12 Best Tools for Tour Operators to Boost Their Social Media Marketing

Social media has grown fast as a preferred communication channel since the popularization of the internet. In 2020 there were 3.8 billion active social media users.

Because of that, travel companies, including tour operators, spend a great amount of time between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms convincing users to book with them.

In such a competitive battleground you need tools that help your business to stand out from the competition, and in addition, save time and money.

Among the countless number of tools in the market, we have listed 12 that every tour operator should consider using to boost their social media marketing efforts.

1. Animoto

This easy-to-use drag and drop video maker will help you create engaging videos for your audience in a matter of minutes.

Animoto has a library of templates, themes and stock music that will make your content look professional. It also makes it easy to add subtitles, which is vital for sound-off autoplay videos.

Videos are one of the most popular formats in social media, and as a tour operator, it is a great tool to inspire travelers by showcasing tours, experiences and destinations.

Investment: You can start for free and upgrade for a professional plan if you want to take your videos to the next level.

2. Facebook Audience Insights

That is a powerful tool to know better your audience. With it, you can have an overview of their interests, behavior and demographics.

By knowing this data, you can create more personalized content to share on social media and also develop tours and experiences that are more appealing to your potential customers.

Investment: This tool is connected with your Facebook Business Manager, and it’s free to use.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one tool for social media management. Use it to publish and schedule posts, create custom workflows, and the most important, measure the performance indicators like engagement and clicks.

It will help you understand which type of content and topic most call the attention of your audience, and also improve the quality of content you create.

Investment: It has a 30-day-free trial, after that, you are charged $149 per user, per month.

4. WordSwag

Create high-quality and visually appealing graphics for your social media with WordSwag. It simply turns ideas, quotes, or phrases, into attractive graphics ready to be shared.

That is a great tool to create inspirational content out of your destination and products, just by mixing short texts with astonishing images.

Investment: It is a free to download mobile app.

5. Brand24

Use Brand24 to track the mentions for your brand on social media. That is a great way to find and answer good and bad feedback outside of your pages and to monitor your competitors.

You can also use it to find customers and ask them to share reviews on platforms like TripAdvisor, for example.

Investment: Plans starting from $49 per month.

6. Qwaya

Qwaya will help you create ads for Facebook and Instagram that will increase your conversions. The tool offers you different options for automation and A/B testing in addition to valuable data.

The price of this tool may be expensive for small tour operators, but if you spend a lot with Facebook Ads, give it a try. Maybe the amount you will save by optimizing your ads will pay back its monthly fee.

Investment: You can do a free trial before paying $149 per month.

7. Canva

This is one of the most popular design tools to create professional look graphic materials for non-designers. It offers all you need to create visual content for your social media and marketing campaigns.

Canva has a huge library with more than 250.000 templates and hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics ready for you to use.

Investment: You can create amazing graphics with Canva’s free plan.

8. Instagram Story DMs

‘Ask Me A Question’ is an Instagram feature that is often underused by tour operators. It is a truly golden mine for valuable data and insights.

Use it to speak directly with your audience and get honest and instant feedback regarding your experiences, ideas for new products, or just to create a personal connection with your followers.

Investment: It’s free to use, all you need in an Instagram account.

9. InShot

This mobile app turns your smartphone into a powerful video editing tool. Use InShot to quickly and easily create creative videos in various size formats.

Tour operators can use it to edit user-generated videos filmed during a tour to create engaging pieces of content to share on social media.

Investment: You can download this app for free.

10. Buffer

Do you feel that you are spending a lot of time on social media only posting content? If your answer is yes, I have the right solution for you.

Use Buffer to easily schedule your posts across different social networks. Take one day a week to plan your content and let this tool deliver it at the right time and place for your audience.

Investment: You can sign up for a free Buffer plan to use the scheduling tool. In order to use the analytics feature, plans start from $35 per month.

11. Repost

This is another great tool for tour operators that work with user-generated content. Repost allows you to share third-party content on Instagram while giving credit for it.

By doing that you build trust among your audience that the experience you are offering is legit.

Sharing your audience content also creates a positive emotional experience, builds consumer loyalty, secures customer retention and saves you some time with ready-to-use content.

Investment: This is a free app you can download on your mobile.

12. Your Blog

This is not exactly a social media tool, but it has a very important role in any content marketing strategy.

Fill your blog with quality content according to your business goals, and share it across all your social media.

You can publish guides for your destination, tips of hidden gems, share future events, talk about cultural differences and other topics.

That will generate organic traffic to your website, which can be converted into direct sales if you have a booking button installed.

Investment: You can create your blog for free using WordPress.

Conclusion

Planning and implementing a marketing strategy is time-consuming. If you are a tour operator, I bet that you rather spend your time providing experiences than planning marketing campaigns.

I hope that this list will assist you in your social media efforts and give you the so needed time to take care of other aspects of your business.

Do you need more advice on digital marketing?

Don’t hesitate to download our comprehensive guide to online marketing in tourism. It will teach you all you need to stand out when tourism rebounds.

Originally published at https://www.orioly.com on February 16, 2021.