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This is the second of the leisure consultants blog from Anita at Agility on Social Networking, prior to her talk at Leisure Industry Week. Taking place on Thursday 23rd September, her Leisure Industry Week Talk is free to attend – just make sure you register for LIW in advance!

Visitor Attraction Facebook Pages

Did you know facebook no longer has fan pages but company facebook pages? And people are no longer fans but they ‘like’ pages instead. Even though the terminology has changed, the basics still apply and in this blog I’m going to cover how regularly you should update visitor attraction facebook pages. Personally, the word ‘likers’ doesn’t sit well with me… so I am going to refer them still as fans. Or let me know if anyone has any other suggestions!

Example leisure facebook pages

We wanted to showcase a few facebook pages for the leisure industry. These examples show how frequently you need to update is affected by the number of fans you have and how engaging your content is.

Example 1: Thorpe Park has reached over 250,000 fans who themselves add message updates (a fan updates the Thorpe Park page every few minutes). Thorpe Park offers special offers to their fan base and leaves the content to be written by their fans.*

Example 2: Whilst another successful facebook page to look at is Colchester Zoo who have 15,000 fans (a year ago they had 2000!). They used to add more content themselves but with more fans now starting conversations,their focus has changed to posting comments on the fans comment to keep the conversion going.

Example 3: In my last example, I thought I’d showcase a client of Agility’s, Adventure Valley. They opened in May and to date have 1600 fans. For this fan base level we need to add more regular ‘new’ postings to encourage conversations.

Measuring your visitor attraction facebook page

As you can see every Facebook company page is different and we recommend a simple test over two weeks to give you a steer on how regularly you should add content.

The subject matter of each fresh posting should vary and if people add a comment, you should encourage the conversation by commenting on their posting.

We suggest you undertake the below….

Week 1: On Monday and Friday, add 2 photo stories with a comment (for example you can add a picture of a new animal arriving, your visitor attraction’s favourite ride or even a picture of a child at their birthday party (with mums permission!), and on the Wednesday you should add one piece of news without a photo. The news could be to do with anything (a new cake in your cafe or new ice-cream, the 100th season ticket holder or a forthcoming event).

Week 2: On Monday, add a link to a recent news article about your leisure attraction or a recent article on your visitor attraction blog, on Wednesday add a comment/bit of news with a photo and on the Friday ask a question. The question could be ‘what is your favourite ride if you are a theme park, to ‘name our new baby goat or terrapin’ if you are a wildlife attraction or farm park’.

This useful test identifies what type of content your fans engage with and how frequently you should be updating your pages. For example if comments slow down on your photo stories after story 4, you know you are adding messages too frequently. Why not contact Agility after you’ve done this test to benchmark against others in the leisure industyr.

In the next leisure consultants blog we are talking about creating engaging content for visitor attractions. Hopefully see you back here soon or at Leisure Industry Week for Anita’s talk on social media.

* Please be aware that Thorpe Park and Colchester Zoo are not clients of Agility Marketing.

With the forthcoming social media talk by Anita from Agility at Leisure Industry Week, we are going to highlight the topic in the new few blog articles.

You’ll discover how visitor attractions can engage better with their fans, how they get more fans to their page, how frequently they should be updating their page and if they haven’t yet started, the very basics the leisure industry must know! Plus we’ll be revealing what’s new on Twitter and Facebook too.

But first some statistics, courtesy of Jake Heard….

What’s happening with Facebook?
1. Facebook is set to reach 500 million users worldwide (an increase of 350 million users in 6 months!)
2. Facebook claim that 50% of their users are active everyday (that’s 250 million daily!)
3. Over 100 million Facebook users update their profile through mobile devices.
4. 5.5 billion pieces of content are shared each week (compared to 3.5 billion six months ago)

Should you bother with Twitter?
1. At a recent blogging conference, Twitter was claimed to have over 150 millions users
2. 75% of content is updated outside of Twitter through feeds.
3. Twitter search engine gets more than 600 million queries a day (more than Bing or Yahoo)

Is You Tube important?
1. There are more than 2 billion views on You Tube each day.
2. Twenty four hours of video content is uploaded every minute
3. The average user spends 15 minutes each day on the site.

We hope you enjoy these blog updates on social media. The next Leisure Marketing Consultancy update will be in the next few days! Or come and hear our talk at LIW on Thursday 23 September.

Are you connected yet to Anita Waddell on Linked In? Anita is Agility Marketing’s MD and if you are a visitor attraction, farm park wildlife attration or a family entertainment centre, we’d love you to join our network now. Just click here.

Linked In is rapidly becoming the online forum for visitor attraction professionals and plenty of really thought provoking debates are underway. If you are not a member of linked in, at Agility we’d definitely recommend it.

The subject of the Agility talk for visitor attraction at Leisure Industry Week 2010 has been announced.

Undertaken jointly between Anita Waddell, MD from Agility and Katie Milbourn, owner of Walby Farm Park, they will togegther illustrate with real examples how the visitor attraction industry can get the most out of social networking.

With opportunities changing weekly and with over 20% of peoples online time taken up in social networking platforms, it is a medium that should be taken seriously by all leisure attractions.

To hear Anita and Katie talk about social networking for visitor attractions, visit Leisure Industry Week on Thursday 23 September at Birmingham’s NEC.

Hot tip: Make sure you register for your tickets in advance of the show!

Over 20 visitor attractions heard Anita Waddell, MD of Agility Marketing speak at Leisure Industry Week in September 2009.

Her talk covered the common mistakes visitor attractions make with their marketing,the essentials to making your leisure marketing pound work at its hardest and how attractions should use social networking.

Leisure Industry Week is the UK’s number one exhibition for visitor attractions, farm parks, play centres and widlife parks. The dates for 2010 have been set for 21-23 October 2010 at Birminghams NEC

Agility Marketing help leisure attractions maximise their marketing follow proven formulas. They work with over 12 visitor attractions from the South West of England to Northumbria.

Leisure Marketing Specialist, Anita Waddell, MD of Agility Marketing spoke at last week’s Leisure Industry Conference organised by Vision XS.

The presentations were kicked off by Juliana Delaney, chief executive of Continuum Attractions who provided an overview of the visitor attraction sector.

The day then continued with a session on how to maximise your brand, your product and your pricing and the last session of the day (undertaken by Anita) also included a spot on quick wins to drive business into visitor attractions during the summer.

Over 50 different attractions attended the leisure conference and feedback was excellent from delegates on the day.

With less than 3 days to go until the Leisure Marketing Industry Event, organised by Vision XS, this year’s event looks fantastic.

Visitor Attraction Delegates will be able to find out ways to improve their brand, discover which pricing strategy is best for them, identify solutions to new product development and gain some leisure marketing tips.

A few places are still available for visitor attractions through Vision XS, taking place on 8th July at Blenheim Palace.

On 8 July, Agility’s MD Anita Waddell will be speaking at the 2009 Vision XS Leisure industry event.

Held at Blenheim Palace, this annual visitor attraction conference is aimed at helping visitor attractions make the most of their branding, product, pricing and marketing.

For further information visit www.visionxs.co.uk.

Feedback to Agility Marketing from visitor attractions over the May half term doesn’t seem to have followed usual leisure trends.

The bank holiday weekend spanning the first three days of the half term produced mediocre results with feedback from visitor attractions stating “The weekend was just like any other, numbers weren’t as high as a usual bank holiday weekend”.

In contrast, the last four days of the school holiday saw above average visitor numbers, putting most visitor attractions numbers on a par with last year.

Agility Marketing are visitor attraction marketing specialists, helping visitor attractions with between 50,000 and 500,000 visitors annually. Quite simply, their role is through using our visitor attraction marketing knowledge to get visitors into leisure venues.