Originally posted on http://marketinghotelsandtourism.com/micro-tutorials-for-hotels-tourism-instagram-marketing/
Instagram is hot property for tourism today.This series of Hotels Tourism Instagram Marketing Tutorials will provide a brief video (under 30 seconds) to overview the benefits of Instagram with respect to its major features. The description and notes under the video will expand on the How and why for each aspect.
Aligned with New Consumer Behavior
Instagram is align with the new attitude to information which is visual, engaging and real. Real in the sense that it is user and brands sharing what matters. It’s authentic as Instagram does not allow affiliate marketing and you cannot link back to your site or a landing page that sells a product. Its a counter-intuitive channel for brands, or so it would seem. But the reality is that Instagramers, and perhaps consumers in general, are wary of brand messages. What brands say about themselves tends to be largely discounted.
Entertain To Inform & Engage
female traveler taking Instagram destinations photo. source pexel
The new trend to brand adverting is more in line with entertainment. Entertainment first and Information second is the new norm for brands. We see this with BMW example and with the fun ads by booking.com and others. The concept is provide interesting, entertaining content that engages and motivates with out having to bang the drums and shout out a message.
Let the medium tell the story. So Instagram has its own 15 second stories and its full video with IGTV. And that in a direct response to the fact that videos are more engaging than photos. In fact video posts get 38% more engagement than image posts and twice the number of comments. The fact is that 100 million users are interacting with Instagram Live video everyday.
Favoured by Millennials
Instagram Stories were launched a years after Snapchat had introduced the concept to great applause. Yet today 68% of Millennials use Instagram versus Snapchat (about 40% use Snapchat). As Millenials are the new consumer its important to follow their thinking and to be where they are. They are a new consumer with a very different motivation. They care about the experience first, and put what is done, how it is done and its impact above valuing things and possessions. This requires a new philosophy for brand messaging and brand integrity.
Series of Short Videos & Nano Moments
So over the next few weeks I will share with you some tips and strategies to help build your Instagram base and your travel brand.
It starts with Instagram power. The video series will cover Influences, shout-outs, sharing other people posts and promotions. We will discuss hashtags and content that is congruent with your travel brand. Success on Instagram requires a fine focus.
It’s not about appealing to the largest audience or aligning with the account with millions of fans. Nano influence are now in vogue.
These are people and sites that are very focused on specific niches. They are users with as little as 1,000 followers and they are not famous. They create engaged following based on a different point of view and a passion for work in travel niches like heritage and culture, lifestyles of artisans and dedicate travel venues.
Power of the Gram
This is the first in the series of nano videos in Hotels Tourism Instagram Marketing Tutorials.
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
The power of the gram is pervasive. It has high appeal to travelers looking for authentic information about destinations, accommodation and lifestyle vacations. We will explain why it has become an authoritative channel in a following video. It is also highly engaging and entertaining as noted above. Part of its appeal is that it is immediate. Real traveler share their experiences as they happen. Its real-time, real users with real experiences. Successful Insta-Brands understand that Instagram content must be real, authentic and not brand-centrist. Successful Posts are user-centered!
Keep watching as explore these issues in future posts.
Showroom for Travel Brands
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
Instagram has become a Digital Brochure for travel. It is a de-facto Showcase of tourism. It works for destinations, hotels, villas, apartments, resorts, restaurants, attractions, festivals, events and all tourism activities. Hotel Chains, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) and independent tourism operators have discover that the correct use of Instagram can increase exposure, brand integrity and lead to more bookings.
The point however is that it must be used correctly.
Post need to be unique, engaging and purposeful. It should appeal to an inner need and connect on an emotional bases. It should entertain and motive the viewer to visit your Instagram profile and your brand website. Instagram has a strict policy on linking and only allows a link back to your site via your BIO. This may seem pointless to many marketers which is fine by Instagram, as they do not want to encourage spammy sales links. The good news is that because of this policy it is a very Authentic Site. And that is good for travel brands using it.
Authenticity & Authority
Unlike many user content sites, Instagram decided that it would restrict linking out to sales pages and websites. Links out to sales page is how brands get value for sharing their content (Backlinks). Its is a big part of affiliate marketing and a natural part of marketing and promotion. Instagram decided that was not on and you can,t add live links to your content.
This has turned out to be a uprisings benefit to travel brands. It is a power platform for branding, especially as it is not crowded with sales pitches and “buy my stuff” backlinks. With fewer sales message clogging the airwaves Instagram has established a high level of credibility, authenticity and authority. It is a good place to build your brand.
Alternative Backlinks
You can and should add a URL in captions, in your videos and images, but these will not link anywhere. They are however essential branding and users who are motivated by your post can always type in the URL (keep it short).
You can add a link to your Instagram BIO (Instagram profile), so long as it is genuine and not-spammy. They don’t like landing pages that are grabbing emails with a signup form. They also may reject clocked links that redirect to another site. So again links have to be genuine links to quality sites. Yo can also add liks to post you promote and to ads on Instagram. Check out the video on promotion coming soon.
If your Instagram account has more that 10,000 followers you can add a link back to your site. You can also add a URL in to your video or photo. However links in video and images are not clickable and users will often go to your Insta-BIO. Be sure your Instagram BIO is optimized well. We will include a video on this later.
There are also apps that will allow you to make you post (images etc) clickable – Check out LATER. I don’t currently use it and have done a very cursory review of it. It’s a bit of a work around but worth investigation. More on this soon.
Passion – Powered By Passion People & Purpose
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
In the new digital landscape information is abundant. Travelers, like all consumers, must sift through endless messages, fake news, hype and overload. The old marketing standards of Place, Price, Packaging and Promotion have little meaning. They are replaced now with a new set of Ps: Passion, Purpose, People and Process. Marketing on the new visual-first platforms, like Instagram, is driven by purpose and delivered with passion to inform, entertain and motivate travelers.
Tourism organization are realizing that they cannot be everywhere. They are reaching out to People and Partnering with Passionate Instagram travelers, photographers and video-graphers to share their user created real-life content. This is the new paradigm of Purpose, Passion, People and Process exemplified by Instagram an its army of people who share.
No! I don’t mean people who share selfies! I personally ignore all of the self indulgent fashion models and body builders unless they have a point of view and interesting take on lifestyles and purpose. There are many who do. These passionate travelers are documenting lifestyles and culture and introducing people and places all over the world. Many have millions of followers. An upcoming video will talk about tapping influencers; it has some tips that will surprise you!
The Next lesson in Hotels Tourism Instagram Marketing Tutorials is Shoutout pages.
Shoutout & Share Reposts to Connect
To succeed with Instagram is you need to post relevant high quality and engaging content regularly. You also must be able to get found, get seen and engage. You will have to promote your posts in order to achieve maximum visibility.
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
Shoutout Pages
Shoutouts are a great way to promote you post and your brand. We will delve into how to Tap Influencers to get exposure to their followers in the next tutorial.
Tapping influencers generally means you pay them to share your post. You can also do this for free if you have outstanding images or videos. If you do you can start right away using the free shoutout pages like LiveFolk, The Outbound Collective,Passion Passport and Discover Earth. These shoutout pages and others like them will share your post if they think it is worth of a shout out. It a quick way to expose your brand to a large following to get more likes and follows. Its generally free so long as you use their hashtag in your post.
Discover Earth, for example, posts images from various photographers. To get them to shoutout your post you need submit to use the hashtag #discoverearth in your post. If they like it, they might feature your image on their feed. They also like to post information about the image and have a massive following with high engagement rates.
Reposting
Sharing user-generated content is the essence of social media and repost are a perfect way to share. By posting another instagramers photos or videos you can increase your engagement, diversity your content and gain authority for rich and relevant content. A repost also inherits the authority tags, keywords and hastags of the post, which helps to expand your reach and influence. Learn more about “How to
Repost or Share” with our Instagramtips page. The article also provides other tips and suggestion for Instagram success. Also checkout the benefits of reposts here>>>
Crossly related to Shoutout pages is influence marketing. That is the next lesson in “Hotels Tourism Instagram Marketing Tutorials”
Tap Influencers to Influence
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
In the previous hotels tourism instagram marketing tutorial we introduced the concept of shout-out pages, a free resource where you have your post mentioned. An influencer, however, is an instagram star with a Mega following, or a niche expert with fewer but highly targeted and engaged followers. They do not shout out your post for free. Instagram is by far the best performing platform for aligning with a travel and tourism influencer. it is an excellent and authentic way to reach travelers with interest in your niche. If an influencer agrees to shout-out your post you will get a recommendation from a trusted and authentic source. It is however not always easy to get their attentions.
Cost and Preformance of Mega and Micro Influencers
Influencer marketing is expected to be a $8 billion dollar industry by 2020. The mega-influencers are expensive. You can pay thousands of dollarsfor a singe post. The smaller (nano and micro) influencers will charge as little as 50$ to several hundred $. These are by far the more popular types of infuencers today. Generally their audience are more targeted and engaged than the “Megas” with millions of Fans.
Micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers account for about 1/3rd of all Instagram influence channels. According to Sapna Maheshwari of the New York Times, “it is now the nano-influencer,ordinary digital citizens, with 1,000 or so followers that are courted for their influence.”
How to Find the Right Fit
You can find influencers by searching Google for the best Instagram leaders in your niche. The video example above shows the “Best Travel Influencers” which is really too large. You need to trim that down to something that is specific to your target audience.Get dond 3 levels at least- Category (Travel) – Niche Villas – Specialitly/Feature/Benefit: Independent Traveler, Away from the crown as inPoinsettiavillas St. Lucia A more recent strategy is to Personalize your offering by Character like Avant Garde, Artisan and Lifestyle Vacationsfeaturing local people, culture and heritage.
Another option is to search on Instagram for your niche and select those who are not Megas. There are resources like UPROXX that will list the best travel Instagramers. There are apps likeiTAGGZ that will help you define your best #hastags and find sites to follow and reach out to.
Reaching Out
It is a good idea to contact several profiles so you can pick and choose from those that reply. The correspondence with them will give you some idea of the working arrangement you might expect. it helps to have a distinctive site and purpose to grab their attention. Remember they are busy and want to work with winners. Informal message usually work best with Nanos.. Try something like:
“Hello {NAME}! I’d love to gift you a free weekend in my boutique villa resort and do a paid promo on your Instagram. Let me if this can work for you!”
– The gift is optional but it will help you get a better rate and also help the influencer to understand your offer.
If your message interests them they will check out your Instagram account. If it is not up to standard compared to similar brands, your message will get ignored. Be sure that you have a great-looking site.
Here are 5 key criteria they will look at:
- The number of followers you have is #1 (They are looking for sites with good traction)
- Your bio should be clear and short
- Your bio link must be to a page that is relevant
- Your grid should look balanced and clean. (seeThe PreviewApp for examples of differentiated Instagram grids)
- Posts must be distinctive, original and high value content (a mix of photos and videos – videos get higher engagement – photos are more instant)
Check Credentials
Spam, fake likes and follows abound everywhere today and Instagram is no exception.
3 quick checks that will help you validate accounts:
- Check that the follower are truly engaging with the site. Your proposed partners should have an average engagement of 2 to 6 percent (likes and comments /follows).
- Look at 10 or so post and see if they are relevant to your niche and engagement is authentic. Comments like “great post” are usually thoughtless and may be robots.
- Be sure that their audience matches your own. Check geographic distribution and demographics.
You may also use tools like Fohr Card to validate followers.
For a good summary of report on how to choose and check accounts see Pixlee
Instagram Promos “Sponsored Posts”
Originally posted on YouTube by Ian R Clayton
Learn how to get the most out of your promotions.
Instagram’s advertising combines Facebook’s reach and targeting. This allows including demographic as well as Facebooks data on behavior and interests. This allows you to get pretty specific in defining your audience.
Instagram ads borrows aspects of Facebooks audience definition such as lookalike targeting, retargeting and fine tuned interest and demographics intersection.
Not all advertising features are available for the PROMOS which is similar to Facebooks Boost. The PROMOS are a quick and easy way to advertise and reach a large audience. In the video above we see how a 40$ budget over 2 days resulted in 1,400 likes, 324 saves, 898 profile vists and 809 clicks. RJ Kaur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4afQkw2sc8
Now that does not mean all promos will deliver these results. In fact there are many videos showing what may be total failures. But the fact is that good results are attainable if you do it right.
Here are 12 Pointers to help you Ace your Promos
- Don’t make it look like an advertisements
- Promote your best posts
- People centered photo and videos do best. People create emotions
- User generated content. Customer photos are dynamite. They prove that people like your site and they are real 3rd party endorsements
- Avoid text in the photos: Instagram is visual – text in photos and and video covers have lower engagementthat those without text
- Use bright and colorful Images. The more eye-catching your photography is, the more likely it is to drive engagement and generate better results
- Cross Promote to your Social Network
- Use Hastags- See how to use hashtags for full details on this vital aspect
- Tag others – Tag followers and locations. Tag other brands that might give you a shoutout – see shoutoutpages
- Use a powerful call to action and link to powerful landing page. As many will go too your profile is a good idea to link you bio to a tracking page
- Track your results – Optimize your landing pages. Use a tracking service, like LATER to manage profile visits. Optimize your profile as in 5 point in tap influencers.
- Choose you target demograpgics wisely– The defaults will mess up your campaign
I did not follow this advice when I promoted my book. Still i reached 35,000 people and got 195 likes for 3 post over 18 day and spent 90$
I totally messed up the first lost using the defaults- That god me a lots of 13 years olds from my how town who were not my prospects.
In the first 6 days 5 people bought my book Digital Media Marketing Hotels and Tourism on Amazon However, Amazon did not provide any tracking and I can’t be sure that the promos were the source of the sales. This level of activity did not occur on the following 2 promos. Ill be doing it again and try to optimize with what I have since learned. I’ll share that soon!.
Coming Next:
Stay tuned to Hotels Tourism Instagram Marketing Tutorials for more Nano Tips and Strategies on presenting your travel brand on Instagram!
- Choose HastTags with Precision
- Using Highlights
- Using the newest features: IG Highlights, Instagram Live and IGTV
- Using emoji, GIFs & stickers in your Story
- Finding exciting and engaging content
- Using provocative conversation starters
- Getting Creator status
Mission & Vision