Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 235: Your Travel Clients Are Tired of Social Media Feeds
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. In a year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping travel advisors be the CEO. Today's episode, day two thirty-five. Your clients are getting tired of their feeds. And they want some real human interaction. Okay? Sit with that as you're planning out your marketing. The very platforms you're using to reach the clients are the same ones many of them are quietly exhausted by. And so check your content. We're gonna talk a little bit about the content. It's not just a feeling, there's real current research behind it. okay, my notes here say survey data from the American Psychiatric Association found that roughly half of Americans reported reducing their social media use in the past year, citing fatigue from AI generated content, algorithm overload, and mental health concerns. Dude, the doomy scrollies is so dangerous. Like it's so fun at first, and it is so easy to get addicted. And then you're depressed and alone and you're like, why is my life shit? Pardon my language. Other recent research shows a real growing wariness, specifically around AI generated content. So I also want to take a step back. And anyone that's telling you buy my templated stuff and you just like rewrite it a little bit or use my AI bot, you can customize it to you. They are just taking your money because nobody wants that stuff anymore. A meaningful share of consumers say they're less likely likely to trust or choose a brand that leans heavily on AI-generated posts or ads, and a majority say they trust brands more when the content clearly comes from an actual person. First of all, I was saying this back in 2021. If you want to go stock my old TikTok, it's still up. It's Easy Destination Weddings. I refused. To do excessive filters and makeups and have all the pretty pictures and pretty content. Because I was like, my ICA doesn't give two rips about pretty pictures because that's been on their Instagram feed for from every single travel advisor for the last decade. They've seen it. It's been on their Pinterest boards. They've seen it. They want to work someone they with someone they know is real and that they can trust and that can confidently state this is how it is. Okay? And I and I had so many people slash travel advisors that would comment on my content and be like, Your content's so ugly. And some people would be like, Why how are you even getting clients? How do you get clients with this content? And I'm just like, It's because they want the service I offer. It doesn't matter where they end up. You know what I mean? And it's becoming more and more popularized and definitely leveraged being a human being. I almost thought, so a few episodes back, I mentioned that I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try out this perplexity thing. And it was like, hey, I'll do an audit of your your YouTube channel. And I was like, well, okay, let's see how I mean no, it's not growing or anything, really. Like it's going really small, but I'm not actively promoting my podcast. let's see. And it found several thumbnails had typos. it could only go back Like 50 episodes for some reason. I guess most people don't do an episode a day like this thing. and it pointed out the typos so I wouldn't have to hunt for them myself. And I almost thought about not fixing them because I was like, at least that proves a human did that slide, you know? Like to air is human. and more and more people really understand it. And when things are like absolutely perfect and like filtered or even like the copy on things being rewritten, you can use AI to like revise stuff, but you need to revise it again, right? But people people can easily spot AI anymore. It's still a good thing that you can use to help streamline and organize your business. But using AI for marketing is bad news bears. Anyway, public social feeds have become super duper crowded, algorithm driven, especially over on Meta. It's like buy ads and you'll you'll get followers. It's like, what? And then I see these I'm just going on a rant here at this point. I see Reddit posts. Where advisors are like, I just started my travel agency and I'm ready to do an ad spend. And thankfully, experienced advisors I see in the comments are like, Don't do it unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on this. Like, do you have someone else paying all your bills? Cause it's not gonna work. It's not gonna really get you any leads. Anyway, the polished or AI assisted content that feels so impersonal at scale, you're just being it's being vomited at you anymore. A lot of it is. And my algorithm for like my personal account is just podcast recordings. Like it's podcast clips, because I'm like, I know these are human beings, and yes, I know it's got professional lighting, but I know these are human beings, right? and so it's different types of podcasts, but it is a lot of podcasts because I know they're real. So that all of that is gonna another kind of quiet burnout, people scrolling out of habit rather than genuine engagement and a growing hunger for something that feels real, specific, and human rather than another optimized post. competing for attention because if they get enough likes and follows, they know somebody's gonna spend their money with them. Which is ugh. I mean, it's good important information to have, by the way, but also that shouldn't be your only goal for creating content. it should be to create a community and engage, not be like, I need 10,000 followers on this account or I'm not gonna make a million dollars this year. Period. How can I manipulate the algorithm? Who can I hire? How much more do I need to spend? Like it's that's just like you're not even creating a community. You're just trying to get money. I actually saw this morning I randomly saw my feed this creator I'd never seen before. And she had a video about the new YouTube monetization things, which I found to be very interesting, and she was quite upset in the first episode because she's like, not that any of you listening wanna monetize, but n neither do I, honestly. I even commented, it like, I don't even want to monetize, I'm just here. But she said the monetization for YouTube is changing in February of next year. And she said, I didn't know anything about this. I have no interest in being in monetizing, but I found it very interesting that YouTube did this. And the comments that I was reading from this video were like, just keeping the man down and blah ba-bah ba. Okay. And I'm going on a tangent here to prove a point with your views and impressions and conversion rates because it is changing. And that's why YouTube's monetization program is also changing. So you still need a thousand subscribers, is what I heard. And from what I remember right now, you need four thousand hours of watch time. And I don't even know if that's average. I don't if it's like average per month or just a minimum of four thousand hours. I don't know. I'm not a creator trying to monetize this account. and then you need with in February you'll need eight thousand hours to get monetized. And she also said you need ten million views a quarter to get your shorts monetized. And I instantly in my head I was like, it's because AI bots. It's because of AI bots chasing all these like people are having AI bots go out and search stuff for ideas and reference. everything on the internet, including all the content on YouTube, to give them ideas to create their own content, right? And I've seen it with my own cause with my own YouTube channel and I just started like a terrible it's fine. I'll improve my short form content. It's fine. But I just started an Instagram and a TikTok and I started like posting shorts. So I was primarily only focused on this podcast for a very long time. And I would see like the average watch time would be like four seconds and like ten seconds. And but then I was like, Well, I'm getting subscribers. And then I would like compare it to Spotify and Apple Podcasts because we're on a bunch of different platforms. And the listen times were totally different. And that's when I realized, and then I looked at the locations of where the YouTube ones were coming from. And for a long time the majority of them were not from the United States. They were from like really weird countries. And I'm like, these are AI bots. These are AI bots. That's why. So it makes perfect sense why YouTube is now like, you need double the watch time anymore? Because they know. Bots are all over the place scouring the internet, especially if you use a bot to generate leads in your own business. So sidebar, if you're like, I'm gonna monetize my account on top of running a travel agency, pretty sure all these platforms are going to increase the requirements to get monetized for because of AI. I'm getting really mad at AI in my in my head as I'm like talking about this out loud. I'm like, why do I even use it? And then I think about like the water waste and the environmental damage and I'm just like It's fine. It's fine. Gotta figure out the good and the bad, right? Okay, so all of that to say, that's good news for your business. If you position yourself correctly, you can still show up on social media. You still should show up on sh social media, especially if your ICA is nowhere within your immediate network and you cannot move. Travel is one of the most human, the most sensory, and the most relationship driven purchases anybody makes. It's the opposite of a commodity transaction. If your clients are tired of scrolling past the polished, impersonal, same exact pictures of the same exact beach from TA after TA after TA after TA with slightly varied scripted fonts, they're tired of it, just so you know. Be you, show up on camera. Please put your face on camera. Please go watch my crappy shorts where I can't even wear makeup because of my MCAS and I have terrible lighting because I just d I just wanted to get this information to you guys. And the hook is bad, it's also bad. But if your clients are so tired of that, the travel advisors who show up as actual human beings, imperfect, sharing real stories, real reactions, and real personality, those stand out precisely because it's become so increasingly rare. All right, so this all connects back. Your founder's story. Ya story bank, your personal touches. These aren't just the nice extras, they're a direct answer to a documented shift in what people are craving from the accounts and businesses that they follow or search for. So, first off, if you ever feel like you're not super polished, where the lighting's bad. Then bigger accounts, A, followers don't mean you're making any money. And B who cares? I like I was booking 30 weddings a year and I had 300 followers. Like followers don't mean shit. It doesn't mean it's converting into sales. the I can almost guarantee you my direct competition that I beat out probably has thousands of followers, tens of thousands of followers. But they didn't have content that truly converted. They had to just spam more often. The trend isn't moving towards more polish. It isn't trend, it isn't, it's moving away. It's totally moving away from the curated, everything matchy matchy, everything so glittery, glamorous-y. I mean, if that's your brand, like if you are super extra, be extra in your content. Don't worry about it. But also. Show up, show up as you. Being genuinely yourself and consistently is the competitive advantage, not the liability. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about the trends for twenty twenty six and beyond on what's actually performing, and why the answer keeps coming back to real human connection. Not the AI, not the not the perfect templated frameworks and copy that you're paying fifty or a hundred dollars a month for that everyone else is posting. Like, don't do that. Be you. Have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow.