Waiheke Social media account for tourism businesses

The @waihekeisland Twitter account and the associated @waihekeisland Instagram accounts receive substantial views and engagement over the Summer holiday period from visitors to Waiheke Island. Due to the nature of mobile use amongst visitors these platforms in tandem present an ideal means to drive visitors towards your Waiheke Island attractions. No other Twitter handle related to tourism on Waiheke has the number of followers, reach, or engagement of these two social media platforms.

Contemporary travellers particularly those from asian countries or India demonstrate a reliance more than ever on technology to plan, buy and review products and services.

“With social media forming an increasingly important part of the travel experience, travel providers will need to adopt social media into the way that they interact with their customers, using the channel both to transact and to interact.” Source: New Zealand tourism within the global environment (2014), http://www.tourism2025.org.nz/tourism-2025-archive/new-zealand-tourism-within-the-global-environment/

“...46% of total holiday travellers to Australia are booking some aspect of their trip online prior to arrival, retail outlets and the associated distribution infrastructure play a role in converting the other 54%.1 Stakeholder consultation suggests that this level is as high as 90% in emerging markets and for key purchases such as airfares and tours.”

Source: Tourism Australia Distribution in Australia’s international markets: Situational Analysis March 2013 http://www.tourism.australia.com/documents/corporate/Distribution_Final_Fullreport.pdf

If you are interested in finding out how your Waiheke based business or activity can benefit from the use of these two accounts please contact us.

Why you should start exploring video

Very interesting video about Facebook vs YouTube that talks about the business models for each platform and why your content may not reach as many people as you think on Facebook. Definitely worth a watch.

Video is a very different kettle of fish though than the average post to a FB page and may require considerably more thought, equipment and time, but my experience lately has been that the return can be considerable. Worth thinking about.

Quick Tip: Facebook Page - Pin to Top

Sometimes you may want to "re-use" an older Facebook Page update that's now moved down your Page's timeline. Perhaps it was initially for an upcoming Waiheke event and now, closer to the date, you want to be sure that visitors to your Facebook Page notice this event. An easy way to do this is to use the Pin to Top functionality. To find this option hover your mouse over the post you want to promote until you see these icons appear in the top-right of the post:

Clicking on the right 'pencil' icon will reveal a drop-down menu. From this menu select Pin to Top:

This will shift the post to the top and add an orange bookmark icon to the post:

This post will now stay at the top, causing even new posts to display below it. To remove this post and put it back into the normal timeline flow of your page just hover over the orange bookmark and 'unpin'.

Note: I've just added an email subscription to this blog so if you'd like to be updated on when I make new posts to Waiheke Social Media please subscribe using the Follow by Email option on the top right. Thanks, Brent.

Setting up a Social Media Calendar

So you're a small business and you're going to take social media seriously, you've got all your accounts lined up, URLs pointing towards your main website, logos in place, etc .. but now what? A good thing to do is to start work on a Social Media Calendar. A social media calendar can help create a cohesive layer to an overall content strategy.

To create the calendar use a spreadsheet - I personally like Google Docs because the spreadsheet is there wherever I am and can be easily shared or viewed by others that you may be working with - but even an old school paper calendar will do. Set aside one hour at minimum to brainstorm and plan the content you aim to highlight in the upcoming days, weeks, or even months. Take into account any significant events that may be taking place over the period you decide to plan for, ie. holidays, special business events, local events, conferences, product releases, and other occurrences that might have a significant social buzz. By including all of the information and links to relevant sites in your calendar, you will have developed a single resource that you can refer to when deciding what to post. For Facebook you should be aiming to post at least once per week and probably not much more than 3 times per week, and for Twitter I try for at least one tweet per day.

If you're using a tool like Hootsuite to manage your social media you even have a calendaring tool built right in where you can schedule tweets or facebook posts ahead of time.