Social Media Doesn’t Need To Take Time To Yield Sales

The JW Marriott in Palm Springs. Photo: Visitor7.

While some travel professionals eschew social media because “they don’t have the time,” Susan Black, a partner at consulting firm Black & Wright, says agents they can get big results without spending hours tapping away on their smartphones.

Speaking at The Affluent Traveler Collection 2016 Symposium, Black suggested that agents use clients to create content. As an example, she cited one agency that holds a weekly contest for customers who tag the agency in their vacation posts on social media. The client whose post gets the most “Likes” gets a $20 Starbucks gift card.

By tagging the agency, the posts go into the agency’s stream, and the agency gets free publicity in customers’ social media, reaching their network of friends and providing exposure to hundreds and thousands of prospects in a relevant way.

Black said the snapping and posting should start during the trip-planning phase. “Take a selfie with your customer looking at brochures,” she said.

Another way agents can tap into social media without doing much work is to partner with bloggers who have large followings. She said Mark Wiens, a food blogger with over 14 million followers, gets hundreds of enquiries every week about the places he visits “He doesn’t sell travel, he doesn’t work with a travel agent yet,” she said, encouraging agents to target bloggers who post about shared specialties and interests for potential partnerships.