REFLECTIONS

Josh Bolton

                   My project involved managing and improving two local Best Western hotel social media pages in order to help the hotels become more successful. Success in this project was defined as positioning the hotels, using various online methods, as premier lodging businesses in Southern Utah. Along with creativity aspect of the social media pages of the hotels, there was also a secondary focus on strengthening the community by posting promotions about local attractions. The main idea was that by creatively promoting the hotels I could in turn improve the overall community.

                The primary social media platforms used were Facebook and Instagram but we also used software such as Hootsuite and Mailchimp as well as various review websites in order to improve the SEO of the hotels and put the brand out there. Paid advertising known as “boosting” was used through Facebook to promote the hotels often using types of giveaways in order to engage people. For example, a Facebook post promoting the upcoming holiday season was used in order to get people to like, share and comment on the post as well as visit the hotel page. This strategy allowed the existence of the product to be more widely known. We also focused on certain demographics such as age and geographic location depending on the contents and intent of the specific post. Many social media sites allow you to easily target your intended audience.