Whites Beach Guest House - Social Media Strategy - Example

Whites Beach Guest House: The Social Media Strategy Report Lecturer: Student details: Date: Table of Contents Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Background information on the creation of a social media strategy 2 WHITES BEACH GUEST HOUSE 3 A.NEED RECOGNITION: 3 B.THE GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF WHITES BEACH GUEST HOUSE 3 C.SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS: 3 D.BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA LOG: 4 COMPETITORS: 4 E.CONTENT STRATEGY: 6 F.PROGRESS TRACKING: 8 G.PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: 9 H.STRATEGY ADJUSTMENTS: 11 MY GOAL FOR THE NEXT PERIOD 12 Conclusion: 14 Abstract A social media strategy report is a kind of report that seeks to clearly explain the status of a given business and to advertise the business to a wide range of individuals. It analyzes the business social media objectives, the current status of the business on social media, the techniques of developing a content strategy, progress tracking techniques and the adjustments to be made to the current strategies. By coming up with such a report, a business is able to know its market position in relation to competitors and its performance in comparison to previous periods. The report aims at improving on the search engine optimization, opportunities for the company participation, content management, social media, online bookings, trip advisor, blogging and other uses of the electronic database. This report is also of great importance to attracting new customers and retaining old customers. Statistical analysis is done on every aspect of the business to ascertain percentage change with regards to popularity, web acceptance and response by correspondences. This report seeks to analyze the social media strategy of Whites beach Guest house. It looks into the main strategy, forecasted strategy and the progress of operations towards achieving the future social media strategies. It further analyzes the situation of some other hotel destinations along the Great Ocean Road. It seeks to ascertain the competitiveness of Whites beach guest house in the hospitality and tourism industry. The report is based on statistical data and facts from other relevant articles which are cited and well referenced at the end of the report. Introduction Whites’ beach guest house latest version is a business that started in 2014 as a family business. It was established in Australia, where there exist a large number of hotels and motels. This is a business in the hospitality and tourism industry. In comparison with other hotels and motels along the Great Ocean Road, Whites beach guest house is a very young hotel destination. Since its establishment, the business has had at least four hundred guests. The business is located on a one acre land, 150 meters away from the beach. It is composed of seven suites and two bed roomed houses in the main house and the coach house respectively (Whitesbeach Guesthouse, n.d.). The place is well furnished with an indoor heated pool, a tennis court and a table tennis room, a playground for Children, an in-ground trampoline, billiards room with full size table and open fire, indoor and outdoor BBQ areas as well as a library with balcony and ocean views. The business performance has increased in response to the main objectives. The business is working on its social media presence and the progress is remarkably good. Whites’ beach guest house has competitors such; Victoria, Geelong Otway Tourism and Great Ocean Road limited. The social media strategy will therefore consider the position of Whites beach guest house in relation to its competitors by analyzing the social media strategies of the competitors. These strategies involve; coming up with quality web content for Whites beach guest house, creating more social media sites that will help in advertising the motel online and increasing the ability of the guest house to reach out to a wide range of customers. The major aim of this report is to market Whites beach guest house and to place it at a competitive advantage with its competitors in Victoria along the Great Ocean Road (Johnston, 2011). Background information on the creation of a social media strategy Having a social media presence enables a business to meet potential customers, advance in skills and expertise, and gain the trust of its existing customers. To engage in the social media business, a company must have a full understanding of the strategy it wants to employ (Akyol, 2013). The business owners must think of how to get their customers engaged, and how to boost sales via social media. In order to gain much from a created social media strategy, the creator must determine the best sites to use by analyzing all available sites. It may be necessary to create all these sites but the content of each site and the number of times to post on the sites need to be determined. One must also have in mind the size of the site, the necessary metrics to use for measuring performance of the site, and the methodology to be used in getting current and potential customers in the online business (Akyol, 2013). WHITES BEACH GUEST HOUSE A. NEED RECOGNITION: Many people are currently looking for hotels and motels that offer hostel facilities rather than just the bread and breakfasts. There is need for holiday destinations to be able to offer TA mobile applications and accommodate even customers in the corporate arena. There is need for the best hotel destination to position itself on top of the market in order to ensure that consumers get only that which is best for them (Das, n.d.). B. THE GENERAL OBJECTIVES OF WHITES BEACH GUEST HOUSE To do beyond what is expected in terms of service provision To provide much more comfort rather than just the traditional bed and breakfast To necessitate comfort without restaurant or room services or laundry To create a situation of “homey” feel to all customers by offering what suits the individual customers C. SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS: 1. To increase the traffic to whites beach guesthouse 2. To maximize the rate of bookings 3. To increase positive online chatter about Whites beach Guesthouse 4. To increase business profit and revenue by offering uniqueness to tourists 5. To ensure full time operations by enabling higher occupancy rates 6. To expand the markets by targeting different categories of customers and additional social media sites 7. To reduce costs of operation by encouraging longer stays and low commissions 8. To promote the business culture and make it a lifestyle that is cherished by customers, at both local and international levels. D. BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA LOG: Whites’ beach guest house is a very young hotel destination. Currently, the business has a stable website but lacks other social media links. However, the business is working on how to develop and start using other social media sites for advertisements, general communications and other online activities. The following social media sites has been identified and confirmed to be necessary for the smooth running of the business. Their use is also anticipated to bring positive changes with regard to business profitability, and online presence as well as customer management (Dorenda-Zaborowicz, 2012). The social media sites should be able to reveal the fact that Whites beach guest house is concerned about the hidden interests of customers. Social media site URL Targeted followers Face book www.facebook/whitesbeach.com one million (1,000,000) Twitter https://twitter@whitesbeach.com twenty thousand (20,000) Instagram www.instagram.co.au three million (3,000,000) LinkedIn www.linkedin.com three hundred thousand (300,000) Note: The above expectations refer to members who are not in any other social media site. Therefore, the business expects at least 4,320,000 viewers of the daily posts in their social media site. The links provided are relevant and applicable in this generation where technological improvement is inevitable (Ellonen and Kosonen, 2010). They are samples of possible links that can be created in the social media. COMPETITORS: The highest competition for Whites beach guest house is the hotel destinations along the Great Ocean Road. Three major competitors are; Occupancy Pty ltd, Geelong Otway Tourism and Surf Coast. However, all of these destinations offer more opportunities for eat outs compared to other activities like visits to the beach, corporate meetings and the like. Social media networks Strengths Weaknesses Occupancy Pty ltd Sionhan.hayes@occupancy.com Face book, twitter Good information systems, which allows for timely relay of information to intended parties. Lacks responsibility over all information that is incredibly wrong and causes suffering to those that relied on the information for action. Openness to the beach, with fewer buildings makes it difficult for the destination to have controls over climate change. Therefore, massive destruction of property is possible in case of cyclones, strong winds, rising sea levels and storms. The company only offers half a year accommodation. I.e.; January to March then October to December. This creates room for customers to look for alternative accommodations during the other seasons. Customer loyalty is not guaranteed. Surf Coast www.visitgreatoceanroad.org.au Availability of full time services and quality facilities for visitors during the nights. Availability of company vehicles to enable transportation of visitors to and from the tourist destination (Tourismgeelongbellarine.com.au, n.d.). The night facilities are very limited and unable to cater for all night time visitors who wish to spend more than three days at the holiday destination. Geelong Otway Tourism www.visitgeelongbellarine.com.au www.geelongotway.org www.businesseventsgeelong.com.au Face book, twitter It is surrounded by many hotels and motels that enable it attract all kinds of people since each of these hotels offer different services to different age brackets. It has the most scenic coastal drives in the world, and other attractive facilities. It has transport facilities like company vehicles which enable visitors to gain easy access to transport and also generate extra income to the company. Most of the recreation facilities are similar to those in other holiday destinations. It therefore lacks uniqueness in its service provision and branding capabilities. Whites Beach Guest House http://whitesbeach.com.au Excellent recreation facilities e.g. gourmet continental breakfast, free Wi-Fi, an indoor heated pool and tennis court Ability to combine amenities of a large hotel with the exclusivity and friendly service of a bed and breakfast.  Very young in the market hence difficulties in penetrating the market may arise. It has no stable we presence as currently most of information about the business is only found in their website and not any other social media. E. CONTENT STRATEGY: i. Type of content to be posted and promoted via social media The guest house wishes to post adverts on our location, mode of operation, time of operation, new arrivals to the hotel and any other additional features. We also wish to post the feedbacks from our customers and live testimonies whether positive or negative since we believe in our services. Generally, we will be posting more business content and some other educative content as well as fun contents. Job vacancies at our place will also be posted in our social media sites (Evans, 2008). Content will also include our history, the basis of our operations, our mission, vision and core values. ii. How often the content will be posted Such information will be posted as soon as it arrives in our premises. Any online feedback will appear as soon as the customer sends the comment. Our new strategies and services will be posted as soon as their credibility has been proven and they prove to be necessary and relevant to the public. Repetitive content will be posted at least twice a day to ensure that most customers get informed (Olivas-Lujan and Bondarouk, 2013). A pop-up menu will also be enabled in the system to ensure that no restriction will prevent a group of customers and potential customers from gaining access to our social media services. iii. Target audience for each type of content Most of our posts will appear in all the social media sites. However, specific posts will be attributed to the specific sites. For instance, our response to customer queries will be channeled via the same medium used by the customer. Our main targets are boutique luxury accommodation, those in need of Personal experience, unique experience, those close to bells Beach or Great Ocean Road, and those close to Melbourne. Most of the content targets a generation of young individuals since they are energetic and have a good knowledge on how to use electronic devices in the digital age (Raghu, n.d.). The young people are also very responsive and in favor of online transactions rather than transactions that involve a lot of movements from place to place. This is one reason as to why Whites beach need to create social media sites instead of using the website for every transaction (Rood, 2007.). Content type: Examples: social media site: About us Business history, investments Website Job vacancies waiter, manager LinkedIn, website Business content performance report, news, website, twitter Contact/feedback customer comments and requests face book, LinkedIn, Website, twitter Staff contacts manager’s phone number website Company address box number, office line, website, face book iv. Who will create the content Special web content will be developed by specialists in web development. In this case we will hire special web developers in case there is none within our team. Tender offers will be advertised for equipped parties to apply (Tuten and Solomon, 2013). Similarly, this duty will be delegated to the information technology department of White beach guest house. Customers and potential customers will also have a say in the type of content being posted. From the feedback, we will be able to make necessary improvements on the content to make it even richer and satisfactory. All the data will however be restricted by encryption and administrative log in passwords, in order to avoid cases of data corruption and manipulation of crucial information. v. How we will promote the content Free education on the benefits of our services and the facilities we offer. This will include free templates to site visitors, one on one talk with other potential customers and insights on new technology. Free trials for every new subscriber to our sites. These trials will be availed for a period of 30 days to enable the customers and potential customers to familiarize with the online systems. Free membership in all the other social media sites, given that a customer is a member in one of the sites. Low and affordable membership fees for potential customers. This will be based on the market price and the cost of operations. A higher than market price will be applicable in cases where the brand is very unique and attractive despite the pricing. F. PROGRESS TRACKING: This will involve the use of tracking devices to find out the people that has been reading and responding to our posts. These devices will also be used to find out the number of our social media subscribers that are always online, seeing our posts and responding to them. It will also enable us identify people who are new to our website and engaging with our page. Facebook offers a great opportunity to track response and timing of such responses since it outlines the details of who visited the site and the time of response (Using social media, 2010). LinkedIn also gives viewers progress report and shows the percentage of profile views and account performance in relation to other LinkedIn sites of other users. An administrator will be assigned for all our social media sites to ensure that someone is always available for online communication. G. PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: The performance of all holiday destinations is ascertained by carrying out a survey of the various destinations, and then a comparison is made to determine which of the destinations performed best and the average performance of all the destinations for that period. The methodology used in this case is the national visitor survey, in which case there is so much use of mobile phones and landlines. Different people are interviewed to hear their views on the service provision before the records for the specific destination are assessed for honesty and reliability (Zarrella, 2010). The interviews also help the interviewers gather enough information on the travel behavior of the individuals in question. The performance assessment also includes a report on attendance in terms of customer visits during the day, the night and other out of bounce trips. The comparison is also done based on the length of customer stay, expenditures on trips as compared to night stay expenditures and the rates of night time visiting friends and relatives. The rate at which individuals travel on the basis of business as well as intrastate overnight travels is also assessed. The performance of the social media sites must be analyzed on a regular basis. This is aimed at identifying weak points and taking corrective measures. The performance measures are also to be analyzed against the performances of other hotel destinations. In Australia, the general measure of performances of mining and resources hotspots, beach holiday destinations, capital cities and wine tourism regions is done using the national accommodation barometer. This is a tool that was last used to measure the performance of hotel destinations in the year 2012. During this time, the Whites beach guest house was not in full operation. Based on this barometer, the occupancy rates for the day and night shifts, visitor arrivals and other relevant statistics are measured. Whites’ beach guest house uses this barometer as the basis of performance measurement. The results from the national accommodation barometer are an average of many hotel destinations for the past five years and for the year ended September 2012. Most of the data is presented as percentages (Whitesbeach Guesthouse, n.d.). Comparison between the current performance of the Whites beach guest house and the National accommodation barometer in 2012 shows the following deviations: National accommodation barometer Whites beach guest house Basis of measurement Statistics as at the end of 2012 Current Desired Season The occupancy levels have been steady throughout the year with limited variations of less than 10% increase or decrease every month, irrespective of the season. • In silly seasons, the business only opens on Saturdays. In steady season, the place opens on Saturdays only and during Easter holidays. In slow seasons, the place is opened only in the June and September holidays. In sleepy seasons, the place opens on week days from May to September. The place should be open for 7 days in January, autumn and spring school holidays, every Friday to Sundays of February to May and September to December. The only times when the place should be closed are in the months of June to August. Days of the week The statistics shows a general increase and positive growth in the occupancy level, dating back from the year 2007 (60.1%). The business has had more visitors on Fridays and Saturdays (34% and 28% respectively) and fewer visitors on Thursdays, Sundays and Wednesdays. No visitors come to the place on Mondays and Tuesdays. The business expects a situation of full time operation and full occupancy on its available capacity. Age The statistics shows that the greatest percentage of visitors range from 20 years, all the way to 49 years. This makes age a distinguishing factor in determining a tourist destination. 59% of the visitors are aged between 30 to 49 years while the lowest visits are of people aged below 20 and above 59 years (2% and 6% respectively). The business targets all age groups especially any one below 59 years old. The below 20 years love surfing and gaming. These facilities have been availed and there is free Wi-Fi in the whole place. Major activities On average, a high percentage of visitors go for eat outs, followed by beach visits, then family visits and lastly for business purposes Most people go for eat outs and beach visits and a lower percentage go for business matters To reach out to more corporate people and be able to attract more corporate visitors in the same way visitors for eat outs and beach visits are attracted. H. STRATEGY ADJUSTMENTS: My new social media strategy i. Things that are expected to work well to achieve the social media goals Running of multiple adverts will help in a faster improvement of CTR Posts of females, faces and borders will lead to more viewers and hence high website traffic With winning adverts, creation of varying colors, borders and scales will lead to further improvement of CTR Working with targets will lead to a better understanding of our targets. This will be influenced by the key learning on the type of content that customers view and respond to. The use of unique adverts will attract the attention of the targets, some will bring in more buyers The use of clicks simply as part of the strategy and not the main focus will help improve the system. Regular cycling of adverts will avoid cases of “ad blindness” and cause high CTR as well as high conversion rates ii. Things that do not work well In case some of the above strategies fail, there will be a back up strategy to keep the company at a high position with respect to social media strategies. There will be adjustments on the objectives of social media strategy as well as the process of implementing strategies. In other cases there will be a total change of strategy due to change in objectives (Ellonen and Kosonen, 2010). For instance, a strategy that puts more facilities for very old people will not be very profitable as these groups have low desire for tourism and entertainment. However, a strategy that aims at people below 20 years will motivate such groups of people to start loving travels and tours. It will also increase the desire of families to travel together rather than just a couple traveling. MY GOAL FOR THE NEXT PERIOD Changes are required in the social media strategy to achieve the next period goal. From the initial creation of the social media sites, the guest house will be able to generate higher revenues and at the same time offer high quality services. The strategy will therefore help to improve the services provided by other hotels and motels like the bed and breakfast, to make it unique and attractive for all. Since it is located at a strategic position to the Great Ocean Road, Whites beach guest house will work to divert the traffic to the competitor destinations by gaining attention. The business also aims at changing the general view of most accommodation destinations that persons and customers are their own responsibility. The business aims at achieving high levels of security of both information and facilities. Any changes in information will be a responsibility of the business in a case where customers will base their action on such information. The business also aims at providing insurance to every customer at the hotel premises at the time of any occurrence. This will ensure that any time a risk occurs with certainty, the affected parties are well compensated and that the loss is minimized. In addition, facilities should be put in place to attract the individuals who intend to hold corporate meetings. A serene environment should be set where no much noise and excitement is expected. This will be attractive for corporate tourists and those that want to adventure into unique conferencing places. These changes will be easier to effect using the extra earnings earned from the results of the social media sites created earlier. The business will also ensure that there are online offers that are unique to the Whites beach guest house only (Whitesbeach Guesthouse, n.d.). This will put the business at a competitive edge with its competitors. Conclusion: Australia receives a great percentage of visitors. This implies that the quality of service must be very high in order to retain customers. The place also has a large number of hotels and motels and most of them are in the same region. The biggest percentage of these holiday destinations is attached to the Great Ocean Road due to its closeness to the beach. The social media strategy that is to be created will manage to raise the competition level since it is anticipated to trigger other businesses of a similar nature to aim at offering services and facilities beyond customer expectation. The created sites are also expected to boost sales of Whites beach guest house by increasing the rate of occupancy, traffic towards the guest house and enhancing a culture of relaxation and fun in the business. The site will also be used as a forum for getting customers informed of new technologies and the progress of the business in terms of performance. The target for social media sites cut across all age groups but mostly groups of individuals, couples, families and business partners, as long as they are ready to have fun, and reach business deals in places that offers the most comfort. References: Rood, David ,2007. "Road's still great, 75 years on". The Age; Retrieved 26 June 2010. Johnston, Matt , 2011. "Great Ocean Road added to Australia's national heritage lis". Herald Sun. Retrieved 7 April 2011. Akyol, Ş. (2013). Social Media and Marketing: Viral Marketing. AJIS. Das, P. (n.d.). Getting Ahead of Competition Through Social Media Marketing. SSRN Electronic Journal. 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