1. Appeal to your destination visitors: Schedule Posts and Tweets to go live in harmony with different time zones.

Articles and social media specialists often suggest blanketed days and times to distribute content across social channels, but resort community managers need to think in broader terms than local appeal. A portion of Whistler Blackcomb’s social media audience doesn’t reside in our province or even our time zone. Keeping these destination visitors in mind, I typically schedule Facebook posts and Tweets to go live according to when they are awake and getting back online. Be bold, test odd hours and days of the week. Who knows, you may discover 3am on Wednesday morning is your social media sweet spot.

Be mindful:   If you schedule a post outside of working hours, don’t share content

that may require a quick response from your resort’s community manager.

2. Resorts have a variety of guests, stop trying to reach them all at once: Use the FacebookGeo Targeting feature to speak to specific audiences.

Step 1: Determine where your audience is from. In the Insights area of your resort’s

Facebook page, pay special attention to the breakdown of your audience by city,

country and language. Pick your top 3-4 audiences.

Step 2: Decide how you would like to target your message. Facebook will allow you to

target your post without spending money on ads. You can choose to target by gender,

relationship status, educational status, “interested in”, age, location or language.

Be mindful: Adding multiple targets will shrink your post’s reach.

Step 3: Go and create your “Status Update” in Facebook.

Once your post is ready to be scheduled or go live, pick the “Select Targeting” option. There you can choose from a

drop down menu of targeting options.

Be mindful: Remember, geo targeting is not an option when your post has already been scheduled or published.

Step 4: Experiment with your messaging to provoke higher engagement. Take those top

locations from your Facebook Insights research (plus languages if you’re extra savvy)

and segment your posts with messaging that speaks to each of these specific audiences.

A few “Targets” decoded:

Interested in – This will target your page’s fans that have specified in their

Facebook profile that they are either interested in Men or Women

Relationship Status – This option will allow you to target Facebook fans that have

specified whether they are Single, In a Relationship, Engaged or Married.

Location –When selecting this target click “All locations” to review a pop up

window with location options. Here you can target by Country, Region/State, or city.

3.  Create a ripple effect of chatter about your new content: Create lists of social media influencers and bloggers to include in your Tweets.   

Webisodes, blog posts, Instagram take-overs, and photo galleries are creating a rich

element of digital storytelling for resort marketing is this year. Make your marketing

budget stretch by targeting social media influencers that may be interested in sharing

your content. Think outside of standard endemic and mass media contacts. For

example, if your resort produces a video for children’s snow school, target family

bloggers who have large Twitter and/or Instagram followings.