We all want more engagement on our hotel’s social media channels. Because the more engaged your fans are, the better. Their comments, their likes and their shares are the ones driving more visitors to your property. A great way to do this might be via a poll post. People love to share their opinion! The poll post suits almost any social media platform and is very easy to create. In this blog post, I want to share some examples I came up with for Hotel V (Nesplein) in Amsterdam.

One of the best way to get quick engagement, is a like-vs-share post. This post works very well because it’s easy. With the click of a button your audience is able to share their vote.

• Add a little contest. With this example post voor Hotel V, you could give away one free breakfast-in-bed to one of the voters.
• Think about for who this might be most interesting: locals and upcoming visitors.
• Inform upcoming visitors about the contest via e-mail, give them the chance to participate
• Inform local community by getting some locals involved via personal contact (tell them they can even win the free breakfast-in-bed without booking a stay)

A poll post is a great way to engage your visitors with your property. You can give them the chance to take part in your decision process. This will give them the feeling you appreciate their opinion and it will benefit you in general. It’s a magnificent way to create committed customers. In this example you can see you could let your visitors vote about what to put on your (new) breakfast menu.

• Interior options
• Menu options: breakfast, lunch, dinner but also cocktails, desserts, etc.
• New decoration: paintings, photography
• Holiday festivities: would they like a Christmas tree in the hotel? Do they want decoration? A Christmas dinner?
• And then elaborate on that: maybe your visitors can help you decide what should be on the Christmas dinner menu?

Another way to get your audience involved is to ask for their favorite places, things and so on. What did they like most about the city/town/area where your hotel is located? What was their favorite restaurant or favorite activity? By asking them about their favorites you show interest in their experience and it will give you valuable knowledge to enhance your next guest’s stay. See the example for Hotel V, where I ask their visitors which museum in Amsterdam they prefer.

• Start your description with a captivating title
• Then ask your visitors to explain why they pick a certain place
• Or if they would suggest another place (in this case, a museum)
• Or to tag the person they would like to bring along next time visiting this place

• Best restaurant, coffee place, café, pub
• Favorite festival
• Preferred place to go clubbing
• Favorite: Dutch food
• Best activities, tours, exhibitions
• Handiest way of transport

Analyze your business and audience

As you can see, there are many options with the poll post. I could go on and create tons of possible posts for Hotel V. Just make sure your posts are in line with the overall vibe and vision of your hotel. If you are focused on sustainability for example, and located in the rain forest or at a farm, integrate those things into your polls. If you are a small town hotel, then try to highlight special places in town and in the area. And look at your target audience: what would they like to vote on? Do they want to share their opinion about the music in the lobby, or do you think they rather suggest a new menu item?

Conclusion

1. Think about the key objectives of your hotel and your vision for social media
2. Decide in which categories you want your target audience to get involved
3. Think of possible things to ask their feedback on, get them engaged with and such
4. Create!
5. Post!
6. And, incredibly important, analyse.
7. Follow up on results

Point 6 is very important and gives you another content option: you could share the results of your poll later in the week. If you don’t analyse your poll’s results, what’s the benefit? Make sure you take results into account and find a way to share them with your audience. You don’t want your fans to vote for something completely useless – you want to show them you truly value their opinion or their effort to like/share your post. So make sure to follow up on the results!

Now what?

Try to create a poll post for your own property and implement the tips given. Done? Please share your result! Either by posting a picture in the comments or a link to your social media page. I check every single comment left and will leave my feedback if you’d like me to.

> The next Social Media for Hotel posts will be in 2 weeks from now. I plan on posting 1 every 2 weeks. If you want to stay updated, make sure to become part of the Tremento Tribe.

All photos in these examples were gathered from the social media channels of Hotel V. These examples were made out of my own interest, not upon request. However, if you are interested in posts like these for your social media channels then please get in touch.