As travel begins to resume, I thought it might make sense to look at some basic strategies to help us all recover. Remember when Facebook was the place you went to tell your friends what you ate for lunch? Social media has become much more than just a place to connect with friends. It is now a full-blown powerhouse for businesses of every stripe. But you already knew that right?
Every user is a potential customer, and to make sure you place your best foot forward, every engagement matters. So, how do you maximize that engagement? Here are seven tips.
Know Your Audience
All the social platforms have some sort of analytics built-in. Dig deep into the ones you use. Find out who your audience is—age, gender, location, interests. Find out how they interact with you. Do they consume video? Read blog posts? Just click the like or heart icon? Answers to these questions should guide you in developing your content.
Their Words Matter
We all hate a sales pitch. Imagine walking in your local mall and the irritating perfume kiosk guy comes up to assault you with his atomizer. Are you apt to buy? Or would you be more inclined to buy if you passed someone with a scent that you liked, and they said they got it at the kiosk? We know that answer, so keep an eye peeled for your rabid fans and re-purpose their words. A stranger online saying you are great is so much more powerful than you saying you’re great.
Interact Interact Interact
The greatest tool Facebook has is the “share” icon. Use it. Social media, by definition, is social. When you find something interesting, share it. Start a conversation. Interact with your audience. And remember, it does not need to be about travel. My most engaged post ever (on a non-travel related page that I have) was a simple photo of a sign in a local deli that read “We don’t have Wi-Fi, talk to each other, pretend it’s 1995.” Look at the math, that is more than the population of Aruba, the US Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands COMBINED!
Be Active
And by active, I don’t mean a constant barrage of postings. The frequency of posts is important, and every business has its own sweet spot. However, do not post and run. Stick around to answer questions, reply to a comment with a “LOL” or an emoji. Let your followers know that you are there and that they are important to you.
Change It Up
What was Jack Torrance typing at the Overlook Hotel? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! Heed the advice. Make sure your content is fresh and varied. If all you have is a weekly posting about your newsletter, your audience will tune it out. Switch it up with videos, polls or quizzes, photos, etc. Make sure you offer variety and entice them to keep coming back.
Track And Adjust
I mentioned looking at the analytics to know your audience, but now you need to know what they do. Again, the tools are there for you to find out how long they hang out on your pages, how they interact or how they lurk, what content is most engaging, what gets shared the most. Once you start to see these numbers, a picture will develop, and you can tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Cross-Promote
Just as I am a fan of working with local businesses to cross-promote one another, you need to do it on social media as well. For me, I play on Facebook and Twitter. I never took the Instagram plunge and actively ran away from Snapchat and TikTok. I have an audience that overlaps and follows both my Facebook page and my Twitter feed. But not all of them. Make sure that your followers on each platform know about the other. Are you running a contest on Facebook? Make sure you cross-promote that on Twitter. Did a tweet get a ton of re-tweets, repurpose that on Facebook? I would never recommend cross-promoting ALL your content as there are two separate audiences, but if you can identify the content that works, absolutely go for it.
