5 Software Tools That Can Help Bed and Breakfast Inns
Setting up a bed and breakfast inn today is not like it used to be. There are many more considerations for entrepreneurs. You not only have to think about ensuring that the establishment meets the standards of your target audience, but also that you can beat the competition.
And that’s not easy when you’re short-staffed. The average bed and breakfast only has 4.6 employees and many have only one or two.
The market is more competitive than it used to be. Bed and breakfast inn owners must therefore be more creative with their approach to running their business. It is therefore a great relief for inn owners to know that there are various software programs that they can use to assist them with their establishments.
More than just management software
If you were to do a search on Google for software for bed and breakfast inns, you’d be presented with a long list of property and hospitality management software tools. While these are important for making tasks such as reservations and management of guests easier, they are not the only software tools that can help bed and breakfast inns.
However, we are not going to discuss that kind of software. There is already a lot of information on the Internet about those. We are going to look at other software tools that are just as important for bed and breakfast inns especially for growing your presence of online.
Software tools to help Bed and Breakfast Inns
Apart from ensuring that your establishment runs efficiently in terms of serving guests, it is important to ensure that it gets the right kind of attention on the Internet. This is vital especially due to the large number of people who now use the Internet to access information.
The following are important tools that can help a bed and breakfast inn grow their online presence:
1. Followerwonk
Social media is an important part of any online marketing strategy. A big part of being successful on social media networks is being linked to influencers in your network and using them to make an impact on social media networks. However, finding these people can be difficult.
Followerwonk is a software tool that helps you find influencers in your industry. It provides business owners with the opportunity to identify and monitor potential influencers that can help them to amplify their marketing efforts.
For example, if you are hoping to attract backpackers to your Bed and Breakfast inn, you would look for a blogger who is a backpacking enthusiast. When you have a list of backpacking enthusiasts who are industry influencers, Followerwonk allows you to analyze their followers and shows you how best to develop a relationship with them.
Use Followerwonk to find the people that influence your target customer. (tweet this)
2. Buffer
To be successful on a social media network it is important to ensure that you provide your readers with fresh content. You therefore have to keep updating the content on your social profiles. This can be quite time consuming especially when you still have the task of running your bed and breakfast inn.
Buffer is a tool that was designed to make it possible to update different social media profiles with one easy click. You can schedule messages and share the content on your social media profiles across different networks including Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Buffer allows you to stagger the content that you would like to share with your audience throughout the day. This ensures that your feeds are consistent.
The tool also provides you with analytical information about the reach of your posts and the level of engagement you achieve.
One of the best things about Buffer is that you can use it for free over a specified trial period. It is actually quite affordable thereafter.
Schedule your social media updates with Buffer. (tweet this)
3. Spredfast
You can’t really tell how successful you are on a social network without facts to tell you as much. This is where Spreadfast comes in. Spreadfast is a great software tool to help you measure data that is obtained from social networks such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. You will be able to measure the number of people you are reaching and the level of engagement you receive from your target audience.
Spreadfast is a great tool because the data is presented in a clear and easy to understand format. The tool also has other great features such as a calendar that will help you keep track of the best times to share content on different social media platforms.
4. Bitly
Social media networks are a great way to create and grow your influence. They give you the opportunity to connect with potential customers, influencers as well as other businesses and suppliers that can help you increase your influence even further. To do this you need to regularly update your social media networks with useful content targeted at your audience.
Bitly is a useful software tool when it comes to posting links on social media networks. Bitly works by shortening the links that you post on your social media accounts, keeping them short, nice and neat.
The tool also provides you with the opportunity to get real-time analytical information on your social media profiles. You will also have the opportunity to bookmark your favorite sites and pages as well as track clicks of visitors on the links posted on your social media profile.
Bitly can be integrated with a wide variety of social media platforms allowing you to keep track of various social media profiles at all times. And you get all this for absolutely no fee!
5. SocialFlow
Ensuring that your target audience is provided with fresh content is vital for the success of a social media campaign and for any online marketing campaign. However, there is more to it than simply ensuring that you provide fresh information regularly.
You have to ensure that the information is interesting and is relevant.
SocialFlow is more than just another tool for timing and sharing content on different social media platforms.
This software tool takes into consideration three important factors for content sharing:
- Message relevancy – you should ensure that you share a message that is more likely to connect with your target audience
- The audience – the software tool takes into account what type of audience is online at any given moment. This ensures that you share the right message with the right audience.
- Time – the software tool will take into account the timing of the message. This helps to ensure that you publish the right type of message at the right time.
Just like any other business you have to always be on the lookout for tools and marketing strategies that can give you an edge over your competition. This is true if you want to ensure that your establishment is successful with the current high level of competition in the bed and breakfast industry.
Ensuring that your bed and breakfast functions at a high level of efficiency is important but it is not everything. You need to establish a loyal customer base and enlarge your circle of influence. The Internet is the best place to get new customers and keep previous customers engaged and ensure that they come back.
The tools listed above will help you build a solid customer base online and increase your influence on the Internet by developing a strong online presence. Take your time and determine which combination of tools work best for your business strategy. They can only help your business get better.
Did we leave any of the software tools that you use off the list? We’d love to hear your favorites in the comments!
Image: PhotoAtelier
Free Hotel Website Checklist
5 Essential tips for using your website to book more guests! Plus, a Free email course, Winning Web Strategies For Innkeepers.