Maintaining Engagement on Social and Exploring Emerging Channels
We started with some questions that are probably shared by other DMO teams. How do we maintain engagement? What's the form of content that works best?
We started with some questions that are probably shared by other DMO teams. How do we maintain engagement? What's the form of content that works best?
We have run the first roundtable of the Leaders of Digital group with the marketing team of our members from Visit Jersey.
We started with some questions that are probably shared by other DMO teams. How do we maintain engagement? What's the form of content that works best?
Please, don't be disappointed by what I'm about to say: there is no fixed recipe to achieve greater engagement. The secret of content success lies in a lot of experimentation, reiteration and in the data you have.
If you do not want to be told what to do, but want to start exploring the content creation potential that lies within your team, continue reading this article to find out our 7 tips.
Organic content should be reserved for true fans, those who will surely get our posts in their feed. The way consumers engage on social has changed massively so we can't assume that our followers will love our content. It is now the other way round: people will first bump into our content and then decide if it's worth following us for more. You should now think of rebuilding a following through a new engaging approach, with content that speaks their language, is teaching them something and they won't scroll past.
Develop a personality for your brand: don't see it as a corporate account but show its personality. This means going beyond brand identity and become real content creators. The reason why a platform like TikTok is successful is that it enables anyone to create amazingly engaging content through tools that are natively in the platform. The audience will be always forgiving of content that is fun, personal, authentic and doesn't require a whole crew of videographers and producers. This is about what challenges you can take on, what are the funniest videos you have seen, the yummiest recipes, the faces of people that can show your audience their favourite spots in the destination and interesting informal interviews and hangouts. And never forget about those people who can't turn the volume up and have to watch with the sound off: include captions and subtitles.
Develop an overarching strategy but do not forget that every channel and feature deserve their own attention. So for example, populate your feed with professionally-created content, tapping into your audience passions. Don't just show beauty, but show purpose. In your Stories, every member of the team can switch into holiday mode and have fun showing people around. Reels are short and punchy: make sure you keep up with the trends of what people want to see and learn, such as beauty, fun facts, lifestyle, challenges. The audience is there to watch your content and take away some good learnings: explore what How-To videos can teach people something they didn't know for example how to make a seaweed face mask if you are a seaside destination like Jersey. Or if you have your own unique produce, create video recipes that show how to use a particular local ingredient; what about a quick recipe of a potato salad with Jersey Royals? IGTV, on the other hand, could be the home of more serialised content and campaign extracts.
Try to identify challenges to tell stories around the year, consistent publishing means optimal chances of increasing engagement. Set out series according to your audience and brand opportunities. You can go niche, being very specific when you pick a new audience to target.
We've seen enough drone footage ... just kidding, we love that, BUT we want to get a close-up, look at people in the eyes, hear from them and follow them around. You hear me right: ditch perfection and stock content for a bit and show us the authentic faces of your destination ambassadors on their way home, or chilling on the beach or cycling to the ice-cream place and interacting with the makers.
When you create a hero video for a campaign, make sure as many people as possible can relate. You can boost your organic storytelling, it's non-paid but still needs to be creative and authentic. Thinking of what to publish as sponsor content? There you can aim at direct promotion and be very travel experience focused, for example by showcasing specific places to stay or offering a promotion. It's just easier to convert from there. Ditch the creative gimmicks: too many things happening on screen, too scripted... it won't engage: it would just look too staged and lack a genuine feel. Leave the humour to real laughs and banter, that hasn't been planned but comes spontaneously from people interacting. Know your audience and deliver on their needs: serialised content will help go into further detail and refine interests. And finally...
It is basically up to you and your team to find out what works and what doesn't by measuring your content performance. Also, be a true social user: before assuming social media works in a certain way, try it yourself and spend a few hours scrolling content and seeing what works through the "user's eyes". Once you find out what is performing best, you can set out some guidelines, styles, filters, formats. Establish a tone and emphasise that. Of course, dedicate some time to some good old research: understand the audience, the channels, etc. You can run focus groups with your target audience and listen to opinions, preferences and behaviours from a panel of people. Lastly, benchmark so that you truly understand how you are performing compared to other destinations and brands and learn from them what you can implement.
When we say there's no recipe to create the perfect content, we also mean that we can't really predict what people are truly going to engage with. It is still worth trying: look at the engagement in the comment in this simple post by Visit Cornwall.
We have run the first roundtable of the Leaders of Digital group with the marketing team of our members from Visit Jersey.
We started with some questions that are probably shared by other DMO teams. How do we maintain engagement? What's the form of content that works best?
Please, don't be disappointed by what I'm about to say: there is no fixed recipe to achieve greater engagement. The secret of content success lies in a lot of experimentation, reiteration and in the data you have.
If you do not want to be told what to do, but want to start exploring the content creation potential that lies within your team, continue reading this article to find out our 7 tips.
Organic content should be reserved for true fans, those who will surely get our posts in their feed. The way consumers engage on social has changed massively so we can't assume that our followers will love our content. It is now the other way round: people will first bump into our content and then decide if it's worth following us for more. You should now think of rebuilding a following through a new engaging approach, with content that speaks their language, is teaching them something and they won't scroll past.
Develop a personality for your brand: don't see it as a corporate account but show its personality. This means going beyond brand identity and become real content creators. The reason why a platform like TikTok is successful is that it enables anyone to create amazingly engaging content through tools that are natively in the platform. The audience will be always forgiving of content that is fun, personal, authentic and doesn't require a whole crew of videographers and producers. This is about what challenges you can take on, what are the funniest videos you have seen, the yummiest recipes, the faces of people that can show your audience their favourite spots in the destination and interesting informal interviews and hangouts. And never forget about those people who can't turn the volume up and have to watch with the sound off: include captions and subtitles.
Develop an overarching strategy but do not forget that every channel and feature deserve their own attention. So for example, populate your feed with professionally-created content, tapping into your audience passions. Don't just show beauty, but show purpose. In your Stories, every member of the team can switch into holiday mode and have fun showing people around. Reels are short and punchy: make sure you keep up with the trends of what people want to see and learn, such as beauty, fun facts, lifestyle, challenges. The audience is there to watch your content and take away some good learnings: explore what How-To videos can teach people something they didn't know for example how to make a seaweed face mask if you are a seaside destination like Jersey. Or if you have your own unique produce, create video recipes that show how to use a particular local ingredient; what about a quick recipe of a potato salad with Jersey Royals? IGTV, on the other hand, could be the home of more serialised content and campaign extracts.
Try to identify challenges to tell stories around the year, consistent publishing means optimal chances of increasing engagement. Set out series according to your audience and brand opportunities. You can go niche, being very specific when you pick a new audience to target.
We've seen enough drone footage ... just kidding, we love that, BUT we want to get a close-up, look at people in the eyes, hear from them and follow them around. You hear me right: ditch perfection and stock content for a bit and show us the authentic faces of your destination ambassadors on their way home, or chilling on the beach or cycling to the ice-cream place and interacting with the makers.
When you create a hero video for a campaign, make sure as many people as possible can relate. You can boost your organic storytelling, it's non-paid but still needs to be creative and authentic. Thinking of what to publish as sponsor content? There you can aim at direct promotion and be very travel experience focused, for example by showcasing specific places to stay or offering a promotion. It's just easier to convert from there. Ditch the creative gimmicks: too many things happening on screen, too scripted... it won't engage: it would just look too staged and lack a genuine feel. Leave the humour to real laughs and banter, that hasn't been planned but comes spontaneously from people interacting. Know your audience and deliver on their needs: serialised content will help go into further detail and refine interests. And finally...
It is basically up to you and your team to find out what works and what doesn't by measuring your content performance. Also, be a true social user: before assuming social media works in a certain way, try it yourself and spend a few hours scrolling content and seeing what works through the "user's eyes". Once you find out what is performing best, you can set out some guidelines, styles, filters, formats. Establish a tone and emphasise that. Of course, dedicate some time to some good old research: understand the audience, the channels, etc. You can run focus groups with your target audience and listen to opinions, preferences and behaviours from a panel of people. Lastly, benchmark so that you truly understand how you are performing compared to other destinations and brands and learn from them what you can implement.
When we say there's no recipe to create the perfect content, we also mean that we can't really predict what people are truly going to engage with. It is still worth trying: look at the engagement in the comment in this simple post by Visit Cornwall.
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