Group Trip Social Media Usage

These days if you’re not involved in social media of some sort, then chances are you may have a rotary phone readily available. Seriously though, social media is a godsend for group travel planners and connecting with your travelers. It enables you to establish a conversation with them before they ever set foot on the charter bus, which sets the tone for the trip and goes beyond providing an agenda to building a community.

At BusRates.com, we have our Facebook page to share information with our community, so we’ll start there. You can create your own closed group Facebook group that will allow travelers to get to know each other. Invite conversations by asking people to introduce themselves; share what they are excited to see or take polls on what movies to watch on the trip. You can also install a countdown clock to help spark more excitement, along with fun facts on your destination or details on your charter bus that you found on BusRates.com.

Now that you’ve established a central hub, let’s look at what else we can use:

Twitter

The nice thing about Twitter and Facebook is the content can be cross-populated if you have some travelers that prefer one outlet over the other. Then, everyone can be involved in the conversation. You just need to setup your group’s own hashtag (#).

Instagram

Instagram and travel go together like peas and carrots. This camera app that creates a collaborative environment enables your group to use its unique hashtag on their pictures and enable the group to see them. Additionally, those images can also be placed on the group’s Facebook page, so it’s all in one place.

Pintrest

Invite your travelers to “pin” items associated with your trip to develop excitement. The pins would then appear on the Facebook page and invite more conversations or pins.

Additionally, smartphones bring out the Coppola in some of us, so be sure to capture those videos too. Instgram recently added the ability to post 15-second videos on its site, which is similar to the offerings on Vine. Longer videos can be posted to YouTube and then placed on the Facebook page.

The technology and its application is constantly changing, so these are just a few ideas. The key is to create a way to create a living scrapbook that continues after the trip is over. It’s quite possible that the group will continue to chat on the page and swap memories or family updates. This will also allow you to alert the community of new trip ideas to consider for their next adventure.

Now that we’ve planted a few seeds of ideas here. What are your ideas for using social media to enhance your group travel? Tell us on the BusRates.com Facebook page and keep the conversation going.