“Social feeds social” is a mantra at Soulmates.AI. Simply put, the more engagements you earn, the easier it is to garner even more. Social media is built to keep their users online, so content that performs well gets delivered to more people in hopes that it will keep performing. As a result, the best way to improve organic reach is to ensure strong initial engagement.

At Soulmates.AI, we value engagements more than vanity metrics like follower count or potential impressions. Those passive metrics might raise awareness, but they do not help build affinity and brand trust in the way that actual likes, shares and comments can.

So, just create amazing content — right? Easier said than done, but we can seek examples to inspire us. To find the best performing content, we look to the amount of overall earned media value (EMV) gained, because that reflects true consumer engagement.

With spring break here and summer around the corner, we thought it was the perfect time to look at how the travel industry is doing in their effort to engage their audiences.

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash

We picked 10 travel brands from both established names and others that our AI platform identified as having some of the fastest growing social accounts within their niche. Our analysis includes an industry cross-section: three airlines (Delta, KLM, Southwest), five travel and home booking companies (Expedia, Booking.com, Skyscanner, Airbnb, Homeaway), and a couple of tour/attraction booking companies (G Adventures and 30A).

Not all social is created equally but they can be judged by the same index of metrics. Likes/comments/shares/views on different platforms have different values as set out in the industry-leading a.network Earned Media Value Index (a.EMVI). This research is vital to understanding the benchmarks for social posts in dollar value, allowing us to make direct and easy comparisons of content performance.

We’ve looked at the last 30 days (2/17–3/17) and excluded content that our AI system indicated was sponsored content. However, some of the remaining posts may still have been partially supported with paid boosting.

Facebook Travel Marketing Showdown

Who leads the pack on Facebook? It’s actually 30A, a Florida lifestyle company that helps consumers book attractions and tours at the beach with a flair for sustainable living through recycling. They’ve mastered the Facebook marketing lead this month with a total EMV of $52K. A very close second with a 30-day earned media value of $50.72K is KLM, followed by Southwest, with an EMV of $21.74K. The drop from $50K to $20K is not that unexpected, given KLM’s following is twice the size of Southwest’s.

However, $52K in terms of EMV is an impressive number for 30A with only 1.2M followers, compared to KLM’s 12M and Southwest’s 6.1M.

30A’s high EMV shows that posting often has been paying off in terms of engagement, and helped them achieve fast social growth. 30A posts 7x more than our list’s average. Positive and aspirational affirmations, like the one below, are common among their top performing posts.

While frequent posting can generate a high EMV, especially when a brand is actively developing its social following, average EMV is more important for most brands. A higher average EMV indicates a deeply engaged audience. In our list, KLM differentiates itself with an average EMV of $3.9K/post, followed by Southwest with $833/post and Delta with $602/post, when the average EMV of listed companies is $347/post.

More mature brands with a larger following can secure more EMV with a lower post frequency, as is the case of KLM, since their number of posts is actually right below our list average.

KLM’s top earned post is a three-minute video called “What is it like to be a pilot?” Marta, a KLM intern, flies in the cockpit from Amsterdam to Paris and back, with viewers finding out that V1 is the speed past which take-off cannot be aborted and getting to see a manual landing from within the cockpit. Compelling content, right? KLM’s audience sure enjoyed it.

Instagram Travel Marketing Showdown

Airbnb doesn’t post much on Facebook, but they leverage Instagram well, capitalizing on the younger audience found there. A $98.72K total EMV and average EMV of $3.29K places them at the top of the list for post averages, ahead of Southwest ($2.48K), KLM ($2.3K) and Delta ($1.45K). Interestingly, Southwest’s EMV is comparable to that of KLM, although the followers ratio between the two is similar to Facebook, where Southwest fans are almost half the size of KLM’s. Southwest really knows how to fly on Instagram.

Unsurprisingly, Airbnb’s top performing Instagram posts are appealing residential homes worthy of design awards, mentioning spectacular views and attractive destinations.

Twitter and YouTube Travel Marketing Showdown

Moving to Twitter, the airlines hold the top three spots. Southwest leads with $6.17K EMV, followed by Delta and KLM, all with more modest numbers, and less frequent posts compared to Facebook and Instagram. Twitter is often used as a way to drive people to the other platforms, so this isn’t too surprising.

On YouTube, Expedia and Booking.com stand out, both with videos as part of their different campaigns. Expedia allures its audience to exotic destinations, while Booking.com encourages viewers to give in to the moment and hit the “Book Now” button to start a fun travel adventure, as part of their #BeABooker campaign.

None of the travel brands in our study posted much video content and the ones that exist appear to be commercially edited. Could they benefit from more ‘social video’ that has been so popular with other brands, including collaborations with social media creators? While we found that some content is repeated across platforms, brands seem to leverage Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube differently.

(Originally published on Medium: https://medium.com/soulmates-ai/how-top-travel-brands-measure-up-on-social-media-bca48353bf4e)