A recent article in the Daily Record detailed some of the ways in which New Jersey vacation destinations Atlantic City, Wildwood, and Ocean City have utilized social media to enhance and supplement the work of their tourism boards. The article also mentions less prominent tourism destinations that have also generated results by encouraging long-term engagement on social media.
The highlighted strategies, including photo-sharing, Instagram meetups, cross-promotion, and brand ambassadors indicate that these towns understand what should be clear to tourism boards across the country: that social media can be a powerful tool to inexpensively and effectively raise awareness about local travel destinations.
What’s true for New Jersey is true for every other region of the US, and certainly for the West Coast, where the busy tourism season is not limited to summer. The New Jersey success stories have tapped into the need to promote themselves year-round even if they only see full-scale results when the temperature rises. But destinations near Los Angeles and Beverly Hills have the potential to generate returns on their social media investment every month of the year.
Being in what may be the most image-conscious area of the country, West Coast destinations and local tourism boards ought to be well-versed in social media on their own. But if they are not, a good Los Angeles social media company is right at their fingertips, ready to exploit all of the current trends and emulate all of the recent, nationwide success stories in order to keep would-be travelers talking about the best spots in sunny California.
Whatever region you’re in, partnering with a local social media company is a sure-fire way to make the best use of both local tourism information and online marketing expertise. Obviously, we wouldn’t recommend that a tourism board go it alone, especially if they don’t have an established track record in social media marketing. But we will say that the best strategy of all is probably to pursue that social media expertise on your own, so as to supplement and better engage with the work of a local social media company.
The tourism industry as a whole is aware of the importance of social media, so there are a number of ways to do this. Tourism Currents is one provider of online learning that is specifically dedicated to teaching communities and businesses in the hospitality industry how to best utilize social media.
In addition, there is an annual Social Media Tourism Symposium held every year to teach exactly the same know-how to destination marketing professionals in the United States, Europe, and Australia. This month’s event, scheduled for October 14 in Los Angeles, is sure to be a further source of anecdotal success stories, as evidenced by the 2014 report prepared by travel industry website Skift, which highlighted the strategies employed by destinations from Los Angeles, to Michigan, to Queensland, complete with the results that were generated by that thoughtful focus on social media marketing.
