How Explorer Ventures Mastered Global Social Media Management

When Explorer Ventures, a global liveaboard diving fleet operating since 1987, found itself drowning in social media demands across multiple time zones, it needed a lifeline. The company’s small three-person marketing team was struggling to stay afloat managing customer engagement from the Caribbean to the Maldives. By implementing Agorapulse as its social media command center, they achieved remarkable results: cutting management time in half while dramatically deepening customer engagement. Response times dropped from hours to minutes, allowing them to capture sales opportunities and strengthen relationships with diving enthusiasts worldwide—all while freeing their team to explore new marketing opportunities.

Beneath the Surface: The Explorer Ventures Experience

For almost four decades, Explorer Ventures has been operating what Rachel Huber, marketing strategist, describes as “mini cruise ships or inclusive floating resorts” for passionate divers. With vessels navigating exotic waters from the Galapagos to the Red Sea to Palau, the company serves a diverse global audience united by their love of underwater adventure.

The company motto—”You come as a guest and leave as a friend for life”—isn’t just marketing speak. It’s a philosophy that extends from their on-board experience to every digital interaction, creating unique challenges for their social media strategy that spans continents, languages, and time zones.

Dangerous Currents: The Global Social Media Challenge

Rachel’s journey with Explorer Ventures began underwater. She started as a dive instructor in 2008 before she transitioned to marketing. This firsthand experience gave her unique insight into their customers’ needs. But it also heightened her frustration when social media limitations prevented her from providing the responsive service those customers deserved.

Communication in different currents

“During COVID, we kind of switched over to primarily digital. Most of our marketing is digital now. And social media, of course, is a really big part of that,” Rachel explained. This pivot intensified existing challenges that their global company faced.

“It was very difficult to be waking up in the morning and signing in and just having so many messages from other time zones,” Rachel said. For example, questions about water temperature in the Maldives might arrive while the team was sleeping in North America.

A maelstrom of manual management

Before Explore Ventures found a comprehensive social media management solution, the company’s approach was mostly manual: “We had dabbled with Hootsuite and a couple other smaller ones. But it was mostly done just manually and we had a couple of people managing it on our team.”

Missing opportunities

The high-value nature of their bookings meant that missed messages could directly impact revenue: “At that period of time, somebody is going to book. So you don’t want to miss that.” When potential customers asked specific questions about upcoming trips, delayed responses could mean lost sales.

Large number of tasks, small number of team members

With just three marketing team members all wearing “many hats,” Rachel couldn’t dedicate someone solely to social media: “I also manage the sustainability programming for our fleet, write for blogs, manage the website, and do a whole bunch of other things.”

Management’s understanding of these challenges was limited: “I think it’s hard for management or people that aren’t in marketing to understand the time it takes to schedule posts, create them, research them… or even communicating with our guests to get photos.”

Finding the Right Social Media Solution

When pandemic restrictions increased online engagement while restricting travel, Explorer Ventures noticed a surprising trend: “Website visitors were dramatically increasing, even though people weren’t traveling, people were online.”

That was an opportunity and challenge for Explorer Ventures. How could they maintain relationships with existing customers and capture new interest without drowning in manual social media management?

“We were looking into a bunch of [tools] and then we just settled on Agorapulse,” Rachel explained. Their selection criteria were driven by specific operational needs for global social media management:

Everything in one place

“We love the streamlined inbox where everything comes into one inbox, and we’re able to mark it as complete.” This single feature transformed how they managed conversations across platforms and time zones.

With team members having different expertise, the ability to route messages appropriately was crucial: “Being able to assign specific questions… allows us to really [leverage team expertise].”

Scheduling effortlessly

“The scheduling was a big thing as well. Being able to schedule posts all within one [platform].”

Now, Explorer Ventures could maintain a consistent presence across time zones without requiring staff to work around the clock.

Monitoring one’s brand

“The listening, the brand listening was important as well… because that’s quite easy to miss with the clatter and the noise online right now.”

Tracking indirect mentions was essential, especially for a brand with global partners and resellers.

Charting New Waters: The Social Media Transformation

The impact of centralizing their global social media management was immediate and profound:

Efficiency that makes waves

The most quantifiable benefit was time savings.

“I think it cut down the time we were spending on social media by at least half,” Rachel emphasized.

That efficiency was transformative for the company’s small team. It could then focus on other efforts as well.

“I’ve switched into a project… we’re about to launch a new website,” Rachel said. She pointed out how resources freed from routine social media management could be redirected to growth projects.

With processes streamlined, Explorer Ventures dramatically improved their customer interaction metrics:

From hours to minutes: revolutionizing response times

“Before that, I believe it was definitely at least a couple of hours and it is down to quite quickly [now],” Rachel explained, describing their improved response times.

Plus, team distribution became an advantage rather than a challenge: “Our European agent is able to respond to people in that time zone a lot faster.”

Perhaps most importantly, “We know the comments aren’t being missed… that was a huge, huge thing for us.”

Every potential sales opportunity and customer interaction now receives attention.

“If you comment, they reply, they reply back… that’s super easy to miss. And for us … that’s something we didn’t want to miss.” Maintaining conversation threads across platforms and time zones became effortless rather than exhausting.

Consistent content strategy

The efficiency gains enabled content consistency. So, the team “picked up to start posting every single day on all of our platforms,” maintaining visibility during travel restrictions.

Personal touch in a digital ocean

The core value of Explorer Ventures remained intact: “Our strategy being the family values and just really interacting with our customers… we didn’t want to miss [any interaction].”

Weathering the Viral Storm: The Ultimate Test

The true test of their new global social media management system came unexpectedly when content featuring a friendly dolphin went viral:

“Within a few hours, we had over 131,000 [views]. We had 3,000 interactions… 3,000 comments and it was just, it had gone insane.”

Where this might have overwhelmed their previous setup, their new approach handled it smoothly:

“I remember thinking, oh my goodness, thank goodness we have this Agorapulse thing. We were able to monitor everything in one place and manage that and not sweat.”

This incident demonstrated how robust social media management tools create capacity not just for routine engagement, but for handling unexpected opportunities that can dramatically expand brand awareness.

Treasure From the Depths: Lessons in Global Social Media Management

Explorer Ventures’ experience revealed valuable insights about managing social media across international boundaries:

The hidden depths of social management

“People that don’t manage social media can’t appreciate the pressure, the rush, the time commitment.”

Global operations only intensify these demands.

Cross-training for rough waters

Streamlined tools enabled team adaptability. When Rachel returned from maternity leave, onboarding back to social media was seamless: “It was really good to be able to be like, ‘Here’s our platform. This is how you do it.'”

Visibility across the fleet

“Management is able to pop in there and take a look at the social media and take a look at the numbers and the metrics… it’s readily available without having to dig through Instagram and then dig through Facebook.” This transparency helped bridge understanding gaps about social media’s importance.

The Explorer’s Map: Guidance for Fellow Global Businesses

For organizations managing social media across international boundaries, Rachel offers this navigational advice:

“I would say that it’s going to be a really big time saver in regards to scheduling posts. And it’s going to be able to keep you in touch with your audience all in one place. It’s definitely worth trialing or using for the inbox and the scheduling.”

When asked what’s next, Rachel mentioned her interest in emerging AI features to further enhance their global efficiency: “I’m interested to start using the AI tool… I’m definitely keen to start using the AI tool, at least for giving you ideas of different ways to write copy for ads and for posts.”

“Managing social media for a global business used to mean choosing between exhausting our team or missing customer opportunities,” Rachel concludes. ”

“With Agorapulse, we’ve been able to cut our management time in half while actually deepening connections with our worldwide audience. For businesses spanning multiple time zones and languages, finding the right centralized platform isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating the capacity to truly engage with customers wherever and whenever they reach out to you.”