Deals publisher and inspiration brand Holiday Pirates has shared some of its social media secrets with the Travel Forward Virtual audience.
Nick Cooper, head of the UK, told the audience that “even though we only pay for less than 3% of our traffic, we can compete with the global giants because the other 97% is organic.”
Holiday Pirates operates in ten markets.
The Holiday Pirates team search for deals online, write about the offer and destination before sharing the content with its social media audience, comprising 10 million Facebook fans and one million Instagram followers.
Other organic and free traffic comes via its app, which has been downloaded 10 million times. It also gets 30 million visitors a month to its websites.
The strategy is quite simple, the execution is more difficult: “People do not join social media networks because they want to be sold to,” he said.
“They join because they want to be part of a community so it important that your brand has a personality.”
Many businesses claim to have a social media presence but, Cooper warned, “posting stuff isn’t a strategy, you have to have a strategy to get people to share what you post.”
There are three ways, he suggested, to help social media content achieve “virality”. Posts need to be entertaining and authentic, transparent and honest, with relevance and immediacy.
It was able to maintain engagement with its social media audiences during the pandemic by empathising with its audience via non-deals content, using a “we’re all in this together” tone of voice while also ensuring all communications are responsible.
It kept inspiration front-of-mind by finding and promoting deals for 2021. It also used the interactive video functions of Instagram Stories.
It has added 100,000 UK Facebook followers and more than 50,000 UK-based Instagrammers over the past six months.
Richard Gayle, Event Director, Travel Forward, said:
“Holiday Pirates is a real-time, ongoing case study in how a business can consistently punch above its weight by becoming experts in one specific area – in this case, social media.
But as with many of the Travel Forward Virtual sessions, this is a great 20-minute watch for any business thinking how to get more from its Facebook and Instagram presence.”