The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau met last Friday, May 1, for a work session on social media and marketing opportunities it could provide. The bureau wanted to talk about how they could promote local businesses, and Wrangell itself, via social media. As this was just a work session, no formal action was taken in the meeting.
"Webinars that I've been on, ATIA's advice, it seems like most everybody is headed that direction and trying to beef up social media now, while we're all sort of sheltering in place and not traveling," said Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore.
Some common themes for this "beefing up" of social media presence, Rushmore said she's seen across various sources, includes ensuring an organization's Google presence and utilizing Facebook. The CVB has already been working to boost Wrangell's presence in Google through a partnership with Truly360, she said, a company that helps clients reach their full potential across all of Google's products. Brooke Leslie, bureau member, pointed out that their target audience would be people with time and money for traveling to visit Wrangell. This means they would generally be older, so they should not worry about reaching out on social media typically used by younger people.
"I don't think Instagram ... is as big of a deal when it comes to what our target market, what they called the 'Donna,' which is your 55-year-old female traveller who's looking to book vacations for the future," she said. "They're not so much Instagram users, but they are Facebook users."
The CVB had many options available when it came to developing a marketing plan for social media, Rushmore said. Posts could be scheduled on a weekly or biweekly basis, she gave as an example, different businesses could be promoted at different times, and there could be varying themes their posts could follow. In general, the bureau members in the workshop liked the ideas of having different themes for their posts. In the month of May, Rushmore gave as an example, birds could be a good theme for the CVB to use in their posts. Other "theme" ideas included glaciers, bears, local shopping, and outdoor recreation.
Other discussions in the workshop included sharing businesses' posts versus creating their own posts, rates for photo usage in those posts, and other ideas for boosting the bureau's social media marketing presence.
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