Social media is a great way to grow awareness, generate interest and increase sales. Chose the right platform(s) for your operation by thinking about who you want to reach and then try our top tips for sharing great social media content.
Your Operator Marketing Pack contains a range of graphics and resources (sized for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn) to help you get started, and we’ll update these regularly so you always have fresh content to share.
Matt Lawrence, Head of Marketing at Passenger shares his top 10 tips for kick-starting your social media marketing.
1. Start interacting
Probably the most important tip! Engage with your audience - answer questions, respond to posts (positive or negative!) and thank users for good feedback by sharing or liking it. You can also start conversations with your audience by asking them questions and then responding or adding to that conversation.
2. Get your team involved!
Encourage staff and drivers to help! They can take and share photos, film short videos, or give you ideas for posts and updates. Showing the real people and personalities in your team helps build transparency and grow trust.
3. Be consistent
Remember, your followers are likely following hundreds or even thousands of other people. By publishing new content regularly, you have more of a chance of being seen. Try setting yourself a posting schedule or goal, and when your posts start to gain traction you can increase your frequency.
4. Focus your messaging
Think about your audience demographic and tailor your content to have the most impact. If you run services in a busy tourist area, you might want to target new customers before school holidays, or if you offer passes to local colleges, you can share that information prior to term times.
5. Try sharing video content
A Tweet with a video is 6x more likely to be retweeted than one with a photo or just text. Facebook also gives higher priority to people posting video content, so by using videos, you’ll get more exposure.
6. Think community!
Within large social networks, smaller communities are increasingly important. Participating in communities like Facebook Groups will help you connect with your audience. You can also start your own group for a great opportunity to start conversations around your brand.
7. Stay relevant
Participate in trends and conversations that matter to your audience and that you can add actual value to the discussion on - don’t just jump on everything that’s trending and hope for the best! Follow others in the industry to pick up on new topics and get involved.
8. Try paid or promoted posts
Facebook Ad Accounts let you target people by demographics, putting your ads in front of the people most likely to be interested. On Twitter, paid advertising can be an effective way to get your content seen via Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.
9. Stay positive
Don’t worry if you don’t become a viral sensation overnight! It can take a while to build up an audience and that’s fine. As long as you are sharing content that offers value to your followers - useful information, fun videos or important updates - you're doing it right.
10. Test, test, test!
Learning where your audience is, what time they are online and what kind of posts they find useful and enjoy can take time, so try different things to find out what works best for you and your audience.
All social media platforms have built-in analytics dashboards that give you information about your posts’ performance, so you can see what works best and find out about your audience, demographics and location. Use this insight to keep refining your posts.
Got any questions at all? Contact the Passenger team - we are happy to help or advise on how best to share myTrip far and wide (and don’t forget to give @myTripBus and @Passengerteam a follow on Twitter!)