Categorizing the Social Media Content used on Facebook by Tourism Organizations

This study examines the ability to attract, engage, and retain tourists while fostering brand awareness and word of mouth through different categories of content posted on social media, specifically Facebook. The analysis is based on the assumption that tourism organizations are able to use social media as a dynamic means of interacting with new and existing customers. This study investigates the content marketing strategies applied by these portals through Facebook, one of the most popular social media sites and the largest social content creation platform. It is seen that Facebook offers unique opportunity for tourism businesses to engage customers through effective content, and in this paper we address two related questions. First, what type of content is being used to communicate with potential customers via Facebook And second, how effective is this means of communication We address these questions by analyzing 1000 Facebook posts in the Facebook pages of five popular tourism organizations - MakeMyTrip, Yatra. com, HolidayIQ, Travel Triangle, and Trip Hobo. Their popularity was identified by calculating the number of members who have joined their Facebook pages. Through content analysis of these posts, we identify three distinct content strategies Way of life, Information Provider, and Market Development. By calculating the number of Shares each post could garner, the effectiveness of each strategy is measured. The results demonstrate that visual and action-oriented posts exert significant effect on online engagement and action of tourists. The findings of this study also reveal that the Way of Life strategy apparently has the biggest impact, generating largest number of Shares. The main limitation of this study is that only five portals were analysed for a period of one month and as a result it might have missed out on fine strategies used by other portals as well. However, further research done on a greater number of travel portals for a longer time on a different social media platform will overcome this limitation. Repeating the same study in a years time will most likely yield significantly different results, due to the constantly evolving nature of social media.