partnered up for #MuseumInstaSwap. This opportunity gave museums a chance to interact with each other and expose their collections to an audience that is more likely to be interested in them.

You don’t need to coordinate with so many museums to make an impact. You can easily take this on with one other area museum, aquarium or park. The idea is to share content and spread brand awareness.

Create Educational Content for Advertising

If you’re dipping your toes into social media advertising, start with a piece of your educational content. After entertainment and discounts, education is the next biggest type of engaging social ads. Our Social Advertising Report found that education in a social ad appeals to one-third of people. Even better, 65% are interested in clicking to learn more.

social media advertising - actions consumers take

This is especially relevant for museums because they’re filled with educational content ready to be shared with the world.

Conduct Live Interviews

The National Air and Space Museum conducted a live interview on Facebook about the women involved in the Voyager missions. They took questions live and the video stayed on to continue more engagement.

Conclusion

This guide walked you through managing social media for museums in three parts. We first examined the basic setup that any museum would want. Next, we examined how you wanted to present your museum to the world and what to pay attention to. And finally, we provided some real-life content from museums around the world to help inspire you.

There are huge opportunities for museums to engage audiences with their unique and educational content.  We’d love to hear your comments on which strategies you have used or have caught your eye.

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