Picture Perfect
Three rules for using Instagram to promote your resort.
Instagram has 500 million monthly active users (300 million daily). It has shown significant growth in almost every demographic group, according to Pew Research, and now 21 percent of all adults use it. Travel brands use Instagram and Instagram Stories to engage with their owners and guests. “With its use of highly engaging visual content and an active monthly audience of 500 million, Instagram is the perfect place for travel and resort marketers to spread the word about their properties,” says Dave Thomas, associate manager of global e-commerce and online marketing at RCI. Utilize the platform more effectively with these three tips to boost owner and guest engagement.
- Integrate into existing advertisements
“Promoting Instagram via traditional marketing methods will help to drive awareness and traffic to the channel,” Thomas says. Put your resort’s handle on print brochures, flyers and TV spots. To promote a particular event or special, create a hashtag and market on every medium.
- Leverage user-generated content (UGC)
Instagram has the highest engagement rate among all the social media platforms, according to Forrester Research. The posts on the photo-sharing app generate an engagement rate of 4.21 percent per follower, which is 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter. This means that Instagram is a great platform for mining UGC. This can be done by creating a hashtag and geotag for your resort. “UGC can help grow a resort’s online presence because it’s authentic in contrast to professionally shot photography and can provide incentive for other users to share with the hopes of being featured on a branded account,” Thomas says. Resorts can use the Repost app to share content from other users while giving the appropriate credit. Thomas recommends consulting your legal team on usage-rights approval before sharing content from other users.
- Create a network
By observing similar accounts and reaching out to them for possible collaborations and mutually beneficial promotions, your brand can expand its reach with users and travel brands nearby and all over the world. “In order to establish and grow a presence on Instagram, it is not only important to post content frequently that leverages trending topics, but resorts should also interact on the channel with fans and like-minded accounts,” Thomas says.
Image credit: iStockphoto
