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How to Get 68,000+ Social Media Followers for Your Glamping Site - Patryk Wargacki · Outdoor Hospitality Podcast: Glamping, STR, Resorts, Unique Stays, RV Parks, RV Resorts & Campgrounds

• 0:00
  Patryk Wargacki: I think it's always worth spending that little extra money on hiring a professional photographer or as I said, collaborating with someone and you know mutual benefits. But getting those high quality photos is definitely good and gives you enough room to, to work with. Basically, I consider April 4, as the the best marketing opportunity that there is this, like one day in the year when you are technically allowed to fool your audience, and nobody should really be like, upset about it.
• 0:40
  Nick Purslow: Yeah and all these highly engaging posts, obviously, you want to grow the audience. But I mean, a big part of any business really is retaining your loyal customers.
• 0:49
  Nick Purslow: And if you can get them to keep on returning, then you've got a solid base for your business.
• 0:51
  Nick Purslow: And so, you know, the strategy isn't all for growing the audience, it;s also for engaging with the guests that have already stayed with us, you know, encouraging them to come again, isn't it?
• 1:04
  Nick Purslow: Hello, and welcome to the Glampitect podcast. Today I'm joined by Patrick Wargacki, whose the social media coordinator for Glampitect and North Coast 500 Pods. We're going to focus more on his work with NC500 Pods today, as we've had some feedback from listeners who want to hear more about social media marketing for glamping sites in a little more detail. In the episode, we discuss the differences between Facebook and Instagram, the type of content that generates the most engagement, the importance of engaging with your core customer base, and April Fool's pranks. As ever, I hope you enjoy and find value in today's episode.
• 1:37
  Nick Purslow: Hi, Patrick, how are you?
• 1:39
  Patryk Wargacki: I'm good. How are you?
• 1:41
  Nick Purslow: I'm good. Thank you. So you're the basically the social media guy for Glampitect and North Coast 500 Pods. North Coast 500 Pods, or NC500 parts, as we call it, for anyone who didn't know is the glamping site that Calum and Ali set up a few years back, which basically, gave them all their glamping, well, started them off on their glamping knowledge, learnt how to, you know, apply for planning permission for glamping sites, learnt what it takes to run a successful glamping site. And obviously, Calum and Ali are very hands off in the, in the running of that. So at some point, they, you know, hired you to run the social medias for them.
• 2:20
  Nick Purslow: And I was actually speaking to Ed, our sales guy, the other day. And he said that a listener to this podcast was enjoying the episode with Calum, where we talked about marketing before launching a glamping site, but they're just after a bit more specific info on the social media marketing side. So we're going to dig dig into that a bit today. I'm going to go into a few other specifics. But just just to start off, how did you end up working for Glampitect and, with our main focus today for NC500 Pods, how did that come about?
• 2:54
  Patryk Wargacki: Yeah, so I actually started looking for work before I graduated. I had like the videography and editing skills that I wanted to apply in digital marketing because I've always been interested in like, you know, social media advertising and stuff like that.
• 3:09
  Patryk Wargacki: But I really didn't really have much experience in digital marketing. So I thought that as soon as I graduate, I'll just look in a digital marketing field to improve on that skill.
• 3:21
  Patryk Wargacki: But yeah, I basically grew up with social media. So there was really not much for me to learn, it was more a case of getting more experience. And I've managed social media pages before for free. So when the opportunity of working at Glampitect came along, I knew that this was a great chance for me to start.
• 3:49
  Patryk Wargacki: So I was invited to interview but I didn't really know much about glamping before. So I've been researching the industry for good couple weeks before I got my head around it and I was really positively surprised with how popular is and how it's still growing. I realised there is so much potential for marketing and glamping site you know like the the rise of glamping timed perfectly with the staycation trend, really skyrocketed in popularity in an interest among young people, including myself. And it is actually now seeing its own trends with its you know, sustainability, luxury and the whole connection with nature. So I was like really excited to execute my ideas and I proved some of my ideas for the interview, and they really liked the fact that I have had the videography skills. So we were basically on the same page that it was good to apply those skills in a different field and obviously keep improving on on the new ones. So yeah, and and they just offered me a job so I was I was happy to go and and started with, you know, doing the the marketing side of it.
• 5:06
  Patryk Wargacki: And here we are.
• 5:08
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, well, it's a good point about how, you know, you grew up really with social media like like I did. And it is a lot easier for people like us to know what it takes to run, you know, have a decent social media feed. And that's, I think, why Calum was so successful with his earlier marketing efforts.
• 5:24
  Nick Purslow: Because, you know, he just understood what people are after on Instagram and Facebook and things like that. I think, you know, the people that are our clients are genuinely, you know, an older crowd, generally, you know, they've got their capital to invest, and that might not be their forte as such, whereas, you know, our company is full of young people, really, we sort of understand what it takes to run social media pages. You mentioned there that you you ran a few pages for free, what what sort of pages were they? Did you learn much from that?
• 5:54
  Patryk Wargacki: Yes, so I used to work in Marks and Spencers.
• 5:57
  Patryk Wargacki: So they offered me to run their local store social media page.
• 6:02
  Patryk Wargacki: And I've also had my own social media page with about 10,000 likes, but it was literally nothing, you know, like business driven or stuff like that, or like, I wasn't selling anything, it was more like, just, you know, learning how to engage with people, basically, exploring the tools that you know, social media has, and the potential to grow, and stuff like that. So I was pretty confident to take on NC500 Pods, pretty much and obviously Glampitect and our own clients.
• 6:41
  Patryk Wargacki: So yeah.
• 6:41
  Nick Purslow: Yeah and, obviously, Calum had done well, with with the social media pages for nc 500 pods, when he brought you on board, did he sort of lay out a blueprint for you? Or did you have a lot of creative control? And have you changed much? Or have you carried on with the general sort of themes that he was doing?
• 7:00
  Patryk Wargacki: So that's actually something that I really liked that I was given this freedom of creativity, and we didn't really have a, like a set plan. We just like, came together and agreed on objectives and KPIs. And we both knew what you want from social media, and I was just trying to execute my ideas. Some of them work really well, some of them didn't. But obviously, that's the part of the process. But generally speaking, we we did get a lot of new followers, we reached out to a lot of new people, especially Glampitect.
• 7:39
  Patryk Wargacki: The page, the business really made its name in the industry, partly through the social media stuff. So that's good. And yeah, so basically, I was just trying to like, every, every day, I was just like, coming up to Calum with my ideas. And then eventually, he was like, you know what, just like, I'll let you do it, I can, I can see that you're doing good. So you don't have to, like come every time and ask me if that's good or not. I'll just trust you in this. I was like, okay, so I had this sense of responsibility, which actually made me more motivated to, you know, to execute my ideas very well. And I was happy with the results.
• 8:25
  Patryk Wargacki: And here we are today. That's that's the literally everyday day to day routine now.
• 8:35
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, what does a typical week of North Coast 500 Pods content look like?
• 8:41
  Patryk Wargacki: So we usually try to plan content couple weeks ahead, while leaving few gaps here and there just to give us enough room to respond to any current social media trends or events that are happening. But because of the large following that we have, and the fact that obviously, thanks to Calum as well, and the fact that we have two glamping sites and Achmelvich and Brora, the ideas for content are pretty much endless. So I've got this set up like a calendar that I just usually try to schedule all my content and see what works well or what doesn't work. We often do collaborations with photographers and other nc 500-focused pages to share photos of NC500 locations always trying to you know, showcase the beauty of local environment and encourage people to visit our glamping sites.
• 9:39
  Patryk Wargacki: We also benefit from our unique selling points. In this case, it's Amazon Alexa in our pods, you know custom lighting, the voice control smart home. So that is really attractive for you know, new audience to book a stay with us. As I said before, responding to current trends or events. So recently, let's say first day of first day of spring. So a little bit of content on that, is they're building up to a real reopening in few weeks. So So yeah, good thing is that because of the fact that we always try to cooperate with other content creators, we have a library containing hundreds and hundreds of high quality photos of both of our sites, and its surrounding areas. So there's so much room to get creative with your content. So one thing I'll definitely say is, having as many as possible high quality photos is definitely good for managing social media page, because obviously, you will, like people will always be more encouraged to click and, you know, check out your shopping site when it's got like, very beautiful images of your glamping sign in and the area around it.
• 10:56
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, how often do you post a day or a week?
• 11:00
  Patryk Wargacki: So now it's every day, sometimes twice a day. Obviously, we want to reach as many people as possible, so we just try to be as consistent as possible. So So yeah.
• 11:15
  Nick Purslow: Okay, and do you mix up the strategy, depending on the platform? Because obviously, you know, we've got Facebook and Instagram pages, does the content change for that? Or does it you know, does one lead the other?
• 11:27
  Patryk Wargacki: So we usually do cross posting. So we share the same content on Instagram and Facebook. But there's obviously exceptions like, because on Instagram, you can't really share links or articles.
• 11:37
  Patryk Wargacki: So in terms of articles, we usually do graphics, just with like quoting whatever the article is saying. And obviously, on Facebook, you've got reactions. So let's say we do, because we try to encourage audience for reactions as well, so recently we've done a post when we ask our audience to vote between our two glamping sites, like whatever was better. So let's say you wanted to vote for Achmelvich, you have a like, if you want to let the vote for Brora, you give a heart reaction. And obviously, you can't do it on Instagram. So we had to work our way around this.
• 12:17
  Patryk Wargacki: So we just done a poll on Instagram story. And obviously, one thing is, one thing that is very beneficial for Instagram, as opposed to Facebook, is hashtags, which basically works like SEO, for Instagram. Because Facebook, it's not really hashtags driven that much. So hashtag is definitely a good way to reach new people on Instagram.
• 12:44
  Nick Purslow: And so you know, having a good, it sounds like having a good knowledge of, of the specifics of each platform is quite important if you really want to utilise each platform to the fullest.
• 12:53
  Patryk Wargacki: Yeah, definitely. As I said, we do although we do cross posting across all platforms, you can't really just copy and paste it because obviously, as I said, you can't you can't share links you like Instagram is very limited in terms of like, links and articles. And you know, stuff like that. Whereas Facebook is basically you can do all sorts of content. So you just need to, like carefully plan out how, how can you execute this idea on this platform and on other platforms?
• 13:28
  Nick Purslow: Speaking to Calum the other week and he said, You know, he initially started out focused on Instagram, because that's just, you know, as he said, the word he is part of like the Instagram generation.
• 13:36
  Nick Purslow: But Facebook is actually better for the business really, because it gets seems to get more engagement. And also, you know, can it's easier to get direct bookings, because you can just say, you can put a link in Facebook post, whereas Instagram, you can't, you have to go through a few funny steps.
• 13:50
  Nick Purslow: So let's say do you have like a, you when you're thinking of content, you have it with Facebook in mind more than Instagram? Or is it sort of a 50/50 split?
• 14:03
  Patryk Wargacki: I would say it's more like a 50/50 split.
• 14:05
  Patryk Wargacki: But as you said, yeah, Facebook is definitely like the main thing to get on. So if I was to choose between Facebook and Instagram, I'll definitely choose Facebook. It's got better reach, it's got much more room to work with, as I said, different types of content. So you can be for us, it can be gifs, videos, normal posts, you can also join Facebook groups, which is actually very beneficial if you want to, you know, engage with with new audience, share your glamping side and wherever, wherever you've got to offer. Instagram is still good. And as as Calum mentioned in one of the episodes that it's more like showcasing your glamping site, showing the you know, the showcasing the pods and exposing yourself to a wider audience, but mainly Facebook would be your main point to to get those bookings
• 15:01
  Nick Purslow: You mentioned Facebook groups, that's a good good point, actually, because they're really good for for, well, for people who don't know, a Facebook group is a sort of mini community that you can join. And you get, I suppose you get more notifications and stuff for things that are posted in that little community that only that, well if it's a private group, that only that little community can see. And you've actually set one up for for Glampitect haven't you, it's called the glamping site owners discussion where, you know, we help our prospective and existing clients with content in that. Is there one for NC500 pods? Or do you just do it for
• 15:37
  Patryk Wargacki: So glamping, site owners discussion was Glampitect.
• 15:40
  Patryk Wargacki: actually set up by Calum, but I remember when I joined, it had only about 200, 300 members, and there wasn't really much activity going on. So basically, what I've done, I was just trying to get as much publicity of the group as possible. And we now have over 2000 members with like about 10 to 20 joining every day.
• 16:05
  Patryk Wargacki: But yeah, as you said, it's definitely a very, very good tool to look at, in terms of like, you know, getting new ideas of for your glamping site, collaborating with other people basically discussing the glamping industry, again, some insider networking with other people. And so for, for us a glamping. site owner, I would say the best thing about Facebook groups is to get ideas and look at the competition, see what others are doing. And check out their pages, see, see what works well, on their social media pages, and any ideas that you could possibly incorporate into your own glamping. site?
• 16:47
  Patryk Wargacki: And yeah, I wouldn't really use it for advertising as much.
• 16:52
  Patryk Wargacki: Maybe, for what I mean, there are some groups that are specifically designed for advertising, but in general, I would say it would be more beneficial, it would be more beneficial for for people to just use Facebook groups as part of just getting your word out there through like, not maybe directly promoting but by just discussing and sharing your ideas. Because people would be more likely to to you know, get in a conversation with you if they saw the like cool idea that you shared rather than just trying to sell and get bookings.
• 17:28
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, if there are any listeners who aren't in in our Facebook group for if you want to set up a glamping site, then it's we'll put a link in link to it in the description.
• 17:36
  Nick Purslow: It's called glamping site owners discussion. Just before we dig into some specific types of content that you do for nc 500 pods because, you know, this stuff does genuinely work genuinely work. So how many followers do we have on Instagram? And how many likes do we have on our Facebook page for nc 500.
• 17:54
  Patryk Wargacki: So at the moment, we've got over 35,000 on Facebook, and I think 33,000 on Instagram.
• 18:03
  Nick Purslow: Okay, so that should give you an idea, you know, some of this stuff can can really build up your following.
• 18:08
  Nick Purslow: And obviously, the more followers you have, you'd like to think the more the more bookings you get, and the more popular your site is. So what kind of content do you think gets the most engagement for a glamping site?
• 18:21
  Patryk Wargacki: So as I said before, definitely high quality photos. So I think it's always worth spending that little extra money on hiring a professional photographer, or, as I said, collaborating with someone and, you know, mutual benefits. But getting those high quality photos is definitely good and gives you enough room to, to work with. And also, it's very attractive for for new followers to come and see both of your glamping site. We always try to engage with our audience by responding to current trends. So as I said before, we do memes as well. So we will we try to like, get like funny content to your audience as well. Because obviously, this is often a conversation starter, as well.
• 19:10
  Patryk Wargacki: And then we can respond to as many comments as we can. Because like, the more people are engaging, the better. And it's always important that you engage with your audience as well. So it's not like you just post a picture of your glamping site, say something nice and you just leave it. I think it's very important that you show that you know that there's people behind your business, not like it's it's not robots that you know, do automatic posting of your of your posts, it's actually real human beings behind the business.
• 19:47
  Patryk Wargacki: We often run like photo contests as well, just to like, you know, for example, recently, we've asked our audience to share the best for us of their stay with us. And then we decided to run a contest when they would, for example, win a 10% voucher for their next stay. And it was really, really high engaging as well. Because obviously, everyone wants to win. And if whoever Stay with us, you always get, you know, nice opportunities to get these nice looking for us. As I mentioned before, Which side do you like more type of things. So if you've got more than one glamping site, or more than one glamping pod, or yurt, or something like that, you can do like a internal voting, asking your audience like what what do you prefer? And generally questions like, just try to ask questions to your audience, because obviously, getting answers from them will always drive engagement. We also try to get featured in articles related to North Coast 500, staycations, and stuff like that. So whenever we are featured, and any article, we always share it to your social medias. And they always drives engagement as well, because people are interested to see what other businesses say about us and other people say about us. So yeah, that's, that's why I would definitely focus on the most.
• 21:26
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, and you mentioned competitions. Didn't you run one recently that gave us a massive bump in followers?
• 21:32
  Patryk Wargacki: Yes. So we did collaborate with another business, from Edinburgh, and we ran a giveaway. So basically, we we asked people to follow us, tag their friends, and they could be in a chance to win a free night stay with us. And it did blow up, we gained about 10,000 followers in a week. And it's been picked up by some influencers on Instagram with a really big following. And they they reached out to us offering to promote or glamping site in exchange of offering them a free night stay for free, which obviously is always a good thing, because it depends on the following. But if you see that you can really benefit from, you know, getting that wide audience from someone else, it would be really wise to consider offering a free night stay in exchange for promoting because you never know what what good might come of it. And we had some influences before from which we gained about, I think one of them because one of them went to our Brora site, and she said she was she was taking really good photos of like our sauna and, and glamping pods. And we I think from her page itself, we got about 10 bookings. So So yeah, it's definitely worth considering that.
• 22:58
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, and for those not well versed in social media lingo, an influencer is someone usually on Instagram who has some sort of following, probably somewhere anywhere between 5000 to infinite number of followers. And there's a whole industry now of of these influencers getting paid or getting things like free night stays in return for some promotion, it's just a form of advertising. It's really, it's really effective, because it's targeted because of the people you know, the people that follow them trust them, and it tends to get quite a quite good return on investments from from those advertisements.
• 23:37
  Nick Purslow: And then just the last thing on specific content, you actually the other day you posted on April Fools' prank, which caught a lot of engagement and inquiries that you had to let people down I believe.
• 23:48
  Patryk Wargacki: Yeah, so basically, I consider April 1st, as the best marketing opportunity that there is. It's like a one day in the year when you are technically allowed to fool your audience and nobody should really be like, upset about it. But yeah, it drove really good engagement. So basically, we drove the we're going to build an underwater pod. And we got a really, really great engagement from it, and a lot of people messaged us asking to book it, but obviously we had to, like break the news that, well, unfortunately, not this time, but you know, maybe in the future. But yeah, like the general response was very positive. Like a lot of people were were laughing and joking with us. And we ended up actually getting, like, reaching new audience who saw the aqua pod. They were like, Oh, my God, what is that? And when they realise it's just a joke, then then afterwards, they went to check on the actual pods that we have. So we actually ended up getting the bookings from that campaign as well. But yeah, it was definitely one of the one of the better campaigns that we executed.
• 24:58
  Nick Purslow: Yeah and all these highly enngaging posts, obviously, you want to grow the audience, but a big part of any business really is retaining your loyal customers. And if you can get them to keep on returning, then you've got a solid base for your business.
• 25:09
  Nick Purslow: And so, you know, the strategy isn't all for growing the audience, it's also, you know, for engaging with with, with the, with the guests that have already stayed with us and, you know, encouraging them to come again, isn't it?
• 25:21
  Patryk Wargacki: Yes, definitely. We actually managed to, you know, build ourselves a little fan base, when we have a group, small group of people where they can, they actually engage with almost any of our posts, they show with their friends and family, and we've got a few people that like, returned to stay with us for like, third or fourth time. So I would say it's pretty important that you know, you treat your customers as, as your friends and family, pretty much. So if you're really passionate about social media, you can make it like, a really fun, like, you don't you don't feel like you're working. It's more like a, you know, you log in every day. And you basically want to share with your audience because you really like to do that. If you know what I mean.
• 26:06
  Nick Purslow: Yeah. Okay. And then, obviously, this podcast is aimed at helping as many prospective and existing glamping site owners as possible. But we're also a business and we do offer marketing services. And as you'll be able to see, from the numbers that we've got on our social media pages, we like to think that we're pretty good at it. I know you are Patrick. So what sort of what sort of services do we do we offer for our for our social media marketing clients?
• 26:33
  Patryk Wargacki: So basically, we can do anything that they want us to do, from setting up from scratch, managing basically paid advertising, we can also do website setup if they if they need one, because obviously social media and website you always want to link to your website from your social media.
• 26:53
  Patryk Wargacki: So we can do all of that for them. Because obviously, as I said before, social media is very time consuming. Not everybody has time to do it. And you can see the example of Calum, like he, he had to get someone to take over social media because he just didn't have enough time to do it. And since then, we are posting every day, we responding to comments faster, we're responding to messages quicker, we create graphics, which is more, it looks more professional, we always try to incorporate the nc 500 logo, some sort of like a watermark, on high engaging content. So when it reaches new people, they will see the logo and potentially look for more information. We started posting on Facebook groups, as I said before we collaborate with others, all those little things that normally you wouldn't have time to do it yourself. Because obviously it does take time. So and as I said, the benefits are really great. So it's definitely worth considering social media set up and management services.
• 28:02
  Nick Purslow: Yeah I'd emphasise the time aspect, but also the quality aspects, you know. It's more important, we said with Calum the other days it's important to just get going and try things and stuff. But if you do want that extra bit of quality, you know, we've got the designers who can make it look, you know, slick and professional, but also personable. And just that consistency of quality and quantity of content. I think that's something that we really can offer for our clients. But yeah, so get in touch if if you're interested in hearing more about those kinds of things. But Patrick, thank you for coming on and I'll leave you to posting more for NC500 and Glampitect.
• 28:42
  Patryk Wargacki: Yeah, it was pleasure. Thank you for having me.
• 28:45
  Nick Purslow: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Glampitect podcast. I hope you enjoyed and that you found value in today's episode. If you did feel free to leave a rating and review on Apple podcast as it really helps us move up the podcast rankings. Thank you