Update Your Social Media

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for; time to reopen the doors post Covid-19 and welcome back customers and guests. We've been helping lots of businesses from the hospitality sector get ready to welcome guests again and below are our top tips for restaurants, hotels, and bars to show you’re back in business again and ready to serve.

Things You Need To Do Once

1. Go back to your old posts on Instagram where you’re telling people that you’re going to have to close, you’re closing, and you’re closed and DELETE!

Those posts are not serving any purpose now. They are a reminder of a time that is now over.  Curating your Instagram feed like this is something you should be doing always.  Work hard to keep your feed looking lovely and that means deleting product shots or those updates that the boss insisted you share, but you know aren't adding value!

2. Have a look at your bio on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and check it’s got the right link and hashtags.

For example, if you are a restaurant that switched to takeaway only, you might have changed the link to payment only. Now’s the time to switch back to table bookings, or your home page.

3. Give some serious thought to updating your customer profiles. 

People have changed. Nothing will ever be the same again. So now is the time to have a re-think about your persona and their needs. Here's a good post on how we do Customer Personas here at Brightspark.

For example, in hotels, if you were previously reliant on American tourists, for now you may have to refocus on the domestic market until they come back again. Your new local market is probably more interested in the hip city centre location than its proximity to Temple Bar. So it's time to update your language in bios and about us descriptions. This is what our mentoring client, Drury Court Hotel did recently with great effect 👇

Planning Your Social Media Content

Speak to the joy of serving. You are happy to be back. Social distancing, whether or not perspex is required, let alone the cost of it all is not your customer’s problem. They want happy happy joy joy.  😂 Nothing negative, thank you! The time for negative is over. So if you have someone looking after your social who tend to be a bit on the maudlin side, shake them up! Or switch them out. It’s time to have Joyful Jules on the case. Did you know: the overriding emotion on Instagram is Joy? When in doubt, speak to that!

Address customer concerns about health and safety. It could potentially be a blocker if you don’t address it in your content. Show all the steps you’ve taken to make your bar, restaurant, hotel safe. Show the care you’ve taken to train your staff. Show don't tell.  Here's our favourite example of an Irish hotel preparing to welcome guests again. Definitely worth watching to the end.

Now is a great time to be thinking about Destination Marketing.

Consumers are making choices about places they want to visit. They may not necessarily be researching specific properties. So experiences need to be packaged differently because the buying decision will often be made on the whole destination and what it has to offer. This is a great opportunity to team up with other local businesses for the win!