Eco Lodge Marketing: Start Using Instagram!
For the Ecolodge owner, Instagram presents a great opportunity for promotion.
For one, it’s a free platform (and so are other social media platforms, but more on that later). Secondly, if you create a post that goes into a stream on Instagram, the reach for your content can be quite substantial. Here’s some ideas on how to get the best leverage from this popular social media app.
Facebook Makes Waves
Before Instagram became so popular, Facebook was the go-to application for posting content and reaching many interested fans or followers on a daily basis. That is until the day that Facebook decided they were in the business of making money.
Facebook went from being the world’s largest social media platform to one of the world’s largest advertising platforms.
Facebook not only featured personal pages, but it had fan pages and company pages you could create as well. Many brands, retail stores, online businesses, non-profits, and hotels went out and created their own brand page. It was all great, because whether you had 10, 100, or 10,000 people liking and following your fan page, everything you posted would go right into your fans’ newstream. It meant you had a free advertising platform!
Facebook started to limit the number of people, who were fans of your page, could actually see what you were posting. That percentage has been shrinking steadily over the past few years, and as of this writing is around 8%. Yes that’s right, whether you have 3 fans or 300,000, only 8% of them are going to see your posts. Discouraging, don’t you think? Not for Facebook! What they have done is made it necessary for anyone who has built up a following on Facebook to start buying ads. In order to reach out to all of those people, whether they are fans or not, you have to pay.
Ultimately Facebook had to “monetize” at some point it time in order to satisfy shareholders, so I guess you can’t blame them for that. And the price of an ad in Facebook is about 50% less than what it costs to advertise in Google, so there is a bright side.
Instagram Stays Relevant
That is why Instagram looks so attractive. If you create a beautiful post of a sunset in your pool and put related hashtags in your post, you will go into a feed that is seen by (potentially) hundreds of thousands of people, and you are not paying anything for that at all.
That makes Instagram a good place to promote your Ecolodge. Bear in mind that Instagram has instituted paid advertising, but this has not effected the reach you can get with a popular hashtag – at least not yet.
Open instagram in your phone and check out the #ecolodge feed. You’ll see posts from all over the world. What I want you to do is keep an eye on which pictures “pop”. In other words, which photos are the ones you want to favorite? Most likely they are:
- Full of color: there is a lot of contrast, and one color jumps out at you
- Featuring the environment: its a picture of a setting where the viewer would like to be
- About beauty: beautiful settings or features
- Well lit: the lighting is dramatic and catches your eye
How do you feel when you look at the picture? Do you want to be there? Does it generate an emotion? This is the type of response you want to evoke with the posts and photos you put in the Instagram posts for your property.
As an example, compare these 2 pictures. Which has more impact?
Make sure that your photos have colors that pop, convey an emotion, have contrast, and even better, have a story! Your posts will get shared and people will have a reason to start following you.
Take a look at the photos in Instagram pictured here. You’ll notice many of the photos that don’t pop are:
- Flat: not much variation in colour
- Poor composition: no drama in the setting
- Lack of focus: nothing in the photo is dramatically different
- No people or point of interest
In other words, in a crowded market of semi-interesting photos, if you post one that stands out with color, contrast, and people, you can increase the chance that your post will be shared and commented on.
Make Your Profile Public and Optimized
Instagram allows you to write a description underneath each picture, and you are limited to 2200 characters, or 1200 words, so you can really go to town if you want to. (In another post I will share with you some of the most popular hashtags to include.)
Use Geo-Tagging
Posts with a geotag get up to 79% percent more engagement. A geotag adds a location, such as street, city, or country, to show where your property is located. It’s a feature that is built right into Instagram, and it lets potential guests know where you are.
Have Personal and Business Instagram Accounts
You can have several Instagram accounts. That means you don’t have to mix your personal account with your company account. To do that, sign out of your account on your phone. Then open Instagram on your phone again and register with a new email and password. You now have a company account, and from there you can create content that is relevant to your property. Remember to make the account public, otherwise only your followers can see your posts. You can change your account to public in the settings.
