There are a plethora of social media channels available for consumption. With each having something unique to offer, taking a dive into social media can feel like there is an endless learning curve. Rather than trying to tackle EVERY social media outlet available, focus on one and master it before expanding your reach.
“Tis better to have one high-quality social media network than mere presence on every outlet”
-Charles Dickens
Remember, it’s not a contest to see who can have the most social media icons on their homepage.
Hashtags
#Do #Not #Spam #With #Hashtags
Use relevant hashtags- #roadtrip may be a trending hashtag but if you’re on a plane, utilizing hashtags in this manner runs the risk of making your personal brand seem inauthentic.
Create brand-specific hashtags during contests, giveaways, etc.
Location, location, location- location-centric hashtags are essential for travel bloggers
General hashtags such as #lifestyle, #travel, and #summer are good to include in a posts
IG ONLY- if you elect to put hashtags in the first comment on your post, IG will prevent you from posting the comment if there are more than 30 tags in the comment.
Generally speaking, popular travel hashtags are:
Travel, sunset, travelgram, wanderlust, vacation, instatravel, adventure, view, travelphotography, roadtrip
Social Media Posting Tips
The Importance of a Content Calendar
Planning ahead can alleviate some of the burdens that social media can feel like- you're already blogging twice a day, researching and planning trips, and maybe working a day job. And now you need to post content to social networks? And not just auto-posted content? The short answer is Yes. While generating content in advance can seem daunting, the reality is it can help you better plan and subsequently use your time. Hootsuite has some great tips and templates to help outline and plan content.
Video, Video, Video
Video is on the rise across the majority of social media networks (sans Twitter).
It's SOCIAL media, be social.
Be human and conversational.
Auto-posting
The BoardingArea Twitter and Facebook social media accounts use an auto-poster called dlvr.it. dlvr.it checks for posts every 5 minutes. The BoardingArea homepage feed checks for posts every 7 minutes. Posting times may be delayed and not instantaneous depending on when the feeds sync with your post's publish time.
For your own social media feeds, you can set up connections in WordPress. WordPress Support has more information about the Connect feature.
Instagram Tips
Pick a few filters and stick to them (2 colors, 1 BW). These should be incorporated into your Brand Guidelines.
Give credit- if it’s not your photo, make sure you give credit to the original photographer/source
Remember our previous Learn about Images and giving credit?
Be Social- interacting with your followers and others in similar niches, increases your reach
Tag locations
Think outside the traditional IG square - you are no longer blocked in or require a secondary app to post non-square photos to Instagram. Instagram can accommodate your panoramas, slideshows, and videos.
Instagram has jumped on the official story train - Zac and Miles are big fans of this feature.
What is Flipboard?
Flipboard is a magazine-style feed reader that BoardingArea blogs feed into. Some bloggers have seen huge amounts of traffic via Flipboard- Points, Miles, and Martini's knocked out a new single-day PR of 148,000 total sessions—90% of that coming from the BoardingArea Flipboard feed.
Here are a few tips and tricks on how you can use FlipBoard as a Blogger.