Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 111 - Aligning your Online presence with Your Travel Business
Transcript
- Rachel K: Day 111 of the Travel Agency New Year podcast. It sounds like I say travel agency ear. It's fine. My name is Rachel K, your host. If you got questions, go to elevatewithrachelk.com. And 111, that's a special number, 111. Interesting. Aligning your online presence. What the heck are you talking about, Rachel? Why do you need to align your online presence? You're like, ⁓ no, I just post everywhere. Let's talk about the importance of aligning your online presence with your ICA. This is like your business strategy episode series, little mini series here. Yesterday was why you should niche down and be specific in your niche, like hyper specific. Today, aligning your online presence. Now, I told myself, I think back on day four is like, I'm never saying ICA again or ideal client avatar again. But please know ICA stands for ideal client avatar. And that's where you need to align your online presence. Social media marketing is important for travel advisors. This job is more sales and marketing than most people think when they get into it. And most of you are independent contractors, so even if you're under an agency owner, they legally cannot guarantee you any leads. They might send you leads their way, your way, but they cannot. Otherwise, it turns into like employer-employee relationship, right? So, that's what this whole episode is about, whether you are hosted, not hosted, under another agency, and you're like a sub-agent, whatever. Let's build your business. This is your business. If you are 1099'd, you are self-employed, period. So yesterday we talked about niche specialization and we talked about why it's important. I launched this course last year at the time of recording, so 2025 called the sweet spot to success. And it's all about finding your niche, figuring out your niche, creating your service packages. It's like 10 hours. of figuring this all out with like I think a 30 or 40 page workbook. I don't remember. It's a thing. It's not expensive. I'm not going to be like, this is so invaluable. I need a million dollars. Like, no, this is, this is informative. ⁓ but it's very important to have your ICA. It's very important to align your ICA with whatever niche specialization you are doing. And it's important that your products from your niche Also, solve the problem of your ICA. Not what you want to do for travel and funsies, but what your ICA needs. But then, you gotta do all the marketing. So, where does your ICA hang out online? Many people have accounts all over the place, right? So you're like, it's everywhere. I can just post anywhere and they'll find me. Yes and no. You will have better luck if you can figure out in your ICA's brain, this takes a lot of like, kind of like meditating and thinking, like trying to really get into your ICA's head. ⁓ where do they go when they feel like absolute shit and they're trying to plan the trip that you provide, right? But where do they go when like nothing's working for me? I need to escape this problem. So go the old doomy scrollie. The doomy scrollies. Where are they? Are they, do they turn to Facebook? Do they turn to Pinterest? Do they turn to Instagram? Do they turn to TikTok? Do they turn to YouTube? Do they turn to Reddit? Where do they turn to chat GBT or clod or perplexity? Where do they go? that's where you need to show up. That is what is aligning your online presence. So if your ICA goes to like an AI chat and is like, help me solve this problem, okay, I'm trying to plan my honeymoon and everything is frustrating me. Here's my parameters, whatever, I don't know how good people are with AI prompts. So I'm just gonna put that in there. In like the imaginary chat we're doing. There's a chance if you have your AEO correct and you are showing up on the right places for that AI platform to pull answers from that you will be referenced in the AI overview of like here's the reference from XYZ travel that says, you're trying to plan a honeymoon, here's your five steps. and it'll take your information. This is why AI chat and research quote unquote can be dangerous because if someone's got their AEO right, they don't necessarily have to provide correct information. It's just enough information to get you interested in going to their website and buying. That's kind of scary. So be careful guys, when you're out there in the AI chat bot world. That's why there's a disclosure, whatever, clod or. chat GBT can make mistakes. I think that's, well that and sometimes they just hallucinate. It's kind of fun talking to them, like the little chat bots every once in a while and just be like, you're insane. Like you've lost your mind. Okay, anyway. So if that's the case, how would you show up in that search? I think I did some episodes on AEO versus SEO a long time ago, probably in the 20s or 30s episodes, like day 20. day 30, day 40, I think it's in the 20s to 50s somewhere I'm talking about AI. But as an example, aligning your online presence so that you can show up in that chat takes work on your blog, ⁓ takes work on maybe posting on Reddit or public Facebook groups or forums or posts on Facebook or, because AI crawls the entire internet and if your content not only asks the question that your ICA has and also answers it and is also formatted. You don't have to get super technical, but at least at a minimum. How do I book a honeymoon? Here's five steps. And you have it like tagged right if it's a blog post, where you have the transcript of an audio recording. or like the captions on the screen. This is why a lot of content has captions now and short form content. Not me, not me. I don't want to show up anywhere. No, I do have transcripts sometimes. Anyway, but that will all show up and sometimes people will share, like they will do the back linking for you, but that's how you like align your online presence. Now, if you're like, I don't need to show up in chat bots, then you need to do wherever your ICA is. So let's say if it's TikTok, you have to do video content on TikTok. At some point, they're gonna wanna see your face. There are some creators on TikTok that can make a lot of money, just... ⁓ not showing their face, but service-based businesses are not that. Like that's if you want to like sell a quick little mini course or digital download or some other like affiliates links and bio or links are in the chat. Like that's more of like the no face social media content. Eventually you should have some content where it's like your face. And if you're ever like, but I don't want to be on camera. Go watch this YouTube. I rarely ever wear makeup. The lighting's terrible. Who cares? Who cares? ⁓ anyway, so you would need to content and not only content that you enjoy and are going to have to get out of your comfort zone, ladies and gents. If you are better at video content, yes, then go to formats for video content, but make sure you're on the platforms that your ICA goes to to solve pain points. If you are more comfortable with written content, then go to where your ICA would go for pain points, okay? So if most younger people, and I don't know what your niche is, but most younger people are like turning to like clod or perplexity. for getting more in-depth responses instead of Google. And honestly, I'm kind of leaning that way too. If I have a question where I'm like, this is too much for me to type in a Google search bar, I will open up like quad or perplexity and like type in all the things and it'll be like, okay. And I feel like it gives me better results. May not be, but I feel like it does, okay? Because when I Google, I have to keep it short and sweet and I have to make sure the term like Plumber, Springfield, Massachusetts. And then it just lists all these plumbers. I'm like, this does not help me. But I could go to perplexity and be like, plumber for installing gas furnace or whatever. Springfield, Massachusetts. I could do that. Or if I'm like, I'm going to DIY this. How to, like you could go further in and you typically. might not get the best advice, but you're gonna get better references on the AI search functions than you typically do for the stupid people who just paid to rank. You know what I mean? I'm not saying they're all paying to rank, but it's just like, it feels less salesy is what I'm saying. Okay, that being said, you should focus on either your written skills or your verbal skills, okay? One or the other, you can do both. I've talked about one piece of content seven ways. I don't even know how many times at this point, but you can do both. And if you are showing up where your ICA is going when they're like, I'm, my life is on fire. I need to decompress. If you're showing up there as a possible solution or a place where they would go searching for answers for their problem, that's the whole point of marketing. You are presenting the idea of I'm solving the problem that you have. So you have to have a very good understanding now with social media, not only Here's the problems my ICA has. Here's how I provide the solutions. But where do they go to search for these problems? And you're like, well, how am I going to know this? ⁓ you have to think like your ICA. You might know someone who kind of fits the profile of your ICA and you can ask them, like, where do you like to go? It's probably a friend or family member, so you could figure it out fairly quickly. ⁓ Yeah, you can do that and you can experiment. You can look at demographics for different platforms to help you get a better idea. Yes, you gotta do research, sorry, to get a better idea of where people are going because it shifts constantly. So as an example, just a few days ago I had a planning call with A bride and I think she's like 27 years old, something like that. Like she's significantly younger than me and things have changed so much since I started in the destination wedding industry. Okay, and it was me, the resort coordinator, the bride and her mom. And she's like, how are we going to communicate all these things between the guests? I'm trying to set these things up. I was like, well, the guests in the room block will get a digital itinerary. And I said, I remember saying this, said, they're gonna have all that information. So if there's anything that you want me to put on there, I can put that on there and they all get that info, right? To be here around this time, we're gonna be here for about an hour. It's fine. ⁓ But also, I was like, you could set up a chat in WhatsApp because you don't know if people have iPhones or Androids and if they aren't on an iPhone, they can't do iMessages. So WhatsApp is probably safer or you could do a Google chat or whatever. I said a lot of my couples now do photo circle because you can chat and share photos and videos and I'm happy to set that up. ⁓ And she's like, I'm just not really sure what I'm going to do about it. And I said, well, the alternative, and this was a video call between all four of us. I said, the alternative is a private Facebook group and her face, if you're watching this on YouTube, it was like, her, and I was like, I get it. Like that fell out of favor like six years ago. Like that's not a thing anymore. I know it's not a thing. That is the only other option though. She's like, ugh. Like she was like grossed out. So if your client is under 30, Facebook's probably not a good idea. If your ICA is under 30, Facebook's probably not a good idea for you to be constantly posting and sharing content because I've seen it so many times myself. ⁓ They don't want to be on that app. No thanks. But it shifts constantly, like I said. So they were all on TikTok. And I was actually talking to another agent that I mentor about this. And I told her, I like, I don't think you should be on TikTok anymore. If you really want to get into destination weddings and your ICA is under 30, you need to, you can still show up there, but you need to move over to this. Like I would, I would try this strategy. And she's doing so much better, A, because she's not in a sea of destination wedding specialists that are just now posting on TikTok in the last two years. She's standing out from them. And B, she's going where her ICA is, not where people in the industry are telling her where to go. So this is what I mean about aligning your online presence. And I'm not bashing one platform or the other, I'm just saying it changes. And if you have a younger ICA, Facebook's not gonna be a good thing for you. It might change back. TikTok is kind of... You can still get a lot of business on TikTok. What I'm saying is if your ICA and your niche and specialization lean under 30, probably it'll be like meh results. But if your ICA is 35, 40, 45, 50, 35 to 50, definitely TikTok and Facebook would work. Facebook would probably be like 40 to 50, right? I don't really know the 35 to 40 where they're at with that. And then... There's so many different platforms. can't get into all of it, but that's what I'm saying. Like if you know someone that is close in age to your ICA and kind of matches the profile enough, you can start asking them not, where do you go when you're super stressed out, but like, what do you think of social media? What are you doing right now? And almost all of them will be like, I hate it. And also I'm stuck on this app. It's gonna be like one or two apps. If they're trying to pull away from social media, they're going to be stuck on one to two. If they love it, they're going to be everywhere. And that's probably not a reliable. Because what I don't want to see you having to do is posting on 17 different platforms and then get burnt out for marketing because you're like, I just threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and it's not working. All right, that's aligning your online presence episode. And I just went on some crazy rants. It's fine. It's fine. I hope this helped you and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.