This post is part of a weekly series by Ravi Shukle called “Best Facebook Pages” where we audit the best performing Facebook Pages to provide you with real life best practices to help improve your Facebook content strategy.
This week we’re analysing The Planet D, a travel blog with a 125,000+ fan page showcasing travel stories, photography and inspiration.
They engage with a large portion of their fans on a daily basis and, as a result, are growing by an average of 2,000 fans per week. We’re going to discover how.
1) Asking fans direct questions
The Planet D often asks travel-related questions to keep their fans engaged,
To help build an engaged Facebook community, encourage your fans to share their stories ~ Click To Tweet
This provides the page with a great opportunity to receive feedback on how their fans like to travel, and allows fans to share their stories with each other.
2) Inspiring their fans through quotes
Their tactic – release a series of motivational images that inspire their fans to travel and explore.
A great way to inspire your Facebook fans is to encourage them along their journey ~ Click To Tweet
Motivating and inspiring their fans to travel has worked very well for this page. It helps connect their fans with their passion for travel. Consequently, posts such as the one above tend to receive a high number of shares and likes.
3) Sharing their personal travel experiences
Those who travel often enjoy sharing experiences with others who have travelled along the same route. By posting their own personal travel journeys on their blog, The Planet D has enabled their fans to share in their experiences.
A great way to humanise your brand is to share your company’s experiences with your fans ~ Click To Tweet
This is a great way to humanise the brand and really showcase the couple behind The Planet D. As a result, fans are more engaged in the comments, as they now feel can relate to the page’s authors. This approach has proven to work so well that The Planet D have also been named Travel Blog of the year 2014! – Great work guys!
4) Sharing a weekly video series
Their tactic – share a weekly video series that features short videos on their latest travels.
To strengthen the relationship with your fans, don’t be afraid to showcase the team behind the business ~ Click To Tweet
This is a new tactic providing the page with a great way to connect with their fans in a personal way and strengthen the relationship as these videos feature commentary from both the owners as they provide insight into their travels.
5) Hosting competitions with other brands
The Planet D regularly hosts competitions, teaming up with other brands in their niche to offer their fans new and exciting prizes.
Teaming up with brands in your niche for competitions is a great way to create exposure to a new audience ~ Click To Tweet
By teaming up with other brands in their space, The Planet D can be exposed to new audiences. This also provides them with a great opportunity to drive traffic to their site from new visitors who may not be familiar with their blog.
How do they compare against the “big guys”?
When auditing a Facebook page’s performance, we always compare it head to head against the big brands competing in their space. In this case, the travel industry:
The interesting takeaways from this comparison are the following:
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- The Planet D although not the largest page compared to others in their industry has the highest monthly engagement rate (95.2%!)
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- On a per post basis, it is generating double the interactions of its competitors such as Matador Network & G Adventures (64,078 vs 22,959)
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- The Planet D achieves the highest engagement rate amongst their competitors by just posting 3.1 posts per day versus 6.5 or 29.8 times a day for Atlas Obscura & Matador Network respectively
This is impressive as it shows their page can still achieve great results by focusing on content that encourages fans to interact such as questions and trivia about their passion for travel without increasing their post frequency.
What could they do to improve?
The Planet D is doing a great job of showing their human side and building a more personal connection with their fans, but here are a few tweaks they could make to help give them the edge:
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- Promote competitions that allow fans to contribute to their award-winning blog
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- Share more travel experiences from their fans — either in the form of quotes, videos or testimonials
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- Host competitions on their own site, creating timeline contests that encourage users to comment with their best travel stories
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- Increase brand awareness by branding images with their logo / website
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Key takeaways for you
Now that we’ve gone through & broken down the key ways The Planet D achieves a more personal connection with their fans and encourage engagement, here are a few key actions you can take today to help you achieve the same for your business:
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- Ask fans direct questions – This is a great opportunity for your business to get feedback from fans
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- Share your personal experience – Behind every business there is a person, and your fans want to know more about that person or team. Sharing the journey is a great way to connect and build trust with your audience.
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- Host competitions with other brands in your niche – This allows your business the opportunity to be exposed to a new fanbase. Not only will this help to increase brand awareness, but will also help to drive more fans back to your page — all without spending a single penny.
Is your business connecting with its fans on a personal level?