Maximizing Social Media Impact for High-Value Sales: Unveiling Bluewater Associates' Success

What you’re actually doing is dealing with high ticket price items. We’re not selling yogurts here. Five, six, 10, 000 a week. The next thing we know is like 80, 000 views. And I was like 90, 000. It was just crazy. Really? Don’t tell me more. I want to know more.
Welcome to the social media ROI hot seat podcast. My name is Emre I’m the CEO of Agorapulse, and since 2011, I’ve been obsessed by proving that social media was more than likes and followers, that it was actually delivering a real return on investment and a business impact that can be measured. At the beginning of 2022, social media ROI tracker and report.
And since then, I’ve been on a quest. The quest of social media ROI success stories you can learn from. And be inspired by this is why this podcast exists. And I hope that thanks to what you’re going to learn following it, you too, we’ll be measuring the business impact of social media on your business or the business of your clients.
Let’s get on with the show. So hello everyone. I am thrilled this week to welcome Trish Forant, who is the marketing manager. At blue water real estate and vacation rental in North Carolina on the crystal coast. And as I was, I was just asking Trish, tell me more about the crystal coast. She told me a lot of things, but one thing stuck with me, it’s 85 miles of beach in North Carolina.
So it’s an amazing place with, um, amazing vacation rentals and properties that you can purchase as well. And obviously you want to use. Uh, blue water real estate to do that. If you ever want to have a place there and a property there, Trish, I am super happy to have you. We’ve been exchanging on this, um, uh, how you do social media for real estate rental and, and property and, you know, people buying and selling properties.
And I’ve obviously got in touch with you because I looked at the data that you had and it was amazing. And, uh, it was different from what I used to see because what you’re actually doing is. Dealing with high ticket price items. Yes, we’re not selling yogurts here. We’re not selling 10 a piece kind of product.
It is, you know, five, six, 10, 000 a week, uh, obviously for a piece of real estate that’s being sold or, or, or bought it’s, you know, could be millions of dollars and what you’ve done, what you’ve done with social on the rental side of things. Is, is working. So that’s why I was so interested by your story about what you’re doing.
And I’m very happy to have you on the show today. Thank you. Very happy to be here. Anything I missed in your description in, in, in who you are, what you do and, uh, what you enjoy doing in life that you’d like to share. I mean, I love living here. I moved to North Carolina and the crystal coast specifically from Miami.
So I always tell people I traded in the Florida beaches for the North Carolina beaches and our beaches here on the crystal coast are exceptional because they’re South facing beaches. So you get breathtaking sunrises and breathtaking sunsets all in the same day. So, yeah, I mean, I just love living here and, um, I like to take photos I like to do digital photography and I’m also a blogger.
So that pretty much sums me up. And when I’m not doing that, of course I’m working. Of course you’re working when we’re not doing the stuff we enjoy doing during our time off. Yeah, we got to work. Me too. Yeah. You know, the working from the beach isn’t so bad, working from the beach in North Carolina is definitely not so bad.
And I totally, I totally envy you on that point. Um, and probably many people do. So I’m not the only one. So you’re as, as a marketing manager, we discussed that earlier, you’re in charge of driving traffic and eyeballs to the real estate buyers and sellers. So. People who have real estate to sell and to buy, they know about you and they use your service, but you’re also making sure that people who have a piece of real estate to rent are getting onboarded with you guys on the platform and are getting their properties rented.
100 percent of the time they want it rented, right? So that’s your role as a marketing manager. And obviously you’re using all the channels that are available to you to do that. So what channels are you using today to help those real estate owners to rent their properties on the crystal coast? So we are currently using Facebook, we are using Instagram, we are using Pinterest, we are using Twitter, LinkedIn, we’re using TikTok, we just started using TikTok, uh, so pretty much everywhere we can be, we are.
Okay. Great. So is social media, the, the, where you’re the most present to create that connection between, um, owners and renters, or are you also using other channels? Like, I don’t know, influencers or maybe a blog or maybe videos or YouTube or anything like that, like a social media, the main channel for you, or do you have other channels that you use in compliment to each other?
We do use multi channel. We, we do have a website on our blog and we write content regularly for both the real estate side of our house and also the vacation rental side of our house. We do use YouTube. We use YouTube shorts. We do a lot of video. Um, we do like homeowner, um, interviews and we do walkthroughs of properties.
We do a lot of fun stuff because we’re a fun company. So we do some kind of comedic shorts and things like that to show our personality. And you can see some of those on. Like on TikTok and Instagram specifically, um, we use stories on both Facebook and Instagram. And of course we, you know, we use traditional marketing as well.
Um, you know, we advertise in magazines, national magazines and local magazines. So we do print, um, and of course, uh, email, which is huge. So we are multi channel marketing, multi channel. If you were to, to look at the channel that works the best, I was, I would think, and we’re going to focus on the rental, uh, mostly here, but thinking about rental, I would think that platforms like Airbnb or platforms like that would be the main driver for, for a business.
So, or maybe even, um, you know, hotelbooking. com or those kinds of platforms is, is that the case? Are these platforms like the main driver of rentals? For rental vacation rental properties, or or is it direct the best channel for you for us? It seems to be direct. Although we do have properties placed on some of those other platforms, but direct seems to be the number 1 traffic driver.
Right now. People are familiar with us and they come direct and we see this. When we look at our analytics, we can see what is driving traffic and where people are coming from. And direct is pretty powerful right now, as well as email and of course, social media. Well, that’s great because I assume direct is less expensive than paying a fee to the booking platforms, right?
So you want direct traffic and direct bookings. So you don’t have to pay the middleman to bring you that traffic. Okay. That’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that. Um, so now looking at looking at all these different channels in terms of attribution, and I know attribution is a dirty words is a dirty word in marketing because people have a hard time with it.
But when you think about attribution, have you been able to have some level of comfort with how you attribute the source of Rentals to your marketing efforts. How does that work when you say attribution where it’s coming from? Like, Oh, we got, we just got one rental. Where did it come from? What, what activity, what marketing activities played a role in securing that, that booking?
Absolutely. Well, we can see that social is driving quite a bit. Um, but email as well. So when we, you know, we’re tracking everything, which I think you noticed, Probably why we’re here today But we are you know, we’re tracking all the links in our email marketing so we can see when we send out an email blast If I’m speaking about email specifically, we can see which email blasts are driving sales, which ones are going just to the website to look.
So we’re tracking all of that. And we can see all of that on the backend or when we dig into our analytics, we can see that email marketing is a huge driver, of course, pay per click as well. We see direct, but we also see that social media is playing a big part of that as well. Let’s dig a little bit there.
So you’re saying social media is a good driver of Of traffic and of, you know, uh, bookings and rentals before you were, before you use the GorePulse, did you know that? And, and how were you, how were you measuring that? How are you looking at social as a channel that is driving traffic to your, to your, to your site and is driving rentals?
Like, how did this work and how did you do it? So prior to using Agora Pulse, we were not tracking our social ROI. So we really couldn’t see very clearly whether the efforts that we were making on let’s say Facebook or Instagram were making sales. There just wasn’t a way to really see how that was converting.
Um, so the only way that we could. See what was converting was by looking at whether people were coming from Other sites or coming to us directly or if it was pay per click So we really were not tracking social Roi, we could see vanity metrics, but we weren’t able to really track what was converting from social So this is a a game changer for us And so what were you tracking before you were tracking the engagement or the number of followers that you were getting when you look back at the reporting that you were doing, if you were doing any or the reporting you were doing for yourself, just to make sure that you were following up on your on your KPIs, what was included there?
So, uh, prior to Agora Pulse, I was not the marketing manager, but some of what was being tracked was, um, growth, follower growth. We were looking at things like, um, you know, how were people, how many people were engaging over time? Were we getting, um, likes? It was more of a brand awareness process and, and some of those vanity metrics like likes and, and follows Hard conversions and return on investment.
So we were mainly looking at like, are we growing? Is the channel, are the channels that we’re using growing? Um, are we seeing good engagement? You know, can we tell if any of those people that we’re having conversations with are becoming guests or clients? So there weren’t really hard, uh, metrics being tracked, um, prior to, to me coming on board as a manager with regard to social media.
Would you say that that had an impact on the perception of what was done on social by people up there or, or like, how would you describe, I, I, I hear that a lot from people in the field, in the trenches, the one that are doing the work is that the perception of what they do is not, is not great because you mentioned vanity metrics and let’s, let’s, um, Not, not put all the social media metrics in the same bucket.
It is important to grow your audience. It is important to get engagement. It is important to be seen on social there. That’s not the point. All these things are important, but if you are, if you don’t know by whom you’re seen, IE, are they your ideal clients or not, then you’re probably. You may be seen by people you don’t care about being seen by and that’s the issue with that’s why vanity sometimes is used with those metrics.
Uh, I, I, you know, I, I don’t want to point fingers at anybody who is following those metrics anyway, but I, I do. I mean, it’s all, it’s all really important because You know, share a voice is important. Building brand awareness is important. Um, all of it is important, but when it comes down to the bottom line, it’s all about the bottom line and what’s converting.
So absolutely. We want to grow our followers. Absolutely. We want to see, um, we want to reach as many people as we can reach with. Everything that we’re doing, especially with social media, because it takes a lot of time and energy and effort to create the content that goes into that. So, um, you know, like you said, there’s nothing wrong with measuring all of that.
Really. You should be measuring all of that, but you also want to add that other layer of return on investment so that you can see that the efforts that you’re doing are actually paying off. So to your question, um, I think the perception overall was that social media was just, um, kind of fun. Like it’s, it wasn’t like a serious part of business.
So just had to be there because everybody was there, but like, what are you really doing there? You know, you’re just posting and talking to people and, you know, Sharing pictures, but you know, there’s a strategy behind that and, and not everybody knows that of course, and we don’t expect everyone to know that because not everyone is in, is a marketer.
Um, but yeah, I think the overall perception a lot of times is that it’s just something that is more, uh, lighthearted and not a serious business metric, um, it’s just something that everybody’s on because everybody’s on. There, um, but now, of course, because we can see what the, what, how we can actually show, like, we’ve booked this, or we’ve got this many properties on hold through social, we can, we can actually track.
Where people are coming from, are they coming from Facebook? Are they coming from Instagram? Are they coming from Twitter, Pinterest, so on and so forth? Um, where we could always track email and we could always track paper click and we could always track direct. Now we have that extra layer to say like, Hey, social media really is a serious.
Part of our business and it does pay to put some time, energy and effort there because we can actually see, um, how it’s converting. Yeah, you’ve just made my day. The reason you’ve made my day is that I have nothing against the social media metrics. I think they’re great. And, you know, we’ve been following them.
Everybody’s been following them. The problem is when you talk to people who are. Especially people in command, most of the time, they kind of see it the way you just described it. Yeah, it’s light hearted, it’s fun, uh, you’re doing great pictures of my vacation rentals. You’re having a good time, don’t you, right?
Now, let’s go do some real business and get me some bookings. And that’s usually the way. Social media pros and marketers working on social are perceived when they’re working on social. And for me, that’s a pity. And that’s what I, I am on a mission to solve because once you start showing them heart numbers, they stop considering what you’re doing as lighthearted and fun.
They start saying like, Oh, okay. So it is actually bringing in business. So it’s worth it. So those nice pictures and nice hats on social are actually good for the business. That’s okay. Do you, I don’t know if you, if you know that, but did you see, did you notice a difference in perception on their part since you were able to show them a little bit more than the, the, the, the likes and the comments and the, and the followers growth?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We’ve seen it a couple different ways. Um, some ways that, uh, I probably can’t say here, uh, but I’ll tell you in private, um, but we’ve definitely seen, uh, a shift and attitude for sure. And we’ve seen, um, a change in the level of respect for the people who work. In the marketing department.
So we’ve been able to bring on some higher level employees versus people coming in and just entry level because I think the perception has changed. And so, you know, when you change the perception, you want to actually have someone in a position that can. Take the reins and run with it. That’s great. I love hearing that.
That’s pretty cool. Cause one of the thing we see too often is, um, decision makers and C levels saying, yeah, we need to do social media. Let’s just hire an intern and do it. Like they don’t, they don’t feel like they need experience and they need people who actually know what they’re doing. And they feel like it’s because it’s light hearted and it’s fun.
A young person without experience could handle it. But actually, if you want to be strategic and if you want to impact the bottom line with it. I see my 22 year old son is amazing, but I wouldn’t trust him with the marketing of my company for sure. And not our marketing and social media has a lot to learn.
Yeah, absolutely. What specific can have you learned since you’ve been tracking that? Are there like tactical things that you’ve learned and you’ve seen, Oh, I thought this wasn’t working and it’s working. Or I thought, This was working and it is not like, have you changed things? Have you changed your mind on certain things, um, on, on how you do social since then, or, or, or not?
I’ve always been a big believer in social media, um, and especially social media, being able to convert and drive traffic. Um, It’s interesting to me. I think the channels that are working, um, and where our people are at. So like you were mentioning earlier, sometimes your, your demographic is not where you think they’re going to be.
So you, I think a lot of companies want to be everywhere and I don’t think you need to be everywhere. You just need to be where your people are. So, um, I looking at our demographics. And just looking at social media as an over, you know, overall overarching, I thought for sure that we would see more people or more conversions coming from places that were more popular, but our demographic seems to really be on Facebook, interestingly enough, so the highest conversions that we’re seeing from social media is.
Is Facebook right now? And that surprised me because I really thought it would be maybe a different platform, but it is very interesting to see that the majority of our traffic, the majority of our conversions are coming from from Facebook, but there are other social networks that are, you know, Are now we’re now being able to track or now that we’re able to track, we can see they’re slowly gaining traction.
So it’s been very interesting to see that and that was unexpected, which ones were the ones you thought the success would coming would come from versus Facebook. I really thought that we’d see a lot more from Instagram. Um, and it, it’s been good, but it has, it certainly hasn’t been as, as good as Facebook.
So that’s been interesting. But because of that, now we’ve kind of slipped, switched up our strategy a bit so that we can be more intent when we’re working On Instagram so that we can track more precisely and maybe just mix things up a little bit so that we can see if those new tactics are working or not.
One suggestion for you. One tactic I’ve seen work for our clients is they are using stories and to, to showcase whatever, uh, for them, that was. Um, medications, medicines, and, and, and stuff like that. Yeah. Health, health related products, but for you, that would be a video showcasing the rental, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s in, in, in, in, in a story, you can actually show photos and videos of a rental in a, in a very efficient manner.
And at the end of the story, they say, if you want to learn more, send us a message. Yes. And they get DMS. On Instagram DMs and on the DMs, they’re able to use links, which you can’t use on comments and post and people get to know. Yeah, I love X, Y, Z. I’d love to learn more. You know, please send me more information.
And then you send them the information via via DM. And in the DM, you put a link to Hey, here is the full page. The full blown, um, uh, description of the house where you can see all the videos, all the photos, and, and they’ve been very successful by doing that. So maybe that’s something you, you want to try.
It does take a little bit more work because you have to create the stories with the photos and videos. But, um, but it’s worth trying because that’s probably the best way to get engagement followed by business, you know, business interest. Absolutely. Yeah. We, we are using stories on Instagram and, um, that is our new tactic that we’re doing right now is encouraging people because we, we were using like one of those, like a link tree where, you know, we’ve got everything listed, like you can click on the blog and you can see the latest articles and we’ve got everything listed there, but.
Like you said, um, it, you know, it, it isn’t as easy to drive to very specific, like we want to do specific properties. So if we’re, we have a specific home that we’re trying to sell, or we have a S a specific property for a specific date that we want to push, um, a generic link, isn’t going to, isn’t going to do it.
And we’d have to update that so frequently that it, it just would be. Incredibly time consuming, but we’re already creating stories. We’re already using stories. So it’s just easier to say, Hey, message us if you want a direct link. And then we can track that much more easily. Um, and then also that gives us more engagement and more opportunities for conversation with the people that are following our brand.
And we’ve got a pretty loyal following and we’ve got a pretty engaged audience and we, we love having conversations with them. So. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it participates into building the brand and the culture and the perception. And that, you know, that closeness, like, Oh, I love this guy. They’re amazing.
They answered me super fast. And that’s why we, you know, brands get stuck in people’s mind and they come, they come to you year after year because they have this relationship. So it makes total sense. But now that you can use those DMS to say, Hey, go check the full property and track that and say, okay, When the boss is going to ask me why I spent two hours responding to people on Instagram, I’m going to show him or her, Hey, look, we had that many people look at our properties and this many, you know, ask for more information or this many book an actual vacation.
And this was the bottom line. I keep telling my team, this is doing the right thing. Engaging with your audience, being present, being open. Helpful and being kind and nice is doing the right thing. The problem in a business is we all want to do the right thing, but if we cannot prove that doing the right thing is actually bringing in the benefits, the business is looking for money at the end of the day, we get on a V in a very awkward situation where we want to do the right thing, but we can’t afford to do it because we can’t prove that the right thing is actually bringing what the business needs, which is cash at the end of the day.
So I love how we can put these two things together by doing that. Yeah, there’s, there’s no greater feeling than, you know, seeing the same person, uh, commenting and liking and sharing over time and then having them say, you know, come back to you and say, oh my gosh, I just, you know, I just went ahead and booked my first vacation with you and you knowing like, oh my gosh, that was, we nurtured this person, we built a relationship with them and in turn now they’re going to come and get to actually experience It’s amazing.
It’s amazing. The brand that we’ve been showcasing. So that is an incredible feeling. And then, you know, to see them when they get here, to hear from them after the fact, and then to know that they’re going to come back again, year after year is amazing. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. That’s really, really cool. So you were surprised that Facebook was above the average social network.
I’m just curious why, like. You thought Facebook was not great, doing great anymore. Like what was the preconceived idea behind Facebook there? Well, you just hear like that, you know, what you hear a lot of times is, you know, certain, certain demographics are in certain places. And, and. Uh, you know, it’s been said for a while that people were leaving Facebook, so I was just really surprised that maybe people were leaving Facebook with not our people.
Our people are still definitely on Facebook, but we do see, you know, we are seeing other, uh, social networks growing. Uh, we’ve, we’ve tapped into Pinterest more heavily now, and we do see p Pinterest showing up pretty significantly, um, where it wasn’t before in our, in our analytics and, and Twitter as well.
Twitter’s a. A channel that we’ve been nurturing and really hadn’t seen a lot of, it was just one of those channels that was kind of there for, I think we were primarily using it as a broadcast channel. And I think that Twitter’s fantastic for customer service. I think it’s a really great place to have conversations.
Um, I’m not sure that everyone feels that way, but I do, because I’ve been on Twitter for, well, since like Twitter started. So I just felt like that was one of the channels that we could. Potentially grow a little bit more easily. So it’s nice to see that, you know, we are getting some traction there. Uh, so that’s, that’s nice.
And of course, now we just started using Tik TOK rather recently, and we’ve gone viral there a couple of times. Really? Tell me more. I want to know more. How did you go viral on TikTok? Um, honestly, I think it might’ve been that we used a trending, uh, audio and a trending hashtag, but it was like, you know, uh, we posted and then it was like 60, 000, uh, views.
And the next thing we know is like, 80, 000 views. And I was like 90, 000, it was just crazy. So yeah, we’ve, um, we’ve been seeing some good success there. So nice, nice. So you, you, you feel that your audience is mostly on Facebook. Is it because, you know, in order to. Pay for vacation rental on the Crystal Coast, which is not going to be 200 a week.
We’re sure you got to be a certain age and a certain, you know, a certain working, working type of person, which, which are the type of people who are still mostly on Facebook, where the, the, the young, like. Like my 22 years old, uh, are with no money are mostly on TikTok or on other platforms. Would that be close to the truth or what’s your analysis on that?
I think that plays a big part of it, most definitely. But I also think it’s the platform that we’ve been on the longest. So we have a larger following there than anywhere else also. So I don’t think it’s not, I don’t think it’s, Only demographics, although that does play a big part of it. And, um, what, you know, people’s maybe financial levels are, because as you said, um, many of our vacation rentals are not 200 a week.
Um, we do, you know, we do try to be inclusive of course, because we do have like one bedrooms and two bedrooms and three bedrooms from condos. To 10 bedroom homes that are well over 10, 000 a week. But primarily I think we’re seeing a lot of, a lot more traction from Facebook because we have a larger audience and some more mature audience.
And, um, we’ve just been on that platform the longest, for a long time. You, you mentioned, um, um, Pinterest for a minute, and I I’m, I’m curious about Pinterest because I am looking at Pinterest as. Hopefully the next social network that we’re going to add to our platform. We don’t have it yet, but it makes a lot of sense based on the revenue tracking and conversion tracking.
Pinterest is all about that. So, but Pinterest feels to me like it’s more, I’m searching for a trend. I’m searching for a certain type of product. Swimming pool or that’s exactly what I’m doing with my house right now. We’re doing a lot of work on the house and I’m like, Oh, let’s look at this. And you could show me new this and new that.
And Priscilla is that Pinterest is that inspiration engine. Let’s call it this way. When you think about. Vacation rentals and it’s like, it actually makes sense, but I’d love to hear from you how Pinterest fits into the picture of what you want to do on social networks. So travels really travel is one of the larger, I think, um, drivers of traffic for Pinterest.
And since we are traveling hospitality on one side of the house, we can use that very easily. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that we do have a blog and we write a lot of content there, so we’re. So we’re doing a lot of things that will help our audience, um, and will help people in general. So like, what do you need to know before you buy a house?
What do you need to know before you sell a house? What should you know? Um, do you need a realtor? Should you do it on your own? What is a mortgage? You know, those types of helpful things we’re writing about on a regular basis. So we’re, we’re sharing that content. So if people are searching for certain types of things, they can find that there.
But we also do things like, you know, a packing list. What should you pack for your beach vacation or what pet friendly places do you need to know about on the crystal coast? Here are, you know, five, Breweries that you should check out or, you know, seven coffee shops or the top, um, restaurants for seafood in Atlantic beach.
So those types of things, like if people are planning travel or looking to travel here and they’re searching. In general, they may end up seeing, uh, you know, not just on Pinterest, but like if they’re searching, they may be brought to Pinterest. They’re searching with interest. Of course we can use, we can use hashtags and keywords and, and, um, descriptions and alt tags and things like that so that people can find our content.
And then. That would link directly to either a vacation rental or an article or a real estate property. That makes sense. So it’s, it’s, is it more like to create more visibility for the content, the helpful content that you’re producing for people who want to buy a house in the, on the crystal coast, or people who are looking for things to do and, and fun, fun things to fun experience to have, rather than linking that directly to, Hey, this is our, these are our listings.
Check them out, which is more what you would, you would do on Facebook, for example, right? Right. We do, we do a combination so we can absolutely like if, uh, so we’re not really like when we’re writing content per se, we’re not necessarily blogging specifically about a particular Uh, home for sale. Uh, but what we could do, like I just did a, um, a traveler’s guide to Beaufort.
And so it was like all the things that you could do if you decided, like, first of all, why would you want to come to Beaufort? What’s so great about Beaufort? So it kind of explains that. Um, and, and uses some great quotes from like traveling leisure, who, you know, who named Beaufort, like one of the best places to come, um, you know, just talks about all those things, but then.
Also, we can put in properties that people who might be considering coming to Beaufort might want to check out. Here’s our, you know, here’s our five best Beaufort properties that you should look into. And why would you pick this one over that one? This one’s pet friendly. This one’s not. Um, what can you do?
So we put some events in there. So we can do travel guides. Um, we can do like, we just did a packing list, a vacation packing list that anybody can use. It doesn’t have to be to come here. Anyone can use a packing list and some, some, some information. And we do fun things like that and informational things that will help travelers, not just travelers coming to the crystal coast, but travelers in general, um, like, um, you know, beach baby hacks.
Like if you’ve got a baby, what do you need to know if you’re going to bring them to the beach? Things like that. So it’s, it’s a combination of things of like. Um, why should you come here versus somewhere else? Why would you pick a vacation rental over a hotel? Let’s say, um, and then helpful things like packing lists and places to go and things to do events.
Got it, got it, got it. Okay, cool. Um, I think I’m running out of questions on, on the social network. Maybe one last, you mentioned Twitter. I’ve seen customer of ours doing amazing on Twitter, but they were very specific. Like their business was very specific. And usually there were. They were heavily, the communities that they were aiming for and they were targeting with their products were very, very active on Twitter.
Those were communities that were Twitter first and, and, uh, mostly that was on the sports side of things. And, and I don’t see, I don’t see that on the vacation rental and real estate, uh, happening. So, If, if you were to position Twitter in that, in that, uh, check, the check board, how would you say, what would you say Twitter is for us?
Twitter is good for X. What would be X? I think for us, Twitter would be good for brand awareness. Um, as a, as a vacation spot or a place where people might want to come to live or even, um, visit, maybe invest in because, um, I think, yes, there’s a lot of conversation there, but I think pictures much like Instagram and many of the social, social networks, photos.
Are amazing there and it really helps you stand out and we’ve got an incredible photographer and we have incredible properties and we have just amazing views here. So being able to share stuff like that draws attention to the brand and then also brings awareness to the coast. In fact, The, the tourism department here is on Twitter and they do incredibly well.
And really all they’re sharing are little tidbits about the area with amazing photos. So kind of piggybacking off of their. Uh, strategy is a way for us to do some similar things as well. And of course, sharing helpful content, um, and things that are going to help people and, and touch on their pain points.
So that’s some of the stuff that we’re sharing right now, but I think that regardless of whether or not. We are seeing conversions. I know that we are most certainly starting to build a pretty good brand awareness because we’re, we’re starting to see people come to our site, uh, directly from Twitter where we hadn’t really seen that before.
So. Oh, okay. Interesting. Interesting. So Twitter is now driving traffic to the site that you didn’t see before. Yeah, we did see a lot of people clicking on, like, you know, opening up our content, but not necessarily going through to, to the website. So now we are seeing that. Got it. Got it. Okay. Great. Um, no, I’m running out of questions.
I, I, I am, I’m super pumped by everything you shared today. It was, it was, um, a lot of very useful information. And, um, and it’s. It really made my day to know that the perception of what you do has evolved in the positive way and that now people are looking at it as, Oh, okay. So that’s more than lighthearted and fun.
So that’s good. That’s really good. Cause that’s, that’s the purpose I have with this. And that’s the goal I’m pursuing, um, you know, beyond building software and making money selling it. Uh, what, what excites me is when I see that we can, we can change things that matter. And for me, that’s one thing that matters changing.
So, That’s pretty cool. As the last question, what should we do or change to be more of a value to you? Like what do you think is the next step is in tracking social media to measure its business impact that it, that does not exist today and you’d like someone like us, you know, to add or build or offer you, that’s a tricky one.
Really good question. Well, uh, I mean, Right now, I’m just, so, I’m, I’m thrilled at everything that we have. Like, there’s so many social networks that we’re able to pull in. Um, we can tag accounts, we can track like, like we’re using all of those things. Like we’re able to label things and we can even, you know, uh, note who our super fans are and advocates and, and people like that.
Um, and of course being able now to bring in Google Analytics is tremendous because we can, we can see how things are working. Um, I can’t think of anything at off the top of my head and I’ve been a big user of your feature where, um, we can go in and, and, uh, recommend features. So I’ve done that and pretty much everything I’ve asked for you guys have done already.
So I can’t think of anything offhand. Um. Yeah, I can’t think of anything else. I mean, like you said, you’re bringing in all these different social networks. So that’s exciting. Uh, and pretty much everything that we’re using is being brought in. So Pinterest would be great because then we can more effectively, uh, more effectively track it, but I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, to be very honest with you.
Well, you’re going to make a bunch of people happy in the product team because everything they hear is, uh, what we don’t have, what’s broken, what’s not working. They rarely hear about the great stuff that’s working and that’s there and that people enjoy. So sometimes, from time to time, it’s good for them to hear that.
Yeah, honestly, um, All of the stuff that I, that, that we’ve needed, we’ve asked for, and it’s either been in progress or it’s been like, Hey, we’re going to get to that. So we use, we use many different, many of the different features. Um, I don’t know. Maybe, uh, if I had to say one, maybe, um, I don’t know. And you may have, and I might not be aware of it, but like being able to track a certain hashtag might be helpful for us.
Yeah. On what platform would you like to do that? Oh, I would say, I mean, probably Twitter and Instagram so that we can already do that on Twitter and Instagram on Twitter and Instagram. Yes. Okay. See, that’s why we are revamping, we are revamping our social listening feature because unfortunately we can do that, but the way it’s been designed, um, doesn’t make it.
user friendly enough. So we’re rebuilding it so it’s more user friendly and you can you can use it, use it better and actually find, find how it works without having to dig for it. So I’ll send you a short video to show you how you can do that. Absolutely. And you know, if you ever need beta. Thank you, Trish, the beta player.
Thank you very much, Trish. It’s been amazing. 40 minutes. I don’t want to, I want to respect your time. It’s been, you’ve given enough of that to me today. Uh, thank you so much for showing up. Thank you so much for answering my questions and for sharing your insights with the listeners. And, um, I wish you an amazing rest of your day.
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.