There’s a general misconception among new influencers and those sitting on the sidelines that being a travel influencer is easy and lucrative. It’s hard to imagine the amount of work that goes into content, whether it’s a long blog article about a new city or a picture of your view from a plane window. While other folks enjoy their visits to hotels, savoring every moment while eating pancakes on fluffy white beds, your job as a travel influencer is never done.
Depending on the typical scope of your content, your followers want to see and hear everything about everything. So, for that reason, you need to carefully plan your stay and what you’ll be posting, especially if you want to maximize your social media engagement. This article will help guide you through the process and ensure that you don’t do or forget anything that could cost you a couple of followers on any of your social media platforms.
Choosing the right content
The most important aspect of being an influencer and gaining the most traction from what you post is the content that you choose. There are many trends that you need to keep up with and it takes a lot of work to choose the right pictures and videos to post. Not to mention the editing that needs to be done before you can hit that Upload button.
It’s important to give your followers the content that they want to see rather than choosing what the masses are going with. Here are some content ideas for each of the largest social media platforms, from TikTok to Pinterest.
TikTok
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Content on TikTok is all about short videos with trending music that’ll keep your audience’s attention for longer and lure them to your account for more. Here are some ideas that you can try out when documenting your hotel stay on TikTok:
A Day in the Life
Many TikTok users want to see what you get up to at the hotel, so if you’ll be staying in and making use of the amenities, you can document your entire day. Start with your morning routine in the gorgeous full-size hotel mirror, have a post-worthy lunch at the restaurant, and relax in the sparkly pool.
A mini tour
Once again, the users want to see what the hotel has to offer. So, take your followers on a mini tour through the hotel by recording everything as you walk from the lobby to your room and back. Be sure to get all the amenities, from the fitness center or gym to the spa and pools.
Trending challenges
One of the best ways to gain likes, comments, follows, and shares is by taking on trending challenges. Choose a spot that showcases the hotel’s beauty or best amenities and take on that dance challenge that you’ve been wanting to do for a while. Then, once you’ve lined up a couple of users who want to see more of the hotel, start focusing on content about your stay.
With Instagram, you have a lot more creative freedom as you can choose between stories, reels, videos, and pictures. With this platform, it’s all about aesthetics, and hashtags and professional images are everything (topped with a great caption, of course). Here are some content ideas to try out when documenting your hotel stay on Instagram:
Eye-catching photos
The key to a successful Instagram profile is high-quality photos that look as professional as it gets. Not only will users scroll past blurry pictures, but it will also be detrimental to your reach. The algorithm will immediately pick it up and send you right to the bottom. Use a good quality camera or one of the newer smartphone models and editing software to ensure that your pictures get optimal engagement and interaction from users.
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You can share pictures of the following to showcase the hotel:
- The hotel from the outside
- Your hotel room and/or bathroom
- The view from your window
- The lobby (if it’s Insta-worthy)
- The restaurant and its food
- Your room service order
Interactive stories
What better way to have followers interact with your profile than by uploading interactive stories? Instead of a normal picture of the restaurant menu, you could choose three meals that you feel like and upload a poll. You’d be surprised to see how much interaction you could get if users feel that they have a say in something you do.
High-quality videos
You can use the same videos that you would use on TikTok, granted that they were taken with a good-quality camera and edited to perfection. A Day in the Life and mini-tour videos do just as well on Instagram, but a video of the waves crashing together from your window or hotel guests chatting away over a cup of coffee at the restaurant would be a much bigger hit on this platform.
While Facebook may not be as popular as it used to be, especially among the youth, it is still one of the biggest social media platforms out there. You can let your creative spirit run wild if you’re documenting your stay on Facebook, as there are so many ways to express yourself, from polls to live videos to reels to pictures. Here are some hotel content ideas for your Facebook page:
Go live
The best thing about going live is that you can show the hotel to your followers in real-time. They’ll be notified as soon as you are live and you can interact with them the moment they start interacting with you. A simple livestream in your hotel room, talking about everything the hotel has to offer can work wonders, or you can take them on an interactive tour.
Trendy reels
Trends are all the hype and you can never go wrong if you follow one or two of the most popular ones. However, jumping on the bandwagon too late can be harmful to your following, so be sure to act fast while the trend is still fresh. You can post some dance challenge reels or do a shopping haul in your hotel room.
A poll for everything
Remember what I said earlier about the amount of interaction and engagement that you can get from allowing your followers to help you make choices? One of Facebook’s best features is the ability to create polls for just about anything. Use this feature to your advantage and create polls for everything, from outfit options to choosing gifts for your friends in the souvenir shop.
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Post about your experience
Technically, any content that you put out into the world is considered posting about your experience. However, with Facebook, you can add long paragraphs about your stay at the hotel, preferably paired with a couple of good-quality pictures or an attractive video. You can write about your entire stay in a single post or use multiple posts to share the highlights of every day.
YouTube
This social media giant is considered the OG, and it’s the bean that the entire concept of influencing sprouted from. Today, there are influencers uploading vlogs in every niche that you could think of, from gaming to makeup tutorials and appliance reviews. Here are some content ideas about your stay at a hotel for your YouTube channel:
Tutorials
If you can think of anything that requires two or more steps, you can make a tutorial about it. You can do a YouTube video tutorial about getting blood stains out of your hotel sheets, or even how to ask for a refund from the hotel. Needless to say, the possibilities are endless and you could gain a lot of new followers if you use your stay to create many helpful tutorials.
Informational videos
The only difference between tutorials and informational videos is that you don’t have to show your followers how to do something step-by-step in the latter. These types of videos are also focused on learning but in a more informational, general knowledge way. You can upload informational videos on anything related to your stay, from explaining what the different sides of a do-not-disturb sign indicate to a guide on using the cutlery in the hotel’s 5-star restaurant.
A video summary of your stay
Short snippets of different moments and areas in the hotel can go a long way if you know how to edit them into a single video summary. Start on the first day and record everything noteworthy until the day you leave. In the end, you can make a longer video with captions and a voiceover for extra information.
The only social media platform where aesthetics is more important than content, other than Instagram, is Pinterest. Since the first thing your followers will see is the images that you post, they must be attractive and entertaining. Here are some ideas that you can use to document your stay on Pinterest:
High-quality, downloadable photos
The chances of getting shares and likes on this platform are much smaller compared to the chances of users downloading your pictures and using them elsewhere. Remember to watermark your pictures and try to take as many photographs of things that people would like to download, like your room view or a pretty cocktail next to a blue pool.
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A link to your site or blog
Link clicks are an important form of engagement and you can use Pinterest to lure users straight to your travel blog or website. Use high-quality videos and pictures of the hotel and add your link to it so when someone clicks on it, they are taken to a post on your blog.
Short videos
You can use the same short videos that you would upload on another social media platform to get engagement on your Pinterest account. Take and edit videos of beautiful areas or Pinterest-worthy moments and add a question or quote to the caption.
Choosing the right time to post
After you’ve chosen the type of content that you want to post on your travel accounts and channels, you need to come up with a schedule. The algorithms just love it when you are a loyal poster with a well-thought-out and strictly followed timeline, and frankly, so do your followers. Here’s when to post on each of the platforms:
TikTok
Once you are done building your TikTok brand, you need to keep your followers coming back for more. To achieve the maximum level of engagement, you should stay on top of trends and try not to get lost in the crowd. The best thing about TikTok is that you can post as frequently as you want (and at any time of the day) as long as your content stays relevant and attractive.
Remember that there are no rules when it comes to posting great content, but you should try to post 3-5 times per week on Instagram. So, to make things easier for yourself, you could stick to posting one day and then skipping a day, and so on…
To stay relevant and fresh in the minds of your followers on Facebook, you need to post more often. The best schedule to maintain on this social media platform is posting something at least once or twice every single day. This may sound hard to maintain but if you split your posts up and reuse and share old content, it is possible.
Youtube
YouTube videos take a lot more editing as they are typically much longer than other posts. So, needless to say, you won’t be able to post on this platform as often. For this reason, you can try and stick to posting at least once every week.
Posting on Pinterest isn’t as complicated and you don’t have to worry about sticking to a strict schedule. You can post at any time and as many times as you’d like, but it’s recommended to try to post something every day.
Things to consider when documenting your stay
Plan thoroughly
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As we’ve already established, travel influencing isn’t easy and it requires a lot of planning. Plan your stay ahead and know what you’ll be documenting so you don’t forget to take pictures and videos while you’re in the moment.
Create a thorough schedule for yourself, with enough time to enjoy your stay and get good value for your money. Remember to add time for editing and time for interacting with your followers to the schedule. Then, set reminders on your phone to keep you on track with your posting.
Get permission
The biggest mistake you could make is posting content without the necessary permission. If it hasn’t been arranged with the hotel beforehand, you should remember to let them know that you’ll be documenting your entire stay. Plus, if you’ll be adding pictures and videos of hotel guests or staff, you should get an OK from them before you post their faces on your social media accounts.
Don’t oversell
Getting in the hotel’s good books to get a free stay every now and then is great, but you should never oversell. Remember that some of your followers may visit the hotel because you recommended it, so don’t make it out to be heaven on earth if your stay was a disaster and you would never return.