Social media marketing is an essential part of any marketing campaign, and brands need to always be on their feet and find ways to stay ahead of the game.
This means they need to adjust and readjust strategies and messages, to keep the audience engaged.
Best way to do that?🤔
Look closely at what the data is telling you. By going through your social media platforms' data and comparing your stats, you can find everything you need to know about your audience.
This article will show how to use cross-channel analysis in your social media reports and why this is important.
Just like cross-channel marketing, where you use different types of channels, both digital and print, to best deliver a message and an idea to your target audience, it is essential to do so when it comes to the different social media platforms.
All social platforms work together to create context and reach as many people as possible.
But to see how well your overall strategy performs, you need to access cross-channel data.
This social media analysis will show you which platform works best, which campaign is more successful and which post has brought in the most engagement.
A well-rounded brand analysis report will keep your clients happy.
Including a cross-channel overview of your social media analysis will come with many actionable insights, like:
Whether you want a short stand-alone report or need to add a few more important ideas to your regular social media report, turning to social media analysis that has cross-channel data will lead you towards key conclusions.
Gathering all of the insights from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, you will see which KPIs you've accomplished.
These are the metrics that will help you do so:
It’s not always enough to look at your own social media insights. While social KPIs such as impressions, reach or engagement are pretty telling, the true value lies in how they compare to your competitor’s stats.
To get a complete picture of the competitive landscape your brand is trying to succeed in, you need to understand what the competitors are doing - the dos and don't of the industry. And, of course, how your brand does by comparison.
Using Socialinsider, you'll be able to benchmark against your top competitors in your industry.
Before starting any social media analysis and reporting process, you should make a plan that clearly outlines your expectations: what do you want to find out?
Set clear social KPIs that give you the answers you need, and then look at what social analytics tools tell you.
There are two ways to go when analyzing cross-channel data:
1. Individual posts
You can take a look at how all of your posts are ranking up against each other: what are your best posts, what is the best performing platform
2. Campaigns
Label each post with the designated campaign name. This way you can have precise data of how much effort you’ve put into each campaign (by looking into the number of posts and their overall percentage) and what engagement has each of these generated, both in total and by channel.
You can look at the social media data as puzzle pieces. Each number helps you create a well-rounded picture of how your future strategies should look.
Here are a few things you will learn:
Going through this social media analysis is a simple process. If you’d like to get started but aren’t sure how to do so, simply follow the steps below.
Choose the project that contains the accounts you want to look into.
Decide if you’d like to look into all posts independently or only focus on certain campaigns. Go to:
Set a timeframe for the results you want to see
Analyse individual posts from the "Posts Newsfeed" section
In a competitive field, staying ahead of the curve is essential. That is the most important purpose of every social media analysis.
Doing cross-channel reporting is important to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each post across all the platforms, but also the real impact of your campaigns across all social networks.
A direct social media cross-channel analysis will show you the rank of each post, the volume of posts for each of the campaigns you want to monitor, the overall engagement as well as the engagement broken down by individual channel.
Are you ready to start your own social media analysis? Don’t worry, we'll be there for you every step of the way!
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![[Insider Insights S2E5] Social Media Manager @ Booking.com](https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/content/images/2021/11/Corina_podcast.png)
Welcome to a new episode of the Insider Insights Podcast!
Today's session is all about social media with a touch layer of engaging users through content.
My guest for today is Corina Bordeianu - global social media marketing manager at Booking.com
She has over 10 years of experience in communication, especially in digital communication and social media.
Corina believes in the power of teaming up, being flexible, transparent and listening to each other.
Let's learn more about social media!
Listen to this podcast on:
On this episode you'll learn:
Corina Bordeianu on LinkedIn
Booking.com on LinkedIn
Booking.com on Instagram
In a fast-forward era, the social algorithms work in mysterious ways, and there’s no certainty that what’s a killer piece of content today may still work tomorrow.
However, overseeing social media trends, and adapting to them as quickly as possible is the one thing that can get a boost to your social media strategy, and help you gain competitive advantage.
So, without further ado, let's take a quick look at the most important five social media marketing trends according to data to skyrocket your brand on social in the year to come.
1. A greater interest in TikTok
2. The supremacy of video content
3. Growing ads budgets
4. The expansion of social selling
5. An increased demand for AR content
Wherever we turn our ears these days, we hear about TikTok - the hottest social media platform of the moment.
Since its initial launch, TikTok has rapidly gained the hearts of the digital natives - Millennials, and Gen Z. And so far, it seems to be the social media platform with the fastest growth.
In order to understand TikTok’s meteoritic rise, we should mention the milestone discovery the guys from Cloudfare did: that in 2021 TikTok ranked above Google and Facebook as most-visited domains.
Also, according to Insider Intelligence’s forecast, in 2022, TikTok is expected to become the world’s third-largest social network.
Therefore, more and more brands are expected to join the platform in 2022.
Zoom, for example, launched its TikTok account in 2021, thanks to a constant need that most - if not all brands have had for a very long time: being able to see what and how the online communities are talking about the business.
Melissa - global social media manager at Zoom gave us a most-welcomed tip in an interview for Insider Insights podcast: that you should always try to be where your audiences are.
What you don’t know can cost you a great deal if we're talking about marketing.
To emphasize TikTok’s importance when talking about the most effective social media trends that you should consider when creating your social strategy for 2022, we must also state a discovery of our own.
When doing a case study to uncover which are the most engaging social media platforms for Christmas marketing campaigns, TikTok ranked number one, with a pretty huge difference from all the other major social media platforms.
So, by taking a look at all this data, is there any doubt that creating a TikTok marketing strategy is an absolute must for 2022?
The good news is that by keeping up with the current social media trends, the chances of falling behind and letting your competitors take the wheel are pretty low.
Therefore, are you ready to put yourself up to date with the latest social media trends and become a leader in your market?
Back to TikTok for a second, the platform must certainly be given some credit for the propulsion of video content among all social media networks.
As Instagram’s many new video features have proven, there is no greater push toward innovation than the pressure of overcoming your competitors.
Today, most anything related to trends on social media is about videos.
And truth be told, for generating higher engagement levels on all social platforms, we must recognize its supremacy.
For example, on that thought, Facebook has created a dedicated ad placement for video content - the Video Feed.
This, according to our Facebook and Instagram ads study, has the lowest CPC - $0.13 on average, and the second-highest CTR - 2.05% on average, being the second-best option for paid advertising, coming after the regular feed.
Now that we’ve established video content is the future, we can go even deeper and dive into video trends on social media to see exactly what type of videos are the best performing, so that you can boost your video marketing strategy in 2022.
Indeed, posting more videos can be great for your social media engagement.
But posting short-form videos can be your ticket to having an awesome social presence, as social media video trends indicate.
And speaking of shortness, social media managers should keep in mind the user's attention span is slightly declining.
So besides choosing short video lengths, the captions used are also better to be under 10 words for maximum of engagement.
TIP: When choosing the format for your social media videos, opt for the vertical mode. As data indicates, the vertical format seems to be the most engaging one, at least in Facebook's case.
With the popularity of video Stories, the launch of Reels, and now with the update that has removed IGTV, Instagram as well seems to be headed in a direction where short-form videos are pushed more upfront.
And since we're at it, did you know that the biggest brands have doubled their Instagram Story's usage in 2021?
According to our Instagram Stories Study, video stories are more successful in retaining an Instagram user to watch more of a brand’s story, having a tap-forward rate of 0,80% lower than image stories.
Now, having all this data and knowing the latest social media trends in video marketing is not a great start for crafting a successful social media strategy for 2022?
And the good news is that there’s more.
With the lockdowns worldwide caused by the COVID19 pandemic, live streaming sessions on social have become the next big thing.
And since this tactic has known increasing popularity, it is most expected to have a continuous growing consumption in the future.
According to our Facebook videos study, live videos are on the rise, having a 55% usage increase in 2021.
Also, as the same study has shown, live videos generate double the engagement compared to pre-recorded ones.
When analyzing the most recent social media trends, we also discovered that live videos that last over one hour increase engagement from 0.26% to 0.46%.
Therefore, consider creating longer webinars if you want to introduce live streaming in your social media strategy for 2022.
Even if you need longer research and preparation for them, be sure the results will be worth it.
Social media grows day by day in its importance for the marketing field.
Especially now, when most brands were forced to cut down on marketing activations due to the COVID19 pandemic and redirected some of their marketing budgets into social media paid advertising.
Which is no surprise, given its ability to reach the most targeted audiences.
As the latest trends in social media advertising have shown, as a results, in 2021 worldwide brands have doubled their paid advertising budgets, both for Facebook and Instagram.
This is expected to happen again in 2022, as the amount of money invested into paid advertising increases year after year.
For now, Instagram ads have proven to be more suited for increasing brand awareness, while Facebook ads for conversion purposes.
However, the growing interest in Instagram advertising may be a strong sign of where the future of social media paid advertising lies.
With the on and off lockdowns caused by the COVID19 pandemic, people turned even more to social media for being a way to stay connected with their loved ones.
And with social media’s usage increasing, online shopping also exploded.
Make no mistake; we’re here referring to both the classical e-commerce realm, where the user manually goes to a website and orders something as well as to social selling.
In 2021 all the major social media platforms have found a way to facilitate the customer’s journey and incorporated shopping features.
Just look at Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram, which besides opening the “Shop” feature, has also introduced Shoppable Stories, which allows tapping on a product sticker and buying a certain product without leaving the app.
So, how did social selling become one of the latest trends in social media marketing?
The great advantage of introducing in-app purchases is that it reduces the churn rate.
By facilitating the buying process, you reduce the risk of losing your prospects along the way until they reach the end of the marketing funnel and order something.
As this has proven to be a quicker way for customers to shop their desired items and a more profitable technique of an e-commerce brand of reaching their potential buyers, social selling is expected to develop in many ways in the years to come.
According to eMarketer's predictions, by 2025 social selling may become a $80 billion industry.
Word of mouth has long been known as the most reliable source for many buying processes.
But as helpful as it is, nothing compares to a personal experience with a product.
Which was probably the mindset behind the creation of AR filters.
AR filters are, by far, one of the latest social media trends that have started to gain incredible popularity, especially among brands from the home&deco or fashion industry.
Huge cosmetic brands like Estée Lauder or MAC Cosmetics have created numerous AR filters to give their prospect the chance of trying their products and offering immersive experiences.
AR filters like Glossy Plumb Lips not only let potential buyers get familiar with the products but are also highly effective for engagement.
This kind of personal experience that an AR filter implies is likely to also increase the click-through-rate in the acquisition process.
Brands like L’Oréal, for example, have even taken things one step further and have come up with a new concept: virtual make-up try-on during video calls.
In a reality where work from home is here to stay, this kind of innovation may be most welcomed for those times when one has to jump on call after call, especially if those are important presentations with clients, being relevant for the company’s image.
With many new features, not to mention new platforms that enter the market once in a while, social media platforms are expanding more than ever.
The social network’s updates for 2022 are pretty hard to predict. But there’s one thing we can be certain of: social media will continue to be a powerhouse in the marketing industry.
As social media platforms grow, it’s paramount to be aware of consumer social media trends if you want to maximize your social media success.
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The post The Metaverse: What Marketers Need to Do to Prepare appeared first on Social Media Examiner | Social Media Marketing.
Social media marketing is an essential part of any marketing campaign, and brands need to always be on their feet and find ways to stay ahead of the game.
This means they need to adjust and readjust strategies and messages, to keep the audience engaged.
Best way to do that?🤔
Look closely at what the data is telling you. By going through your social media platforms' data and comparing your stats, you can find everything you need to know about your audience.
This article will show how to use cross-channel analysis in your social media reports and why this is important.
Just like cross-channel marketing, where you use different types of channels, both digital and print, to best deliver a message and an idea to your target audience, it is essential to do so when it comes to the different social media platforms.
All social platforms work together to create context and reach as many people as possible.
But to see how well your strategy performs, you need to access cross-channel analysis.
This analysis will show you which platform works best, which campaign is more successful and which post has brought in the most engagement.
A well-rounded brand analysis report will keep your clients happy.
Including a cross-channel overview of your social media report will come with many actionable insights, like:
Whether you want a short stand-alone report or need to add a few more important ideas to your regular social media report, using your cross-channel analysis will lead you towards key conclusions.
Gathering all of the data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, you will see which KPIs you've accomplished.
These are the metrics that will help you do so:
It’s not always enough to look at your own data. While metrics such as impressions, reach or engagement are pretty telling, the true value lies in how they compare to your competitor’s stats.
To get a complete picture of the competitive landscape your brand is trying to succeed in, you need to understand what the competitors are doing - the dos and don't of the industry. And, of course, how your brand does by comparison.
Using Socialinsider, you'll be able to benchmark against your top competitors in your industry.
Before starting any analysis and report, you should make a plan that clearly outlines your expectations: what do you want to find out?
Set clear KPIs that give you the answers you need, and then look at what analytics tools tell you.
There are two ways to go about a cross-channel analysis:
1. Individual post.
You can take a look at how all of your posts are ranking up against each other: what are your best posts, what is the best performing platform
2. Campaigns
Label each post with the designated campaign name. This way you can have precise data of how much effort you’ve put into each campaign (by looking into the number of posts and their overall percentage) and what engagement has each of these generated, both in total and by channel.
You can look at the data as puzzle pieces. Each number helps you create a well-rounded picture of how your future strategies should look.
Here are a few things you will learn:
Going through this analysis is a simple process. If you’d like to get started but aren’t sure how to do so, simply follow the steps below.
Choose the project that contains the accounts you want to look into.
Decide if you’d like to look into all posts independently or only focus on certain campaigns. Go to:
Set a timeframe for the results you want to see
Analyse individual posts from the "Posts Newsfeed" section
In a competitive field, staying ahead of the curve is essential. An overview is important to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each post across all channels, but also the real impact of your campaigns across all platforms.
A direct social media cross-channel analysis will show you the rank of each post, the volume of posts for each of the campaigns you want to monitor, the overall engagement as well as the engagement broken down by individual channel.
Are you ready for your social media cross-channel analysis? Don’t worry, the first one is on us!
Relates posts:
Nowadays, Facebook engagement is the meaning of something more than a couple of likes thrown at a post.
It is the way through which customers establish a one-to-one communication with their favorite brands and address their concerns.
The buyer journey has changed a lot over the last few years.
Before finalizing the buying process, people are now looking for a recommendation on Facebook or Twitter, they are asking their friends or family and they are reading the Facebook page's reviews.
A higher Facebook engagement rate per page increases the number of positive reviews on your page and the overall experience with your products and services.
Engaging posts for Facebook are not easy to create, but here's a nine tips guide that I’ve put together to show you how to increase engagement on Facebook and your account’s performance overall.
Let’s dive in!
When stepping into digital marketing, one of the first and most important tasks you’ll have to complete, as a social media manager, will be to develop an optimized content calendar, made of engaging Facebook posts.
That means, besides actually writing the copy and maybe even making the visuals, which we’ll cover in a bit, you’ll also need some strategic thinking besides the more practical skills.
Questions like “when is my audience online, how often should I post, to what type of content my audience responds best or what and how I want my community to do something” should be top of mind before creating any plan or social media campaign.
First things first, the stage when you actually start writing comes only after you researched your desired audiences and discovered what their online habits are.
No worries, nobody expects you to start guessing and be right. For this part of the job you can always rely on analytics to give you a hand, to discover your own engaging Facebook posts or your competitor's.
In order to increase engagement on Facebook you can check the insights displayed in your native analytics, or turn to a third party analytics tool, for more in-depth information.
Once you’ve established a time schedule, you need to have consistency.
And that’s because your customers need to know they can rely on you to offer them the information they need, information that’s up to date and aligned with the trends and their interests.
We mentioned earlier something about having a strategic thinking. Because without it creating a Facebook engagement strategy can become a pretty exhausting task.
Well, since every planning starts after a bit of brainstorming, let us tell you something important about content, that can have a huge impact on your Facebook’s engagement improvement project.
What you absolutely must have in mind when designing your wannabe engaging Facebook content that it’s not all about you.
So, one of social media manager's most pressing question becomes how to keep an audience engaged.
A most important thing that you need to remember is that people don’t want to hear you brag about how awesome your products are, over and over again, but rather they need to be let to discover by themselves.
What you can do instead is to try to create meaningful and valuable relationships with your customers.
And since any relationship is a two way street, once in a while you should offer them the spotlight and drive your attention and social media efforts towards them.
Offer them interactive Facebook posts! Let them be and create a part of your brand's story!
After all, let’s not forget they are the ones buying and advocating for your brand. And the world of mouth should never, but never be undermined.
Another thing to keep in mind when creating your posts, that will surely be healthy for your Facebook engagement is variety.
By diversifying your content you will prevent your potential customers from getting bored, and even more, you’ll stir their curiosity, which will only draw them towards you more.
Tip: try mixing up product posts with mood posts - from tutorials to tips and tricks, sky's the limit. Be creative and try out whatever is suited for your business segment.
Well, if in the personal development sector, “stop comparing yourself to others” may be a good piece of advice and an essential first step to do in order to grow, in the business sector, it is certainly not the case, at least not when it comes to marketing.
But before starting to talk about why competitive analysis is mandatory to be done in order to increase engagement on Facebook, let’s first cover the need of evaluating a brand’s own posts and performance.
Or, in other words, with the “get to know yourself” moment, if we continue the comparison started.
Sure, after you understand your audience’s needs and interests, it’s way easier to craft top-notch content, meant to skyrocket your engagement on Facebook.
But there will always be posts that will have a greater Facebook engagement than others, and continuously keeping an eye on which are the most engaging Facebook posts will only help you further create equally, or even more awesome content.
Also, a very helpful technique that sometimes marketers neglect, or just don’t concentrate on that much as they should, is repurposing.
For example, if you’ve written a blog post that really caught the reader’s attention, you shouldn’t waste the opportunity of not promoting it on Facebook as well, taking that interesting topic and playing with it in a bunch of other inventive ways.
Also, it is important to create Facebook interactive posts where you offer you audiences the chance of being creative as well.
You can make a funny video, an eye-catching insightful carousel, a bold post with an edgy visual, or even a mix between them, whatever is more suited for your brand’s identity.
Remember, sky’s the limit!
In the last couple of years, visual content has gained significant ground on all social networks.
According to our social media industry benchmarks study, conducted in the early days of 2021, 25 out of the 35 industries analysed had images as their primary type of content posted on Facebook.
And because in order to succeed in the social media era, you must give your audience what it wants, which translates into bold and interactive visuals, you must certainly step up your game in this area, if you want to create successful Facebook posts.
But let’s remember when we’re talking about visuals, we’re not only talking about images, since nowadays, video content is rapidly gaining advantage, reaching a usage of 15% from the total content posted on the platform, and starting to generate the highest levels of engagement on Facebook.
Now, regardless of the type of visual you’ll choose to focus on, depending on your business and your goals, you should know that quality is something that will never go out of style, and something that your audience will always appreciate.
A good tip that I can give you is to try creating sensorial experiences with your content, pictures or video on your Facebook page.
Important to mention is that, when creating visual content you should try, as much as you can to personalize it, to align it to your brand identity and make it a piece of the puzzle that is your brand’s story.
That’s why the color palettes and writing styles are a key, identificatory factor for a brand’s posts on social media.
Of course, creating engaging and impactful visuals is not an easy part, and can become very time consuming sometimes.
But just like you have analytics tools to help you with that part of the process, for this next phase you can find a lot of helpful apps to give you a hand, as well.
Canva is, for example, any social media’s best friend for creating all sorts of visual materials and presentations, but it is certainly not the online one.
See? Creating engaging posts for Facebook becomes easier with the right tools by your side!
Depending on your needs, you’ll discover there are a lot of tools for great social media visuals, the secret is to know what you want to achieve.
Continuing our journey of how to boost engagement on Facebook, as a brand that puts a lot of money into social media, you surely know your popularity comes from your followers.
After all, their involvement and sympathy is the reason behind all those online efforts.
Therefore, if your marketing goal is to increase engagement on Facebook, then you must know you have to be available for your fans, to dedicate as much time as needed to reply to their comments and questions.
Social media is a two way communication street, which means your community expects you to be equally involved and keep the conversations going.
After all, everybody wants to see their opinion matters and that are important enough, especially for those they admire.
Moral of the story: if someone cares enough and dedicates even the slightest amount of time to comment on your post, you should take your time to reply to them.
Ask their opinion, thank them, engage with them, and invite them to join you on your brand mission!
Changing their emotions when they first comment or write to your page influences their buying decision shortly, plus for sure will recommend your product to their friends.
Ever since its first appearance on Snapchat, the story type of content has found a way to win over the people on social media, thanks to its ability to rapidly put them up to date with everything that’s going on, in many creative ways.
On Instagram for example, Stories are an important component of the most engaging posts.
What is great about stories is the fact they easily humanize a brand.
Which is awesome, considering that nowadays customers want some sort of relationship from which they can gain more than a product, they expect more from brands than just being sold to.
Social media shouldn't be treated only as a selling channel, since it is the new way of consolidating businesses.
By posting all types of stories, like funny or emotional ones, ingeniously packaged like behind the scenes or before and after moments for example, is how you can keep your community hooked, and interested in interacting with your brand online.
Regardless of your approach, remember this: be authentic, and try to Create meaningful relationship moments with your fans base, through Facebook stories, and not only.
By doing so, your results in your Facebook engagement won’t take long to appear.
Videos are amazing. As a time-efficient, easy-to-access and more interactive way of delivering information into the user’s feeds, video content rules the engagement on social media, and especially on Facebook.
Therefore, it is surely a box you must check in your search for ways to increase Facebook engagement.
Brands and marketers use storytelling to appeal to the user’s emotions, as they are the most powerful drive for anything.
And for being a more immersive way of communication, videos are a powerful instrument for making people part of that story, and therefore driving to more engaged audiences.
TIP: It’s only normal for Facebook to prioritize native videos, as a way of rewarding the users exclusively relying on the platform, so for better results in terms of your Facebook engagement, upload the videos directly into the app.
Another important thing worth knowing about Facebook videos is that compared to pre-recorded ones, live videos perform way better, having the potential of reaching even doubled values, as we’ve discovered in our recent study.
So, if you’re looking for ways to increase your engagement on Facebook, here it is. Camera, light, go!
Facebook groups are a great way of creating strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers.
Keep in mind they are now looking for person to person communication, and this might be the missing piece when it comes to successfully unifying your community.
A Facebook group is the perfect place to start a customer loyalty program for example.
By serving your subscribers exclusive content, that you know for sure they’re interested in, since they joined your Facebook group, you’ll show that you’re willing to reward them for the loyalty shown.
Which will only make them appreciate and increase their trust in you even more.
To keep it short, my advice would be: engage with your fans on your Facebook page and groups, share useful content for them, appreciate their comments, ask questions regarding their concerns.
The more you’ll opt for a 360’ communication strategy, the more profitable your business will become.
As important as it may be, marketing it’s not only about social media. But, in order to have the whole picture, understand your identity and what you do, your audiences need synergy.
Besides, since you worked that hard to ensure communication materials on other sources and platforms, wouldn't it be such a shame to lose some exposure potential by not linking your social media accounts with other channels your customers can find you on?
Now we’ve cleared that, put the right buttons and let the shares come!
Facebook Engagement is an important KPI to measure for every social media manager. But it’s not only about the numbers, it's also about the connection between a brand and its customers.
Build your brand through engagement.
Did your fans experience a positive feeling while interacting with your brand on social networks?
And for sure you’ll be their top of mind choice when googling related products or services with your business.
Support your sales teams with empowering content, nurture your fans and invite them to be the brand ambassadors of your brand.
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In the digital world, the most important touching point is engaging with your users through content.
The world-leading OTA (Online Travel Agency), Booking.com, is the perfect brand example whose marketing activities are clear and well-executed.
Beyond high numbers that speak for themselves, Booking.com has another peerless advantage: the combination between a strong brand positioning and a savvy social media strategy which translates into a front-of-mind brand for consumers who are looking for travel services.
So, in today's case study, we will take a closer look at Booking.com’s marketing strategy. We’ll shortly examine some of the marketing tactics and social media strategies that Booking.com uses to win people's hearts.
Are you ready? Let's dive in!
Booking.com is the world-leading OTA and has been one of the most prominent travel and tourism industry players for the past years.
Marketed as not just a platform for booking accommodation, but a technology that makes travel easier, Booking.com has been growing impressively and is one of the most recognizable travel brands worldwide.
A quick look at the numbers tells us that the brand has an average monthly traffic of 394.84 million users, while 35.79% is generated by Google searches, of which 54.98% is organic.
Sure, numbers play a huge role when defining a brand's success, but Booking.com is far more than that. When a consumer sits down and makes a plan for traveling, Booking.com is the first that comes to mind.
This is achieved thanks to a well-put marketing strategy, using both traditional and digital channels.
When it comes to social media, Facebook is not only the social channel with the highest number of followers (more than 15 millions), but it also seems to be the number one channel that drives traffic to the brand's website, having an average 49.11% of the total traffic generated through social media.
It's no secret anymore that the key to keeping your online communities hooked, apart from being present, is to engage with them and be relatable.
As such, in today's digital world, storytelling is a must for every brand that wants to shine online.
While it may not be easy for an OTA to build strong brand loyalty through emotional appeal, Booking.com did its homework and understood how to make the best of its marketing strategy efforts through the power of storytelling.
For example, they publish regular travel articles on their website, sharing helpful information and tips and tricks for travel lovers or those planning their next holiday.
They write under several categories, such as "Eat & Drink," "Destinations," "Family travel," or "Nature," making it easier to navigate and find the exact topic that you were looking for.
This theme continues on Booking.com's social channels. They often post these articles on their Facebook page, which automatically brings more traffic to their website.
Their YouTube channel is one of the most creative ones and has a collection of short travel videos.
My favorite playlist is the one categorized as "Booking.com | City Guide," whose concept involves imagining a place as a person with specific personality traits and passions.
The Booking.com's digital marketing strategy is all about storytelling.
Actually, the storytelling theme follows a broader trend that has become extremely popular within the content marketing community, where storytelling and experiences are the fundamentals.
Now that we have gone over Booking.com's social media content strategy let's go even deeper and understand how and what the brand does on every social channel.
Relying massively on the power of storytelling, as demonstrated earlier, Booking.com has a solid social media presence, a key component for becoming one of the world's most inspiring travel brands.
Booking.com is present on all the major social platforms, from Facebook or Instagram to Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
With more than 17 million brand followers, Booking.com has a brand engagement of 1.3 million and has gained 550K followers in the past year.
With more than 15 million followers and an engagement of 768K on Facebook, this channel is by far the biggest social channel of Booking.com.
This social channel is another great example of how the brand uses storytelling to touch its customers just by looking at the mission statement on Booking.com's Facebook page:
From apartments, holiday homes, and B&Bs to 5-star luxury resorts, tree houses, and even igloos, we've got every type of trip – and every type of traveler – covered. With over 2 million properties in over 225 countries around the world, we make it easy to find and book your perfect place at the right price.
The brand uses this channel heavily by posting content almost daily. Booking.com uses a mix of images, short videos, and articles to promote specific touristic locations, share tips and tricks about safe traveling, or do fun games to better engage with its consumers.
Apart from their regular geographical content, Booking.com has a fun side, which can be seen in the images below.
For the World Emoji Day, the brand posted an image inviting its users to test their geography skills with a travel quiz made out of emojis.
They also made a series of memes that show the difference between what people thought traveling was in 2020 and how traveling actually was in 2020 in the context of the pandemic.
Booking.com's Instagram profile is newer, with just 1.6 million followers, but with 323K followers gained in the past year and an average engagement rate per post of 0.155%, data that was possible to discover by using Socialinsider's analytics features.
Bookin.com's social media strategy for this social platform is somehow similar to its Facebook one.
They use a mix of images, videos, carousels, and very rarely IGTVs to share traveling content that inspires people and invites them to use their services.
Even though the content itself doesn't differ that much from the content posted on the other social platforms, the brand's Instagram page has clean visuals and is very well-put.
Beyond great aesthetics, Booking.com's Instagram strategy uses the network to raise issues that concern this social media platform's user base, which is formed mainly of Millenials and Gen Zs.
As such, they often share content to share their support for the LGBTQ+ community, as can be seen in the image below.
On Twitter, Booking.com has 175.8K followers and an average engagement rate per profile of 5.092%.
With Socialinsider's analytics feature, I was able to see that the brand posts more frequently than on the other social platforms, with an average of 0.6 tweets per day.
The content strategy behind this social channel is pretty much the same as the one for Facebook or Instagram, but two elements of novelty make Twitter stand out.
One of them is the bio, built around the brand's central theme - the power of storytelling that invites the followers to dream about the next place they'd like to travel to.
Welcome back to all the little things we've missed. Welcome #BackToTravel. Where shall we go first, as it becomes possible?
The second striking element is represented by polls, which Booking.com often uses to start conversations with its customers.
Even though it's the social media platform with the least amount of followers (49.3K subscribers), Booking.com's YouTube channel is by far my personal favorite because it relies heavily on the emotional component.
Even though the brand only published 15 videos in the past year, Booking.com has pretty good performance metrics, data that was possible to analyze thanks to Socialinsider.
For example, I discovered that the average engagement rate per video is 0.411%, while the engagement rate per channel is 6.170%.
As seen in the picture below, Booking.com organized its videos by playlists to be easier to navigate.
The "Booking.com Local Guides" series is a collaboration between the brand and different locals who show the best places from the town they live/were born in.
What's great about these videos is that they have that sense of familiarity and coziness, like you were talking to old friends in the intimacy of your home.
They say that social media campaigns are a brand's best friend.
As Corina Bordeianu, global social media marketing manager at Booking.com, told us during our latest podcast episode of Insider Insights, every campaign that the brand does is different and depends on multiple variables, such as budgets, the culture you're in, and most importantly, the audience.
One of Corina's favorite campaigns is the one that Booking.com did last year for the United States and is called #AmericaIsForEveryone.
The campaign aimed to inspire people across the United States by acknowledging how different cultures and communities around the world are living.
Corina told us that they selected 10 U.S. destinations and allowed travelers to transpose themselves in these places while remaining close to home. They invited Americans to reconnect with their culture and to transmit what really makes their nation unique.
The main result was that it generated a lot of positive engagement - the campaign resonated with a lot of Americans, the message was very strong, and people were starting to engage in comments and responding with questions. - Corina Bordeianu, global social media marketing manager at Booking.com
With two posts on Facebook, two on Instagram, and 13 tweets posted in the past year, this campaign was really successful on social media with an engagement rate of 1.7%.
Another impactful social media campaign included in Booking.com's marketing strategy was their most recent one, called #BackToTravel.
Booking.com knew at the beginning of 2021 that travel was coming back, maybe slower in some countries or faster in some others.
So they created co-content together with influencers, launched this hashtag, and started talking about the joy of traveling again, the pleasure of getting your troller back from the closet.
Corina told us that she takes great pride in this campaign because they partnered with many influencers and co-created content for both channels.
Find out more about Corina's insights regarding Booking.com's digital marketing strategy in Insider Insights podcast episode:
With 106 posts published in the past year and an engagement rate of 7.5%, this campaign had skyrocketed reactions from Booking.com's fans.
Last but not least, the #BookingHero social media campaign launched in 2018 is all about bringing people together.
Starting from the idea that what makes traveling really special are the people you meet along the way, Booking.com asked travelers to share their stories, inviting guests to nominate their #BookingHero: someone working at their accommodation who went above and beyond to make their trip unforgettable.
The brand gathered a collection of beautiful stories, which were later transformed into videos published mainly on their YouTube channel.
It's clear that Booking.com is a brand with an active social media presence and great performance results. But data means nothing if it isn't placed in the right context.
In today's busy digital world, benchmarking your results against your competitors is key if you want to see where your brand stands. It will also help you improve your performance and achieve your goals.
To see how Booking.com's social media profiles perform compared to its biggest competitors (Tripadvisor, Airbnb, Trivago, and Expedia Group), I used Socialinsider's benchmarks feature to get in-depth analytics.
By looking at the Facebook profiles, it seems that Booking.com outperformed its competition in terms of reach (2,698,960) and average engagement rate per post (0.029%).
This insight comes as no surprise, as Booking.com's Facebook profile is the one with the most following.
When it comes to Instagram, Booking.com's biggest competitor is by far Airbnb. This may be because Booking.com posted the least out of all the profiles analyzed in the past year (only 209 posts), but it has the highest followers evolution, gaining 323,409 followers in the selected time frame.
Here's how the social media data looks for both brands in Instagram's case:
You can also compare some specific social media accounts. In the example below, I compared Booking.com's Twitter profile with Tripadvisor's.
This analysis shows that Tripadvisor's Twitter profile surpassed Booking.com's Twitter profile in terms of the number of followers and tweets, but Booking.com has a higher engagement rate per profile (5.096%).
To go even deeper in your benchmarks analysis, you can compare any Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter profile with the industry of your choice.
For example, you can see how your brand performs against the industry's engagement metrics or the average number of posts.
This analysis of Booking.com's social media strategy demonstrates the high awareness of the brand among consumers.
Booking.com's marketing strategy focuses on the value the brand brings to its consumers, which, beyond pricing, room selection, and easy-to-use products, is also about storytelling.
Even though the travel industry is not the most creative one, it's highly competitive, particularly in the digital space, with giants like Airbnb or Expedia who have a global presence.
However, with well-thought strategies and social media campaigns that are hitting the right spots, Booking.com became a strong player with an excellent social media presence.
This case study is the perfect example that if a brand stays true to its beliefs, constantly engages with its communities, and tries to bring value to them, will be rewarded with great engagement metrics, regardless of the industry.
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