Social Media Marketing for Travel Agents
** Originally posted in 2017, updated for 2021.
Last month I was sunny San Diego at a marketing conference – Traffic & Conversion Summit – learning from, and with, some of the world’s most brilliant marketers.
This conference is one of my favorites, I always leave with tons of new insight and innovative marketing strategies (and some great friendships).
I’m going to be sharing tons of great new marketing strategies and tools with you over the next couple month, so keep your eyes on your inbox!
As you might expect, social media marketing remains one of the hottest topics, and things are ever-changing when it comes to best practices.
One thing NEVER changes though, and that is that people want to do business with people they know, like and trust. Building trusting relationships with your clients is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign.
Watch today’s video to discover how this applies to your social media marketing.
Transcript – Social Media Marketing for Travel Agents
Hello Travel Experts!
In today’s video, I’m going to address one of the most common questions that I get from Travel Agents regarding Social Media for travel agents, which is this, “Should I be setting up personal profiles or business profiles?” Should they be branded for me or for my Travel Agency?”
The answer is, “They should be branded for YOU.”
You can certainly set up business pages, for example. You definitely want a Facebook Business Page. Don’t use your private page with your business and same goes with some of the other Social Media Platforms. Although in some cases having a personal page and just having it be your business is okay.
But, the reason that you want to by and large branded for you is that people don’t want to do business with LOGOs. They want to do business with YOU. They want a relationship with YOU; they want to know that they can trust you and that you’re going to book them a fantastic trip and in order to build that know, like and trust relationship they need to see you so you need to be the face of your profile. So your face should be on every single one of your social media profiles. You can also include your logo and your branding colors and you should include clear and compelling calls-to-action for people to come visit your website and join your email list or schedule a free consultation with you.
So they are business pages and they should be conducted like business pages but you need to be the face of them and you need to share some personal insights and tips (not so personal.) You’re trying to build-up a relationship with people and booking their travel is a bit of an intimate experience, you’re learning your personal preferences and things like that. And so, before they’re going to open up to you and trust you to do that, they want to know you, they want to like you, they want to feel like that they can trust you and to have that know, like and trust relationship. You’ve got to be the face of your brand and you’ve got to share some personal things along with really good travel tips and things that show that you’re an expert. You need to show that you’re an expert and you need to show a more personal side of you as well.
On your business page, on all of the different Social Media Platforms that you’re using for business, they’re not just your friend page. For example you’ve got your private Facebook Fan page which is fine and you don’t need clients or prospective clients to be a part of that, you can do whatever you want there but for your Business Page and whatever Social Media you’re using for business even if you’re using a personal profile, like on Instagram, for example. Maybe, it’s your personal Instagram and you’re really just using it for business, that’s fine. You need to be the face of it. And, this holds true whether you have a host agency or your own credentials or franchise or consortia. Whatever the backend of your business looks like, doesn’t matter.
What matters is, the front-end of your business because your clients could care less, if you’re working with a host agency or franchise or consortia they don’t even know what those things are. All they care about is the relationship with you, that they like you, they feel like they know you, and they feel like they can trust you. That’s what they care about.
So you need to be the face of your brand, especially on your Social Media Profiles.
Love & Success,
Heidi and Your Marketing Team
This video really helped a lot thank you!
Thank you Yolanda! Glad we could be of service to you. 🙂
The information is really relevant. I hope most agents will learn from this blog.
Thanks Andrew! We hope most agents can learn from our blog as well, it’s why we do what we do. 🙂
Really interesting article. I’m looking for some way to use social media to promote new sites, particularly with regard to travel, and this helped some with inspiration.
So happy to hear the article was helpful to you!