UNWTO’s Social Media Communication Plan
Part I: Social Media Communication Plan. 3
Ø Company Profile Overview.. 5
Part III: Social Media Strategy. 8
ü Documentary Campaigns for the winners\ 10
Social Media Calendar for UNWTO.. 12
Social Media Measurement: United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). 13
v Digital Goals & Objectives. 13
v Frequency of Content for Primary Channels/Platforms. 14
Part I: Social Media Communication Plan
In today’s world every organization needs a social media presence. Social media allows organizations to connect with their followers and customers on a more personal level while building their brand up as a valuable resource. Not every platform is right for every organization, so it is crucial to choose which are right for organizational brand and create a social media strategy. Today’s population who are exposed to internet spend considerable time with various social sites. For organic social posts, organizations should post relevant and engaging materials (Kulakoğlu-Dilek, Kizilirmak, İ., & Dilek, 2018). It should be approximately 25–30% self-promotion (posting about specific products/services) and the rest should be about cementing organizational brand as an authority resource. This paper provides an overview of The World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) social media communication plan.
The First important aspect to be highlighted will be a summary of UNWTO company profile which includes what it is in charge of, its target and number of members. What follows is a comprehensive information of the organization’s landscape analysis including social media presence, target audience, competition, tradition PR outreach and its social media policy. Another important aspect is UNWTO’s SWOT analysis that covers its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the organization.
The next section of this paper will cover important aspects such as social media strategy, objectives and tactics. Among the major tactics include gifting people on social media, using chat box on the company’s website and social platforms, posting advisory statements, query sessions and documentary campaigns. Another major component of this paper is the organization’s digital campaign. The main role of digital campaigns is to increase brand image, consumer knowledge and sales. UNWTO’s digital campaign will majorly target American youths and its primary goal will be to increase the number of visits on the company’s social media platforms. An overview of the company’s social media calendar and social media measurement will also be presented. Social media measurement will include UNWTO’s digital goals and objectives, frequency of content on primary channels and engagement levels.
| UNWTO 6-Month’s Timeline for Social Media Communication Plan | |
| 2021 July | Website development
Creation of social media pages Social media audit Drafting weekly blogs Social media strategies Recruit social media managers
|
| 2021 August | Social media posts
Social media campaign Ensure follower are engaged in social platforms |
| 2021 September | Social media promotions
Blog posts Engagement report |
| 2021 October | Redesigning the company’s website
Updating social media cites Promoting company’s campaign Daily blog posts |
| 2021 November | Regular social media updates
Promotions and gifts Chat box Query sessions |
| 2021 December | Campaign
Blog posts Online gifts
|
The World Tourism Organization is a United Nations agency in charge of the promotion of responsible, sustainable, and universally accepted tourism. The target of the organization is Nation State’s tourism sectors as the key factor in economic development. It prioritizes in advocating tourism as a socio-economic driver, improving competitiveness in tourism by spreading knowledge and advocating for policies, promoting sustainable tourism through policy advocacy, building partnerships, advancing tourism as a poverty alleviation strategy, and fostering knowledge and capacity building in member states (UNWTO, 2021). With a membership of 159 states, 6 associate members, 2 observers, and 500 affiliate members, the UNWTO is meeting its target audience; nation states.
Over the last six months, The World Tourism Organization has maintained an active social media with an organic traffic of 208,462 worldwide and 0 paid traffic. This means that its target audience was attracted to the information posted on social media palforms. However, it generated less traffic compared to its competitors such as the tourism notes. The social media sites provided significant traffic from backlinks with image links bringing in 68% of all backlinks (Büyüközkan, Mukul & Kongar, 2021). The organization has 25.5k followers on Twitter, and 84.2k followers on Instagram while maintaining a constant feed in all the platforms including the website’s blog. The entity has an average of 2.46k visits per page, 56.23% bounce rate, and a visit duration of 7:18. The online presence of the organization is performing significantly well.
The World Trade Organization has widely used digital media as it main tool of communication. Over the past six months, the United Nations’ branch has used its social media platforms to educate its target audiences, and the digital media such as it is website to provide frequent reports on happenings within the organization. It’s platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the official blog site has gathered a lot of traffic as it remains active and interactive (Feili ey al., 2017). The major challenge as reported in the official website of the organization over the past year was the COVID-19 pandemic which deterred nation states from carrying out tourism.
The inability of nation states to conduct tourism led to the failure of the organization to meet its core mandate of promoting tourism for economic benefits. The UNWTO experts projected 2022 as the year where its objectives would recover after the pandemic has been mitigated (UNWTO, 2021). The organization highlights major advancements in its tourism scope to reach neglected economies such as Africa and the middle East. It’s You Tube channel remains relevant with 11.7k subscribers and a constant upload of new tourism videos and streams.
Target audience are the specific individuals likely to be attracted tourism industry. One of the most reliable audience are young middle-aged adults who are frequent travelers. Approximately 60% of young and middle-aged adults engage in tourism activities such as site visits and wildlife seeing.
The most prominent tradition PR outreach used by UNWTO is television. Through television, the organization hairs advisories and advertisements to help in reaching out its follower (UNWTO, 2021). Also, there is newspapers. The organizations frequently contact different media organizations to publish articles and adverts on their newspaper pages. Tradition PR is significant in increasing awareness of the brand and ensuring the brand positioning is deliberate and accurate.
Part III: Social Media Strategy
- Increase the number of Twitter Retweets, comments, and clicks to the company’s website from an average of 2000 likes and 400 comments to 10,000 likes and 2000 comments within two months to help increase the sales volumes by 30%. (10,000 retweets would help the company to be trending on Twitter and thus increase the marketability of the company and by extension its brand name) (UNWTO, 2021).
- Use our websites and other media platforms to address issues concerning climate change and the protection of the environment (this campaign will also be extended to Twitter, where we will be guiding people on how to best protect the environment in their immediate surrounding)
The organization will provide gifts to the most frequent liker, and the person who best knows the company by answering questions posted on the website concerning our brand, the company’s products, and history, and lastly, the customer who gives the highest number of referrals (UNWTO, 2021). This will make the interaction lively and interesting. The customer who likes our social media posts and comments the most will be given a free shopping voucher. The company will set up a committee that will be determining the winner. The customers will be asked to send the number of comments they have made and the likes they made on our social media platforms, and then the winner will be selected based on the number of likes and comments they make. Currently, the company only posts items on social media, and they do not follow up on the number of likes that the company receives. The challenge is that sometimes no people like the posts, and there is a need to increase the likes and the shares to increase the company’s marketability and, by extension, its brand. The increased referrals to liking our website and buying products from the company will help increase the overall sales and improve the brand image.
Use of Chatbot on our website and our social media platforms will also be significant. According to Drift (2019), one of the best ways to improve customer interaction in digital platforms is to ensure that the customers have immediate feedback. Therefore, we will introduce some chatbots on our websites so that when the customers need to enquire something about the company’s products or file a complaint or a give a recommendation they can freely do so. Currently, the company utilizes email and the official way to make a complaint; however, it may be quite inconvenient and time-consuming to the customers. Thus, there is the need to introduce chatbot addressing these issues. The chatbot will first filter the message that the customer wants to address by the company. Then it will redirect the customer to our customer service attendant, who addresses those issues.
The company will be posting some advisory statements every week to help people understand the best way to protect the environment. There will also be some social media challenges in which the customers will be giving ideas on how to best protect the environment, and the person with the best idea will be awarded (E-consultancy, 2020).
The tactics will be aimed at increasing awareness about the company and its products. The first tactic is about asking a random question that directly links to our company’s products. The first person to answer the question correctly will be regarded as the winner, and he/she will be rewarded (Feili et al., 2017). The query tactic will attract more customers as they will want to get the gist. The gift will be delivered together with other products that the customer will purchase from the firm; this will help improve the sales.
A video will be recorded when gifting the winners their prizes. The videos will be shared across the company’s social media platforms and other media outlets to make the campaign believable and increase the customer’s urge to join the campaign to win such prizes.
Part IV: Digital Campaign
The campaign’s primary role will be increasing the brand image, the customer’s knowledge of the customer’s image, and most especially, the company’s sales. The initial campaign will run for three months in which the current month (06/2021) statistics will be used as the benchmark (UNWTO, 2021). The benchmark will help the management to understand if the objectives of the company are being met. Suppose the likes, referrals, and sales statistics will not improve within the given time. In that case, the management will have to re-strategize and develop a better framework to increase the company’s statistics.
The campaign will primarily target the American youths. Statistics indicate that the youths are the most frequent users of social media platforms. Thus, they will be the most significant group to increase its brand image on social media platforms. However, the scope of the target group will not be limited to the youths alone (Mallick, Rudra & Samanta, 2020). Other members of the population can also take part in the campaign, and if they are lucky, they will win the prizes when they win.
The primary goal of this campaign is to increase the number of visits to our social media platforms and the website—also, the number of tweets, comments, and likes. The importance of the increase in these statistics is that it will improve the brand image and customers’ knowledge of the firm and its products (UNWTO, 2021). Several companies such as Boohoo, PlayStation, The Royal Academy, Depop, Chipotle have used this strategy to improve their brand image. By extension, their sales and the campaign deliver their expectation (E-consultancy, 2020). Thus, we will use their framework as the benchmark to ensure that our campaign delivers such excellent results.
To evaluate the performance, we will use 06/2021 as the base period month, which will be used to evaluate the other performance of the campaign. We will use the following arithmetic to calculate the increase in the likes, retweets, shares, and visits to the website.
% Increase in likes/tweets/shares/visits= (statistics for month (x)-statistics for 06/2021)/(statistics for 06/2021) 100%
%Increase in sales = (sales in month (x)-sales in baseline month)/( sales in baseline month) X 100%
The figure obtained will show the success rate of the campaign in line with the company’s objectives of moving from 2000 likes and 400 comments to 10,000 likes and 2000 comments
Social Media Calendar for UNWTO
| PLATFORM | DATE | TIME | DESCRIPTION | CHARACTER COUNT |
| WeChat
YouTube |
21/6/2021 | A 10 minute video showcasing historical sites in the Middle East to draw attention from tourists. | 16 | |
| 22/6/2021 | 10.00 AM | Street food photos of locals in Africa, creating more awareness about African tourism. | 13 | |
| 12.45 PM | Street food photos of locals in Africa, creating more awareness about African tourism. | 13 | ||
| Facebook
|
23/6/2021 | 11.00 AM | A link to the United World Tourism Organization website sharing recent updates on our new offices. | 16 |
| 24/6/2021 | 8.00 AM | Serene sunset and sunrise landscape photos of dream destination places in African countries. | 13 | |
| 10.00 AM | ||||
| YouTube
|
25/6/2021 | 10.00 AM | An aesthetic compilation video of places to travel in the Middle East, the serenity and a YouTube video showing how to travel on budget. | 24 |
| 26/6/2021 | 12.45 AM | A photo announcing a camera giveaway we will be hosting to help document people’s travel experiences to encourage them to be bolder with travelling to undiscovered places in the Middle East and African countries, and the necessary requirements for entry to the giveaway. | 43 | |
| 10.00 AM | ||||
| 27/6/2021 | 8.00 AM | Follower appreciation post for the continuous increase in YouTube subscribers and a countdown reminder for a video we will be posting next week on Tuesday regarding travelling necessities during the Covid-19 Pandemic. | 32 |
Social Media Measurement: United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
Based on its activities on most of its social media platforms, The World Tourism Organization uses the platforms to educate the public about its activities, and educate the world on the tourism sector as a key economic entity of States. For example, the UNWTO You Tube channel showcases different tourism sites of the world (Mallick, Rudra & Samanta, 2020).
All the digital platforms run by the UNWTO are constantly updated with content. This shows that they are meeting their objectives as an organization as proven by an average of 2.46k visits per page, 56.23% bounce rate, and a visit duration of 7:18 over the last 6 weeks (UNWTO, 2021).
According to SEMrush analytics, the UNWTO digital sites attract significant traffic from backlinks with image links bringing in 68% of all backlinks. This is an indication that the tourism organization is successful in the engagement with its target audience. However, some of its platform such as The You Tube Channel has fewer engagements. For example, a 3minute video uploaded to its channel a week ago titled ‘Impulse Travel’ gained 36 views and 4 likes (E-consultancy, 2020).
The organization has done little to breach the gap between the tourism inequalities between Europe/ America and Africa/ Middle East/Latin America. Although it has made strides by establishing a new office in Middle East, and creating awareness about forgotten places in Latin America and Africa, more has to be done in terms of establishing policies that will rectify the situation. Further, The Organization has failed in the effort to continue tourism amidst the pandemic. Therefore, it needs to come up with policies that will enable the continuation of travel during the pandemic and a future occurrence.
The overall social media posts target raising awareness to undiscovered places in less developed countries and the cautionary measures that people should take regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic. The time set for each social media site is in accordance to the relevant analytics showing the times that UNWTO followers and subscribers are most active, therefore reaching the direct target audience. Posting videos of dream-like travel destinations in underdeveloped countries entices viewers into visiting those places or wanting to find out more about them. Posting similar photos of those places and the locals in their day to day lives on Instagram and Facebook also garners the same effect. Posting a video on WeChat, Instagram, Facebook, You Tube social media platforms about travelling on a budget helps people realise that it does not take much to travel to these places and have a reminiscent experience.
Drift. (2019, August 27). Why are chatbots important? https://www.drift.com/learn/chatbot/why-are- chatbots-important/
E-consultancy. (2020, June 25). Thirty brands with excellent social media strategies – Econsultancy. Econsultancy. https://econsultancy.com/30-brands-with-excellent-social-media- strategies/
Büyüközkan, G., Mukul, E., & Kongar, E. (2021). Health tourism strategy selection via SWOT analysis and integrated hesitant fuzzy linguistic AHP-MABAC approach. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 74, 100929.
Feili, H., Qomi, M., Sheibani, S., & Azmoun, G. (2017, November). SWOT analysis for sustainable tourism development strategies using fuzzy logic. In 3rd International Conference of Science & Engineering in the Technology Era, Copenhagen, Denmark (Vol. 30).
Kulakoğlu-Dilek, N., KIZILIRMAK, İ., & Dilek, S. E. (2018). Virtual reality or just reality? A SWOT analysis of the tourism industry. Journal of Tourismology, 4(1), 67-74.
Mallick, S. K., Rudra, S., & Samanta, R. (2020). Sustainable ecotourism development using SWOT and QSPM approach: A study on Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. International Journal of Geoheritage and Parks, 8(3), 185-193.
Mondal, M., & Haque, S. (2017). SWOT analysis and strategies to develop sustainable tourism in United Nations. UTMS Journal of Economics, 8(2), 159-167.
