Fake Accounts on Facebook

With so many of Facebook's profiles being fake, how many are real 'likes'?

Well this infographic from Joyoftech.com might help explain!

Make sure you target the right audience with your posts and campaigns and beware of those fake accounts!

Top 5 Tips for Marketing with Facebook

Having trouble attracting the right audience on Facebook? Try these 5 tips to help market your business

Facebook is moving towards just being an advertising tool, and as such they're developing functions and models that help marketeers. Here are some of the ways to maximise your Facebook marketing.


1. Make a New Product and Boost it Announcement

Despite all the fake accounts on Facebook - boosting posts is still relatively effective as you will stay in the Newsfeed for longer. Use this for announcements, not advertisements - by keeping it to news you don't turn people off.


2. Make use of Your Newsfeed

How often do you look at pages? Most people on Facebook interact via the newsfeed - this is where the shares and likes are won from. Avoid writing updates that require people to go to your page and leave the newsfeed, such as entering a competition. Try using ActionSprout to allow someone to sign, join, enter from the newsfeed itself.

3. Customise your Marketing to your Audience

You can target your marketing on Facebook and reach specific fans. One such tip is using the 'Custom Audience' option, especially if you post in multiple languages. You can also customise it to people who have visited your website, so know your users and set a different marketing message for them. Essentially you're getting to know your market better and targeting them based on what they are looking at.


4. Don't Run the Same Adverts

To make the most of your advertising efforts and maximise your budget - run a trial of adverts and use different keywords for each. Use only a small portion of your budget and find out which adverts have the best engagement. It may sound a hit and miss way to find your return on investment, but split testing gives the best results to find exactly what segments of the market your reaching and with which keywords.


5. Use Audience Insights

These measuring functions are there to help you and should be used! Take advantage of the insights and check when your users are most active - times of day, where and what they're looking at. This should make you better equipped to target your audience so use this as a tool and engage with them.


For more suggestions on how to market your business check out www.hosteldoctor.com

Top 5 Tips for Using Pinterest for your Hostel

Pinterest is a way to virtually 'pin' or bookmark images and videos of interest to a board in your Pinterest account. For businesses it's a great way to create boards to showcase your product, but also to get images from your website and blog shared by other users for free. It's a great platform for the travel industry as it appeals to people as a way to collect ideas together and places to visit, engage with other users to promote your hostel.


1. Make your account a Pinterest business page

Make sure you use Pinterest as a way to represent your business not just for fun. It only takes a few minutes to set up a business page and means you can access analytics and metrics to find out users, repins and impressions. This means you can quickly analyse which types of images are engaging or appeal most. Then focus your pinning on your audience.


2. Use 'Place Pins'

Pinterest introduced 'Place Pins' in 2013 which is specifically to allow people to plan vacations. There are almost 100 million of these now being used! There's also an iPhone app to pin on-the-go. The place pins are simple to use - just add a map and drop pins with the address and telephone number. You can even create a board of your location with recommended tourist sites and restaurants ready to share with people heading to your destination. Check out Air bnb's 'Loved in Paris' board as an example of how to do it! http://www.pinterest.com/airbnb/loved-by-parisians/


3. Use all your assets

Pin all your photos but also any maps and blog images too. Make sure you add proper descriptions with hash tags and alt tags incorporated and urls where applicable, and that your website images are named for search engines, such as 'xyzhostel-Paris-bar', so when they're shared it has the correct information. You can tag people to pins too using @. If you work with a charity add a board for your photos with them and the activities you work on together. You can even add old pictures showing the history of your brand to create a story board.


4. Add a 'On Hover pin' to your web, blog and social media images

This encourages people to 'pin' an image whenever they hover their mouse over it - a great 'call to action' in marketing terms. Obviously this won't work on touch screens but is an effective way to encourage re-pinning. (Pinterest has instructions of how to do this)


5. Interact with other users

As with other social media sites, engaging with users is key. There is space to comment or converse with people pinning your pins, and equally respond to comments directed to you. Find out what boards people are placing you in, for example 'Paris Vacation Inspiration' and engage with your audience. You can also seek out influential pinners and write messages to them, for example people with the same target audience. Make sure you follow competitors and similar businesses to find out their latest news. You can also create Group Boards and invite users to collaborate (you have to be following each other to invite them).

And make sure you link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts!

Check out other hostel pages to find out what friends are doing, and see what works for you.
Good Luck!

For more advice see the Hostel Health Tips on www.hosteldoctor.com

DOs & DON'Ts for SEO marketing

Search Engine Optimisation is maximising your webpage to achieve higher recognition and listing on search engines through natural (unpaid) search. You should be taking into account all major search engines but Google has a 65% market share globally. If you’re marketing to Asia then there are differences; for instance Google only has a 17% share in China with Baidu having an 80% market share, so do your research on local trends.

Do use meta descriptions, keywords and tags
Use a few concise meta descriptions, tags and keyword for your pages- then repeat them in your content. Don’t use too many – this counts for all search engines. If you have Chinese translation pages, Baidu has a website tool that tells you trending keywords so you can include these in your descriptions to maximise exposure – but you must use keywords relevant to your page. Try to register with search directories – some take a while and some (Yahoo) you can pay for, but they will immediately improve your ranking.

Don’t use ‘black hat’ tactics
If you stuff website with irrelevant keywords, cloak them, and add links to spam sites - Google will punish you. You are also preventing people from finding the relevant material they are searching for. You can even be removed from searches for this, so keep your content relevant and true – you will attract less visitors; but the right visitors. This goes for Social Media too – don’t buy likes, it won’t increase your bookings.

Do Optimise
Add ‘alt’ tags and a title for your images so they load faster, reduce them in file size so they are optimised for the space, and keep your page sizes under 100kb throughout the site – search speed has been incorporated into ranking for search results. Make sure you have a ‘contact us’ page and site maps for both users and search engines.

Do write great content
Despite many changes to Google with the latest algorithm - Hummingbird, overall content is still the most important factor for search. Big changes were made to keyword searches which anyone using Google Analytics will be aware of, but the purpose is to value the content of the whole site for relevance, and provide better search results for users. Focus on useful content for your users – tourist information, places to see, places to go, and information on your hostel. If your bounce rate is high, your content is not that relevant.

Don’t forget your key business
Yes, you need good content on your areas and activities for guests, but your website should be a booking tool and point of information about your hostel primarily. The rest of the information is great, but secondary. Make sure you are marketing yourself as a great place to stay and have an intuitive site that leads to booking. You want people to read about you, book and share positive reviews. Make sure your social pages all use your url also, it’s better for your brand and counts on search too.

Hostel Health Tip
Beware that on China’s Baidu search – Flash and JavaScript don’t work!

To find out more about changes to Google search with Hummingbird
see our blog article HERE.

How to Get More Facebook Shares - by Mari Smith

Mari Smith is an excellent Marketeer who created a great infographic to help you get more 'shares' on facebook.  Follow the advice below and you can't go wrong!

14 ways to get more facebook shares

How to Create Great 'Brand Positioning" for your Hostel

What does this mean? Well, your brand is not your product (in this case your hostel) – it is the perception of your product. So, you need to identify how you want people to see your product before you start your marketing campaign. Then you can work out effective and fun ways to achieve this.

The first step to creating your ‘brand positioning’ is to create a ‘Statement’. This means a lot of brainstorming, honesty about what your unique value and proposition are, and get all your team’s ideas together. Put together a list of everything that is important for your business, your team, for you and your customer. Synthesize your results to include everyone’s point of view, give it a couple of days to think about it, then come back and decide your ‘Statement’.

When you have all the information in front of you – it should read like this:
- Your Target Market
- Definition of the market you are in
- Your Brand Promise
- Reason to Believe (RTB) the brand promise

This sounds simple – your market is backpackers, the age range and demographic is mostly open, and you’re offering a place to stay that is hopefully safe, fun, friendly, clean and good value for money. And your reviews, ratings and testimonials on your website and social sites provide the Reason to Believe.

What are you really selling?
You and your competitors are all selling beds – but ultimately, what is the experience you are selling? What do you really offer that is different from other hostels? Is your demographic really ‘everyone’? Who are you targeting? What nationalities are you promoting to? What translations do you have on your website? Do you encourage group bookings? What are you known for? What activities do you offer or can you recommend? You must work out all of these things before you begin to market yourself. Also make sure you identify what you don’t want to be known as – if you’re a party hostel then make sure you tell people if they want to sleep, to stay somewhere else!

Stay focused. The more focused you are, the more individual and distinctive your brand will be.  Try to find your exact section of the market, your promise and one or two reasons why that promise is believable. Remember you are also positioning yourself against competitors, so make sure you have a good understanding of their positioning too.

Product Message
Once you have established your positioning, put together the following, and make sure everyone in your team knows about it:

- Key Statements:  your benefits/unique selling points in a couple of key statements. These will be repeated      like mantras in all your marketing.
- Differentiators:  In marketing speak – what makes you different from the rest?
- Positioning:  Make sure everyone knows what you want to be known as.
- 25 words:  This is one sentence about you that says it all.

Now you have you message and product identified, you can build your brand.

Build your Brand
Now you have created it, you have to make sure you use it. This means keeping your brand identity ‘true’ (don’t stretch your logo!) and populate it across everything from your facebook to your invoices. This should be consistent – you will want it to look professional in everything you do, and to remain clearly identifiable. Read our article on ‘Building your Brand’ to see the checklist of what to do.

Manage your Brand
Once you have decided on your brand positioning, and have begun to build it, make sure you keep it well managed. Your “Reasons to believe” come in here, because your brand makes a ‘promise’ that the experience will be positive, and as you described. If you tell your customers you have an amazing party atmosphere and when they arrive you bar is under refurbishment, they will be disappointed. You need to manage expectations when they differ from your usual promise (such as when you are having renovations done etc.) and if something goes wrong, as it sometimes does, you have to recover your customers’ trust by managing the experience. Things can go wrong and you can still get a good review, but only if you manage it correctly. If you had a bad customer experience with a well known brand, you know they will respond to it immediately and try to gain your brand trust again – usually with discounts, exclusive offers or something free. Decide your standard protocol for dealing with complaints at front desk, online, through social networks, and make sure you send out consistent, positive responses to manage your brand.

Also, don’t forget that managing your brand is also a positive experience, not just crisis management! When you get positive reviews, thank the customer, share it on your website or social channels, and make sure the customer feels it was worth telling people. Good reviews and feedback from happy customers are your best friends, remember 51% of people follow friend’s recommendations when it comes to where to stay.  Your customer will feel more inclined to visit again, recommend you, read your email marketing rather than thinking it’s spam, and remember it as a positive customer experience, even after their visit! This is marketing gold dust, so don’t think the customer experience ends when at check-out. Find out more about Positive PR in our free article online.

Good Luck!

If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact us at hello@hosteldoctor.com