Social Media for Travel Writers

Liz Borod Wright

Editor/Publisher of Travelogged.com

Social Media Coach and Consultant

Faculty Adjunct at Columbia Journalism School

Are YOU using Social Media?

More than just entertainment, social media can help YOU…

• Get more readers for your Stories

• Develop your personal brand

• Keep up with travel industry news

• Make new contacts

• Strengthen ties with existing contacts

All of which can lead to new assignments & trips!

:the best place to “meet” people on social media

Anatomy of a Tweet• 140 characters including @mention, #hashtag

photo or link. You can also retweet someone else’s tweet…

How to Meet People on Twitter

• Seek them out through searches (hashtags, etc.) and then follow them

• Respond to tweets about travel

• Retweet their tweets – retweeting is the currency of twitter

• Use hashtags to make your own tweets more discoverable

• Participate in Twitter Chats: #TTOT, #TWChats, #TourismChat, #TNI, #EXPchat

Why Aren’t People Following You Back?

• You don’t have a profile photo (and show you care – add that cover photo!) and bio

• Your tweets are protected

• You tweet too little

• You tweet too much

• You mostly broadcast but rarely engage

Twitter as a News Source

• Not comfortable with tweeting? You can still benefit from Twitter…

• Follow hotels, tourism boards, travel publications, travel writers, bloggers and publicists

• You’ll craft your own breaking news feed!

Scheduling Tweets• Once you start tweeting, you need to keep up the

momentum

• Too busy to tweet on the road? Planning ahead is easy with HootSuite!

Shorten Links Using Bit.ly• Shorten on Bitly and us the new link

onTwitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to track your metrics across platforms

For Travel Writers

• Facebook can help you professionally… and hurt you professionally. Be your OWN privacy filter and don’t post anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with the whole world seeing. And don’t be afraid to untag yourself from any dubious photos.

• Don’t be shy to post your own stories!

• And now, pages vs. profiles…

My Facebook Business Page

My Facebook Profile

Facebook Pages vs. Profiles

• Profiles are for people

• Pages are for people, businesses, products and organizations

• Profiles are limited to 5,000 friends

• Pages can have an unlimited amount of fans “like” them

• Profiles have privacy settings

• Pages are visible to everyone, whether you “like” them or not

And More… Facebook Pages vs. Profiles

• Profiles can accept friend requests from other profiles

• Anyone can “like” a page – both profiles and pages

• Profiles can write on the walls of other profiles and pages, and comment on their status and links

• Pages can only write on the walls of other pages and comment on pages’ status and links

Should you have a Facebook Page?

• YES, if you are a business or organization.

• MAYBE, if you are an individual writer.Some are opting to use the Follow feature (used to be called Subscribe) for personal profiles.

Wait a Minute, What is Follow?

What You Need to Know About Follow

• Until last year, all Facebook profile relationships were reciprocal. The only option was to friend each other.

• Enter Follow, which lets you follow someone and see their Public updates. As with Twitter, you don’t need a reciprocal relationship.

• It’s up to you whether you want to enable the Follow feature or not.

Why Writers Might Prefer “Follow”

Over a Facebook Business Page

• It appears to be easier to attract subscribers than Facebook fans.

• If your Facebook page would just be you and have the same name, it might make sense to just keep it to one profile.

• Time Management: you only have to maintain one thing (your profile) as opposed to your profile and your page.

Why Writers Might Prefer to Have a

Facebook Business Page…

• You don’t have to change the way you’ve been using your Facebook profile. Just post status updates, photos, etc. for your friends without worrying about playing to a larger, public audience of Followers.

• Having Facebook fans provides another metric to describe your reach to publicists (e.g. my website gets 10K views a month, but I also have 2K Facebook fans.)

And of course, you can always do both:

Enable Follow and actively post things with them in mind AND maintain a Facebook business page.

Then you have an even greater reach!

Facebook Pages have Insights – these valuable, detailed analytics are only available for pages, not for profiles even if you’ve enabled the Follow feature.

I’ll admit that I’ve been slacking on my page and these stats certainly aren’t the best. However, the average reach of pages (without ads) is only 16%. Facebook has recently introduced Reach Generator, a pay service to boost reach up to 75%.

Looking to

increase your

reach?

Facebook

wants you to

pay to “boost.”

Create an Ad Instead of Choosing Boost• Boost is

quick and easy, but you’ll have better results if you create an ad because you can target your audience. Facebook has an amazing capacity for targeting.

For Profiles,

“Promote” is the

equivalent of

Boost

But there’s no way to target your promotion of a Profile post geographically, etc., like there is for Pages.

For Travel Writers

: Why It’s Good for Travel Writers

• Instagram is a natural home for all of those iPhone photos you snap on your trips – a more self-selecting audience than Facebook

• An excellent outlet for photos that won’t make publication elsewhere (great if you’re on press trips, press events or just want to share personal photos)

• There’s a lot of engagement on Instagram – lots of liking and commenting

• Get visual industry news: follow hotels, tourism organizations and other writers to see what’s new

• Growing your audience can be slow, despite the good engagement with your existing followers

• Limited platform with poor search function – really all about the hashtags. So research your hashtags, become aware of campagins, just like you should for Twitter

• Speaking of Twitter, they don’t play nicely together and the photos don’t show up in the newsfeed. So don’t share directly to Twitter

• No hotlinks – if you put in a link to a story in the caption, it won’t work.

: Why It’s Not So Good (But Still Worth It)

But if you post great travel photos, it can still be a good extension of your brand and good place to connect!

Google+: Google’s Attempt to

Compete With FacebookDoes this Google+ post remind you of

anything?

3 Reasons Why Google Thought

Everyone Would Want to Use Google+

1. Superior privacy settings to

Facebook: The Circles

2. Streamlined interface, more intuitive design. Here’s

my profile:

3. We’re all already using Gmail for

email and chat, and of course

Googling everything we want to

know…

Here’s the 1 Reason Why You

Should Be Using Google+ To Improve Your Ranking in Google’s Search

Results: The new “personal results,” which show up on top when you’re logged in.

And also, see how the Google+ results are

integrated within the regular search results.

And Look at the Images Section

Looking for Social Media help?

• FOR INDIVIDUALS: Social Media 101 to Advanced Social Media Practices

• Setting up new social media platforms or giving feedback on existing accounts

• Personal/professional branding through social media

• Social media time management

• FOR COMPANIES: Short-term & long term strategy, content development & management, campaigns

• Past clients include: Austria Tourist Office, Perrier Jouet, Committee of 100, Healthier NYC and Dataminr

Liz Borod Wright

• Social Media Coach and Consultant

• NYC-based but can work remotely

• lizborod@gmail.com

• 917-601-1054

• Or just tweet at me @Travelogged!