Find out about the benefits and limitations of the three major social media platforms for experience businesses and activity centres.

Social media can be an invaluable tool for activity centres and experience businesses looking to build awareness and encourage bookings. But with so many platforms to choose from, it can be hard to know where to focus your energy.

Whilst the likes of TikTok and Snapchat are capturing a younger audience, three platforms still reign supreme when it comes to popularity - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We believe that every experience business should consider these platforms first and foremost when starting out on social media, so we’ve focused on them in this article.

Find out more about how social media can benefit your business.

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, and is hugely popular across most age groups, particularly millennial and above. It supports a variety of content, including written posts, imagery, video, and links to external websites.

A Facebook business page allows you to build an integrated online persona for your business. You can make essential information like contact details, operating hours, and website links easily accessible to your audience.

A business page is also a great way to build a sense of community around your business. Users can comment on your posts, tag friends, and share your content, boosting your marketing efforts. On Facebook you can also create private groups connected to your business page, where you can invite members or interest groups to build a stronger community and share information.

It’s difficult to organically reach new customers via a Facebook business page, "as the platform does not naturally make you visible to new audiences or offer a search option so people can find you easily. To be discovered by new people you need to pay to boost your posts or your page. If your main goal is to reach new audiences, however, the costs of boosting a post’s reach and getting paid engagement are usually low, adaptive, and easy to turn on and off.

Facebook is also not growing as much in popularity with users under 25 compared to other platforms, which means it might be harder to reach a younger audience via the platform.

Bottom line: Great for building a community, not the best for reaching new audiences.

Instagram puts visual content first. Travel and outdoor experiences are amongst the most popular topics for sharing on the platform. It’s good for reaching new audiences due to the emphasis it puts on discovery and organic search.

It’s important to share visually engaging and inspiring photos in order to attract new customers on Instagram. With a little practice, it’s easy to take and edit excellent photos with nothing but a smartphone - to find out more, take a look at our article on using images to inspire and engage.

Instagram is also a good platform to use to interact with customers. Try to engage with your customers and encourage them to share and tag your business in their posts. This way you can share their content. By liking and commenting on your customers’ posts as well as similar posts from other users you can reach new audiences and inspire new bookings.

Advertising on Instagram is slightly cheaper than Facebook.

One limitation with Instagram for businesses is that it only allows you to display one external link on your profile, and you cannot use external links in regular posts. This makes it difficult to get people viewing your Instagram page to click through to your website or booking platform. Services like linkin.bio or linktr.ee can help you get around this, but it is a limitation compared to other platforms.

Instagram generally has a younger audience than Facebook, which may affect your decision depending on your business. In fact, approximately 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35.

Bottom line: Instagram is a great way to reach a younger audience, but you’ll need to invest some time into creating great content.

Twitter works best for short, snappy content due to its 280 character limit. It supports images, videos, and links. Followers can like and share your content as ‘retweets’.

Twitter is designed for conversation and interaction, so it’s a great platform if you have a lot to say, and want to engage directly with your audience. You can reach an extremely wide audience by discussing different topics. Over time, you can effectively communicate your brand ethos and personality.

Twitter’s focus on conversation and interaction can be a limitation for busy centres who don’t have time to be producing a lot of content. It’s also a very time-sensitive platform, so if you don’t tweet at the right time, your content could fail to make an impact.

Bottom line: If you’re up for getting stuck in, Twitter could generate a lot of buzz for your business. It’s a time-intensive platform that requires regular attention.

Ultimately, it’s up to you where you start your social media journey as a business. Different platforms will yield different results. For example, our largest audience is on Twitter, whilst our posts tend to get the most engagement on Instagram, and we tend to use Facebook for paid outreach and keeping our partner community of businesses informed.

However you choose to start your social media journey, remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day - and neither is a good social media account. If you want to develop a healthy social media presence that generates bookings for your business, it’s worth investing some time in creating great content. Find out how in our next article on the subject.

5 benefits of social media for experience business

Which social media platform is right for my business?

Take bookings directly from your website with the new and improved eola booking widget.

We are delighted to announce the launch of the new and improved eola booking widget.

85% of bookings come outside of working hours. The eola booking widget handles the entire booking process for you 24/7, from prospect to payment, via your own website.

We spent the last twelve months rebuilding our booking widget from the ground up. Our new widget makes it easier than ever for customers to find what they want and complete a purchase, resulting in increased conversion rates directly from your website.

Add your logo to the widget for a bespoke booking experience.

Purchase activities, vouchers and passes all at once.

Invite guests and sign disclaimers in one booking flow.

With our widget, your customers can easily book on any device, anywhere. That’s because we build with speed and efficiency in mind. The new widget is more than five times faster than our previous widget, with an industry-leading page loading time of just 0.1 seconds.

Not everyone has ultra-fast broadband. Just like the rest of the eola platform, our widget works in low internet environments, and on older, slower devices.

By using our widget, your customer base is not defined by technological limitations, so you can increase conversion rates and drive bookings.

When booking an experience, customers have to make a number of decisions in a relatively short amount of time. We analysed millions of interactions mediated by our old widget, and used that information to redesign our booking flows with simplicity and accessibility in mind.

We then tested these booking flows on real people. We spoke to people from all ages and backgrounds, with varying levels of digital literacy. When they encountered an issue or weren’t sure how to proceed, we made sure to address those issues in our next design phase.

The end result is a booking flow that gathers all the information you need as an experience provider, whilst remaining accessible and intuitive for the customer.

Find out more about how we designed our new widget from our product manager Jamie.

Don’t take our word for it - here’s what our partners are saying about eola

"eola has made our customer journey so much easier. After a quick meet and greet our customers are out on the water in minutes. All we have to worry about is bums on boats.”

Charlie Boyce-Smith, Woodmill Outdoor Activities Centre

“eola has become so important to us that we don’t even take manual bookings anymore, we always direct customers to our online booking system. It’s literally a couple of buttons, about five clicks and they’ve booked and paid.”

“Since using eola, clients have commented on how quick, easy, and efficient the booking process now is. Even better than that, my workload has decreased! Brilliant!”

Sign up for free today and give eola a try. You can be up and running in minutes, with no hidden fees and no commitment necessary.

Your business, your bookings

New and improved features

A streamlined booking experience

Why so fast?

Tested by humans

Don’t take our word for it - here’s what our partners are saying about eola

Give it a go

Read more

Enjoyed this?