Telling a story about your hotel business is a great way to attract new customers and to make sure the old ones form a connection with your business. It might not always be easy to come up with a story to share but there are certain tips and tricks you can use in order to make sure that your stories perform the best.
Increasing the engagement of your customers on the posts you make on your social media accounts is all about finding the right ways to approach those who read them. Here are some of the best ways you can increase your customer engagement through storytelling.
Focus on people, not services
When running a business, it is often possible for those running it to focus more on the products or services it sells rather than the people who help run and maintain it. Hotel storytelling should be about the people who work in the business more than the services the business provides.
Some of the things you can include in your stories which will help you drive customer engagement on your posts consist of the following:
- The founding story of the restaurant
- The cultural background of the owners of staff
- A story about the location of the business
“Focusing on the people who work in your business is important as it will help you enrich these stories even further. Letting your audience know about the background of your employees will show that you care about them and that you treat them better than just a regular employee”, advises Marie Fincher, Writer and Social Media Manager for WowGrade.
All of these ideas can help you create a story which your audience will find interesting. Every customer always wants to know more about a business they trust and use the services of, and by sharing more personal details about your hotel, they are bound to trust your services even more.
Form an emotional connection
Trying to evoke your audience’s emotions through a story you share is one of the most important factors contributing to its success. A story which doesn’t share something personal is not going to motivate your customers to leave a comment on your social media post, no matter how interesting the story might be.
Each business has its own background and stories to share, and by adding an emotional aspect to these stories you are essentially showing your customers that your business isn’t just about business but also about connecting with the people who help keep it running.
If you have created your own social media accounts, you can easily show emotions and achieve this level of engagement by creating short video stories of your employees sharing personal experiences they have had while working for you. The more personal you make a story and the more you involve the employees that experienced it, the more you will engage your customers.
If you wish to also create written content instead of videos on your social media handles, you can make sure your stories are well written with the help of certain writing tools. By using tools and services such as Hemmingway Editor, WritingJudge and Grammarly and you can eliminate grammar and spelling errors and make sure your stories are easy to read by every one of your customers.
Use audiovisual content to your advantage
Stories will never truly be able to hold a customer’s attention if they just consist of words. In order to hold someone’s attention and get them to reach the story you want to share, you will have to use more than just words to captivate them.
Using audiovisual content is one of the best options you have if you wish to increase the engagement of your customers on your posts. This is something that can be done of any platform and while it might demand some additional time for editing, you will end up creating a much more successful result.
You audience will always want to know more about your business and the way it works behind the scenes. This is a great opportunity for you to give your customers what they want and add pictures of videos of your business in your written content.
For example, you can add pictures of your employees, the offices you might have for your staff, videos of everyday activities of the business and even footage of renovations of other similar activities that take place daily.
The point here is for your business to appear transparent, like you have nothing to hide from your customers and audiovisual content can really help you achieve that. The more you share about your business in your own free will, the fewer questions your audience will have. Additionally, they will feel like they will be able to ask you anything they wish in the comments and this will help increase their engagement.
Hold giveaways on your social media accounts
Another thing that many business owners of all niches like to do in order to increase the engagement on their posts is to hold frequent giveaways on their social media accounts. This is a great opportunity for you to combine sharing a personal story with the chance to gain more new potential customers.
If your business has an important date upcoming, like a business anniversary, Valentine’s Day or anything else of significance, you can create a post sharing a story about that certain day and combining it with a giveaway of a free stay for a lucky winner.
Giveaways have become very popular online and the chance of winning something free, especially a stay at a hotel is something most people would want to have a go at. One thing you should keep in mind is to have a set of rules to accompany your contest such as for your audience to like the post, tag a few of their friends, follow your account and share the post on their social media pages.
Motivate your customers to share their stories
Last but not least, another thing that is important to do in order to increase the engagement of your audience is to motivate them to share their own stories with you. By sharing something personal online, you are essentially allowing your audience to form a connection with your brand and to feel like they trust you more.
Using a call-to-action phrase is a great way for you to ask your audience to share a personal story in the comment section of your content. It is a good idea to ask your audience to share their experiences in regards to staying over at your hotel.
The more your followers become involved and speak about their personal stories regarding your business, the more others will be interested in booking a stay at your hotel too.
Attracting new customers and improving your services
The main aims of increasing your customers’ engagement is to become better at the services you provide and make sure both your old and new customers are always left satisfied. Online platforms can help make your business and its stories accessible to all your followers and turn them into customers.
Which are your personal strategies for increasing customer engagement for your business?
Bio:
Kristin Savage is a professional Content Creator and Editor for SupremeDissertations and BestEssayEducation. Her passions for educating her audience is always motivating her to continue learning more about new topics. In her spare time, she loves reading books and practicing yoga and meditation.
