Posted 27 February 2017
Social media is a great opportunity to showcase how brilliant you are as an independent and leading travel expert, providing the ultimate platform for you to demonstrate your knowledge, the personal service you can offer, and also the chance to strengthen your relationship with customers.
As of 31 December 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion monthly users, with 1.23 billion using the site daily. 600 million people use Instagram and 467 million use LinkedIn. As for the ‘small’ social networks, 319 million use Twitter and 150 million are active on Pinterest. The best thing about social media is that all of these people are potential customers and they are literally at your fingertips.
At Travel Counsellors, we want to help as many of our agents as possible use social media to their fullest potential. Whether this is as fundamental as setting up your page and writing your first post or analysing engagement levels and boosting posts, we’re on hand to help you out.
Social media is all about emotional engagement
One of the most important things to remember is that social media is not a sales platform. How many adverts do you see on your timelines every days? It’s probably quite a lot! And you probably ignore most of them, right? We encourage our Travel Counsellors to use social media to build relationships with their customers, share their own personal experiences and most of all, inspire them. It’s all about selling the story, not the product.
Here’s our very own Social Media Specialist, Laura Belshaw’s top tips for using social media for your travel business…
Tip #1: Get your customers involved
Your customers will be your biggest advocates! After all, you’ll be booking them amazing holidays, and they’ll want to share what a great time they had. Asking them to send you some of their holiday snaps or videos for you to share on your social media channels is a great way of inspiring your followers and showcasing what a great service you can offer!
Tip #2: Share your own personal experiences
If you’re considering becoming a Travel Counsellor, chances are you’ve probably been on plenty of your own travel adventures. Nothing beats a first-hand perspective when it comes to booking a holiday, and customers love to read reviews and hear from people who have actually experienced the destination or hotel they’re thinking about visiting. So share your own personal travel experiences – whether that’s with a blog, photos or a video diary.
Tip #3: Share inspirational content
You might be wondering, what should I post on social media? Well don’t worry, our Marketing team produce lots of great content for our Travel Counsellors to share – from inspiring blog posts, destination guides, irresistible offers, videos and more!
And with your own personal webpage, you’ll have able to add your own blogs so you can share your experiences, advice and expertise with your fans!
Tip #4: Use eye-catching photos
How often do you see photos of breath-taking destinations and start dreaming about being sat on a beach sipping cocktails? Using lots of imagery on social media is a great way to evoke emotion, and is far more eye-catching when scrolling through your newsfeed! The proof is in the pudding, so they say – and research has shown that Tweets that include an image get a staggering 150% more retweets, and Facebook posts get over twice as much engagement as those without.
Tip #5: Be consistently active
By remaining consistently active on social channels, you would expect to increase your audience reach (followers) and therefore brand popularity – you’ll be getting your business known, for free!
Many people use multiple social media channels, so while you might prefer to use Facebook, your customers might be serial tweeters, or they might love sharing photos on Instagram.
Tip #6: Take advantage of our social media training
You’ll have access to a wealth of training resources to help you get the most out of social media for your business. From training sessions, to webinars and e-learning, we’ve got everything from the basics to the more advanced covered. You’ll also have your own Business Development Coach who is on hand to help you, and, when you first join, we’ll help you set your Facebook business page to help get you started!
