Cisco Systems predicts that video will account for 90 percentof internet traffic within three years. Even now, 51 percent of web traffic is video and 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Video is becoming too big to ignore.

It is hardly surprising that we are watching more and more online video. If blogs are the magazines of the web, then videos are its television. We spend hours a day watching TV so why wouldn’t we do the same online. The Millenial Generation, those born after about 1980, consume online videos more than anyone else. They are the future of the tourist industry!

Facebook page statistics that go up and down like crazy are a sign that your posting strategy needs to be optimized.  Your content is attracting attention but not enough to boost your Edgerank. Fortunately there is a simple solution.

Facebook’s Timeline has moved the goalposts of engagement in the last six months. Strategies that worked in the past are no longer effective.  “Reach”, “viral reach” and “talking about this” graphs that look like roller coasters are a strong signal that your posting strategy needs a revamp. 

Facebook admits that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake. Many of these fake accounts are created expressly for the dishonest purpose of inflating like numbers.

This makes paying for likes a risky business: Your new fans may well be worthless, fake Facebook profiles created in “factories” in Asia. If you are paying for fans, make sure that engagement rises in proportion to the number of new likes. Otherwise you are likely wasting money on robots. It is faar better to use an agency like Canary Content that focuses on creating quality content aimed at your target markeet. 

Facebook admits that only 17% of the average page’s fans see its updates.  To maximize your page’s impact and return on investment you need to reach a much higher percentage of your fans. To do this you need to understand how Facebook decides who sees what.

Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to grade every single post you make. EdgeRank is the social media giant’s version of Google’s PageRank. Luckily, EdgeRank is a much simpler and more elegant system than Google’s opaque and ever-changing algorithms.

EdgeRank uses three factors to calculate the rank of your posts: Affinity, EdgeWeight  and Recency.

Using a third party app such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to automate posting reduces Facebook engagement by 86%, according to app developer Applum.  

 It appears that Facebook penalises people who use third party apps by dropping their EdgeRank (the FB equivalent of Google’s Page Rank). Most apps also don’t allow you to take advantage of all the tools that Facebook offers on its pages. For example, Hootsuite users cannot create a gallery of images to share on Facebook but must upload only a single image per post.

Penalizing app users makes sense for Facebook. The social media giant has to keeps its pages human and avoid automation. It knows that users will quickly go elsewhere if they are constantly bombarded by robot-created spam messages. Pre-loaded posts are not exactly social.

Canary Island businesses with a Facebook page this means focusing on creating a community of engaged users over time rather than just focusing on post frequency and volume.

There is currently a lot of talk about the need for the Canary Islands to cultivate the loyalty of their visitors. The debate however, has to a large extent missed the point. It has focused only on what we can do while our tourists are in the Canaries. The hugely important subject of how to stay in touch and build loyalty once they have gone home has been ignored. 

With Canarian tourism now in its sixth decade, customer service and amiability should be second nature. Rather than pinning all our future hopes on smiling a lot and providing good customer service, we need to move the debate towards what happens once our visitors have left the islands. In short, we need to stay in touch with our visitors and make sure that they come back.

Launched on April 24 and updated several times since, Google’s Penguin Update is the search engine giant’s latest attempt to improve its users’ internet experience. It has far-reaching consequences for tourism industry websites in the Canary Islands.

Penguin is a sign that the search engine and social media giant is putting web surfers’ opinions ahead of the mechanical results generated by its algorithms. This has become possible thanks to the rise of social media. For tourist businesses in the Canary Islands Google Penguin is a game-changer.

The Millenials, also known as Generation Y, are starting to get jobs, earn money, and come on holiday. They will soon be the largest consumer group in history. Their outlook and expectations will shape Canary Island tourist industry for the next 20 years.

Millenials, all born after 1983, are the first genuinely technology-friendly generation. They grew up with computers and mobile phones, email and social media. They expect information to be available instantly via their mobile devices, and don’t react kindly to WiFi blackspots and poor quality websites.

Photos are everything when it comes to marketing tourist destinations and businesses via Facebook.com. Treat your Facebook timeline like a glossy magazine: Make sure it is visually attractive and full of useful and easily digested information.

The initial impact of your Facebook page comes from the photos that you share with your audience. They are what catch the eye and make people go WOW. If your page grabs their attention they are more likely to like the page and follow your new posts.

Social media marketing is a powerful tool that allows tourist businesses to stay in touch with their customers. However, without quality content, social media campaigns are hollow and rarely lead to long-term engagement and return visits.

Canary Content believes that successful social media campaigns in the tourist industry start with quality photos, short videos and useful written content. We focus on generating that content for your business!