A Travelpayouts crew just got back from Hamburg, where they were skipping work attending Traverse, one of our favorite travel events of the year.
Of course, that’s not fair – our dear colleagues were actually working hard. Our partnerships manager Alexandra presented insights we’ve learned by studying Travelpayouts’ top 5,000 partners, and our business development manager Oleg furiously took notes at other sessions.
In this post, we’ll bring the conference home to you by sharing the juiciest tidbits. There was a lot of great advice on socials, so if you’re wondering how best to use Facebook, how to gain traction on TikTok, or how to turn social audiences into blog traffic, this one’s for you.
How to grow a huge Facebook community
Nele created The Navigatio, one of the biggest Japan travel sites around. How did she do it? Partly by building a Facebook community with nearly a million members. Now, 50% of all her traffic comes from socials.
Here are a few gems from her talk.
Pros of Facebook communities
- Facebook skews older. Yes, that’s a good thing – older travelers might be less likely to know about your blog, so these will be new contacts.
- You learn from your audience. Direct questions and discussions that arise help you keep you stay on top of hot topics.
Cons of Facebook communities
- This is rented ground. Facebook can cap your reach or ultimately decide to shut you down.
- You can’t rely on Facebook alone. Use it to grow your newsletter – then you have an owned audience.
Tips
- Promote the community in other content, especially at first. The first 1,000–1,500 members are the hardest to get. (In the beginning, Nele mentioned her community in EVERY article.)
- Comment. Be as active and helpful as possible.
- Content first, monetization later. Once you’ve grown, you can start gently promoting links.
- Pin a FAQ to the top of the group with all your affiliate links and discount codes.
On that note – keeping links at the top of pages is a good idea on your blog, too. Our partnerships manager Alexandra gave an interesting data point in her own talk: conversion is 4x higher for links placed above the fold of the page, where readers see them immediately, than for ones lower down. Don’t forget to make sure offers are easy to spot in your mobile version, as well.
The mysterious TikTok algorithm
Laura Edwards is a comedian and content creator with over a million followers on TikTok. In her session, she talked about how to get the most out of its algorithm.
SEO
- Laura recommends captions of 150-300 characters, with the first 100 being the most important.
- Keywords should appear onscreen in the first couple of seconds (and many creators even hide more keywords, matching them to the background color).
- Aim for four hashtags: two trending, two niche.
- TikTok is heavily pushing the POV feature right now, so if you use it, you may get a boost.
User interaction
- Comment first on your videos, and use stories to boost engagement.
- Grab attention within the first three seconds, and close your video with a CTA (follow, check out my other video, etc.).
- Users typically subscribe after two to three views, so make series and follow-ups.
Location, location, location
- TikTok is international, but location is really important for discovery.
- Only post in one language.
- Post at peak times for your target audience.
From socials to owned traffic
Nick and Hannah, the couple behind Salt in Our Hair, have been steadily reducing their reliance on Google. In 2023, 80% of their blog traffic was organic, but now, that number is only 51%, thanks mostly to their focus on socials.
But how do you turn distracted scrollers into loyal readers? Here’s what Nick and Hannah suggest.
Common travel creator mistakes on Instagram
- Your posts/reels give away too much. Users have no reason to go check out your blog.
- Friction: the link in bio is too hard to get to, so users don’t bother.
- A user opens a link and loves your article… then closes it and leaves forever. You need a way to reach readers again.
Solutions
- In the reel, prove you’ve got something to say. Save the best for the blog post. Hannah and Nick save food, budget, transport, and stays for their articles.
- To avoid link-in-bio friction, use Manychat for pre-designed interactions: “Reply with word X and we’ll DM you a link.” (But they’ve still got a blog link in their bio.)
- As part of DM interactions, offer email goodies like destination guides. Nick and Hannah were able to build up a mailing list with more than 8,000 addresses this way.
Hopefully you’ll be able to attend the next creator event in person – but if not, we’ll bring you the roundup. Good luck growing your socials!
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