Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 236: Why Human Content Wins for Travel Advisors
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping you become the CEO of your travel business. Today is day two hundred and thirty-six. We're gonna talk about social media trends in twenty twenty-seven, I guess. Like stuff that's been trending this year because it is almost September of twenty twenty-six. But what will continue trending into twenty twenty-seven? Because the data this year points in a pretty consistent direction. Less AI, more human presence. That's real. I remember even just a few months ago, creators were like creating full on AI bots to do podcasts and pretend that they were them and like grab my ten dollar guide to see how you can do this and monetize your own channel. And I was like, my gosh, but you could so easily tell. Because they didn't know how to blink or like their neck muscles weren't right. But some of them, I was like, this looks so real, but I know this is not real. Anyway, multiple recent industry reports, social media industry, marketing industry, not just travel, points to the same pattern. As AI generated content has flooded social media. Audiences have grown noticeably noticeably skeptical of it. research this year found that a meaningful share of consumers actively avoid or distrust brands whose content feels AI generated or overly polished, and platforms themselves have responded. Several of the bigger social media platforms now require visible labeling. I got a pop up here. Visible labeling on AI generated visuals and audio depicting realistic people or scenes. Okay. So what are audiences on social media moving towards instead that you can apply for your travel agency and your social media marketing? private communities over public feeds. Discord communities, subreddits, you can make them private. are running higher than the typical public feed because people don't want to see all the AI and the ads and they want to be in smaller, more trusted spaces. I really wish Meta never did on Facebook. they used to do it in like order of people posting, regardless of how popular they were, and when it changed to like what's getting the most interaction, I was like, Ugh, brother, Alright, another thing they want is a human on camera. A human on camera. Not not pictures you took on your trip. Not because they're they're nope. A human. Not a logo, not a polished brand voice. The human appears directly on camera. Is consistently outperforming purely branded content because it puts a real tropical tropical trackable human face behind the business. I also want to thank you for putting up with all of my stuttering cause Stuttering and mispronunciations. Is that even word? Misanunciations? Ooh, if I was a rapper, I'd be like, I'm misannunciations. I'm I would not be good at rapping. Clearly, I can barely speak at a normal pace. Anyway. AI is not gonna write that. I gotta get back to my notes here. the next thing, what are we talking about? Let me go back up. yeah, what audiences are moving towards? Imperfection as a signal of authenticity. You need inspiration? Follow any of my accounts because I am as imperfect as they come. Because I'd rather just have it out there than and s gosh. That was me slamming my coffee mug on my table. The number of people when I used to post content like back when I had Facebook and stuff, who'd be like, You know you misspelled this one word. It's like, well at least I'm putting myself out there. What are you doing? Judging how I misspelled one word. Like you aren't doing crap to bring any money in. Ugh It's it's annoying and you will get it, trust me. You're gonna get it from like your crazy aunts that you don't want to talk to really anyway. That have nothing else to do but scrutinize everything. Meanwhile they've never done what you've done. Don't even worry about it. Laugh it off. Anyway, back to my notes. Reports this year have specifically noted That natural pacing, minor imperfections, and unscripted moments are now reading as trust signals. Which is why my content. I just started my IG and TikTok, and I feel like my subreddit's okay, but nobody knows about it. what else? in YouTube Shorts. I had, I was so excited. I was like, I've got the best thing ever, and I wanted it to be a series, and it's like Seven tips on getting to a million in sales in 2027 for travel advisors. And that it is so poorly executed. I'm keeping it. Like, I don't care. But I was like coming off as a little as a tryhard. You can go find me. Like, you can go watch my shorts here. That's like the same stuff. Like, it's on this account. And I I'm just gonna cringe at myself and go on. I don't really care. Because at least it's out there and I could look at it once I posted because I thought it was good. Also, also I was like, this is great. And then I saw myself and I was like, this is so bad. All right, now I know what not to do. Okay. The next thing on the list that we're talking about is long form is making a comeback alongside short form. So the five ten second, thirty second videos are out of trend because people, if you're anything like me, you watch a lot of podcasts about like mindset and like medical stuff. And doctors are like, short form video is killing your mind. It's killing your ability to maintain focus. And that's why I didn't want to be on the other platforms for so long. So I was like, I don't want to contribute to that. So all of my short form stuff is like ninety seconds to two minutes. That's like my shortest stuff, right? short form will still work, but there's a documented resurgent of longer form content this year. As if you find something that you like enough, you're just gonna sit and listen to it, right? I just put on a four hour podcast while I was doing other work this morning before I started filming all of this, just to be like the background noise, and I got some amazing insights because it was a four hour interview with an entrepreneur I personally really really admired. and it's such good content. It's such good content. It the the that entrepreneur is a huge part of the inspiration of what I'm doing here and with my travel agency. And there's so much mindset stuff that I relate to and like things that that entrepreneur and I have both kind of gone through. And I'm just like, if they're at that point, I can get to that point. But I didn't even know I was three hours into the four hour podcast when I was like, time to start recording. Anyway go deeper. Go deeper in your content. Show up on camera. Go a little bit deeper than you used to, and have it be a little more substantial instead of endless stream of the 15 second clips. Everyone's getting tired of it. You can do a couple of them. I've got some on my content calendar that I'm gonna be doing that I think are hilarious. And I hope you all do too. Anyway, everything that we've been working on this year, your story bank, your founder's story. Your video first task by task workflow, but the video first. I I know no, you're gonna fight me on it. I don't care. Just you get so much more comfortable on camera, you stop caring. And you're speaking in your natural voice. Mm-hmm. That's already all stuff that's positioned well for exactly this shift. If you've been paying attention to this podcast, you don't need to chase. Templates, AI, AI generated stuff to compete. If anything, doing so would be moving in the opposite direction of where the actual data says audiences are headed. I also want to sidebar this. Like, I do not have enough photographic content for my Elevate with Rachel K website. And I just started putting videos in instead because I do have the software that I use to build the web pages. It has like this little AI build assist and I'll be like, this is what I want to happen on this page, because I don't want to like drag and drop the sections. And yes, it looks terrible. Like it like I have my branding uploaded and it's still like, your branding's stupid fonts you don't use. And here's here's a random color. Orange. That's in your brand. And I'm like, my gosh. So I do have to go through and redo all the stuff. And But it's nice to just have that page done and I can just delete entire sections. but I'm like, well, I like having pictures here, but I don't have any other pictures. And one of them, I deleted it, but I'm I asked the AI, I was like, is this an AI generated photo of me trying to look professional? Cause it kinda it was a chick that kinda looked like me, but also was wearing a blazer and was like forty pounds lighter and didn't have the crazy white streak and was like, I'm here to help you. And I was like, that's so gross. And I just deleted it. But there are other pictures where I'm like, well, stock photos and AI photos it is for now until I can figure out better stuff. Cause I just need to have the website out, right? Anyway, I'm just going on tangents today. I'm not saying avoid AI altogether. I have just mentioned AI helps me build my web pages. Yes, I have to go back and edit a lot of it, but at least it's like done enough, right? And sometimes it does some cool stuff where I'm like, I like that, but now I need to go in the HDML code and fix it quick. And it's just minor little fixes. and I've said, I don't remember if it was today or in past episodes, I used Perplexity to do a full audit of this podcast. And it was like, you don't know how to type. I was like, fine, I'll fix them. So don't avoid AI altogether, especially if you are like a one man band. You do need a little bit of help, and it is more cost effective. in certain regards. It can be a little bit of a time suck too, so be very careful with it. if you use AI, like I like perplexity for researching. You can use Claude or like Gemini or whatever for drafting and like figuring out the flow of your newsletters or anything like that. Organizing your ideas. Helping you understand how you want to batch everything, how you want your workflows to work. All of that's fine, and that's increasingly standard. The purpose of AI is to pull any of the tasks a human shouldn't be doing and give it to AI. And that's it. Like humans need to be marketing and connecting with people, not robots. So you do the marketing. AI can like double check your workflows and fix typos. I don't have time to read my own stuff. I'm kidding. I was that kid in middle school that just would zoom through math problems and never check my work because I was like, I understand the concept. Well, I'm left handed. I understand the concept and I'd just like blow through the math problems and I'd turn it in because I just wanted to be done. And then my teacher would be like, You missed Five plus two is not six, Rachel. Like I would just go so fast, I'd miss the tiniest little things. And you when I was in middle school, we had to write out every single step and show. So I didn't get a ton of points deducted for having the wrong final answer because it was like you did everything right. You didn't double check your math. And that carries on in my life. So I like to have AI double check things for me. all of the research that we've been talking about today is drawing the distinction between using AI as a back-end efficiency tool, like I just mentioned, versus letting it become the actual face of your brand and the voice of your brand. Keep the human part, your voice, your face, your story, front and center. Let any other tools be a supporting role. We're gonna keep talking about this tomorrow. anyway, I'm gonna wrap up this episode because I'm just in a mood. I need to get some more water. It's been over 15 minutes. My hair is just sticking out. I don't know what's going on there. It's fine. have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow. If you are new, you can subscribe for amazing, authentic, flawed. imperfect content from a in a multiple award-winning travel advisor who wants to see you get there too. Bye.