Blog

January 1st 2017

“New Year New thinking”

In the world of thing’s the clock ticking at midnight this morning was not any different than any other night except for one small difference, the perception of a whole world changed as each midnight in each time zone happened. So whether you want to downplay the importance of a New Year as just another day that is over-hyped, or to take advantage of what the new year represents to everyone including your guests and staff, the business choice is up to you.

Facebook©

How to use its insights tool for hospitality marketing

 

The purpose of this article is to familiarize you with some of the best functions and tools available within Facebook©.

 

General Navigation – This is done through your administrative access to your business page. It is confusing to first-time users that they must use their personal FB (Facebook©) account to access the use of the business page, this does not mean that your personal information is tied to the business page. It is FB’s way of knowing who you are; think of it as a log into a system, its only purpose is to identify who you are to award access.

 

Once viewing the business page as an administrator you will see additional navigational tabs along the top center of the page just above the large ‘background’ or ‘header’ image. These are;

 

Page | Messages | Notifications | Insights | Publishing Tools | Settings | Help

 

In addition, down the right column, you will see an additional expandable button called “Promote” along with some current page stats for the week. There are some additional features and navigation options but for the purpose of this short article we are going to focus on the “Insights” tab.

 

Insights – When clicked you will see a new navigation bar in the left column;

 

Overview | Likes | Reach | Page Views | Actions on Page | Posts | Videos | People | Local

 

Overview – Likes its name suggests this snapshot of all the other pages that have relevant content will be displayed here, for weekly review purposes this is sometimes the only place you need to glance at depending on your efforts.

 

I would like to now begin to focus on the more relevant data sources and what they mean rather than give a tutorial on the navigation functions as it can be found and described better by FB itself.

 

Reach – This tab is more of value when it comes to interpreting the extension of your message to an audience. ‘Likes’ are fine, and in the early days of FB use it was the more prevalent measure to a successful FB audience but now that FB has filtered who see’s what you are posting based on advanced algorithms your audience does not, in fact, see much of what you post, only a ‘relevant’ few, (estimates are at 4-6% of your audience). You will quickly start to make correlations between when you post to the increase of reach as well as in subsequent discussions the ‘actions’ that those posts created.

 

Actions on Page – Now begins a better understanding of why this data can be useful. On this page, you will see a timeline of those who ‘engaged’ with your page, along with corresponding dates. You can select the timeline you wish to review, (top slider). With a successful editorial calendar that mimics and predicates your natural business cycle, you can begin to see how successful your planned posts created engagement. Your first report is total actions, this includes;

 

Get Directions Clicks | Phone Number Clicks | Website Clicks | Page Call to Action Clicks

 

When you begin to create storylines that augment your business cycle, (peak season, events, holidays, etc.,) and create items within those posts that solicit interaction, (directions, click to call, link to your website for more info, etc.,) you can begin to see how they may mirror your business in terms you are more familiar with. Terms like, ‘booking date’, which creates a ‘booking window’ and ‘stay dates’ due to interaction with local information posts and such.

 

Now in subsequent articles, podcasts and blabcasts we will discuss and outline how to create ad campaigns, tracking codes and specific strategies to tie all that together with your other online and offline marketing efforts so that these insight statistics have even more value and correlation to you campaign efforts.

 

Posts – This tab when selected will show you when your fans are online, (by day) and when, (by the hour), in the attempt to assist you in refining both the time and day you choose to schedule your posts for maximum exposure, yes schedule. You do not have to manually post at the exact time and day you have decided, but rather you can use FB’s own scheduling tab when posting. As a rule of thumb, with an editorial calendar, you should have at least two weeks worth of posts already scheduled in advance. Below those two data lines comes the real value of this page, a detailed review of the effectiveness of your specific posts. With all relevant data to your individual posts, you can see;

 

Date published | Post | Type | Targeting | Reach | Engagement

 

Let’s cover the less familiar.

Type – was the post a picture? A link? A video?

Targeting – When you made the post did you apply a filter as to whom would see it?

Reach – Same data as the reach tab but with additional segmentation as to ‘organic’ and ‘paid’, (this comes into play when you boost a post or use the Power Editor or Ad Manager on FB to promote a post).

Engagement – This is now divided into post clicks and reactions, comments and shares (by default) you can select the drop-down button above this column to show other correlations.

With this additional specific data, you can visually see which of your posts had the better engagements and hence better influence on its intended audience.

 

People – On this tab comes some of the most insightful data with the most potential use. It also requires the more property level engagement. First there are three new tabs along the top of the first chart;

 

Your Fans | People Reached | People Engaged

 

Now pause for a moment and allow the context of those three categories settle in. If you have been following this article while navigating to the described tabs you will see why I ask to think for a moment on this data. You have a gender defined, an age defined, located specific, (to the city), language identified chart for each of the three categories identified above. In context, you have a lot of demographic information about who has decided to follow you, who they reach, and those who actually engaged with your content on your page!

 

Now this is why property level engagement is so crucial to helping to understand what this data can be used for. Here are some questions only your front of the house staff can answer;

Does this data match who we see checking in / eating in the restaurant / using the spa / going to the bar / in the fitness room?

Are they from the places that show in this chart?

Are they the same relevant age and family size?

 

Keep in mind that the current traffic reflected in this data is both upcoming guests and past guests wishing to stay connected, (more of the first than the second, however).

 

When compared to the traffic from you Google Analytics as to geographic source and behavioral data associated with the same dates and then you match that with your booking window and feeder market data you begin to create a perspective on when people begin to research you and from where they are from and what type of person they represent, inevitably helping you to refine you marketing dollars and campaign timelines.

 

Last in our brief overview is a recent addition to the data being provided by FB called;

 

Local – When the data is available this tab presents a ‘hyperlocal’ perspective of who was within a radius of your business down to 50m and as little as one week’s worth of interaction that any paid ad’s you may have done, (boosted or defined by the ad platforms mentioned earlier) reached. If you have ancillary services like a restaurant or spa or retail function this waking traffic data is amazing! This chart will share;

 

Activity and Peak Hours | Demographic Info | Ad Performance

 

This can only enhance your refinement of when a particular ad on FB should be run that focuses on those in your immediate area who can take advantage of the message. Messages like, Lunch specials, Happy Hour specials, events, time sensitive offers, this list, of course, can be quite lengthy.

 

Summary – These insights can only improve your working knowledge and affirmation of who your guests are and what they are wanting. It is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of opportunities that can be refined with the use of this data in collusion your CRM data and website analytics, (both for branded and unbranded hotels). I hope this gets you excited to review this data on a more frequent basis and begin to use the insights it provides.

 

Thank You,

 

Loren Gray

Americas Board Member HSMAI

Hospitality Digital Marketing – Founder

 

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