The true impact of social strategy

This is a preview of the report Social Media Usage Approach in Travel

By: Madeline List

Introduction

Once consisting of simple sites used to post life updates to family, friends and acquaintances, social media is now a thriving ecosystem of users, brands and influencers. Almost 17 years after Facebook first introduced advertising, social media marketing and social commerce's star continues to rise. Marketers have flocked to social media to be where their customers are, fiercely strategizing to pull prospective and existing customers into their funnel.

These platforms may chart a clear path for products with shorter and simpler paths to purchase: Categories like apparel and beauty have found tremendous success with their social marketing. But for travel, the waters remain murky. On the one hand, social content has played a big role in helping grow tourism in certain places - sometimes to the point where it's directly linked with overtourism. But in many cases, organizations struggle to measure the true impact of their social strategies. Understanding is clouded by the length of conversion periods, circuitous digital routes to booking, and lack of accurate attribution methods for social channels.

This research cuts past the mores of social marketing and behavior built for other sectors and delves specifically into the way the platforms are used for travel. It explores the platforms being used for specific components of the trip and how travelers think about which account types and platforms offer the best information. It also explores social media behaviors in travel - what travelers are looking for when they follow branded accounts, "like" content, post their own experiences, or even give formal tags and mentions to travel brands. Through a better understanding of demographics that embrace social media and the psychology of why people engage with the medium, brands can better position themselves and improve the effectiveness of their social marketing.

Core Social Behaviors

A majority of travelers (57%) utilize social media for their trips. It's leveraged for a variety of purposes including finding ideas, general travel information, shopping, making a booking, or sharing content to their pages. This is especially common for younger age groups, with three in four travelers under 35 turning to social platforms for a recent trip. Incidence rate drops off among travelers 55+, with only 35% using social media.

Marketers often expect younger cohorts to use social media heavily and 55+ cohorts to be relatively light users. But they should also take note of the incidence rates among the middle cohort, travelers aged 35-54. Sixty-three percent of those travelers use a social platform in their trips for either planning or sharing. Social media has moved beyond the days of serving solely as a young person's travel tool. Marketers must consider audience tastes and representation when forming both content and broader social strategies, given that the majority of the middle age group uses social platforms for travel.

The most common way to involve social media in a trip is through sharing. Sixty-two percent of social users shared content to platforms (other than YouTube) on a recent trip (see image above). These posts include both permanent posts to the feed, or stories that disappear after 24 hours. For social media users, platforms are one of the most popular online resources used for finding trip ideas, second only to general search by a close margin. And the time spent engaging with travel content on social media does make an impact: 62% of social users made a specific trip decision as a result of viewing social media content.

Learn more in this week's preview article ?

Phocuswright’s Social Media Usage Approach in Travel is part of a comprehensive consumer research study delving into the specifics of how social media platforms are used for travel.

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