Boost your new travel business with social mediaThis presentation was originally used as part of an international project run by GTTP(Global Travel & Tourism Partnership) and was presented to students in Russia and United States.

Presentation by Bruce Martin, Managing Director, Ginger Juice Social Mediawww.gingerjuice.co.uk

Getting Started

Great! you’re launching a new travel company! You have the product, you have the business plan – now how should you market it?

Social media is now an important part of the travel marketing mix with most travel companies having some kind of social media presence.

It’s a Crowded Market

But with over 200 social media platforms to work with and 1.6 million other travel & tourism companies fighting for the same global business…

How do you stand out and get a slice of the 5th biggest industry in the world?

Getting Started

The first step is to think about WHY you are going to be using social media

What is the point? What is your goal?

Getting Started

Social media can be used in a number of ways: direct sales brand awareness build customer loyalty show your expertise customer service lead generation drive web traffic sharing funny cat pictures

Choosing the right social platform

Choosing the right social platform is very important Which one is the right social media platforms for your audience? Think about who you want to reach and where in the world

Do you want to reach a domestic or global audience? What age group / sex does your product appeal to?

Set goals

Once you’ve decided on your platforms and content you will need to set yourself some clear goals. Examples: How many followers do you want to gain in 3/6/12 months? What % of your followers should be domestic vs international How many likes do you want to be getting per month? How many views of your videos? How many retweets? How many blog subscribers signed up? How many web visits as a result of social media? What % of web visits should be from social media?

What will you say?

You will need to agree a content strategy What exactly will be posting? What is your

message? Think about social media as a party. No-one wants

to listen to big head, bragging about themselves and trying to sell you stuff.

What Will You Say?

Social media marketing will not deliver a huge amount of business from selling direct

However, it will help you expose your brand, build credibility, drive web traffic and underpin your existing commercial activity

The 70 / 20 / 10 Rule

A sensible approach to social media content is something called the 70/20/10 rule: 70% of your posts should add value; be

interesting, helpful & fun 20% should share other people’s ideas 10% can be direct sales messages

70%

20%

10%

Add Value Share Promote

A good mix of posts

Build Your Audience

There’s no point creating great content if no-one sees it

It’s like shouting through a megaphone in a field 

Going LiveOK, you have your strategy, now it’s time to take action

Build Your Audience

Spend time making sure you build your audience. Follow, mention and engage with relevant profiles to

increase the potential audience for your content Make sure that it is easy to follow your profiles. Place your

social media icon in a good place on your website Add social media links to all your email communications. Every little helps!

Advertising

o Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & YouTube all allow you to promote your business via their platforms

o Facebook has a great advertising tool. You can create targeted adverts and get ‘likes’ for your page for as little as $0.1 each

o If you have budget available then you can support your organic (free) activity with some paid-for advertising

Blogging

o Blogs are a really important part of any company’s marketingo A recent report by Hubspot said that 79% of businesses with a blog had

a reported positive a return of investmento The same report claimed that nearly half of all businesses had acquired

customers because of their blog

Blogging

o Blogging is great for business as it helps boost your ranking on Googleo Blogging also helps build credibility, generates leads and helps promote

your company news

Mobile Friendly

Remember that that vast majority of people will see your social media post via a smart phone or tablet

It is vitally important to make sure your posts look good on phones and tablets

Use fabulous images and accompany them with short, pithy text and one simple call-to-action

Measuring Success

It is important to measure how you are doing in relation to your goals

There are 100’s of different things you can monitor and 100’s of different websites that will claim to help you monitor things. It can get confusing

Keep things simple to begin with and just monitor things like:• Audience growth• Engagement (how many times your content is

shared, liked or commented on)• Your activity – how often YOU post things

Smart Social StrategiesOK, so you’ve set up your social media profiles and you’ve started to post. Now what?

Here are some hot tips on making the most of social media:

1. Be regular

Many travel companies make the mistake of starting too many social media channels

Many websites show 6 or 7 social media icons. This looks impressive but if you look closer, you will not see much activity on them

Start off by making sure you post one great post a day on your social media channels

Then step-up your regularity by posting about 4 posts a day

2. Share Great Content

Finding things to talk about can be a challengeThere are lots of ways to find great content to share: Follow other interesting accounts on social media Set up Google Alerts to send your emails interesting news stories Use Feedly - it collects lots of news stories in one place for you Sign up to interest travel blogs Create your own images, infographics & blogs

3. Be Proactive

o Scheduling post is great but natural, human engagement is bettero Take time to monitor social media to dip into conversations where you can be

helpful, appreciative or just funnyo Consumers share lots of things online - use this to your advantage!

Here’s an example. This person tweeted about how she was frustrated with booking a holiday online…

This would be a great opportunity for a local travel agent to tweet her to ask if they could help!

4. Global Trends

o Keep an eye on popular topics o Sometimes you can use a trending

topic your advantage by creating content which fits the trend AND your brand

o Oreo’s famously created this tweet during the 2013 Superbowl electricity blackout which gained over 30,000 shares & likes in the first hour

4. Global Trends

o You don’t have to try to create content in real-time either

o Smart brands made the most of the recent cold weather in the US by creating the right kind of content to connect with people

5. Plan Ahead

Some events come around every year. Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day etc

You can also look out for more obscure (funny) days too like World Pillow Fight Day

Use websites like http://www.daysoftheyear.com/ to find them!

There are often great ways to create content around those days which support your brand

6. Maximise your best posts

o If you’ve created some content and it’s been well received then consider reposting later on

o Not all your followers would have seen it first time and it’s quite acceptable to repost things now and then.

6. Maximise your best posts

o If you’ve posted something on Facebook and it’s getting more likes than usual, then consider paying to boost the post to more people

o This free post was performing well so we knew it would be worth paying $10 to boost the post

o For just $10 we gained nearly 100 likes and a reach of nearly 16,000

7. Post at the right times

• Make sure you are posting at the right time for your target audience

• Lunchtimes, evening and weekends are often the best time to reach people

• Don’t fall in to the trap of posting at times that suit you

8. Ask Questions

People love being asked for their opinion Social media is a great platform to get

people to provide opinions and feedback about your products and ideas

Consider caption competitions or polls

9. Treat each platform differently

Create posts optimised for each platform

Avoid having your Facebook account tweet for you – it doesn’t look great

If you are going to maintain a Twitter page, it is best to treat is as an independent platform; not a Facebook add-on Cyprus Tourism – showing what happens

when you try to tweet from Facebook

10. Use More Images

Social media loves images. More images = more engagement

And…the tourism has the best images – so use them! Try to include an image in EVERY single post People scroll through their smart phones at high speed You need to be creating posts that are ‘scroll-stoppers’

Thank you!

Bruce Martin, Ginger Juice Social Media

@BruceMartin@GingerJuice

www.gingerjuice.co.uk