Top Social Media Trends in 2018 for Travel & The Outdoors

In flushing out your social media plan for 2018 here are some of the top trends that best apply to the travel and the outdoor industries. 1. Increasing popularity of Instagram Stories. According to Instagram, the platform’s stories feature has passed 200 million daily active users just nine months into its existence. People are spending more time on their Instagram feeds and interest in short lived video content is continuing to grow across all social platforms. It’s important to discover whether your customers spend time on Instagram and could Instagram stories be an appropriate channel to reach them? 2. Continued Investment in Influencer Marketing. Influencer marketing is nothing new but this realm is still expanding. Did you know that influencers can deliver 11 times the ROI compared to traditional digital marketing according to TapInfluence a influencer marketing company? Also, according to a joint study by Twitter and analytics firm Annaclt around 40 percent of respondents said they've purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine or YouTube. Also, 20 percent of respondents said they shared something they saw from an influencer. In 2018, this will undoubtedly continue as more companies embrace influencer campaigns. 3. Expansion of Live Streaming Content. Companies of all sizes have started using live streaming to capture the attention of followers. According to Livestream about 80 percent of consumers would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82 percent would prefer live video to written social media updates. What happenings, events, people and topics could you live stream in 2018 that would be interesting to your followers? 4. Facebook’s Changing Newsfeed. Last week Facebook announced it is changing its newsfeed to increase interactions among friends and family and decrease the visibility of posts by media, brands and other organizations unless the post is commented or shared by a Facebook friend. This will definitely change the overall Facebook strategy for companies this year but while the dust is settling on this it’s best to continue to produce engaging, authentic content that creates comments and reactions among your followers. One great article I read on this is in Entrepreneur.com