#23: From Travelers to Brand Advocates: How Booking.com Amplifies UGC on Social Media

Hello and welcome to a new season of The Social Dot newsletter. I’m Andreea, your local social media expert, and together we shall connect the dots of the social media world. We’ll be deconstructing viral trends & campaigns, and getting strategic insights to help your brand thrive on social.

Long before the emergence of viral posts, paid ads, influencer marketing and hashtag campaigns, social media was a much simpler place where everyone could share snippets of their everyday lives - whether that was in the shape of a text, photo or video.?

The early days of Instagram were filled with square pictures of food, selfies and travel destinations. Almost 14 years later, regular people and content creators alike still love to share pictures (as well as videos, Reels, carousels etc) of the places they travel to.

Well aware of this fact, Booking.com decided to launch a social media campaign that encourages people to share their travel content and tag their posts using the #TravelGenius hashtag.

?? What happened?

The premise of Booking’s campaign is simple: get people to share posts using their branded hashtag, achieve lots of reach, engagement and UGC. They took a step further and promised to reward a few lucky users with $500 to book another trip using their platform.?

What better incentive to share content on social media than a money reward?

Looking at Socialinsider data, I can see that the #travelgenius hashtag campaign has garnered quite a lot of attention since the start of the year. Most posts come from creators - that is, Instagram users with a Creator account, who usually have a sizeable audience.

Although they mostly leave this campaign in the hands of their social media followers, Booking.com has also posted a few times since the beginning of the year using the hashtag, to boost the campaign visibility and give a lucky follower shoutout (and the promised monetary prize!)

?? My takeaways

Like many other brands with a social media presence, Booking.com has realized the importance of engaging your audience and leveraging UGC to boost brand awareness, build a dedicated community and transform regular users into brand advocates.

People will probably always love sharing content showcasing their travel destinations, and it would be a pity not to capitalize on this opportunity as an online travel agency.?

To me, this signals that Booking knows what they’re doing on social media and it gives me hope that they will continue to tweak their strategy to match their audience’s expectations.

?? Food for thought

Your turn now.

Do you think UGC (user-generated-content) is a sustainable way to boost your brand awareness and engagement on social media??

Anyway, this is me signing off. I’ll see you next week, in the next issue of The Social Dot, a newsletter powered by Socialinsider, and written by me, Andreea, your local social media expert.

If you have any viral trends and campaigns you’d want me to deconstruct next, don’t hesitate to send them my way.