I can guarantee that if you don’t know or do all of these social media hacks…you need to…trust me!
After watching Erik Hatterscheidt’s social media hack video it was too good not to share with our Tourism Tribe community. Erick’s really got the knack for explaining things in a way that is captivating and easy to digest.
You can scroll down to watch the 40 min video but as we know you might not have that time up your sleeve we’ve pulled out some gems.
Hack Highlights:
- Be the hero of your own story
- Create a new journey for your business
- Have a conversation with your audience
- Build a movement (have concepts people buy into)
If you read on, you’ll also learn:
- How to successfully use social media platforms to engage and convert customers
- How to effectively have a conversation with your audience (generate sales)
- How to caption your Instagram posts
- How to build a movement
Where to begin?
It can be really overwhelming to come up with a plan if you don’t have one, so Eric’s broken it down in small chunks that 
make total sense.
1. Lead by being a charismatic leader
You need to have a charismatic leader that your followers fall in love with and can relate to. To do this you need to communicate one personality (e.g. say “Today, I want to share with you” as opposed to “We want to share with you”).
You want to avoid communicating as a collective ‘we’. If you have a one to one conversation with your audience you are more likely to engage, convert and generate leads.
We’ve discussed internally at Tourism Tribe how this was best to happen if the business’s owners aren’t in charge of social media but one of their staff is (a common occurence amongst our members). We believe that the “I” should be the narrator, as in the team member who’s coming up with the social media content. This “I” really is the journalist who’s capturing the stories first hand.
2. New opportunity
In Erik Hatterscheidt’s video, he postulates this idea that a ‘new opportunity is not a ‘better experience’ – whereby saying ‘we’re the best…’ implies that there are similar offerings and experiences. This is NOT what you want.
However, if you present a new opportunity – you are communicating that there is nothing else like you.
3. The cause
You need to get your customers/followers emotionally invested. This is why it is important to have a variety of content on your social media platforms (every post should not sell something).
To do this, you must ask yourself…What is it that you’re doing that isn’t related to what you’re selling? The customers are not buying a hotel room for the nice beds and wall lights…they are buying an experience!
This is where you need to learn how to communicate this and then how to leverage it into sales and leads. Understand what they want and then tap into it from an emotional perspective.
…. and all the above is really hard to do if you don’t PLAN! If you leave it last minute we have seen it too often – the posts become very ad hock and too close to the ‘sell’. This is the very reason why our SuperHero social media calendar is such a hoot – we’ve come up with 744 post ideas you can use that are NOT related to your product but related to the experience your guests will experience.
4. Brand personality
Who is your brand personality? Who is the “I” in your social media posts?
To connect and engage with your customers, you need to show that you are having a conversation with the customer. A one to one conversation. NOT a sales pitch, but a genuine conversation. Although this conversation can create wanderlust and holiday envy to encourage your customers to engage (engage not to buy!).
To increase the engagement you need to be direct, cheeky, fun, relatable and show your personality…ONE personality.
5. Find the passion and create your own message
Find accounts that your customer follows (that have high engagement) then use that to create your own message…your new opportunity. This is how you’ll successfully use your tourism social media platform to engage and convert customers.
This is the number one thing we see tourism businesses are forgetting to do!! They’re often too focused on creating their own content. A good place to start with Facebook is by following other Page’s feed… (if you can’t find your Page’s feed anymore just add /news_feed after your Page’s URL (e.g. facebook.com/tourismtribe/news_feed
6. Create a customer persona
When you find the passion and create your own message you need to be clear on who you are talking to. You may want to create an in-depth customer persona to help guide your social media strategy.
Customer personas are a representation of your target market and their key characteristics. They are great to use for the basis of your social media content, campaigns, promotions, customer experience, etc. Making sure you optimise your efforts and ensure customer expectations are met and exceeded.
Below is a suggested draft persona template we created at Tourism Tribe to help the busiensses we coach.
You could refine and print the below personas and pin them up in your office to help you and your staff to remain focused on your ideal customer needs.
The full video
Here’s Erick’s video. You can also go straight to it on YouTube here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=559&v=NYUYN5ssGJM&feature=emb_logoWhere to go from here?
If you were inspired by these social media hacks but feel overwhelmed with where to begin – we offer one on one consultation sessions as well as several social media courses (incl. Instagram, Facebook, Google Analytics and more!).
