Social media can be difficult for any business including a business in the travel industry. There is a lot of competition on social media and people only have so much attention. It’s challenging to get social media engagement.
Because it’s difficult, many travel businesses resort to offering discounts on social media to get engagement. This can become very costly since you’re giving away your profit margin and you’re giving the wrong impression about your brand. And it’s really difficult to go back to full price once your customers know that you’re willing to give discounts.
There are other ways to do social media without discounts.
Here are some updates you can use with your travel business on social media.
1. Trivia Questions
Everybody loves trivia! Okay, maybe not everybody loves trivia, but there are a lot of people that love guessing the right answer to a trivia question. You can ask a question on social media and have fun with it. You don’t even have to give away a prize for people to feel involved.
Take this a step further by integrating the trivia into photos, blog posts and other content on your website to get that engagement off social media and back to where you can convert visitors.
Example: Travel Wisconsin @TravelWI
2. Showcase Related Businesses
Social media is about more than just your business. You can showcase the work others do on social media. They’ll appreciate it and often reply to you and re-share the things you share. That exposes your brand to their audience and grows your engagement.
Example: Pure Michigan @PureMichigan
3. Share Photos
What a better way to show off your beautiful location than with photos! People can’t get enough photos these days so get snapping with your smartphone and upload the photos to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and everything else. You can also re-share photos that others upload.
Example: Seattle Art Museum @iheartSAM
4. Mention Your Visitors (Especially Famous Ones)
Mentioning your visitors is a great way to get engagement. Ask your visitors if they’re on Twitter when they visit. Snap a pic and post is on Twitter and mention them. You could also ask them to take a photo and share it on social media by mentioning you. Then you could re-share it.
Mentioning people gets them engaged and they’ll likely re-share it. When you do this with people that are famous it can really send people to your account.
Example: San Francisco Zoo @sfzoo
5. New Events And Signups
You have to promote your latest events. Use appropriate hashtags; anything that your target customer will be looking at when they’re using social media. And don’t just share these once and then forget about it. Share the information each day so everyone has a chance to signup. And share it multiple times as the date gets closer.
Example: TampaDowntown @TampasDowntown
6. Share Historic Information And Photos
There is something about seeing an old photo that makes people stop and look. People are curious about what things used to look like. Find photos from your business’s history and share them on social media. People will go nuts and they’ll re-share and talk about them all day long.
Example: Chicago Symphony @ChicagoSymphony
7. Use Popular Hashtags
You might not think that every hashtag on Twitter or Facebook fits your business, but that shouldn’t stop you. In this example, I Love New York shared a blog post they wrote on Spring Break places to visit in NYC. When they shared it they used the #SpringBreak hashtag. You know a bunch of people are following that hashtag and now some of them might visit NYC.
Example: I Love New York @I_Love_NY
8. Retweet With Your Opinion
Retweet and add your thoughts to popular tweets and profiles. If you can show your personality it will work even better.
Example: Eat Boston @eatboston
9. Retweet People That Use Your City Hashtag
Whether it’s a visitor or a resident, you’ll get bonus points when you retweet people that are in your city and posting really cool things. Leave a comment on their photos or help them with a question.
Example: Visit Savannah @VisitSavannah
10. Share An Interesting Fact Or Tidbit
Come up with them on your own or ask your co-workers. Chances are that everybody has a story about someone that once visited town or something that once happened. People like to hear these fun little stories.
Example: House Of Blues – Dallas @HOBDallas
Conclusion
You can always get attention on social media with discounts. People will pay attention, but it’s very costly to your business if you’re giving away profit margin. There are better ways to use social media to increase engagement and sales.
Try these suggestions and you should see more engagement and from these you can probably create your own updates that will do even better.
And if we missed some updates that you’ve shared that have worked please share them in the comments. We want to hear from you!
