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  4. Manage your social media

Manage your social media accounts

7 minute read • Last updated: 15 April 2025

Social media platforms help your business to reach potential customers and support existing customers with bookings and enquiries.

Understand how customers use social media for passive inspiration and active enquiries, before creating a plan on how to best use social media platforms for your business. Read on for tips, platform guides and more.

In this article:

  • Why is social media important?
  • Tips for social media
  • Understanding who you’re speaking to
  • Creating content
  • Planning tools
  • How to monitor your performance on social media
  • Everything you need to know about social media

Why is social media important?

Two young women take a selfie on a beach. the tide is out and buildings are visible in distance

Taking a selfie on West Sands Beach, St Andrews

© VisitScotland / Peter Dibdin

You can see why social media is important by understanding the customer journey of planning and booking a holiday.

Customers generally go through three stages – inspiration, deciding, and planning and booking. Although there are three stages overall, these stages do not always happen in chronological order. A customer might be researching holiday ideas and decide on a trip, but then go back to the research stage for a detailed itinerary. This could mean they book their accommodation or flights, but still need to decide what to do each day. Some customers are still looking for ideas even once they get to Scotland.

Social media has long been a place for inspiration, whether it’s getting ideas from images of trips taken by friends and family, or videos shared by an influencer you follow.

But social media is now used for much more – many customers now use it to search for things, as well as or instead of using search engines.

This means it is more important than ever that your business has a presence on the key social channels and that you look to post consistently and engage with customers online.

Why can social media be useful to customers?

  • inspiration and ideas, including for unique places or those off-the-beaten track
  • reviews and recommendations from people who have visited
  • gives a clear idea of what it’s like to visit a place before they arrive
  • ask questions
  • make bookings or purchases
  • leave their own feedback

How can social media be useful to your business?

There are many goals to use your social media channel for, including to:

  • inspire potential customers to think about booking
  • take enquiries from customers thinking about booking
  • share images with customers who have visited
  • take reviews from customers who have visited
  • networking and building business relationships

Tips for social media

  • Look at existing data

    What can you learn from who follows you right now, and who engages with your content?

  • Look at your competitors

    What can you learn from a similar tourism business or an event? What content are they posting, and who engages with it? Could you create something similar?

  • Use planning tools

    It can take a lot of effort to come up with ideas and create content. Instead of having to put time aside often, set up a monthly plan. Sit down each month, plan out your ideas and decide how to deliver them. Create a calendar that you and your team can follow on what to post and when.

  • Start small

    Build up a presence and post consistently on a single platform first. This gives you learnings that you can apply to a second platform, when you’re comfortable you have the resource to manage both.

  • Tailor each plan to the platform

    You may be able to use the same topic across multiple channels but you’ll need to think about the format (image or video), size or length (dimensions of image or length of video), music, filters, etc that are right for each platform.

  • Share other content

    You don’t need to create everything from scratch. Maybe your destination marketing organisation (DMO) has shared something about your area, or another business nearby has talked about the town. Look out for UGC about your business from past customers that you can share (and thank them for!).

  • Keep an eye on analytics

    Don’t just keep posting your content. Stop and look at how each piece of content is performing. Find something that works better? Think about how you can create more of that.

Understanding who you’re speaking to

A man stands at the edge of a cliff taking a photo with his mobile

South Ronaldsay

© Orkney.com

All social media channels are different, so your approach to each of them should be different as well. With each channel, think about a tailored approach and content plan.

Who will see your content?

You may reach different people with different types of content, so you need to customise your approach.

For example:

Your general “feed” on a platform could be seen by both your followers and non-followers.

Imagine seeing an image or video from your business for the first time. The customer doesn’t know anything about you – they don’t know what you do, or if you’re suitable or interesting to them.

Contrast this with your “stories” on a platform such as Instagram or Facebook.

Stories are more likely to be seen by your existing followers. These are people who know who you are and have chosen to be kept updated on what you’re up to. They are more likely to engage with a sticker, or vote in a poll.

They know all the basic information about you. So what else can you share with them that they’ll find interesting and will keep them engaged?

You need to think about creating content for:

  • A cold audience – who you are and what you’re about in a simple and easy-to-digest way, as a stand alone message.
  • A warm audience – such as behind the scenes or a day in the life of you or your staff.

Creating content

Tourism and events have always worked well on social media because they are visual – we have always taken photographs of these trips and experiences to share with friends and family.

This visual-based content can connect directly with people on an emotional level – you help them to imagine themselves in the picture having that experience.

  • Share customer experiences and testimonials including UGC.
  • Create point of view content which shows your business from a customer’s experience.
  • Highlight your unique selling points.

User generated content

This can be an authentic way to show people what it’s like to visit your business, and helps boost your credibility when others share their independent perspective. Encourage customers to tag your business in any content they post, so you have permission to share it on your own channels.

High-quality images and video

Images should be 4:5 for feeds and 9:16 for reels, stories and TikTok.

Find out how to create engaging online content across your website, social media and other online channels.

When to use artificial intelligence

There are now artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools that can quickly generate post ideas and text for your social media posts. But you should never post anything written by AI without first checking if the idea:

  • is right for your sector and brand
  • fits with your usual tone of voice and sounds like your brand

Be careful about using AI generated imagery on any of your channels:

  • make sure you have permission to use it
  • don’t use anything that is an obvious copy of a well-known image
  • be transparent about using these images

AI tools could save you time, but it’s worth considering what you will use them for, and how you will monitor their use throughout your business.

Find out more from Business Gateway on using AI.

Planning tools

Taking pictures at LothianBridge Caravan Park, Midlothian

Taking pictures at LothianBridge Caravan Park, Midlothian

© Connor Mollison

Social media calendars

A social media calendar is a plan of what you will post and when on each of your social media platforms.

Using a calendar makes it easier for you to ensure you're posting consistently and sharing a variety of different messages and types of content. The calendar is easily shareable so staff can see what's planned, and allows you to easily delegate the day-to-day task of posting and moderating content.

There are many social media calendars available for free online.

Scheduling and moderation

Social media scheduling is a way to help you organise and post your social content across multiple social media accounts and platforms in advance. 

Moderating your accounts allows you to engage with your followers and build a sense of community. This includes sharing their images and posts (where permission allows) and generally acknowledging feedback and reviews.

There are free tools within each platform for scheduling and moderation, which are the best option for a small business.

You can find more information on:

  • how to schedule Facebook and Instagram content
  • how to schedule videos on TikTok
  • using TikTok Studio to create and manage content
  • how to schedule posts on X

How to plan your activity

  • Review your analytics before each planning session to see what worked and what you should change.
  • Have a set time for planning your schedule each month.
  • Prepare the copy and images for each post as well.

How to monitor your performance on social media

It's important not to just keeping posting content on social media and hoping for good results - you need to monitor your posts closely and often to understand how they are doing.

  • Look at the reach – how many people have seen your post.
  • Look at the engagement – the number of likes, comments, shares and follows of your page.
  • Look at saves – how many people have saved that content to look at again later.

You can then start to get an idea of what works best and create more posts of that type and content, though it is still important to include variety.

Check out the Business Gateway video on monitoring social media for more advice.

Everything you need to know about social media

What social media platforms are most used?

Over the past years, there has been a decline in the use of X (formerly Twitter), the pace of growth of Facebook has slowed, and we’ve seen an increase in newer platforms like Threads and Bluesky.

Meanwhile Instagram and TikTok are growing extensively as attention switches from text to images and video.

LinkedIn remains popular in the business community with over a billion users. Although this is not a social platform that you can use to engage customers, it's useful for making connections in the industry. 

Should I set up a business account?

Most social media platforms recommend using a business profile instead of a personal account.

The benefits of using a business account include:

  • real-time insights on the content you’re posting
  • share clear contact information
  • sell directly through your social media account
  • manage customer conversations easily
  • paid advertising opportunities

Social media terms explained

Algorithm – how a social platform decides what content to show to a customer. Platforms such as Instagram talk about using multiple algorithms for different formats, rather than one overall algorithm.

Carousels – a post seen by non-followers with multiple photos and/or videos for customers to swipe through, so can cover multiple locations, themes or products. More likely to be saved for reference again later.

Feed – an updated list of content posted by the accounts a user follows on social media, as well as content they might like or sponsored posts.

Followers – customers who have liked/followed your account.

Image – posting a single image.

Non-followers – anyone who hasn’t followed your account but may still see your content through the algorithm (eg recommended as one of your followers has engaged with it).

Reach – the number of people who have been served a social post or advert while they are active on the app or website.

Reels – a feature seen by non-followers sharing short-form video content through Stories or the feed. Reels allow you to show more, such as a point of view, or day in the life of.

Social proof – the idea that people tend to follow others’ actions or decision when uncertain what to do.

Stories – ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours, most likely seen by your followers.

User-generated content – content created by regular people on social media, rather than businesses.

Find out more from Brandwatch's social media glossary.

Platform help guides

  • Instagram

    Instagram has a help centre hosting a whole range of helpful insights and advice. Learn how to monitor your business dashboard or be inspired by their blog highlighting businesses using the platform well.

    Check out Instagram's Help Centre.

  • Facebook

    Want to reach new customers, build on sales or learn about paid advertising on Facebook? The Business Meta Centre offers free courses to get you up to speed. 

    Visit the Meta Business Help Centre.

  • X

    Learn how to run advertising campaigns, and find tips and resources to help maximise your use of X (formerly Twitter).

    Find resources for adverts on X.

  • TikTok

    Learn how to collaborate on TikTok in their free online business centre. Develop marketing campaigns, create paid ads and work with influencers.

    Go to the TikTok Business Centre.

  • LinkedIn

    This platform is designed specifically for business networking. Learn how to make connections, share your knowledge and meet other like minded people.

    Visit the LinkedIn support section which offers training and learning on a variety of topics.

Catch up on our social media webinar

Watch the short recording of our recent VisitScotland Business Essentials: bitesize webinar on a guide to social media.

Learn why social media is essential for tourism, how to craft engaging stories, plan and analyse content for each platform, and generate high-quality posts. Perfect for businesses looking to boost their online presence and connect with travellers effectively.

Watch time: 19 minutes

VisitScotland Business Essentials: Bitesize Webinars

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