Social Media Engagement: How To Connect With Us
We all have amazing stories to tell and know that travel-related storytelling, in all its many forms, is of great interest to consumers. We encourage our regional partners, and operators to share their stories/products/experiences/packages with us to keep us in the loop. Your input will help with our marketing needs.
How do we connect with tourism partners?
Part of what we do includes increasing the marketing reach for destinations, communities, and tourism business operators within South Eastern Ontario. We actively work with our Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Destination Marketing Program (DMPs) partners when developing our content on a seasonal basis. The content recommendations are referenced and repurposed into our marketing activities across our website and social media channels. We also reference these suggestions when organizing Influencer and other Media trips.
Our South Eastern Ontario Social Media channels allow us to connect with our audience and inspire visitation. Both Facebook and Instagram serve as our primary channels for connecting with consumers and staying connected with our Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), Destination Marketing Program (DMPs), tourism partners, and operators in the region. We have leveraged our Social Media channels to build a community of advocates for the South Eastern Ontario region. Our brand hashtag, #SouthEasternOntario, has been used over 22,000 times on Instagram alone. We invite you to use our hashtag in your Social Media posts but please note that we do not monitor hashtag usage on Facebook.
On our South Eastern Ontario Social Media channels, we use “Mentions” and ‘Tags’ in our posts when we communicate with our Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), Destination Marketing Program (DMPs), and tourism partners. A mention is an act of adding another user’s handle (@) or account name to a Social Media post. A properly formatted mention allows our audience to click through to the profile of the user mentioned in the post and be directed to their page. A Tag is a keyword that is added to a Social Media post for the purpose of categorizing related content. You can also use tags to tag another profile in a post or photo, which creates a link to the user’s Social Media profile and associates them with the content.
Like and Follow our South Eastern Ontario Social Media pages to get involved in the conversation and to keep us up to date with your offerings.
Facebook @South Eastern Ontario – Mention us in your captions.
Instagram @southeast.ontario – Tag us in your post, Mention us in the caption, & use our hashtag #SouthEasternOntario.
X (Twitter) @southeast_ontario – Tag us in your post, Mention us in the caption, & use our hashtag #SouthEasternOntario.
Why should you participate?
1. We can better promote you!
Tag us in your post and mention us in your caption to tell us about your tourism product and experiences. Connecting with us keeps you top of mind in our marketing efforts – such as our website, social channels, newsletter, etc. This is a simple way for you to share your content with us.
2. Amplify your reach
When you share your story with us, this gives you the opportunity to increase the visibility of your brand. When we share your story, we are amplifying your brand and sharing it with an entirely new audience (ours!)
3. Reach a new audience
Try searching #SouthEasternOntario on Instagram and Twitter. Take a look at what visitors are talking about and doing in the region. Once you know what visitors are saying, we hope you’ll be excited to participate in the conversation by creating a similar post and engaging with other accounts. From this, your content and your brand can be seen by an audience that you may not have been able to reach before.
A Note About Events
We have recently moved away from an events calendar on our website and are now linking directly to our Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Destination Marketing Program (DMPs) event pages on their website.
If you are using the Facebook Events listing on your page, keep us in mind: Tag us, mention us or ask us to be a co-host on your Facebook events as we can then easily share them on our events page. Any changes you make on your event will automatically show up wherever it has been shared on other Facebook events.
How do we respond to a post when South Eastern Ontario is Mentioned and Tagged?
As part of our engagement strategy, we will ‘Like’ all posts we are tagged and mentioned in and may leave a comment. We may share your post if it fits in with our tourism mandate, our current social media calendar allows it, and our number of daily posts hasn’t been exceeded. Or, we might just save it to refer back to at another time.
We check our Social Media notifications at least once a day as part of our daily routine. Due to volume, we cannot share all posts we are tagged/mentioned in. We are cautious about “overposting”, especially on Facebook when we have numerous campaigns running as it can disengage followers. Don’t be discouraged if your post isn’t reshared on our Social Media pages. Remember, you’re still feeding us information to help us in all of our marketing activities.
What to do when you have been Mentioned and Tagged in a post?
So, we have tagged and mentioned you in a post, what are we looking for in return? Here are different ways you can engage in a post when you have been featured.
- ‘Like’ the post – Acknowledges that you have seen it.
- Leave a comment, maybe with more info about whatever is featured in the post, a thank-you for the feature, or you can just leave an emoji if you can’t think of anything to say.
- Reply to an inquiry from a user that you can answer way better than we can.
- Share/Retweet the post if it’s relevant to your Followers. Bonus: sharing helps increase engagement for all of us!
The success of our consumer brand South Eastern Ontario depends upon the active engagement from our Followers and the participation from the tourism community across the region. Together, we can work towards increasing awareness and inspiring visitors to the South Eastern Ontario region.
Check out these post to better understand Social Media Engagement: Understanding and Using # Tags and @ Tags, How to Use Instagram Tagging for More Exposure, Social Mentions 101: What Are They and Why They’re Important.
As a tourism partner, make sure to Like and Follow our Industry accounts to stay up to date on tourism industry news, tips, and opportunities.
Facebook @RTO9
Instagram @RTO9_ON
X (Twitter) @RTO9_ON
LinkedIn @RTO 9