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Email marketing is one of the oldest and best tricks in the communication playbook, and newsletters are an excellent tool for brand awareness, audience engagement, and lead nurturing. But newsletter planning is challenging. Coming up with and delivering fresh ideas...
Jul 3, 2024
It’s well-known that a trip lasts longer than the days you spend at the destination. The emotional journey meanders through the mind for much longer. When your travel agency content ideas reflect this breadth of feeling, they become more engaging, informative, and interactive posts that position your agency as a top-of-mind travel brand.
That’s why your social media calendar needs to plug into the traveler’s dreams, mood boards, and pins saved from way before leaving. And don’t forget the corkboards filled with maps, printed photos, and ticket stubs from after the holiday.
For so many, planning a trip and gathering inspo is a form of emotional regulation. One trip lives a thousand lives in our minds, as we keep adding dishes we’d like to try and attractions that seem right up our alley. The more your content engages with this year-long practice, the more your brand gets increased visibility, enhanced customer engagement, and improved sales.
To help you get started, I’ve gathered some of the most captivating ideas you can use in your social media and content marketing strategy during 2024. So, keep reading.
Here’s the knack to making engaging content that makes travel enthusiasts want to be on your team: map out your social media content ideas on the emotional checkpoints people go through before, during, and after a trip. From fantasy to memory.
Tell stories with authenticity and zest, all while balancing visual appeal with useful facts. Consider using a mix of content forms to keep your audience engaged and maximize reach and engagement.
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Blog posts
Blog posts are crucial for holding evergreen travel agency content and archiving your best customer stories. They’re also great for gathering your best social media posts that share a common theme. Attract readers and engage them long-term by displaying your unique knowledge of specific places and different ways travelers can make the most of them while respecting local culture.
A lively travel blog can create intensely bookmarkable content and showcase your local knowledge in a way that dispels ambiguity for the more angsty traveler (hi, that’s me). Not to mention how it can shape people’s travel wishes and bucket lists.
Social media channels
The best travel agencies have social media channels that are finely calibrated but still exude this fizzy, exuberant quality. You’ll want to put out a consistent vibe while also making the best of channel-specific features and how they relate to the hyper-specific feel of destinations you work with.
@handluggageonly♬ Benny and Chiquitita – reymifasol
Switch it up between static posts, carousels, Reels, videos, and YouTube shorts, all while keeping an eye on the bigger picture. Consider Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest, sure. But also consider what your travel agency is really good at, aka how you can maximize reach and engagement by growing gradually and zooming in on local highlights one at a time.
What can be repurposed for different dates and channels? What’s worth gathering into a blog post with a quirky theme? Most of all, what seems to really strike a chord with specific subsets of your audience? Answering these questions helps focus your calendar planning. Experimenting is key.
You can frame things like `These are my social media content ideas for the week.` Or `This is where the travel destinations I work with really shine. How can I put those features in the best possible light?‘
Sharpen your visual storytelling with high-quality images or videos, then get creative with repurposing them (a drum I will keep on beating).
@silly.girl.guide Fun things to do in #barcelona We visited the Big Fun Museum on Las Ramblas last sunday! There’s so much to see 🥰 our favorite was definitely the upside down rooms 🙃 #barcelona #bcntiktok #barcelonatiktok #invite #barcelonaguide #barcelonacity #whattodoinbcn #whattodoinbarcelona ♬ The Look – Instrumental – Metronomy
Some of my personal favorite travel agents gather insights with a light touch. They’re plugged into trending destinations, but also provide unique insights for approaching culinary hotspots or niche music festivals.
What specialist knowledge do you hold that intersects with the features of your destinations? Make a blog post about a city seen through a book lover’s eyes, highlight summer outdoor cinemas, or gather the best places to shop for seasonal flowers.
Your engagement really improves when you balance content that establishes your subtle authority with authentic photos, stories, and reviews from your travelers. Get permission, foster long-term collaboration, and you’ll be able to offer new fans a more well-rounded view of a destination. Being able to see the same place from different perspectives is worth so much.
Make sure people tag you in their posts and use a tool like Planable to easily distribute or recycle content across various platforms.
Multiple social posts selected in Planable’s list view
So many of the same questions get asked again and again. So many of us rejoice when finding a Reddit post from 2018 addressing our exact query. Reframe your local knowledge as answers to people’s questions (platforms like Quora are a great starting point), then outline a detailed blog post or a social media nugget that deserves to be pinned at the top of your page.
Breathe new life into familiar travel topics by bringing in your good friend and mine, the list. Use the left column to list content topics or juicy insights about specific places, all throughout the seasons. In the right column, list different formats, then connect the two and consider the possibilities.
Which insight or attraction matches up best with a listicle, a how-to guide, or an expert interview? These kinds of questions may have more than one answer, but bring your best strengths into the mix and the picture clears up right away.
The blog posts you write can then be repurposed as posts for different social media platforms, so that you reach a wider audience.
To make your job easier, look into Planable’s Universal Content feature bundle, which is tailor-made for collaboration and approval. Use it to whip up stellar content for social media and beyond, all from a single calendar. Emails, blog posts, newsletters, press releases, ads, they’re all possible.
Collaboration on a newsletter in Planable
The more insightful and empathetic your advice, the more goodwill you gather for your travel business. But go beyond guides that include required documents and optimal visiting times (though those are super-important). As a travel agency, becoming a primary digital resource for people involves engaging with the culture in a respectful way and passing on that knowledge to your readers.
@thaitraveltips Prepare before visiting Thailand #thailandtips #travelthailand #thailandguide #fyp ♬ Sunrise – Official Sound Studio
Paint a vivid picture of a specific cultural norm and its history. Approach cultural etiquette with the world-weary but loving vibe of someone like Anthony Bourdain. The more travel agents provide context for cultural norms, the more they build trust.
As you gather insights, you’ll see larger themes emerging. These themes can become pillars for your social media strategy, and a tool like Planable can help you make the most of it by providing the perfect space for your team to collaborate on new ideas.
Collaboration and approval in Planable
Sitting down with agency clients to flesh out in-depth stories can make for great evergreen content. Real-world insights are unparalleled when it comes to giving your content that special personal touch, no matter the format (which is worth experimenting with). Someone’s story might work better as an interview, someone else’s as a guest post.
It’s super interesting to see how different types of people travel. Yes, I want to know exactly how a chronic list-maker and a lover of spontaneity make an itinerary work for them both. I want to see how an artist travels to a warm place and how a mother might find kid-appropriate activities somewhere frosty. The texture, the specificity. That’s where the juice is.
You could get creative with this one too. Imagine an Instagram grid with photos showcasing a location, all provided by customers who loved it and accompanied with quote captions! Perfectly organized and previewed in Planable’s grid view before posting too.
Instagram grid preview in Planable
Exclusive promotions, last-minute deals, and special packages boost your bookings for multiple reasons. Many make the decision as a couple. Somebody suggests Zagreb next Tuesday and the other can’t resist. For others, it’s the last little nudge they needed to commit to a destination that had been calling their name from that bookmarks folder for months.
Campaigns and content featuring promotions may need an extra approval step before going live – just to make sure all the details are correct. Using Planable’s multi-level approval workflow lets you set things up in the way that makes the most sense for your team.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
Here’s one of my favorite all-time insights: it’s not just hanging out in a forest or being surrounded by houseplants that calms our nervous system. Actual plastic plants (I’m not kidding) and even just pictures of greenery have a similar effect. Product designers know this. It’s why so many items come with a leaf pattern.
Locals know how a spot changes with the seasons and travelers love to partake in this knowledge. List out season-based activities and events, but also lean into what the flora and fauna are doing, even in a big city. Getting the houseplant and birdwatching girlies on your side will always be a win.
So many trips started after the mental seed was planted by a single picture. One sun-kissed shot of bougainvillea growing on a Greek island rooftop can spur someone into action, especially if accompanied by info about the season’s other local attractions.
It’s so important to cultivate trust and loyalty. Behind-the-scenes content is crucial in the process, so lean into the personal stories your travel agents can share. Shedding light on planning techniques strengthens the bond in more than one way: you clue people in on your specific MO but also help them become more savvy travelers.
Everyone with a neat insight to share should be able to contribute. And Planable’s workspaces let you easily grant permissions for external collaborators, making it an absolute breeze for folks to pitch in with their contributions.
Workspace permissions in Planable
If you save someone hours over a document they might’ve never even packed, you’re their hero. Screenshots of your content will live on travelers’ phones for a long time. Keep an eye out for travel warnings related to visas, traffic, weather, health and safety, and beyond.
@ifeandlonimi Here are 5 things to know if you’re travelling to Tirana, Albania! These tips will prepare you! #traveltips #albania #vacation #couplestrip #traveltiktok #naijatiktok ♬ original sound – Ife&Lonimi | Motherhood
This is all the more important if you work with specific destinations – your local knowledge will be crucial for putting updates in context. For best results, intersperse posts about travel insurance and other travel-related paperwork with more lighthearted content.
When you use Planable’s calendar to schedule social media posts, it’s easy to keep updates fresh and organized. If something changes last minute, one drag and drop and you’re in the clear.
Social media calendar with drag and drop in Planable
It’s not news that travel agents build buzz by creating clever giveaways and customizing travel packages, complete with little contests as a twist. Travel deals expand your target audience and endear you to the existing one. Creating targeted marketing campaigns with these goodies is also a good idea, especially if you can match tailored promos to different sub-sections of your followers.
Also, consider going about it the other way around: encourage user-generated content by thinking up clever prompts. Visualize the resulting posts before launching the contest, then curate and repurpose them over time.
Seasoned travelers and newbies alike will appreciate a bird’s-eye view. Look at shifting travel industry trends with the help of the most forward-thinking people in your network. Interviews and research (with proper credit, of course) do wonders for establishing a travel agent’s brand.
Here are the kinds of conversations I’d like to see more of when it comes to content ideas for travel brands: environmental changes affecting travel destinations, technological advancements in travel planning, or economic trends influencing global travel. Readers appreciate a balanced view, so include optimistic forecasts alongside potential challenges.
One thing, though: remember the difference between presenting different viewpoints and bothsidesing subjects that cannot, in good faith, be bothsidesed (such as climate change).
Just like travel agents, the best part of travel aficionados are planners. Sure, others are likely to just jump on a plane. But that’s rarely accessible for people traveling on a budget, and failing to consider seasonal closures, for example, can put a lid on some trips.
As many a traveler knows, spontaneous romps like spending a day without a schedule or venturing off a nice-looking side street work much better within the structure of a cleverly pre-planned itinerary. So lean into this.
Take the time to go deeper with specific destinations and neatly organize all the events happening across an entire year, from Jan. 1 to New Year’s. Consider how different types of travelers might enjoy it at different times, and consider how specific clusters of local events could make for a good holiday. The more your travel tips find their way onto their mood boards, the more you build customer loyalty.
Planable’s content calendar is great for having a bird’s eye view of your year-round initiatives. All your content, on and off social media, lives in one place.
Content calendar in Planable
You might feel like quotes belong to a previous internet era, and I’d be tempted to agree. But I say they’ve got potential if done right. We don’t need another rehash of motivational bon mots that sing the praises of travel in general or deem travelers to be more well-rounded than other people. It’s basic stuff.
But there is room for quotes that reframe things a bit, that open up a different, more compassionate way of looking at travel. You can really improve customer engagement when using listicles, posts, and carousels to focus on taking the pressure off just a little bit. Like how a trip doesn’t have to be perfect to generate joy, or doing things like the locals can be more fun (and more respectful) than bringing all your routines with you.
People really appreciate travel fails, especially when they’ve got a winning combo of useful information and humor. The more you empower folks to anticipate common problems and tackle them like pros, the more engaging your content becomes. Remember to add all this content to the repurposing queue: it usually does good numbers on social media, but also works great collected in a blog article or newsletter.
@pubity Her phone had had enough… 😩😂 (Via: Insta/Tiffanyscarabelli partnersonthego) #travel #fail #phone ♬ dark beach – void
Word to the wise: keep it lighthearted and kind. A lot of fail content out there is downright mean-spirited, so be wary of going down that route. Consider the power dynamics at play or if a certain piece contributes to harmful stereotypes.
Trust your gut, but if you’re having second thoughts about striking the right tone, you can always ask Planable AI to give you a few more suggestions on how to phrase things.
Rewrite posts and captions with Planable AI
Two things are essential for a rich content calendar with regular, relevant posts.
First up: emotional granularity is your friend. Consider how hyper-specific positive feelings from the emotion wheel map onto available activities in the areas you cover (and onto a traveler’s long-term plans).
Source: Medium
Second, make sure the process behind those emotional rollercoasters is optimized.
Planable’s content calendar tool helps you plan and schedule posts with no fuss, all while avoiding gaps and last-minute fumbles. It’s a cinch to collaborate with everyone involved and get approvals. Plus, you can schedule all your social media posts from the same place.
Your online presence stays consistent and engaging, but it’s also easier to cultivate that specific je ne sais quoi that only your agency can bring.
Make a shortlist of the content ideas that spark the most enthusiasm for you, then prioritize trying them out. The more you do it, the more well-rounded your digital footprint becomes and the more travelers you reach.
Planable can help you simplify content creation, planning, and distribution in a way that brings out the very best of what travel agents and destinations have to offer. Why not give it a try? You get 50 free posts when you sign up!
Irina is a freelance senior copywriter & content writer with an advertising agency background. If she’s not rummaging for good synonyms, she’s probably watching a sitcom or listening to radio dramas with plucky amateur detectives. She loves collage, doing crosswords on paper and shazamming the birds outside her window.
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