Social media can help travel writers get more readers, develop their personal brand, keep up with industry news, make new contacts, and strengthen existing connections - all of which can lead to new writing assignments and trips. The document provides tips for using key social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and more to professionally engage with audiences and other travel writers.

1. Social Media for Travel Writers
Liz Borod Wright
Editor/Publisher of Travelogged.com
Social Media Coach and Consultant
Faculty Adjunct at Columbia Journalism School

2. Are YOU using Social Media?

3. More than just entertainment, social
media can help YOU…
• Get more readers for your Stories
• Develop your personal brand
• Keep up with travel industry news
• Make new contacts
• Strengthen ties with existing contacts
All of which can lead to new assignments & trips!

4. :the best place to “meet”
people on social media

5. Anatomy of a Tweet
• 140 characters including @mention, #hashtag
photo or link. You can also retweet someone
else’s tweet…

6. How to Meet People on Twitter
• Seek them out through searches (hashtags,
etc.) and then follow them
• Respond to tweets about travel
• Retweet their tweets – retweeting is the
currency of twitter
• Use hashtags to make your own tweets more
discoverable
• Participate in Twitter Chats: #TTOT, #TWChats,
#TourismChat, #TNI, #EXPchat

7. Why Aren’t People Following
You Back?
• You don’t have a profile photo (and show you
care – add that cover photo!) and bio
• Your tweets are protected
• You tweet too little
• You tweet too much
• You mostly broadcast but rarely engage

8. Twitter as a News Source
• Not comfortable with tweeting? You can still
benefit from Twitter…
• Follow hotels, tourism boards, travel
publications, travel writers, bloggers and
publicists
• You’ll craft your own breaking news feed!

9. Scheduling Tweets
• Once you start tweeting, you need to keep up the
momentum
• Too busy to tweet on the road? Planning ahead is
easy with HootSuite!

10. Shorten Links Using Bit.ly
• Shorten on Bitly and us the new link
onTwitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to
track your metrics across platforms

11. For Travel Writers
• Facebook can help you professionally… and
hurt you professionally. Be your OWN privacy
filter and don’t post anything you wouldn’t be
comfortable with the whole world seeing. And
don’t be afraid to untag yourself from any
dubious photos.
• Don’t be shy to post your own stories!
• And now, pages vs. profiles…

12. My Facebook Business Page

13. My Facebook Profile

14. Facebook Pages vs. Profiles
• Profiles are for people
• Pages are for people, businesses,
products and organizations
• Profiles are limited to 5,000 friends
• Pages can have an unlimited amount of
fans “like” them
• Profiles have privacy settings
• Pages are visible to everyone, whether
you “like” them or not

15. And More… Facebook Pages vs. Profiles
• Profiles can accept friend requests from other
profiles
• Anyone can “like” a page – both profiles and
pages
• Profiles can write on the walls of other profiles
and pages, and comment on their status and
links
• Pages can only write on the walls of other pages
and comment on pages’ status and links

16. Should you have a Facebook Page?
• YES, if you are a business or organization.
• MAYBE, if you are an individual writer.
Some are opting to use the
Follow feature (used to be called Subscribe)
for personal profiles.

17. Wait a Minute, What is Follow?

18. What You Need to Know About Follow
• Until last year, all Facebook profile
relationships were reciprocal. The only option
was to friend each other.
• Enter Follow, which lets you follow someone
and see their Public updates. As with Twitter,
you don’t need a reciprocal relationship.
• It’s up to you whether you want to enable the
Follow feature or not.

19. Why Writers Might Prefer “Follow”
Over a Facebook Business Page
• It appears to be easier to attract subscribers
than Facebook fans.
• If your Facebook page would just be you and
have the same name, it might make sense to
just keep it to one profile.
• Time Management: you only have to maintain
one thing (your profile) as opposed to your
profile and your page.

20. Why Writers Might Prefer to Have a
Facebook Business Page…
• You don’t have to change the way you’ve been
using your Facebook profile. Just post status
updates, photos, etc. for your friends without
worrying about playing to a larger, public
audience of Followers.
• Having Facebook fans provides another metric
to describe your reach to publicists (e.g. my
website gets 10K views a month, but I also
have 2K Facebook fans.)

21. And of course, you can always do both:
Enable Follow and actively post things
with them in mind AND maintain a
Facebook business page.
Then you have an even greater reach!

22. Facebook Pages have Insights – these valuable, detailed analytics
are only available for pages, not for profiles even if you’ve
enabled the Follow feature.
I’ll admit that I’ve
been slacking on
my page and
these stats
certainly aren’t
the best.
However, the
average reach of
pages (without
ads) is only 16%.
Facebook has
recently
introduced Reach
Generator, a pay
service to boost
reach up to 75%.

23. Looking to
increase your
reach?
Facebook
wants you to
pay to “boost.”

24. Create an Ad Instead of Choosing Boost
• Boost is
quick and
easy, but
you’ll have
better
results if
you create
an ad
because
you can
target your
audience.
Facebook
has an
amazing
capacity
for
targeting.

25. For Profiles,
“Promote” is the
equivalent of
Boost
But there’s no
way to target
your
promotion of a
Profile post
geographically,
etc., like there
is for Pages.

26. For Travel Writers

27. : Why It’s Good for
Travel Writers
• Instagram is a natural home for all of those iPhone
photos you snap on your trips – a more self-selecting
audience than Facebook
• An excellent outlet for photos that won’t make
publication elsewhere (great if you’re on press trips,
press events or just want to share personal photos)
• There’s a lot of engagement on Instagram – lots of
liking and commenting
• Get visual industry news: follow hotels, tourism
organizations and other writers to see what’s new

28. : Why It’s Not So Good
(But Still Worth It)
• Growing your audience can be slow, despite the good
engagement with your existing followers
• Limited platform with poor search function – really all
about the hashtags. So research your hashtags,
become aware of campagins, just like you should for
Twitter
• Speaking of Twitter, they don’t play nicely together
and the photos don’t show up in the newsfeed. So
don’t share directly to Twitter
• No hotlinks – if you put in a link to a story in the
caption, it won’t work.
But if you post great travel photos, it can still be a good
extension of your brand and good place to connect!

29. Google+: Google’s Attempt to
Compete With Facebook
Does this Google+ post remind you of
anything?

30. 3 Reasons Why Google Thought
Everyone Would Want to Use Google+
1. Superior privacy settings to
Facebook: The Circles

31. 2. Streamlined interface, more intuitive design. Here’s
my profile:

32. 3. We’re all already using Gmail for
email and chat, and of course
Googling everything we want to
know…

33. Here’s the 1 Reason Why You
Should Be Using Google+
To Improve Your Ranking in Google’s Search
Results: The new “personal results,” which
show up on top when you’re logged in.

35. And also, see how the Google+ results are
integrated within the regular search results.

36. And Look at the Images Section

37. Looking for Social Media help?
• FOR INDIVIDUALS: Social Media 101 to Advanced
Social Media Practices
• Setting up new social media platforms or giving
feedback on existing accounts
• Personal/professional branding through social media
• Social media time management
• FOR COMPANIES: Short-term & long term strategy,
content development & management, campaigns
• Past clients include: Austria Tourist Office, Perrier
Jouet, Committee of 100, Healthier NYC and Dataminr

38. Liz BorodWright
• Social Media Coach and Consultant
• NYC-based but can work remotely
• lizborod@gmail.com
• 917-601-1054
• Or just tweet at me @Travelogged!