Video is quickly becoming the hottest way to showcase your group menu selection, beautiful room décor and latest fams or ship inspections.
Did you know that over 100 hours of video are uploaded to You-Tube every minute? How can you find success in this busy medium?
Many travel pros are uncertain about 2 main things; the content that can be adapted to video and how to best market their creations. Let’s brainstorm a bit to generate ideas on how to turn your fams, ship inspections, group tours and top attractions into video.
Content Strategy
Travel Consultants:
- Create short video clips of your own fam trips, ship inspections and interviews with your BDM’s and DSM’s
- Record highlights of cruising, top destinations or activities.
- Start a “Where in the World is (your name goes here). Showcase top selling ships, destinations, events, activities, restaurants and experiences.
- Upload your photos into a video slideshow. (here’s how to use Animoto to create compelling photo slide shows.)
Tour Operators:
- Showcase highlights of an upcoming group tour. Focus on experiences, activities and photo/video clips of past groups.
- Zoom into new destinations or itinerary changes and upgrades
- Provide a visual tour of the hotels and restaurants of your next group tour
- Take short video clips and incorporate them into a video collage to use as a group memory
Destinations:
- Combine user-generate video and photos into a presentation to send to potential group leaders, tour operators and trade
- Use micro-video to highlight fun moments in your destination
- Work with your membership to pull together a ‘highlights’ video
- Consider content needed by trade.
- Create a video of your top FAQ’s
With 100 hours of video being uploaded every minute to You-Tube implementing marketing tactics to help your clients find your unique material becomes essential. Micro-video sites like Instagram video and Vine quickly engage people in less than 15 seconds. Tools like Animoto, Prezi, SlideShare and You-Tube enable us to make snazzy video out of still photos. These innovative platforms and tools are useless without fresh marketing.
Video Marketing Tips
#1 Upload your Animoto creation to your YouTube channel
Locate your Animoto presentation
Click “Export” and choose Youtube (or other platform that you use)
The upload will take awhile. When complete you’ll see it on your You-Tube channel where you can edit it if needed.
#2 Create a Facebook post with the link to your creation
Tip: be certain to customize the text in the thumbnail if uploading from You-Tube.
Advanced tip: Download your video (Animoto or Prezi) to your hard drive then upload it as a video directly to Facebook. This way it appears as a bigger image in your post.
#3 Add your video to your Facebook video tab
#4 Install a YouTube app to your Facebook page so fans can see all your videos from your business page
Check out WooBox, for this type of app. Also, go directly to the video app here.
#5 Add your video to your Pinterest site
Pinterest will pull your video from You-Tube, but not directly from your hard drive.
#6 Embed your video from You-Tube into a related blog
Here’s how:
- Locate the video you’d like to embed
- Click Share
- Click Embed and copy the code that’s shown in blue
- Paste this code into your blog. In WordPress you’ll need to paste it into the ‘Text’ tab of a new blog post.
- Adjust the size of the video player based on the size of your blog. I choose 640×360 as it extends the entire width of my post. Here’s the finished product in a blog post.
#7 Embed your video into your next e-blast. Contact your e-blast service for detailed instructions
If you can’t embed the video directly into the text of your e-blast, provide a link directly to the video.
#8 Post your video onto your Google+ business page
Tip: be sure the link to your You-Tube channel is listed in your Google+ profile in the website links section.
#9 Tweet about your latest video and include the link
Embed this tweet into your e-blast or blog.
Tip: Create a series of tweets and post at various times during the day.
#10 Add the SlideShare app to your LinkedIn profile
While SlideShare isn’t technically a video presentation it’s a powerful application for your photos and other unique content.
I challenge your to captivate your clients with video marketing campaigns. Short attention spans and the burst of interest in accessing content on mobile devices makes this essential to your marketing success.
What other video marketing tactics work for you?
Related Articles:
Vine! Marketing for Travel Pros
3 Easy Steps to Set Up YOUR Instagram Site
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About the author, Catherine J. Heeg.
Catherine Heeg is a travel, hospitality and tourism industry thought leader. As President of Customized Management Solutions and an international speaker and trainer she delivers customized interactive social media, marketing and communication workshops and webinars. Customized social marketing strategy design and coaching keep her driving results for the tourism, travel and hospitality industry.