5 Social Media Travel Marketing Tips for Businesses
Being involved with a particularly socially orientated industry, travel inspired companies can enjoy great rewards from adopting a carefully planned social media travel marketing strategy. Today, the vast majority of people turn to the Internet when it comes to planning their holidays. Consumers invariably look at things like hotel reviews, destination overviews, flight comparison websites, travel blogs and a wealth of other online sources of information. Those in the travel marketing business must capitalise on these facts. Know how to draw in a wider audience and inspire those who are seeking to plan their perfect getaway.
1 – Build a Community
Social media is all about building a community. This fact applies to any kind of business adopting a social media marketing strategy. For travel businesses, community building means being constantly present and helpful. It also means encouraging others to share their stories and provide suggestions. Just as there are numerous Facebook groups and other online forums for travel enthusiasts, so should your business build a community. Your audience hence delivers important feedback and exchanges ideas. As the leader of your community, your business needs to act as a virtual concierge for your audience.
2 – Focus on Visuals
The travel industry is very much visually orientated. Numerous studies have shown that people are far more likely to engage with visual content as well as share it. With regards to social media travel marketing, the most important image of all is your header image. It\’s the first thing that most people will notice when visiting your profile. It also appears in the search results. The header image should be both inspiring and creative. People who see it for the first time should be saying to themselves \’I wish I were there\’. Likewise, providing a regular stream of photos of your destinations is the most powerful way for any travel business to market their services.
3 – Promote Inspiring Content
While a focus on visuals in itself offers the potential of inspiring content, you should adopt a wide variety of content formats to suit as many among your audience as possible. Your social profiles are excellent places to promote your other online content, such as blog posts. Inspiring content is that which is relevant, helpful and entertaining. You might provide travel tips for certain destinations, lists of top destinations. Most notably, offer travel stories that your target audience can actually relate to. User-generated content that falls into any of these categories can be even more useful. Moreover, it acts as an endorsement for your brand.
4 – Offer Exclusive Deals
Providing people with an incentive to become followers on Facebook and other social networks and encouraging them to remain active is essential for your long-term success. But don’t forget to reward them! By offering exclusive deals to those who have signed up to your social media profiles and email newsletter campaigns, you\’ll encourage them to stay and keep checking up on you on a regular basis. The social networks provide excellent opportunities for offering exclusive promotions to a highly targeted audience. By knowing your audience and what gets them interested, you\’ll be able to offer irresistible deals to increase the number of paying customers.
5 – Target Your Ads
No travel business should overlook the power of paid social media advertising. The reach of Facebook posts has recently dropped significantly due to recent Newsfeed algorithm updates. Twitter and other networks will likely undergo the same changes in the coming months as well. This will make paid advertising all the more valuable for any online marketer. As a travel agency, you can define your target audience in such a way that your ads only reach the right people based on factors such as income, marital status, age, gender and geographical location to ensure the highest return on investment.
To conclude this list, it’s necessary to mention the importance of choosing the right tools and platforms for your business. While almost any business can profit from using Facebook and Twitter, travel businesses in particular, being more visually orientated, can make excellent use of visual platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram for sharing photo portfolios of the destinations that they work with. And don’t forget to write great captions so people know exactly what they are looking at and how they can get there.
