When it comes to marketing your travel business, social media is an essential platform for inspiring wanderlust, advertising dazzling destinations and building rapport with your desired audience.
Getting those vacay vibes going and building up potential customers’ excitement to book you is one of social media’s strong suits. I know it can be difficult to know exactly where and how to go about it, so we’re going to explore the 7 Seas of Socials together today to give you all the tools you need to promote your travel business.
We’re going to cover all the essentials to help you develop a whale-y good strategy, including choosing your social channels, making use of SEO and monitoring your performance. If you’re a hotel, tour company or travel agency of any size it’s time to grab your diving gear - we’re going in!
Contents
Choosing your channels wisely
Creating compelling content
Eye-catching visuals
Engagement, engagement, engagement
Creating hashtag sets
SEO
Mapping your progress
1. Choosing Your Channels Wisely
It’s really shell-rific how many different social media channels there are to choose from; I know it can seem overwhelming, but it actually means you can select the ones that work the hardest for your business. It doesn’t matter what works well for anyone else; this is all about deep-diving into the ones that will help you soar.
Here’s a little overview to help you choose…
Instagram is a beautiful, shiny window to the world. Share content about travel destinations, tips and inspiration to put your audience in a sunny mood and sell.
Facebook is a great place for holiday offers as well as inspiration.
LinkedIn is a space to establish your expertise in the industry by sharing news, business highlights, updates, and more.
2. Creating Compelling Content
Making a splash with your travel business marketing is all about creating content that hits the spot. Establish a grid aesthetic and decide what you’ll post about, to save you from flip-flopping around when it comes to content o’clock. Think about what type of content you’ll post; a mixture of reels, images and carousels works really well, especially for travel businesses.
3. Eye-Catching Visuals
You want to spark wanderlust with your content, and one of the easiest ways to do this is by sharing visuals that transport your audience somewhere incredible. Think about the colours you’re using to attract attention; ocean blues, sandy creams and sunset pinks all inspire your audience to dream about faraway places…and remember to be consistent to create a coherent aesthetic.
4. Engagement, engagement, engagement
It’s time to leave the old post-and-ghost behind and remember to engage with your followers. Respond to comments on your posts and get back to everyone in your inbox. You never know when one simple conversion could lead to a new connection or even a sale, and social media is designed to be exactly that…social!
5. Creating Hashtag Sets
If the phrase ‘hashtag sets’ makes you want to seek the shade of a coconut tree for a little lie-down, fear not. It doesn’t have to be complex and it doesn’t have to be time-consuming!
Create a few sets of hashtags that you can use consistently; one for each pillar of content will do the trick. It’s fine for them to overlap, as you’ll likely have some biggies that appear regularly. An example hashtag set for content about travel destination inspiration looks like this:
6. SEO (stay with me!)
SEO is another term that can strike fear into the hearts of business owners, but I’m here to guide you into balmy, ankle-deep waters with this one and take the overwhelm away. It doesn’t need to be any more complex than this: focus on using keywords and phrases relating to travel in your captions.
Instagram’s search bar can be really useful to help you find examples; just start typing and see what suggestions come up. SEO is no longer just for your website, so it’s important you start thinking about it in your captions too.
Just remember not to get so hyper-focused on this that your captions start to sound like gibberish…the main focus should be to nail the point of the post, first and foremost!
4. Mapping Your Progress
No good navigator sets sail without a map and compass, and they certainly don’t stop referring back to them throughout their journey. It’s the same with your social media metrics, which act as guidance to whether you’re hitting your social goals.
You can measure your results by tracking key metrics such as reach, post reactions and impressions. Take a look at these numbers and use them to create more content that sparks the most engagement.
Thanks for coming on this voyage across the 7 Seas of Socials for your travel business with me! If you’re looking for more tips on honing your social media strategy, you might like my Successful Content Planning blog and my advice on how often to post on social media in 2023.
You can find out more about bringing me on board to help manage your social accounts here - my only goal for you is smooth sailing!