Maximizing User Engagement on Twitter: Insights from Hotel Industry's Social Media Strategies

Researchers examined how different types of content on hotel industry Twitter accounts influence user engagement, revealing that content related to hotel management and sustainability generates the highest engagement. Using natural language processing and topic modeling, they identified key themes and highlighted the importance of tailored, relevant content for effective social media strategies.

In a comprehensive study examining the engagement dynamics of hotel industry Twitter accounts, researchers Inmaculada Rabadán-Martín, Lucía Barcos-Redín, Jorge Pereira-Delgado, Francisco Aguado-Correa, and Nuria Padilla-Garrido delve into how different content types influence user interactions. This study, published in the journal Tourism Management, focuses on firm-generated content (FGC) from 44,448 tweets by 62 hotel brands, utilizing natural language processing and topic modeling to uncover 14 key themes.

Unveiling the Power of Social Media for Hotel Brands

The researchers highlight the growing importance of social media as a platform for brands to disseminate information, launch promotions, and engage with consumers. The core of the study revolves around understanding how different types of content affect user engagement. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), they identify topics ranging from hotel management activities to sustainability, and explore their engagement levels. Their findings reveal a strong positive correlation between engagement and content related to hotel management activities, as well as sustainability topics among smaller groups. The study emphasizes the necessity for brands to frame their messages in a way that quickly resonates with users, aligning with the Uses and Gratifications theory, which posits that content providing value or gratification attracts higher engagement.

Methodology: From Tweets to Insights

The methodology involved extensive pre-processing of the tweet texts, followed by topic modeling using LDA. The researchers meticulously adjusted hyperparameters to optimize the model's performance, ensuring high coherence in topic identification. They then analyzed the engagement metrics replies, likes, retweets, and quotes to gauge user interactions with each identified topic. One notable outcome is the identification of temporal trends, particularly the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the types of content shared by hotels. The analysis shows that hotel brands adapted their social media strategies during the pandemic, focusing more on trust, safety, and cordiality. This shift in content strategy is linked to changing user preferences and the need for brands to maintain relevance during crises.

Engagement Disparities: What Works and What Doesn’t

The study also sheds light on the disparity in engagement levels across different content types. Promotional messages, for instance, were found to generate lower engagement compared to more informative or emotionally charged content. This insight is crucial for hotel brands aiming to refine their social media strategies to maximize user engagement. By clustering hotel brands based on the engagement generated by various topics, the researchers provide a nuanced understanding of how different brands prioritize and succeed with specific types of content. This clustering helps identify best practices and areas for improvement, offering valuable insights for the hotel industry to enhance their social media presence. The detailed analysis revealed that hotel brands that focused on specific themes, such as sustainability and hotel management, saw higher engagement rates. This finding aligns with the broader marketing principle that tailored, relevant content tends to perform better in engaging audiences.

Adapting to Changing Times: The COVID-19 Effect

Further, the study highlighted the evolving nature of social media engagement. The impact of external factors, like the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrated how quickly user interests and engagement patterns can shift, necessitating agile and responsive content strategies from brands. Hotel brands that were able to swiftly pivot their messaging to address safety concerns and build trust during the pandemic period managed to maintain and even boost their engagement levels. This adaptability underscores the importance of monitoring social media trends and being prepared to adjust content strategies in response to global events and changing consumer sentiments. The researchers used a combination of quantitative metrics and qualitative judgment to select and label the most coherent topics. This dual approach ensured that the identified themes were both statistically sound and intuitively meaningful. The engagement analysis involved calculating the average reactions per tweet and distributing these reactions proportionally across the identified topics. This method allowed for a detailed examination of which topics drove the most user interaction, providing actionable insights for hotel brands.

The Future of Hotel Social Media Strategies

One of the significant contributions of this study is its detailed exploration of the underlying themes in the FGC of hotel chains through natural language processing. This approach goes beyond traditional manual content analysis by allowing for the discovery of latent topics and their respective weights within each tweet. The use of LDA facilitated a more nuanced understanding of the content structure, enabling the researchers to identify the specific themes that resonated most with users. Additionally, the study's findings highlight the importance of topic coherence and the role of tailored content in driving user engagement. The high engagement levels associated with content related to hotel management and sustainability suggest that users are particularly responsive to these themes, providing valuable guidance for hotel brands looking to optimize their social media strategies. The research also underscores the need for brands to continuously assess and adjust their content strategies based on user engagement data and evolving trends.

The study offers a comprehensive analysis of how different types of firm-generated content influence user engagement on Twitter for hotel brands. By leveraging advanced topic modeling techniques and detailed engagement metrics, the researchers provide actionable insights that can help hotel brands enhance their social media presence and more effectively connect with their audience. The findings emphasize the importance of relevant, timely, and tailored content in achieving high levels of user engagement, particularly in a rapidly changing social media landscape.