The 5 Must Know Social Media Tips for Travel Agencies:

You have heard all about social media, you know what a tweet is, you know that a blog is not some Star Trek character, but where do you start?

Here are 5 hints and tips that will help Travel Agencies start out using social media. They are not all tactical suggestions, but also some strategic suggestions:

Social  Media is a 2 way street -

no matter which sites / technology you use it is always going to be about openness, transparency and relationships. If you are constantly sending messages out there, and not engaging in conversations, then you are missing the point.

Know Yourself -

The Travel Industry is massive, if you don’t focus on your specialty then you have little hope online. There are so many different niches in the travel industry that you need to spend energy identifying your ideal customer. This will allow you to focus.

Hang Out -

Once you know who you are looking for, you need to find out where your target client hangs out online. There are hundreds of social media communities, groups (Facebook shows over 500 groups when you search ‘Travel’) and many amazing blogs. Start by reading what everyone else is talking about, and see if they are similar to your target group, and then start to join the conversation. A good way to start is look for people with travel related questions, and then help them out.

Tweet-le Dee, Tweet-le Dum -

Twitter is growing in popularity very quickly, and businesses are able to use this channel to drive business and gain new customers. For those that are not familiar with twitter, here is a good getting started resource, and here is a list of travel companies already on Twitter: http://bit.ly/DdvY. It is a good idea to see how others are using the service before you dive in. On that note, Tweetdeck is a great, free tool for helping you organize your Twitter experience.

The Blog Fog -

Some people think that they don’t have time to blog, and if they think it is a good idea, they fear that they don’t know what to write about. The great thing is that once you get started, it just gets easier and easier to write, and if you are writing about something you are passionate about, then it is even easier. If you use your website to generate business, then blogging is the cheapest and most effective way to generate traffic to your site. It may take some time, but it is well worth it. Some hints are:

Use your own domain:

Your blog should be similar to http://yoursite.com/blog

If you use a 3^rd party blog that doesn’t use your web URL, you loose all of the SEO benefits. (Read bad)

Use a designer to get set up

If you are not comfortable with HTML and design, you should skip the hassle and pay a professional to setup a blog for you.

These 5 suggestions will give you some direction on how to get started. Let me know if you have any other hints for travel businesses in the comments.