How do you measure the impact of your social media storytelling on your tourism goals and objectives?

Measuring social media success is no small feat. It's important to understand that the best way to do so is to keep a finger on the pulse of performance before, during, and after campaigns. Aligning KPIs and SMART goals before the start of a campaign and knowing what you will benchmark them against is key.

When my agency worked for many years on state-wide tourism, our objective was always awareness that the location or event existed and then the goal was always attendance and ticket sales. Make sure to be transparent and clear, about goals. Things like "We want them to love our town!" isn't a goal because sentiment cannot be measured. And if you survey "Do you like me?", and people take the survey, people do not often tell the truth. You can always measure attendance, awareness and ticket sales. Ensure that you get the goals and objectives in writing and everyone at the decision-making agrees on them.

Sometime I am asked by executives so what would you do to market X, some are ususally disappointed when I say well it depends on your goals and objectives. This is the foundation before you can identify the key metrics that will determine mif your campaign is successful or not. The ojectives must be specific, measurable, aatainable, realistic and time bound.

Ensure your metrics have a number attached and can be achieved. "It went viral" is not a metric. And viral to one brand is a failure to another. Start small, increase as time goes on, celebrate and make note of every single met goal. And when you exceed a metric, throw a party and remember to invite the client!

Never underestimate the value of those talking about you on social media. Consider making one (or more) of your KPIs related to the measurement of those using your tourism brand's hashtag, tagging your brand, or using a relevant geolocation.

If you are new to social media marketing, do some research to identify median performance metrics across platforms for your industry. Videos vs photos on FB, IG, X, TikTok come with their own median performance levels by indsutry. For example engagements per post and abandonment rates per industry etc. Do some research to ensure you are choosing the right metrics based on your objectives.

For tourism, the number one tool in my world is a camera phone and the use of hashtags to say "I was here!" If you can design a campaign that encouraged photos and comments and stories on various channels, you are winning. Also, Google reviews work! Part of any tourism tool is to get customer reviews. And take the good with the bad while you are at it. Because a bad review gives you practice on how to communicate in crisis as a brand or business owner and also, attention is attention. You know the saying: Bad press is still press. Again, customer reviews, comments, photos and hashtag campaigns are my three top tools for tourism work. Oh, one more: Google local search strategy. But that's another entire thread.

I totally encourage the use of scheduling/calendar tools to ensure that you your brand consistently plays to AIDA- awareness,interest, desire and ultimately action (to purchase and/or recommed)!

In my experience, an enterprise tool like Sprout Social will win this for you every time. I won't run any social campaign without it. Don't waste time, use this tool and it will be magic.

Something that is useful to me is to look for the active advertising that the companies that handle the message I aspire to have, or in that case, a message similar to the one I am in. In this way, I can see what type of advertising, Photography's videos, captions, are working for them .

Year-over-year measurement is important for tourism brands, because so much of the work we do is related to brand awareness. A visitor to a region could have been inspired by a social media post that they saw 6 months, or even a year or more, prior. Track growth and KPIs annually for more effectiveness.

Before this point on compare and benchmark, I wish more was said about how important it is to take the time to research and develop the story arc and then use alternative story arcs in A/B testing to see what works/performs better.

Sometimes you just have to go for it and throw measurement out the window. Don't get stuck in committees fighting for your ego. If that doesn't work, create a vehicle that can measure something, even if it's a old school tech system that can measure how many people literally walk across a threshold. Like they do at Disney.

You know your destination. If your social media strategy isn't working for you, go back to basics and think about what you know makes your destination stand out.

In our many decades of creating tourism campaigns, social media is just one component of a successful experience and outcome. Traditional billboard advertising, Internet radio, podcast appearances, email marketing including email promotion, mobile advertising, Midjourney experiments, Stories/TikTok, personal essays/blogs all must be deployed. Depending on the budget, the determination of the decision makers, and if there is an innovation and trust mindset on the team, tourism campaigns can be wildly successful by creating content that taps into the latent desires of people that have been trapped in a virtual stuck-at-home-and-broke-as-hell nightmare since 2020.

It's important to display our message where the target audience can see it. That is, if we're selling a paradise getaway, we should be able to display content that makes people who see it want to be there. After that we should be able to rank on the platforms they use regularly. Finally, content creators are always a good tool, not because of the numbers but because they can show the real experience to potential consumers.