Tips to social media success
Bruce Martin, social media expert and managing director of the popular Facebook group Travel Gossip, said that if agents want to promote their businesses through social media, they’d better be prepared to pay for it.
Whilst sites like Facebook and Twitter used to be a way to get free publicity, that was no longer the case he said.
Martin, whose social media agency, Ginger Juice, is working with Advantage to provide exclusive training, said: "You can’t do social media for free any more, you’ve got to pay to play. Your posts won’t get seen because organic reach is too low. If you want to reach people, you have to pay."
He suggested agents focus on Facebook, which he said is still the single most important social media site. On average, 30 million Britons check their FB pages on mobile devices an average of seven times a day, said Martin.
However, he said often social media users don’t like travel agency posts because they’re boring or not relevant.
Martin suggested agents focused more on creating a mix of engaging content, rather than simply pushing offers all the time. "Be fun, people go on Facebook to be amused, and it’s okay to be personal, people like to see people, so share photos of the team, get yourself in the story, talk about the fam trips you have been on.
"Be insightful, share knowledge, and be inspirational, share photos. Think about scroll-stoppers."
It’s also important to get users to engage with your posts, said Martin, to get comments, likes and shares so that Facebook will trust your page. However, he said beware of using ‘engagement-bait’, such as tagging people, as this is more likely to harm your reputation with Facebook.
His tips for posting offers on FB included:
- Creating a punchy title with relevant emojjis
- Using bullet points
- Using a ‘hero’ image
- Including essential information
- Adding video, which is always better than static images
- Including more than four photos at the end to get more clicks
- Adding a call to action
Finally, Martin said you should always use the mobile preview button on Facebook once you’ve created your posts to make sure they’ll display correctly on mobiles. This is vitally important, he said, as more people now use mobiles rather than desktops to view social media.
So that your posts reach the right audience, he suggested you target specific groups, such as promoting honeymoon offers to recently engaged users, or targeting users whose friends have birthdays coming up.
Always respond to questions on posts, either on the site or by direct message, address users by their first names and avoid cut-and-paste replies. If asked to quote a price for a different time frame to the original offer, which is more expensive, he suggested you reply by private message.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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