Some time ago social media used to be a platform in which people used to share their travel experiences, but, now it has gradually transformed into a platform where you can conveniently make your reservations.

Social media has become a go-to place for travelers to view travel destinations and get inspired. Also, travelers use social media platforms to do their research and seek recommendations while they plan their travel journey.

Since social media has become such a massive marketing tool it is now important for tourism operators to have a clearly defined social media strategy in place. Having a properly established plan will help to focus on what you need to achieve.

A smart action plan will help you to create a massive buzz on social media. Now you may be wondering of ways to stand out on social media,  don’t worry, we have come up with few simple social media hacks to increase brand awareness and get more bookings for your tourism-based business.

As a tourism operator, you naturally have an existing client base that has used your services. You can use it to analyze the demographics. Based on this information and additional market research you could construct a buyer persona for your business.

For those who don’t know what a buyer persona is,  a buyer persona is a fictional individual that has the characteristics of your ideal customer. These buyer personas can have names, detailed descriptions of their demographics, interests, behavior, pain points, and goals.

Creating a buyer persona helps you to have a clear understanding of the interests and needs of your customers. This, in turn, helps to cater your social media content to the buyer personas which you created. This way you are constantly reminded that each post is for actual people intended to create a special bond.

Buyer personas help you out when you are running paid ads as well because it helps to address the correct audience. Defining your target audience will help you to position your ad in front of the right crowd, which then helps you to get clicks from qualified leads. As a result, you won’t have to spend money on unqualified leads.

As a tourism operator, you cannot be active on every social media platform, So what you can do is identify the ideal platform that matches your services. The best way to choose the ideal platform is through the buyer personas which you created. The interests of the buyer persona play a major role in identifying the best social media platform that fits you. 

Another thing that you need to keep in mind when choosing the right platform is your availability to smoothly manage the platform. You cant manage each and every social media platform because it is highly stressful instead you should stick to ones that you have time for and are capable of managing. By doing so, you will be able to improve the quality of your content and your brand voice as well.

Frequently posting content significantly helps to improve your social media performance. The more you post, the more your customers get to know who you are. The more they know about you, the more likely they are going to trust you and make a booking.

Also, frequent posting of content helps to create a good perception of your brand. Moreover, it allows your potential guests to find your company on the web hardly without any effort. 

True, it is important to post frequently but at the same time, you need to be mindful that quality is far more important than quantity. One way of focusing on quality is to put post diverse content. Adding diverse content adds value to your audience.

A question may pop up in your mind as to how to figure out the different types of content you need to post. The answer to this question is to look back at your buyer persona. Diverse content posts need to suit your goals as well. This will make planning much easier for you.

Here are different types of content which you can post:

1. Informational-Add interesting info about historical places within your area.
2. Educational-Educate your audience on something new such as travel tips.
3. Entertaining-Provide fun facts about the tourism industry.
4. Social proof-Guest recommendations or feedback on your services.
5. Promotional- Talk about your services.
6. Behind the scenes-Put content relating to your staff because shows the humanistic aspect of the business.

After you sort out your content types then you need to create a content calendar for social media allocating a content type for each day. A content calendar can be created and managed using Excel or Google Sheets. If you have enough budget then you can invest in tools such as Later, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Canva to organize and schedule content across different platforms.

Clever interactions help you to gain more followers. You interact with the customers by responding to their comments or reacting to their comments or sharing their posts. Eventually, this will help to build sustainable relationships with your potential guests.

Other making these interactions you can make the optimum use of user-generated content. When guests share their experience about using their services then be quick to repost it on your social channel. Reposting will give an idea of what it is like to experience your services.

Social media performance can be identified by tracking your efforts every month or week. A proper analysis will give you insights into which content is gaining engagement and getting more followers.  Furthermore, you can identify what publishing times have been successful in getting more engagement. 

There are few metrics that help to track performance and they are impressions, follower count, engagement, reach, referrals, conversions and click rates. 

Tracking and analyzing your performance will make you realize whether you need to streamline or revise your overall social media strategy and which efforts you need to prioritize.

Your website visitors will not tolerate if the social media links are inactive, directing them to the wrong place or not anywhere at all. These things will directly impact the image of your brand as it is a waste of time.

Do an audit weekly or monthly to your website to ensure that the above errors don’t repeat themselves and make sure that other technical errors are sorted. After all, a visitor only cares if your website works properly so that they can quickly do what they want.

Day by day social media is becoming a powerful marketing tool and we can help your website to harness its power to leverage your online visibility. 

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