Social media is where most of your target audience is, in today’s times. It is an essential part of the marketing strategy for any travel agency. Having an attractive social media presence can help you to generate leads and sales for your travel business. Social media is a cost-effective channel to promote your Geelong based business.
According to this report, there are 16 million active Facebook users, 5 million active Instagram users and 2.8 million active Twitter users in Australia.
“You’ll be shocked. Social media doesn’t just drive users. It drives paying users and it’s really effective. And you can track all of it with analytics these days.”
Most travellers look up to social media while planning their trip. They are also active on social while travelling and sharing their experiences.
Take a look at this study from eMarketer:
“Social media is here. It’s not going away; not a passing fad. Be where your customers are: in social media.”
-Lori Ruff
If you can provide your prospects with exciting travel ideas and advice from your social pages, they would love to follow you and connect with your business. The strategy will help you to get qualified leads and conversions for your business.
Here are some useful tips on how you can create and maintain an impressive social media presence for your Geelong based travel business:
Create a Facebook Profile
As a travel agency, you must have a business page on Facebook. Add an appealing cover image and profile picture that’s relevant to the travel business. Take a look at this snapshot from the Facebook page of Escape Travel, Geelong:
You must also optimise the Call-to-Action button on your Facebook page as shown in the snapshot above. It should drive your page visitors to a landing page where they can make a travel booking.
The next step is to optimise the ‘About’ section of your page:
You can add the following details about your company on your Facebook page:
- Year of establishment
- Mission
- About the company
- Company overview
- Products
- Milestones and contact details
While creating your Facebook page, you can define your target audience as well. Once you have a page ready, you need to add interesting updates to it on a daily basis. You should add at least two posts every day, to engage with your Facebook fans.
Add posts that will be of interest to your Facebook fans. Here are some examples of the type of posts you can add:
- Talk about favourite travel destinations
- Traditional seasonal destinations
- Travel facts
- Travel advice
You can also give discount offers and create a paid campaign targeting prospects in Geelong. Make sure you are replying to each of the comments you are getting on your Facebook posts.
Take a look at this example from Expedia Australia’s Facebook page. The post talks about a unique music concert hall in Barcelona:
Such fascinating itinerary ideas are helpful in maintaining the interest level of your Facebook fans.
“Consumers are particularly keen on discounts (54%) and giveaways (48%) from the brands or businesses they follow.”
Here is an example on how you can lure your fans and convert them with an attractive discount offer:
Here is another example of the kind of contest you can run on your Facebook page. Just ask a fun travel related question and choose a winner with the most creative answer:
The more you engage with your fans, the higher will be your rate of conversion. Besides that, contests would help you add virality to your posts, helping you to spread a word about our services.
Create a monthly goal for your Facebook page and make sure it’s overall reach and engagement is going up consistently. Use the Facebook Insights tool to track some of the key metrics related to your page.
Here are some of the Facebook page metrics that you can and must track:
- Organic vs. Paid Likes
- Likes from Geelong (local region)
- Average Post Reach
- People Who Clicked the Call-to-Action Button
- Website Clicks
- Total Pageviews
- Audience Demographics
- Post Engagement Level – Likes, Comments and Shares
You can use the following free template to create and manage weekly reports of your social media activities:
Creating Your Twitter Profile
Twitter is another channel where you must have your business profile. The channel helps you to interact with your prospects and follow them. It will help you to get more followers for your business. To create a professional business presence on Twitter, you need to create a new account and spruce up your profile:
Update your Twitter profile by adding the following details:
- Cover image
- Profile image
- About the company
- Website link
Create a persona of the people you wish to target. Your persona should include their demographics, psychographics and preferences. Use Twitter search to look for such people in Geelong and nearby areas. Next, you should follow these people and engage with them. It will ensure that quite a few of these are following you back. Post tweets from your Twitter account on an ongoing basis. Research for the appropriate hashtags using a tool like Hashtagify.me. Make sure you are using at least one hashtag in each of your tweets.
Take a look at this example:
You must also engage with your prospects by retweeting and liking their tweets. You can use the direct message feature of Twitter to send offer related DMs to your followers and get more conversions for your business.
Also, use Twitter ads and promoted tweets to fetch leads and followers for your business.
Create weekly goals for the number of Twitter followers you are getting. You must also use Twitter analytics to analyse some of the key metrics of your Twitter account. Some of these include:
- Number of tweets
- Mentions
- Profile visits
- Total followers
Track these metrics and make sure you can maintain an upward trend for all of them.
Here is a snapshot of how your Twitter analytics would look like:
Here is a free weekly reporting template that you can use for Twitter: Click to View
Create a Presence on Instagram
Instagram is a visual medium for showcasing your travel business and attracting potential customers. Create a profile and start adding updates on a regular basis.
Instagram, helps you to add photos, short videos and stories which are visible to your followers. Make sure you are adding high quality and professional images on your Instagram account. You can use tools like Websta to research for relevant hashtags to be used in the captions.
Follow Instagram accounts of your potential clients and engage with them by liking their posts and commenting on them.
The platform also allows you to run paid campaigns and get targeted followers for your business. Once you have relevant followers on your Instagram profile, you can use the direct message feature to offer them a special discount on your services.
You must track some of the key metrics of your Instagram page as well. Use this free template and record the results and improve them over time: Click to View
Build a Community
For a thriving travel business in Geelong, you must build a community of travel lovers to participate in stimulating and engaging conversations. You should at least have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Run contests and paid ad campaigns to grow your community. Get your followers to interact with your pages through conversations related to travel and reward them with gifts and offers.
All of your efforts will help you to grow your community and get more business from it.
You can add a LinkedIn page and a Google+ page as well. A Google+ page will help you to improve your search engine visibility.
Social Media Automation
You can automate the posts that you are adding on your social media pages with the aid of a tool like Hootsuite. The free version of the tool helps you to post up to three social media profiles simultaneously. It also allows you to schedule your posts and save time in posting on all your profiles manually.
You can create a content calendar for adding posts to your social media pages. You can plan your posts according to the seasonal popularity of travel destinations.
Create a spreadsheet and add say 60 posts for the month, to be published twice daily. Create separate images for each of your posts. You can use a tool like Canva to design your images and add the necessary text and filters to them. You can create a style guide for designing the social media images. Use the guide to maintain design consistency of your social posts. Here is an interesting list of free social media tools that you can use, to promote your travel business more efficiently.
Keep track of your post comments and make sure you are replying to them promptly.
Having a presence on social media will help you to come across as a professional travel service provider in Geelong. It will help you to interact with your prospects and convert them into loyal customers. You can use the channel to build a reputable online brand for your business.
