As a hotelier, an optimal guest experience is really all that you care for. From top-notch facilities, interior design, and customer service, you’ve had it all thought out. However, the only aspect you’re likely to be overlooking is the integration strategy of digital signage and social media.
According to Statista, around 3.6 billion people use social media in 2020. The number will cross 4.4 billion by 2025. These figures tell us that with time, the influence of social media is set to rise increasingly. Hotel digital signage and social media are an interesting combination of marketing and interactivity on your hotel property. It is something that would take the guest experience to newer heights.
This article will discuss how and why you need a social media digital signage as the leverage to optimize your brand outreach and promote your services.
Why should you integrate social media with hotel digital signage?
On average, a social media user spends more than two hours online. So, make use of digital signage to elevate your online customer experience.
1. Customer engagement
On top of the list is better customer engagement than your old-school advertising channels. By incorporating your live social feeds on digital signage, you allow customers to have their comments publicized on your property. Naturally, this is by far the most effective way to keep your audiences hooked and involved not only in your services but on your social media pages as well.
2. Brand visibility
Running content from social media feeds is bound to earn you more exposure. Imagine an interactive digital display broadcasting what your active users are saying about your business while parked at visible focal points across your hotel property. Besides generating brand awareness for first-time customers, they are also a handy tool for out-of-hotel onlookers.
Displaying moderated content from past social media posts, you’re doing free word-of-mouth marketing for your business. This content may contain FAQs, reviews, and what people are saying about it. Guests would want to see their posts and comment up on the big screen. By doing so, they are ultimately expanding your brand’s visibility to all of their follower’s timelines. Resultantly, it keeps your social media account exceptionally active.
3. Automated content
Using user-generated content (UGC), you will not have to create fresh content for your displays. Using a moderator or filter system to screen out abusive, irrelevant, or repetitive content, you have tons of ideas up in your stock.
With user-generated pictures and customer quotes rolling in from social media, you can also save on the cost of graphic designers creating separate videos and photos for the digital signage. In a nutshell, you’re killing one bird with two stones!
4. Effortless marketing & scaling
Increasing your social media following allows your followers to perceive your brand as trustworthy and reliable. Subsequently, you can scale your marketing efforts right from the digital signage.
Special offers, promotions, discounts, and loyalty programs that you are advertising on social media pages can reach your audience on-site in a creative integration of the physical and online worlds. The money you would otherwise spend on launching separate posters, displays, or via any other static channel, you can now do that with digital signage solutions.
5. Customer loyalty
According to research, more than 70% of customers return, or recommend, a brand with which they have had a positive experience. This largely indicates optimal customer service.
With an integration of your hotel’s digital signage and social media pages, you are addressing your customers, thanking them, or even striking up a conversation. Above all, you are sharing their messages with the rest of your guests, which is as encouraging as it can get. This is one-of-a-kind of customer service and certainly a hit on the mark.
And lastly, it provides an opening to drive users towards taking an action. Be it via a hashtag campaign or a CTA bar, social media digital signage drives consumers to promote your services using the said call-to-action channel.
How to use social media in digital signage?
It is important to avoid redundancy over time. You can achieve this in the following three practical ways:
1. Real-time feed
The customary way to go about digital signage is running real-time live feeds from all your social media pages. Here, the priority is given to the comments, messages, and linked-up posts of your followers.
Guests carrying out live activity from the venue can appear on the big screen of digital signage within seconds of transpiring. Such activity can include posting a comment using your business name on their profiles.
2. Highlights
Besides broadcasting real-time newsfeeds, generating highlights of interactions is another perfect way to integrate the two. You can drive your customers to interact more with your business by dedicating a segment to your digital signage. This can be to highlight some of the best picks every week. For example, “customer of the week,” “review of the week,” or celebrating inspirational customer stories that relate to your services.
When run on a loop every week, it would help improve your call-to-action or hashtag campaign. The more guests would integrate your business name or hashtag in the social media posts in a bid to appear for seven days on digital signage, the more you can earn brand visibility, awareness, and growth.
3. Educating customers
Besides multiplying interactivity levels, integration of your hotel’s digital signage with social media is a means to educate your customers with updated and authentic information that they can rely on.
Bookmark the previous posts where customers asked questions to which you had replied. Create educational posts about the ins and outs of your service and run them on the digital signage. This way, you can promote your service not just to your social media following but also to the customers inside your property on their “dwell” time.
Winning customer loyalty?
A word of caution to integrate hotel digital signage and social media is not to focus on pushing sales. A consumer comes across advertisements 20 hours a day, and you wouldn’t want to increase that number. The primary idea of integration is to maximize customer interaction and win their loyalty and favor.
You can learn more about NexSigns’ Digital Signage solution and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube to get the latest info on digital signage!
