I wanted to inquire whether you believe the paid posts offered on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked are a good source of ROI, when used on the Business Page of a Lodging Operation- hotel? Can the eventual ROI from paid posts be tracked down easily? Thank you.
I've tried this and paid advertising on Facebook and found the ROI to be quite low. People are there to socialize, not to look at advertisements and promoted items. Results may vary from person to person though.
I have tried Facebook advertisements recently. Just wasted a lot of money. You get a lot of likes for your website and pages but you don't get the clicks to make money. Unless you have a very cool offer that will naturally go viral, I doubt you could make money.
Try to target people (possible customer) using filters by interests, gender and age, In this way you will reach your niche and increase conversion rates. You can get lot of customers and likes on FB using this feature.
Paid post in social media sites provide only fast and short-term results. I would suggest to make your own effort to socialize with your targeted visitors and provide them what they need through posting interesting content that will benefit the members.
If you know what you're doing, paid posts can provide amazing ROI. However every offer is different and it takes a good budget to test, tweak, test, tweak, etc... until you see positive ROI.
For lodging niche, Facebook ads works better. You need to offer discount and/or other incentives for people to book. Direct sales on social media is harder, but it does work if done properly. Here's a lit of over 20 case studies on direct sales on social media. http://www.4th-media.com/case_studies/direct_sales.php
What is your metric for a great ROI? Whenever I was doing paid FB ads, I split tested them with boosting posts that I created in the FB page. By targeting the traffic (based on where it was coming from, as far as the site/FB page goes), I was able to get a CTR of around 4-6%, versus .5-2% for the ads. Also, I had a hard time getting the ads approved, whereas boosting the posts was easy. I would try it for yourself (if you don't already have one, set up a FB page and start posting content).
Agreed, I wouldn't just focus of paid adverts, it should be a piece in the big puzzle that is your advert strategy. The most important thing is to create great content that people will want to like, comment on, and share.