If you have a tourism business, whether it’s a travel agency, accommodation provider, tourism attraction or restaurant, you not only want your business to be active on Facebook, but on Instagram too.
Here are a few statistics to convince you:
- 1 billion active monthly users on Instagram
- 500 million of daily users sharing an average of 95 million photos and videos per day.
In 2017, a Facebook study found that:
- 70% of “travel enthusiasts” (people using travel-oriented hashtags) shared their travel plans on Instagram;
- 67% of them used Instagram to find inspiration for where to travel next.
- Up to a million travel-related searches were performed on the platform each week
- 61% of travel enthusiasts found things to do on Instagram while they were travelling
While these are global figures, in 2020 in New Zealand, Instagram is the second most used social media after Facebook and just before Pinterest.
Do keep in mind that the audience on Instagram is relatively young. So if your target audience is over 50s’, and if you can’t afford to be on both platforms, it is probably better for you to focus on, and put your efforts and paid advertising spend on Facebook.
If you’re new to Instagram, here are some tips to get you started:
Setting up your Instagram profile
The first thing to do when creating a new Instagram profile is to write a good description or ‘bio’. Limited to 150 characters, it should briefly say who you are, what you do and where you do it.
Create your own and unique hashtag to invite your audience to share their photos with you, and to increase your brand awareness.
As far as the profile picture is concerned, it’s best to use your logo, once again for brand awareness and consistency. Just make sure it is the right format: the size should be 110 x 110 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1:1.
Before you start posting content, decide on your own style and stick with it to create a cohesive and attractive Instagram aesthetic. For instance, your style can be focused on:
- Always using the same filter
- Applying a frame around your photos
- Alternating between photos and a text graphic/quote
Having a ‘style’ is not mandatory but the general look of your Instagram feed matters: someone who is not following you yet will first visit your profile, read your bio and check your old posts. This is why you want it to be attractive and this what Instagram’s users are looking for.
Unlike Facebook, you can’t have clickable links in your photo’s captions. The only link you are allowed to have is in your bio below the description.
Instead of linking only your website’s homepage, use a tool to show off multiple links: you can have a link to your Facebook page, one to your blog, one to a specific page on your website…and so on. We use linktr.ee, it is free, unless you want to customise the look of it.
Content is king (or Queen!) on Instagram
Like any other social media platform, what you need the most to be successful on Instagram is content! But not just any sort of content: beautiful, high definition photos, whenever possible! Being in the tourism industry, you know that the goal is to “sell the dream”: you want your followers to picture themselves in your hotel, your holiday park or at your attraction having the best time.
Kate from Collective Concepts taking a photo for social media of Leithfield Beach Holiday Park’s owners
Content-wise, you have several options, that you can combine:
- Get a professional photographer: when allocating your budget for the year, it is a wise choice to spend a bit of money on getting a professional photographer to spend a few hours “inside” your business to take photos. This is content that you can use and re-purpose on multiple mediums online or offline. A very good investment!
- Be the photographer yourself: What you need is a good camera or a recent release smartphone and good daily habits in taking photos! A beautiful sunrise, a happy customer or guest, friendly staff, the beautiful surroundings, stunning detail. The choice is yours.
- Share user-generated content: we wouldn’t recommend basing your Instagram content strategy solely around the content of others (your customers, followers, industry partners, staff, etc), however this can be done from time to time. If you see a photo that you like and is relevant to your tourism business (and Instagram content strategy!), but don’t plan on sharing the original post or photo, be respectful and ask permission to the owner/photographer to re-post on your own feed with credit. You will likely never get a no and you might actually earn a new follower or two!
- Videos, preferably short form: for the tourism industry, what works best are drone or GoPro videos – watchers love feeling like they are right there in the action.
Hashtags
A very important feature of the ‘gram! You have a photo or a video and a caption, now you need hashtags. This is how your post can be discovered by Instagram’s users. Think about Instagram being like another search engine to be found on.
We recommend having a good mix of brand hashtags that are unique to you, then relevant hashtags (describing the photo), along with a few popular ones. The maximum number of hashtags you can have is 30. If you are using a number of hashtags, consider having a few at the end of the main caption, and the remainder in the ‘first comment’.
Quick tip: use your website analytics tool to see which keywords your visitors use to discover your product/business.
Stories
Because of Instagram’s algorithm, your own followers won’t see all your posts (especially if they never react to them), even if you are a regular poster and add several photos per week. This is why stories should be used: they are chronological and not algorithm dependent. Meaning the more “stories” you have, the more visible to your followers you are.
What sort of content can you have in your stories? There are so many choices with heaps of options to have some fun!
- The easiest is to simply share your last post. The good thing is that this will automatically link to the post itself for your audience to like or comment.
- ‘Behind the scenes’ content is always a favourite: stories are a great way to show your face and your staff’s, using photos or videos.
- There are lots of great ways to engage with your audience: ask questions or use the ‘poll’ option. As a business, what more could you ask for? It’s a free, live and easy to use survey tool. You will gather useful information from your audience and can respond with content tailored especially for your followers.
- Reels – the newest Instagram feature, set to rival Tik Tok!
Growing your account
So, you’ve spent time and invested in good photos, you worked on creating your own content and style but your account is growing slowly, too slowly… Instagram is not as easy as it looks. There are so many accounts, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd!
To increase your followers, be proactive: follow your industry partners, the local businesses around you, the region’s RTO and I-Site, etc. with the hope they will follow you back and start engaging with your content.
Last but not least, to grow your account, and hopefully increase your sales, you MUST engage authentically with your audience. Not only, should you reply to each comment posted on your content, but you should also get involved in conversations on other accounts. This is another way to be seen: comment on a photo that is relevant to your business, so that other readers can see that you exist! Try to be useful and knowledgeable!
The engagement rate is normally higher on Instagram than it is on Facebook, especially if you show the human side of your business. This is why a lot of brands use Instagram as a customer service tool as well.
Influencer marketing for tourism businesses
You have probably seen this viral video of BareKiwi being slapped in a face with an octopus by a seal!
For some industries such as beauty, hospitality, clothing or tourism, influencers can be a great option to partner with if you choose them well.
Make sure they suit your audience: location, age, style, tone of voice, other brand relationships, etc.
Then check the size of their community, how engaged their community is on their posts, how they respond to the engagement, etc. Depending on your budget, you might not want to aim for a too larger audience when starting out – a 5k following is a good starting point because at this level the deal is often: you give them a product or a service to try, and they talk about it (honestly) in their content. If you are looking for a larger audience or wish to have more say in / or ownership of the content that is produced, you can expect to pay a negotiated fee for the marketing service the influencer is providing your business.
As with any business relationship, when dealing with an influencer, make sure both sides agree (in writing) on what they expect from each other!
For an example of a very well respected influencer in the New Zealand tourism industry, and what kind of content you can have produced for your brand or business, check out Barekiwi, who regularly work with businesses such as GoPro and RTO’s (Kaikoura Tourism).
The last word
Instagram takes time, requires patience and regularity but it’s a fantastic brand awareness tool. It’s also a great place to connect with your audience, show your face and ask for feedback, all with a more human approach.
And who knows: once you get going you may even enjoy it! Don’t expect to see results straight away but as you build your presence on Instagram, you will begin to work towards reaching your objective of increasing sales.
We are so lucky to live in one of the most beautiful country’s on earth: it might only take for you to post one amazing photo for your audience to stop dreaming about your product or service and book in to pay for it!
