Airlines and travel media really got into social media in 2014, destinations are sure to follow suit in 2015, we visit some learnings from last year.
Who leads in acquisitions across travel trade?
In terms of social media presence, it’s clear to see that airlines and media are leading the charge in acquisitions. It’s also interesting to note that destinations are besting hotel brands on their social media presence. We predict that in 2015, destinations will see more value in social media and really step up their game to try and rival the airlines who are leading the charge in social media.
What are the social media benchmarks for destinations?
Source: SkiftIQ
Here is the amount of acquisitions destinations should be aiming for to achieve best practices on social media. The most important thing is to have a goal in mind.
- Adjust your benchmarks accordingly to set yourself realistic goals
- Make sure you’re posting quality content, don’t play the numbers game – find things relevant to your audience that is also cohesive with your brand message
- For more tips on how to achieve this, check out our handy hints on social media
What equals success in social media?
Often it’s hard to measure social medias values. It’s not just about how much you post, but what kind of engagement you get out of it. Here are a few things to note:
- There’s been a move from the amount of followers to quality, acquisitions and engagement. It means that each interaction on social does not have the same value.
- Likes, favourites or views are at the bottom, then comments, and the highest interactions are shares and retweets.
- Total engagement/Total content = Content effectiveness and Total followers/Unique followers who interact = Community Quality.
Forget social reach, it’s all about engagement.
Your 100 thousand followers are not worth anything if they’re not engaged. Create content relevant to your audience, make them feel something, make it shareable.
In Feb 2014, Visit California took over YouTube for their ’24 Hours, 24 Dreams’ campaign. A collection of videos focused on inspiring and celebrating Californians who made their dreams possible. It featured variety of cool, fun, offbeat, thought provoking content including videos, memes, tweets, time-lapses, photos and more.
Two days after the YouTube takeover. Visits to the Visit California website had increased 306% in the US, 165% in Canada and 920% in the UK. Here are four more reasons why you should consider adding video to your marketing plan.
Tourism Australia has also been pioneering social media for destinations. Tourism Australia reached a million Instagram followers last year. They’ve done really well at creating engagement with simple and visually stunning campaigns. 2014’s most notable? #RestaurantAustralia of course, the hashtag was used 27,800+ on twitter and 20,575+ on Instagram.
Get personal
It’s ok to get personal, sometimes targeting to the individual makes for some great shareable stories. KLM helped travellers around the globe via social media, they also posted some handy holiday hints via video that got a lot of publicity, and of course shares across the world.
Noteworthy social media trends
- Users on instagram mention their friends more, don’t be afraid to tag relevant parties, give the ‘@’ symbol a workout
- Users on Facebook are now starting to comment with photos, perhaps you can reply back in photos too?
- Sophisticated targeting is in, trying to please the most people is out
- Destinations are holding more and more competitions on Twitter and Instagram
- As always #hastags are still a thing for content discovery, but make sure they’re relevant.