Florida Social Media: Are you showing them what they want, need, or have to see?
Welcome to Florida! It’s more than Meth-heads eating faces and Alligator wrestling!
Florida! It’s everyone's dream destination for a quiet beach getaway and some nightlife they could never get in Ohio. Besides the weird lady that sits over near the poker machine. Everywhere has that lady in some sort of fashion but you’re in Florida!
They’re a few main things about marketing Florida tourism that everyone should know.
Sunsets
Look at this glorious thing! It’s like the Dad from A Christmas Story is narrating how his leg lamp looks while you stare into the Gulf of Mexico. If you have a shot of the sun right before the water, you’re good. If you have a shot right after or during, you’re good. If you have a shot after the sunset and the sky doesn't look exactly like a unicorn puked all over the skyline, not good. Facebook specific, brighter pictures always do much better for reach and the long lost “organic” and if you’re going to think about flipping it over to Instagram, you better have a pretty big following because that will soon be an algorithm anomaly. Plus, they are putting a lockdown on that API.
Drinks
This should never be a mind blower to anyone that has been to a beach in Florida or have seen some college girls on vacation. Whatever drink or beer you have, hold that thing up so the top of the drink, not the glass, is level with the water. Make sure there is plenty of sand that may or may not be in focus and you get some bonus points if there is someone jumping in the background. Not a regular jump, but an “I just stepped on a tarantula and I have no idea why my feet are touching my lower back and my arms are flailing akimbo” type of jump. You know the one.
Shells
When taking pictures of shells, get as close as you can to the ground where other people may think you are trying to destroy Ant Man with a magnifying glass. Nothing else has to be in focus at all except for that one shell you found while taking random beach shots as long as you have some snappy copy to lay on the image. “The sea, it always takes my breath away”. BAM! You Pinterest quote the shit out of that because do you know what people share, Pinterest quotes and now that sappy crap is on your image! Yeah!
Fishing
People love fishing! At the same time people really don’t like to see you pulling the fish up and ripping hooks out of living things while it flops to death all over the boat. How do we fix this? Just fishing. Drone shots from above are amazing and tons of charter Captains are using them. The struggle is a great image too because you still can’t see the fish being pulled into space, the same as us getting sucked into the outer atmosphere. The prize. This photo lets everyone know that YOU can catch a huge fish and make all your friends in Chicago jealous.
Florida is how you frame it. I’ve grown up here and it’s a vacation paradise I will never leave again. The trick is getting people here before they realize they have the same poker lady, fishing is just choking something so you can hold it up for a picture, and someone will always walk in front of you and ruin your sunset picture.
Side note: The poker lady is usually fun, I love fishing, and seeing a wild dolphin never gets old. I love Florida!
