Social Media Best Practices for Tour Operators

Social media can be a powerful tool, but only if you know how to use it right. In a Family Travel Association Lunch & Learn with Tamay Shannon, Social Media Strategist and Founder of W2S Marketing, we looked at how you can effectively use social media to boost family travel business.

Shannon explored best practices for creating engaging content that resonates with families, building a loyal online community, and leveraging the latest trends to keep followers engaged. The session gave actionable insights and practical advice to make the most of social media platforms.

We’ve rounded up some key insights from Shannon’s webinar:

Audience Analysis

• Learn not just your demographics (age, gender, location, etc.), but also your psychographics (interests, values, dialect, etc.)
• You can learn your psychographics through direct conversations with clients. What commonalities are you hearing?
• Reddit is a surprisingly wonderful place to do listening. Look for subreddits related to a destination to see what hot spots people are talking about, discussions around attractions that are best for families, what the hidden gems are, and so on. You can even make use of
• Or, consider just asking directly through a social media poll! The bonus here is that polls get a lot of engagement, so it’s relatively easy to garner responses.
• Look at larger demographics for different social media platforms, so you can learn where your audience is most likely to be active and spend your time accordingly

Content Strategy

• Don’t forget about accessibility. Always have captions for your videos, always have descriptive alt text for your images, and make sure to have color contrast so people can actually read all your text.
• Visual storytelling is crucial. Words are not enough. Use photos that enable your audience to visualize themselves on that trip/in that experience.
• Develop a content calendar, with includes goals, KPIs (key performance indicators), and themes & topics. An example of a theme is “Summer of Family,” which covers the season, then break it down into weekly ideas like “how to travel with a toddler, how to travel with a middle schooler, how to travel with a teenager who doesn’t want to be there,” and so on! Having themes makes the actual work of creating content much easier.
• Have a content bank for the times when you’re tired, or have an emergency, or are on vacation yourself. You can help yourself out ahead of time by shooting a ton of short clips wherever you go, so you don’t have to rely on stock footage or imagery.
• Reusing/recycling content is okay (within reason), because people see a whole lot of information every single day online, and many of your followers either didn’t even see your post the first time, or have already forgotten they saw it.
• You don’t have to know every new trend on TikTok or every algorithm change for all the platforms. Your primary job is to provide great travel experiences, not to become a content creator.

Platform Overviews

• Facebook
  • Misdirection is a popular tactic here, but not in a way where you’re making people feel tricked (people hate feeling tricked). One example from Shannon is starting your video with, “How We Sleep On Vacation,” and then showing an empty bed and saying, “We don’t sleep on vacation, we get out there and have fun.” It’s not really a trick, but still subverts expectations.
  • Join communities and interact to provide a direct pipeline. Don’t linger too long or get into disagreements—just offer up your expertise and develop a great reputation.
  • Always include direct links.
  • Don’t allow perfectionism to get in the way of providing consistent content.
• Instagram
  • Organize story Highlights with buyers in mind. Instead of just having a highlight of testimonials, have a highlight that’s focused on something more specific, such as, “How to Plan a Vacation for Your 50th Anniversary.”
  • Keep in mind that engagement will be higher and lower at certain times. For instant, it’s much lower in summer when more people are outdoors being active rather than scrolling social media.
  • Show your face (or someone from your business) occasionally. Your audience needs to know there’s a real person behind the business, creating trust and credibility.
  • User-generated content! Do giveaways for your audience, or special offers for your current clients, such as, “Tag me when you’re on your trip and I’ll give you a discount for the next trip.” It’s the social media equivalent of putting out a yard sign for a contractor.
  • Even consider investing in a photographer to go on a big trip with you, so you have photos/videos of real people going on real trips you made happen.
• Threads
  • Have fun! It’s new, you can be less rigid. Perfect time to grow your audience.
  • Deep dive into the odd. You can really be authentic, quirky and maybe even a bit snarky here.
• TikTok
  • It’s fast-paced content typically, but you may actually be able to stand out by slowing down or taking a different approach (as long as it’s still engaging).
  • Don’t be afraid to be quirky or repetitive. Some people on TikTok do the same kind of video every single time, and people follow them because they know what to expect and want more of that content.
  • Borrow liberally.
• LinkedIn
  • Talk about your audience, what they’re looking for, and how you help them get what they want/need. Give examples!
  • LinkedIn is relatively text heavy, which is a perfect opportunity to use your own voice.
  • Tell stories.
• YouTube
  • Great for how-to’s, visual learning, and answering audience FAQs! This is where you really want to provide useful, relevant information.

Community Building

• You don’t have to necessarily create an official community like a Facebook Group. Your community can simply be conversations in the comments, connecting people who can help each other, and sharing memes relevant to your audience.
• The more you know your audience (demographics and psychographics), the easier this is.

Analytics

• These are critical to building community. Are they coming from desktop or mobile? Where are they located? Why are they interested in you? What marketing successes (and low points) have you seen so far? When you know what works and why, you can do more of it.