Social Media and Its Undeniable Power to Attract the International Visitor to the South
Travel South’s social media presence is paramount in attracting international visitors. To that end, Travel South has partnered with Sparkloft Media to ensure that messaging is current but also innovative, and that it is relevant to each unique international market. To learn more about this well-developed process and the strategies involved, read our interview with Martin Stoll, President of Sparkloft Media.
Q: Explain the partnership that TS and Sparkloft have:
A: We work with Travel South on promoting travel to the Travel South region in several countries (Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland) using Facebook and Instagram. We create the content for those social channels, post it, engage potential visitors through content moderation and manage paid media and reporting.
Q: What are some nuances of social media with regards to reaching the international market?
A: It really has two dimensions: one is the mindset of the traveler in the specific market, and the other one is how consumers use social media in the respective country.
When you look at the different markets, the understanding, the motivations for international visitors coming to the Travel South region of the US are significantly different. It is not a one-size-fits-all. For example, Canadians can come with a week's notice, they have a much better familiarity of the market, but they are interested in different things than people coming from Brazil who need to get a visa before they come and have a much longer planning cycle. Understanding their familiarity with the US is important. I think we sometimes take for granted what our international audience truly knows. We must explain the context for them. The German market really loves the outdoors and road trips. People from Brazil like music, culinary, shopping, so you try to work that into the content. So, when it comes to social media, we work those things into the content and tailor it to the particular country. Also the questions that people ask that need to be answered vary greatly because they have a different understanding of where they are coming from.
The other thing that makes social media so powerful is that it is the only medium where consumers can have two-way conversations with brands; they can visibly react to what a brand is doing, and they can easily find like-minded consumers who share their interests and passions.
The engagement strategy we have for each market is different because you have to see it from a local cultural context where you compete with other content in the user’s social media stream, the mindset in which you reach them is different. We have people in-market who not only work with us to make sure that the content is culturally relevant for that specific market but who also have a really deep understanding of how social media is used, what the trends are etc. for the specific country.
Q: What content works?
A: The question is finding what works best. Do you want to have high engagement, or do you want to drive people down to a booking funnel? Aligning the content that we show with the overall strategy of the product that is actually relevant is most important. We want to use content that show people experiences where there are hotels around, where they can do activities and so on. So, it is a balance of using content you could show to get high engagement with content where people can see themselves going there. We try to align with the content pillars and topics that are related to bookable product and then, of course, we want the engagement from that as well.
Q: What content doesn’t work?
A: I think it is sometimes overlooked that the content landscape changes quite a bit. The social platforms constantly compete for the attention of users, they try new features, prioritize different things and then copy each other when they see that something is working. An example of this is the impact that TikTok currently has on platforms like Instagram and YouTube. We want to pay attention to those trends and then adjust our content accordingly. And of course we stay away from content that can be perceived as political, content that might be culturally relevant for a US audience but would be insensitive in international markets etc.
Q: How does Sparkloft Media stay on top of the ever-evolving social media world?
A: We have an advantage of having a team of 50 people who spend a lot of time thinking about not only social media but also overall consumer trends, how consumers are behaving and about technical platform trends. We also have a wide set of clients that operate differently because of organizational reasons or because of where they are, so we can learn from them as well and use that information to gain deeper insights.
Q: What would you say to a destination that hasn’t embarked on a dedicated social media person?
A: One of the challenges in doing social media well is that it is changing constantly. When you look at out-of-home advertising for billboards, it hasn’t changed much in thirty years. But if you look at Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, they are different now than they were 6 months ago. In my opinion, marketers do not spend enough time trying to understand the platforms and the strategy behind them because it is changing. For example, the rise of TikTok is significantly impacting how people behave on Instagram, so even if you are in a state that is not being active on TikTok, you now need to do Instagram differently because consumers are going on it differently. No longer is it the over-filtered, beautiful picture of the beach that is perfect to induce this FOMO feeling. TikTok is much more raw; people are being more vulnerable and real (that includes brands) and now this is coming to Instagram. As a result, now you need to adapt your strategy to be effective. So marketers really need to update what they do on a regular basis and it is hard to do that if you do not have resources for a social media expert. But there are ways to mitigate this. For example, for some clients we provide ongoing insights on trends and platform changes, but they produce the content themselves.
Q: Vertical video. How are destinations adapting to the platforms prioritizing vertical video and the fact that it is being used more than ever before?
A: The issue is that most DMOs don’t have vertical video in their digital asset management systems. It's mostly horizontal. And now to be on trend, at least some of it has to be raw and off the cuff and not overproduced. So that is one of the challenges. One way around it is to frame videos differently during the filming so you can edit the videos later for vertical and horizontal use. It is more complicated and requires prior planning (and maybe storyboarding) with the social platforms in mind. But vertical video is now so important there is no way around it.
Q: What metrics do you share for ROI to stakeholders?
A: We look at reach (how many people see our content), engagement (how many share, like or comment) and if we have a link to another website, we measure clicks. I think it is important to cross reference that with the audience's targets because while we do want high engagement, it will not lead to visitors to the Travel South region if we do not target those interested in traveling.
Q: How do you make adjustments as you gather data?
A: We try to understand when engagement is changing. It helps to look at other accounts. It could be a platform change where a platform will just prioritize content in a different way. For example, a couple of years ago when video became more important on Facebook, you would get higher engagement if you posted a video. The platform basically incentivizes certain behavior from a content publisher. You discover this change, either through research or by watching other clients' accounts. Then you make adjustments to your content strategy accordingly. Content producers can get caught in the arms race between the platforms as they battle each other for viewers, and you have to shift accordingly.
Q: How do you go about creating inclusive and diverse messaging?
A: Two things really: one is when you look at the Sparkloft team overall, we are pretty diverse from an international perspective. We have people who are from or have lived in Germany, Brazil, Chile, Australia, Argentina, the Netherlands etc. This is really helpful as they usually still read news from those countries or have friends who post memes from those countries on social media. It provides really good perspective and understanding.
When we talk about inclusive and diverse messages from an international perspective, we not only try to represent the respective culture in the visual content and the copy we share, but we also think about how they travel. A good example is the Indian subcontinent (not a market we do social media in for Travel South). Travelers from this region often travel in multi-generational groups. So if we show a photo of a couple overlooking a sunset it will not resonate as much as they can not see themselves as easily in the photo - they want to see a bigger family. Having that understanding is key.