Nothing tells the story of travel better than images. In particular—video! Think about it, what allows clients to picture themselves immersed in a vacation better? Is it your descriptive words like “luxury surroundings” or “pristine beaches”? Probably not. Now, give them some pictures and the immersion goes a little deeper. Before the days when online galleries were the thing, I used to loan my clients CD-ROMS of images to enable them. Today, of course, it is video and Facebook is in the process of launching a new feature tailor made for travel professionals.
Of course you already know the value of Facebook and social media. Hopefully you have been using it to engage your clients and prospects with chatter, images, videos, information, and the occasional self-promoting post. As you look at your insights, I am sure you notice how well your videos perform compared to other types of posts. And Facebook sees to that!
Earlier this spring they started to quietly roll out a new video feature that allows you to replace your cover image with a…wait for it, video.
It is still a bit glitchy, and may not be available for all just yet, but I think this might be an incredible asset to agencies.
It will take a bit of work to format it correctly. Facebook suggests that cover videos dimensions are 820 x 312 pixels. They can be anywhere from 20-90 seconds long and can loop in any way you want.
Narcos, the Netflix series, has a 6 second clip that is set to loop a few times over. The video starts to play when someone visits the page, immediately drawing attention to the page cover. Cover videos are preset to have the sound muted, so if a user wishes to hear the video they must manually turn the sound on.
If you are a cruise agency, why not a video of a ship sailing into a sunset. Specialize in Europe? Why not a panoramic video of Paris along the Seine River? Spring break agency? Mayhem on the beach! Fan cruises? How about a live performance from one of the bands? Scuba? Sounds like a perfect place for some underwater video.
With it set to auto-play (silent), your Facebook fans will be drawn to it. Keeping Facebook’s standard ad criteria in mind, I suspect (but have yet to try) that you will be able to get a brief message in at the end of the loop—be sure to check out our website at ….. or scroll down to see our weekly travel deals….
Thoughts? Is this as big of a deal as I seem to think?
