Facebook has limited set of real estate that can be used for promoting a brand. So. How do you use the space creatively? Sahara Star recently reached a benchmark of 1,00,000 fans on Facebook and 1,000 followers on Twitter, and below is how it was done:

Facebook Page - Sahara Star

The objective:

To celebrate the occasion while continuing to drive increased ROI for the brand via current guests/customers

The Insight:

One big challenge which any hospitality brand today faces is that, guests are sharing their experiences across the web- tripadvisor, blogs, forums, twitter etc and as a brand you want that all these get aggregated in an interesting way onto your primary platform, which is usually Facebook. Especially for a luxury brand these are strong drivers of consumer interest.

The Challenge:

To get a relevant fan base & thus drive ROI

The Idea:

When Sahara Star reached the benchmark of 1 Lakh Facebook fans & 1000 Twitter followers, instead of focusing on a gimmicky campaign, the brand continued to keep its focus on relevancy & ROI.

The Activity:

A special set of Facebook cover photos were designed. Each cover photo contained a unique and latest experience about the brand, which was updated after every new like. Thus, even thoughts of those who tweeted their experience was shared with the whole community through Facebook cover photo.

Also a dynamic countdown which seems to be becoming popular these days was included on the cover photo, with every new guest experience on the cover.

In addition to the creative execution of the cover photo, Sahara Star also ran contests on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. On Facebook and Instagram, the contest was run under the name of ‘Star moments’, where the focus was on participants and guests, and building a buzz through word of mouth. On Facebook, an application called ‘Memorable Moments’ was created, which asked fans to share their Star Moments with a picture, background and a few words. The Twitter contest (part of the same campaign) was called #1000Stars where the brand crowd-sourced the reasons from Twitter followers for being at the hotel. On Instagram and Pinterest, the brand started off by tracking the hashtag ‘Hotel Sahara Star’. All the images on these channels were acknowledged by creating a board on Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/hotelsaharastar/instagrammed/ while also, getting in touch with these clients via Twitter. Also, a contest by the tag ‘#StarInstaAnswers’ was run, which connected with the actual clientele of the Hotel through a series of 14 questions and merchandise as gratification.

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