What’s Trending in 2016? Looking into Social Media Trends for your Hotel

According to Fast Company, there are now more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide, and that sum is growing at a brisk clip of 25% each year, the social media landscape is constantly evolving and growing to meet the demands of the savvy social users and advertisers. 

In this article, we will outline some of the bigger trends in 2015 and share our thoughts on where things are heading in 2016 and how this will impact your hotel social media marketing.

Search and Social

We’ve seen that social signals impact search. The highest impact can be seen through social shares; social shares validate a page’s authority and thus allow it to rank higher. Social posts are currently showing up in search results but this will continue to increase.

Google will likely add additional platforms muddling the line between web and social, as they have already partnered with Twitter to share tweets in search results.  Social platforms are beginning to morph into mini search engines. Rather than going to Google to search for information, users are searching directly in Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube to find the information they are seeking.

A study by Pew Research highlights 63% of both Twitter and Facebook say the platform serves as a source of news and events outside the realm of friends and family.  Additionally, a recent survey showed 87% of the respondents said that Pinterest played a large factor in their purchase decision.

This does not imply your hotel will take over CNN as a news source, but if there is a relevant news story tying your content into that will increase the likelihood of social shares.