The comments to our recent blog post on maintaining conversations with bed and breakfast guests on Twitter really helped to expand the discussion.  Both Karen Thorne from the UK (@HoptonhouseBnB) and Heather Turner (@forfeng) added several suggestions for Innkeepers to try to expand the return on investment of their Social Media Marketing efforts.  In this post, I am going to summarize all of these comments into one “Best Practices” post for reaching your guests via Social Media Marketing.

First, let’s define the goals of this type of marketing.  For Bed and Breakfast Inns, any form of marketing is about recruiting and retention.  Recruiting is all about attracting new guests, and this type of marketing costs a lot.  It includes great website design, professional photography, SEO, paid placement, and, most of all, conversions to reservations.  All of the things that Innkeepers need to do to get new people to come to their bed and breakfast.  Retention on the other hand is all about getting your existing guests to come back to the Inn and tell all their friends about the great experiences that they have there.  It is about building your base of repeats and referrals, which is the critical part of your success as an Inn Business.  Retention is less expensive than recruitment, and includes newsletters, blogs and building brand loyalty and excitement.  It is about driving traffic to your website and helping in the SEO effort.

So, if we translate these concepts to Social Media Marketing, what are our goals for Twitter and Facebook?  Funny thing here, because the line starts to blur a little.   This form of marketing is all about conversation and building trust.  A lot of it is getting people to see you as a person and to trust that if they like you as a person, they will feel good about coming to your Inn.  So the goal is two-fold, both to recruit new potential guests and to help build your brand loyalty and brand excitement among existing guests.  The strategy is therefore to build up your followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook to reach as many people as possible.  Social Media Marketing can achieve this strategy and both of these goals at the same time.  Here is a list of some Best Practices our previous blog posting received as comments, and not in any particular order:

1. Links:  Make sure that you have links to your Social Media sites on everything that you do.  “Follow me on Twitter” and “Become a Fan on Facebook” should be on every piece of real or electronic paper that comes out of your office.  Karen Thorne even puts these links on the bottom of the guest bill at checkout.   
2. Stick in Peoples’ Heads:  Social Media Marketing has a “slow burn” aspect, says Karen Thorne.  Making a reservation at your Bed and Breakfast may not occur to your followers immediately, but your goal is to make sure that they think of your Inn first when it comes time to do so.  This is all about building trust and brand loyalty.   
3. Social Media doesn’t have to be a Time Sucker:  Yes, it takes time to execute a marketing plan on Twitter and Facebook, but as Heather Turner comments, you don’t have to be on line all of the time to do so.  There are now automated sites that can help you to plan out and execute a Twitter and Facebook advertising campaign. 
4. Indexing of Tweets and Updates:  Heather goes on to comment that both Bing and Google are now going to be indexing Tweets and Facebook updates which will greatly improve the SEO impact of Social Media Marketing on websites.  So make sure that your Twitter feed is right there on your website home page. 
5. Relationship Building:  Both Heather and Karen point out that Social Media Marketing is all about relation building.  Tweeting about things that interest you is fun and expands the conversation so that it is not just about your Inn business.  This brings in a wider group of potential guests who may listen to you and engage about other subjects and who will remember that you are an Innkeeper.  If they like you as a person, they will also see your business in the same light.  This means that you are marketing to potential new guests (recruiting) on a viral basis.  This is especially true when your Tweets get retweeted by your followers, which gives you instant exposure to a whole new group of people who follow them; and on and on . . . .   
6. Public Relations:  Karen Thorne reminds us in her comments that media outlets of all kinds are heavily into Social Media, so this gives us all a good chance to connect and build relationships with these great sources of public relations.  She states that this enables her to get PR and to make sure that her press releases get out there via both local and national media sources.   
7. Content:  What you write about on Twitter and Facebook is really very important to your success.  It is all about writing content that is meaningful to other people.  It is not just what you are doing at that moment, but more importantly, what you are thinking about that has relevancy to others.  People follow you to learn something about you and about the things that interest you.  Show your expertise and you will gain followers and business. 
8. Subtlety Counts:  This lesson bears repeating.  No one will continue to follow you for too long if all that you are doing is selling them something.  People are quick to catch on to the “sell.”  Remember, they know why you are spending time on Twitter and Facebook, and they don’t need to be reminded that your goal is to get them to come to the Inn.  That is good, because you can forget about marketing overtly and just be yourself.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t tell them what is going on at the Inn and what great things you have planned.  You just have to build very short (140 character) images of the great experiences that you offer.  If they like the image, then you have done your job.   The conversion will follow.   
9. Your Unique Voice:  Karen Thorne makes several very important comments on this subject.  First, you need to put some effort into planning and writing on social media.  It is not an off-the-cuff exercise.  Next, you need to be consistent, and like emails, you need to think about what you write and consider how it will be viewed by your followers and your guests.  Another suggestion is the similar to what you do as Innkeepers every day.  Make it effortless.  Never show to the guest how hard it really is or how tired and grouchy you may be at the time.  Karen says that if you are having a tough day, DM your Innkeeper friends, because they will understand. 
10. Collaboration not Competition:  The saying about boats is true.  A rising tide floats all boats.  Social Media is not a competition with other Innkeepers.  It is all about collaboration to help guests find the unique Inn that will best suite them.  You don’t have to always be the one to respond.  Let the other Innkeepers into your conversation and it will have more meaning for your guests. 

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