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Know where you start from
Look at all your social media channels and prioritise them based on how many leads you have had from each recently. Identify your top three posts from the last few months and look for a common topic or format. These should form the basis of your content.
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Research your competition
Which social channels are your competitors active on? How often do they post? What type of content do they create? What works and what doesn’t work for them?
Also make sure to read the comments under their posts as these can serve as great inspiration for content ideas, this is what your potential customers want to know.
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Establish your target audience
Get to know your ideal customer: age, job, budget, what time of the year they usually travel, are they a group/couple or solo traveller, what type of holiday do they look for? Create two or three different customer personas. These will help you tailor your message to your ideal clients’ specific interests.
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Content is still king
Set goals for each platform and build the content around those goals. Avoid only posting about deals and promotions. While the goal is to sell holidays, people don’t want to be bombarded with brands asking them to buy. A good mix of content equally includes educating and inspiring posts as well as those promoting deals. Often the first two lines of the post may be all you have to grab their attention – use them wisely.
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Social platform trends
Beyond trending topics, social media platforms often ‘reward’ you for getting on board with their latest features with better reach. Look out for new stickers on Instagram stories, or try going live to answer frequently asked questions to your followers. Testing is a crucial part of social media, even the biggest brands experiment regularly and so should you.
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Videos shouldn’t be a drain on your time
Videos reach a lot more people than picture posts in general, so if you get the chance, on your next fam trip make sure to make lots of videos, even if just a few seconds. Another option is to create bitesize interviews with a member of staff specialising in cruise and sharing their tips or answer FAQs. You can quickly edit these with your phone’s editor or using canva.com.
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How frequently should you post?
There’s no right answer! If you can’t dedicate time to multiple social accounts, grab the social handles for your company and set them as private, so they are there to use in the future, but don’t worry about them for now. Focus on those channels where your target audiences are most likely to spend time and those you are comfortable using already.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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Tools to save you time
Try canva.com and you’ll find quick template-based ways to create graphics and videos for free.
Facebook’s Creator Studio is the tool you will need to schedule your content for both Facebook and Instagram. By linking your Instagram to Facebook you can easily monitor and reply to DMs and comments from your PC, instead of having to reply via your phone.
Using software such as Hootsuite is a good idea if you want to take your social presence to the next level. It allows you to schedule posts in advance for multiple platforms, create a publishing calendar and respond to multiple account DMs in one place.
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
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Getting the engagement up
If your customers mostly use Facebook, you can still achieve great reach using Facebook groups. Video can also be a gamechanger for engagement and your brand awareness. On Instagram use relevant hashtags rather than generic ones and include a call to action at the end of posts like “follow for more”, “call to book”, “share your best cruise memory”, etc.
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Check your progress monthly
Monitor performance to craft out better results and grow your sales by looking at the insights. Look out for when your followers are online, which post had the highest and lowest engagement (comment, like, share and clicks). Reflect on the data, adapt your strategy, and continue to learn more about social media and your target audiences.