Ideas & knowhow
Social media
Do it again
What's the best thing you've ever done to promote your tourism business?
What worked well?
Or perhaps there's something small you did that was moderately successful?
It could have been a social media post that got plenty of engagement. Or a blog post that's still driving traffic to your website? A photo that people have said they like? Or something you say to guests that seems to resonate?
Whatever it is, don't just do it once. Repeat whatever works, again, again and again.
We often as…
Social media ideas for Winter
It's the one thing everyone tells me they struggle with - ideas for social media posts.
What can you write about to keep people interested and engaged, even if your business isn't open or busy at this time of year?
Here are a few ideas
Before we get started: instead of just scanning through these ideas, I suggest you get a pen and paper (it works much better if you can actively scribble, not just think or type) and jot down related thoughts as you read each topic. Let the list below spark mo…
Ideas for social media posts in Autumn
It's the one thing everyone tells me they struggle with - ideas for social media posts.
What can you write about to keep people interested and engaged, even if your business isn't open or busy at this time of year?
Here are a few ideas
Before we get started: instead of just scanning through these ideas, I suggest you get a pen and paper (it works much better if you can actively scribble, not just think or type) and jot down related thoughts as you read each topic. Let the list below spark mo…
Don't just tell - show
We often say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but how often do we actually use the right photos to convey key points?
Most businesses have something they need to tell their visitors or need to stand out somehow. A single photo might do the trick.
Have you thought about the key messages you're trying to convey and then made sure you're using photos that tell that story?
Years ago I advised a hotelier, Dave, who ran a small hotel in an area that was notorious for dirty and run-down …
Stop feeling stressed by social media marketing
Social media is an essential part of tourism marketing. It’s free and can be incredibly effective.
It can also feel overwhelming and stressful. Here are a few ideas to help:
1. Create, then consume. Social media is useful when you use it to post, not just to scroll. So stop scrolling, think what you want to post, post it, and then if you have time, take a peak at the rest of your timeline. Being deliberate about how you use social media definitely helps.
2. Decide why you want to be on social…
Are you making these mistakes on social media?
Social media is a funny thing. It’s free and easy to use. It can help you reach millions of potential customers. But when most people talk about it, they mention negatives!
Yes! it can be useful for business and marketing but…
It takes up so much time. It’s hard to know if it’s really working. It’s hard to come up with ideas. It’s hard to keep up. All of these things can be true. They’re also relatively easy to solve. Sometimes, the problem isn’t the one we think.
There are a few mistakes eve…
Let your visitors do your marketing for you
Have you tried letting your visitors do your marketing for you?
The 'normal' ways to do this is through word of mouth recommendations. I'm suggesting going a step further with four different ways to encourage your visitors to help promote your business - without being pushy.
First of all, you can encourage word of mouth recommendations through social media, simply by suggesting people follow you or asking happy customers to post photos of their visit.
The second way is to think about offeri…
Hashtags - why, which, where
When you write a social media post, are you an expert sprinkler of #hashtags or are you still mystified by the random-seeming words after the # sign?
It doesn’t help that each social media channel uses hashtags in different ways. And that some guidelines and algorithms have also recently changed. Here’s a quick overview.
First of all, what are hashtags?
They’re the short words or phrases that follow the #, that help perform the sorting process to decide which posts get seen, and when. Not all…
Are you wasting time on the wrong social media?
There’s a marketing saying, ‘fish where the fish are’. There’s no point promoting into a vacuum.
It used to be hard to know what marketing activities were actually working. Now it’s easier, particularly if you’re trying to work out how to get people to your website. There are essentially four ways people will come to your website:
1. By searching on Google & other search engines
2. By typing in your domain name
3. By foll…