The social media bubble is expanding fast, with more interactive platforms coming online by the day. In this article, Tyne van der Merwe explains where to get started.
All social media works off the same premise…they are interactive platforms, which encourage members to join and interact with each other.
Facebook is very much focused on personal interaction and currently has over 1.4 billion members. The business element, Facebook Pages, is a great platform to market your tourism and hospitality business. It allows you to post very interactive content (text, images, video, links). You are also able to target very specific market segments via paid for advertising by ‘Boosting’ posts to these segments by using selected key words for as little as R10 per day.
Facebook also allows you to add Apps to your Page. A great App for the tourism industry is Trip Advisor Reviews, this creates a tab and keeps an up to date stream of customer reviews straight from your Trip Advisor profile. A great add-on to this App is the ability to create a ‘Book Now’ tab, directed to the booking page on your website.
Twitter on the other hand is a more real-time platform and lets you engage with your audience by sending out ‘Tweets’ of 140 characters in length. This is a great platform for a customer facing and servicing business.
Instagram is the new generation and is currently the fastest growing social media. This platform is based solely on images. You can attract new followers and likes by using selected hashtags such as #rhinos #southafrica #kruger which come up in their ‘Explore’ tab.
Social Media Success
The key to success in social media is having a clear strategy upfront, which deals with key marketing principles and a great understanding of your product or service, the segments it needs to reach and whether it is best expressed with words or images.
