Imagup General Magazine 2024
Whether it is a business travel trip, romantic getaway, solo trip, or a family holiday, travelers find it really interesting to share their holiday highlights on social media. And when we talk about the most popular social media tool to share amazing vacation pictures, Instagram is indeed on top of the list.
With more than 300 million active users, it’s obvious the photo-sharing app has grown tremendously over the years. On average, about 70 million photos are being posted daily on the platform. Experts believed Instagram has revolutionized travel marketing. In fact, a recent survey by Expedia shows that above anything else, millennials think of Instagram photos first when booking holidays. One podcast by Facebook also confirmed that 67% of travel enthusiasts use Instagram to find inspiration for new journeys and 61% use it to find interesting things to do while on their trips.
Whether you’re just a small-scale travel agent or a big player in the industry, Instagram is one effective tool you should have in your arsenal. So how do you do it – how do you use the platform to your full advantage? Let’s see the top 9 effective ways you can promote your travel agency on Instagram.
How to Promote Your Travel Agency on Instagram
1. Take quality, eye-catching photos and videos
This is no doubt the core ingredient for any brand or business that wants to succeed on Instagram. The platform is primarily known for sharing photos and videos, so if you are going to promote your travel agency there, you need to be prepared to post highly visual content.
You want to inspire people to travel, so it’s important to be creative with your photos. Inspire travelers by letting them see a completely different perspective of travel. This will go a long way to help create brand awareness for your agency. You can hire a professional to take high-resolution images that get your audience to pack their suitcases right away.
However, if you don’t have your own photos, that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate your message with other people’s photos. Use free sites like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay to get quality photos you can post on Instagram. You are also allowed to use these types of photos without having to give any credit.
Posting aesthetically pleasing photos and videos on Instagram will make it a million times easier to connect with your audience and promote your brand without stress.
2. Use the right hashtags
Instagram is a space littered with lots of businesses, and one can easily get drowned if one refuses to understand how hashtags work. Hashtags work as an effective medium of placing your agency in an area of the community you would love to be in. Consider it as a smart way of placing your business in the circle of people who are interested.
Use relevant hashtags on your posts. You can create hashtags for destinations you are looking to sell or promote. And when you have clients that have booked their vacations through you, ask them to also use those hashtags when sharing their special moments. This will increase your brand awareness, promote your agency, and keep getting you popular on the platform.
3. Partner with Travel Bloggers/ Influencers
Influencers, by nature, have a huge fanbase and can be of great help in helping you get the word out and create a viral effect. People tend to have more trust in content that comes from travel enthusiasts and relatable personalities, so collaborating with travel influencers is a smart way to reach out to genuine followers.
Partnering with a travel blogger or influencer will also help you save big bucks which you would have spent on sending your employee or a freelancer on expensive foreign trips. These influencers can get you locally sourced content which will also earn more trust from your audience because they believe they have originated from a reliable source. This kind of content appeals to and resonates better with your audience.
However, don’t neglect your customers too. They are potential influencers you should leverage for your growth. Request that they post about their vacation on their walls and tag you.
4. Post varied content consistently
Regularly posting on your Instagram wall is very important when looking to promote your travel agency there. You need to keep your audience engaged at all times. But remember that your content also needs to be diverse. Every pretty image of seascapes and mountains can become boring after a while. So remember to vary your content type. You can, once in a while, include inspirational posts or other content that resonates with your values and brand identity.
To make this easier for you, you can utilize a tool like PosterMyWall that allows you to create eye-catching content from pre-made templates. You only need to choose a template and customize it to your needs. Additionally, you can devise a social media calendar that allows you to schedule your posts for posting on Instagram. Posting often on the platform increases your visibility and lets your audience know that you have a lot in store for them.
5. Take advantage of Instagram stories
While you can promote incredibly polished content through your regular Instagram post, ‘Instagram stories’ is where the real aesthetic thing happens. Stories are no doubt one of the most loved features on the platform and it provides you with the opportunity to achieve great brand awareness while also letting your audience have a better feel of what it is you are offering.
Take advantage of this feature to post an interactive short video clip of your travel destination. You can also get a credible influencer to stream real-time holiday adventures or sight-seeing trips you think your audience will like.
6. Create an Instagram Take Over campaign
A Take Over campaign is when you allow an influencer, blogger, or client to take over your Instagram account for a stipulated amount of time. During this time, he or she will be sharing different posts that focus solely on your travel offering.
This is often done to allow such a person to share their experience of your travel offering on your Instagram page. It is always a wonderful tool to generate interest and promote your travel business.
7. Run picture contests
When it comes to putting in for a contest, people do it with so much energy. Why not take advantage of that and let people share their vacation pictures in a picture contest? Just think of a creative hashtag for the contest and let them submit their lovely pictures with the hashtag. It will make a great way to promote your travel agency.
8. Advertise on Instagram
Well, if you have enough cash to splash, this will make a great method to promote your business to the right set of audience. You can either advertise using your Instagram posts or stories – it will appear appropriately on the audience’s books too. This proved to be a quick and effective way to earn yourself a reputable place in the Instagram community.
9. Geo-target your posts
This is another method worth mentioning. In addition to using relevant hashtags on your posts, consider using geo-location for the locations you are looking to target. When people who show interest in such particular places show up, your post will become readily available to them.
Remember that most people rely on Instagram for travel inspirations and destinations. Adding location to your images will make a lot of sense to your travel agency – it is a smart way of putting your company on the map for people to easily find.
Final Note
The travel niche is one of the most profitable niches on Instagram as modern customers use the platform to find new destinations and draw inspiration for vacations. As a travel agent, you need to position your company well to enjoy the benefits the platform offers travel agencies. These tips above will surely come in handy to help you promote your travel agency on Instagram. So read them again and start implementing them right away!
