If you are not interested in social media and online marketing this page will be of no interest whatsoever to you.
The adoption of social media has seen it become a key revenue driver for many businesses in the hospitality industry. While many still ignore or ‘play’ at it, others are very social indeed and reap the commercial benefits of doing it well.
Restaurants develop loyal followings through social media, and as a consequence regular diners that keep coming back, with their friends. Diners become evangelists when their experience justifies it, spreading the word, and the images, through Instagram, Facebook, twitter and other channels. Social media then amplifies the marketing messages getting more bums on seats and more cards in payment processors.
H&C News measures revenues through readership, as a reader views a page display advertising banners are served to the page, and advertisers pay for that reach (thank you for reading this page). Social media is our second biggest revenue stream, second only to Google Organic search.
Only a few years ago email newsletters were our number one revenue stream, but things change very quickly online, and email is now in third place, quite some distance behind social.
Much of what we have learned over the years came from analysing Google Analytics and understanding how our readership arrive and then behave. We then adjust the content mix accordingly to maximise incoming readership, regular readers and how many pages are read per visit. We need to do this as display banner advertisers only pay when their banners are seen. Display banners create revenues through CPM’s, not placement over time.
Once a year for the last six years we also get a group of like minded social media practitioners to spend a morning, afternoon or evening discussing social media and sharing their experiences. This has taught us a lot and enabled us to fast track our strategies and tactics.
The feedback from attendees is of a similar experience, and we are also careful not to invite two people that operate in competition, and yes, it’s an invitation only event.
We only talk in first hand ROI.
We of course source all attendees through social media, so, if you are interested in being invited to take part in 2019 please join the conversation on our Facebook H&C Social Group.