News and Insights
17 Social Media Actions to Capture The Pandemic Traveller
December 15, 2020
In these testing times for the travel industry, the social media drum bangs ever louder as people spend more time on their phones and interacting with friends and brands online. In the social media space, travel now has two sides to it, the nostalgic look at memories and places that people have been paired with the anticipation of destinations and experiences they hope to have again. They may not necessarily be buying travel experiences right now, but they are certainly browsing and looking for inspiration for when travel is back at the top of the agenda.
Our FINN Partner’s Global travel team, together with MintTwist have created 17 Social Media Actions to Capture The Pandemic Traveller through organic and paid social content. This is a top-level check list to make sure you are making the most with your social content. Remember, posting is not strategy. By spending your time wisely on creating shareable and relevant content that has an authentic tone of voice, the right level of authority about your subject area, is transparent in its approach and entertaining enough to keep followers engaged, you will have the perfect recipe for a loyal following who will interact with you, share your content and ultimately invest when the time is right.
Tips:
1. Listen – it’s the best way to learn. Use tools like Infegy or follow hashtags to get a feel for what consumers want and then use your own brand knowledge to turn this into something they didn’t know they needed
2. Be yourself – the most important thing about social media is to show a brand personality that is both authentic and engaging. Basically, don’t sound like ‘a brand’ as the social media community is based on personal interactions.
3. Welcome window shoppers – people don’t join social media to be sold to, so don’t go in for the hard sell nor expect it when setting KPIs. Your followers are your potential brand ambassadors and will share your content if they love it enough
4. Quality content is king – it sounds really obvious, but your community needs to love what you are sharing, and it needs to appeal to their motivations. It’s worth spending extra time to make sure your images, videos and text really deliver.
5. Third party endorsement goes a long way – a very effective way to build trust in your brand is to share media coverage on your channels, raving posts from fellow travellers who create and share relevant content online, or any influencer content tagging your brand. It adds gravitas and demonstrates your influence beyond that particular channel
6. Be nimble – the news agenda gallops at an incredible speed nowadays and brands that can adapt their social comms to be part of the story will get the most traction. Reserve space in your content calendar for opportunistic and timely posts to truly connect with the cultural conversation.
7. Hashtags are your friends – hungry for news, entertainment and being part of a movement people are using and following hashtags like never before. Make sure you use them to their fullest and follow best practices across social channels with the optimal number of hashtags to use
8. Play with video – video is becoming even more important and with Reels now taking centre stage on Instagram, it is expected from consumers – and use subtitles
9. Be part of the community – engage, comment, like and respond. Take issues offline and make your followers feel heard
10. Plan ahead – use Year Ahead or other planning tools to see what dates are coming up to plan your content in advance so that your aren’t caught out and find out too late that it’s World Tourism Day to get your messages out there whilst the world watched.
11. Be memorable – we could have done 10 or 20 or even 21 tips and that would have made sense but we did 17 to make us stand out, intrigue the brain to query ‘why 17?’ And ultimately memorable as we have not given you the answer…
12. Be covid-conscious – it might seem obvious, but don’t show crowds of people in content, pick influencers who are behaving sensitively to the news agenda and not flaunting guidelines, have transparent content showing real pictures or if they are pre-covid, note that in your description.
13. Build trust – in a world of #fakenews and confusing and sometime contradictory guidelines, people are desperate for factual content on social. Make sure that what you share is relevant and you discard any outdated regulations updates as well as have prepared responses for your followers so that they all feel heard when asking questions, but also informed by your responses.
14. Experimentation is key – Testing your messaging and the social channels is key especially due to the changing online behaviours and unpredictable results during COVID times. Testing allows you to use data to understand what works and what doesn’t.
15. Analyse and be self-critical – check your analytics and engagement levels – if something isn’t working then change it. Crowdsource content ideas with your community to deliver a memorable brand experience.
16. Put your audience first – Many brands will think of their own objectives first when creating social content. In this current landscape, it’s important that you think of your audience first when deciding on the content that you wish to share. Focus on adding value to your target audience to ensure the messaging resonates with them and provides them with a useful takeaway (be it entertainment, informational, insightful…etc).
17. More focus on remarketing – Since your target audience is less likely to make a purchase or convert at the first touch point, remarketing is very important as it allows your brand to stay top-of-mind and recapture users who have previously engaged with your content but not yet converted.
