TikTok for Tour Operators: Worth it in 2023?
This offseason I launched a social media experiment: post a short vertical video every day for 62 consecutive days (every day in December and January). These are the top-line results from the Trip Hacks DC TikTok account:
- 3,871,727 video views
- 6,230 new followers
- 313,877 likes
- 14,642 shares
- 32,117 profile views
Based on these numbers would you call the experiment a success? By some metrics the answer is overwhelmingly yes. But by others it’s less clear. Overall: it’s complicated.
Motivation for the experiment
Two years ago I ran a similar experiment and wrote up the results. My takeaway back then was that TikTok was still the Wild West and investing time and resources into it was a gamble. At that time it was still unclear what short video would become.
I attended my first Arival conference in 2022 and short video was a topic of great enthusiasm. I attended a breakout session about short video. TikTok videos played in the main ballroom throughout the day. Whatever my previous experience, short video felt too big to ignore.
Another motivation for this year’s experiment came from the fact that social media is constantly changing and evolving. When I did my experiment two years ago I posted exclusively on TikTok because it was basically the only game in town. This year I posted on four platforms: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels.
How I create short videos
The experiment had only one defined goal: post a high quality video every day. This required planning, scripting, recording, editing, captioning and uploading. It sounds like a lot of work because it is a lot of work. I spent an average of one hour on each video.
Some of my videos were voiceovers, some were me in front of a green screen, and some were me out and about. I recorded footage and voiceovers on my phone and edited them using DaVinci Resolve on my computer. I also made a few videos using CapCut templates on my phone.
The challenge with posting on four different platforms is that these platforms do not appreciate cross-posting. Posting a video on one platform with the watermark from another platform dooms it to failure. The simplest way around this is to edit one watermark-free “base” video and then add features native to each app (like text or captions). This allows you to post the same piece of content in multiple places as if it were native to each, but it is time consuming and tedious.
Video topics and posting frequency
Short video is highly visual. If you are selling a product or service that is naturally visual a short video is an amazing opportunity to showcase it. There is an entire genre of “TikTok made me buy it” products that demo so well on video that people feel the urge to rush out and impulse buy them.
I don’t sell a visual product that is impulse purchased — I sell walking tours in Washington, DC. How do I translate that into short video? Turns out this is quite challenging. All of my videos are on a topic of (theoretical) interest to Washington, DC tourists. In practice many videos wound up being pushed to people interested in tangential topics or to locals interested in the city but not so interested in tips for tourists.
For frequency I settled on one video per day because a common piece of advice from short video coaches and gurus is that it’s a volume game. If you’re not posting at least once per day it’s hard to gain traction. But many of these same coaches also say once per day isn’t enough. If you really want to grow they tell you to post 2–3 times per day, or even 3–5 times per day!
Digging deeper into the numbers
The top-line analytics from the beginning of the article are incredible. If I judge the experiment based on those numbers I have no choice but to conclude the outcome was an overwhelming success. And remember those numbers are only from TikTok. Including the other platforms would add more than 500,000 views to the total. If you want eyeballs on your content then short video is the way to get them.
The question is: what’s the value of a view or a like or a follower for my business? It’s not realistic to expect someone to watch a single short video and immediately book a tour. But if short video sits at the top of the marketing funnel and gets people interested enough to subscribe to my YouTube channel, visit my website, listen to my podcast, or engage in any meaningful way, I would consider that a win.
In January I tracked 62 visits from profile to website. 62 website visits off of over 2-plus million video views feels pathetically low.
The problem is I have limited evidence that this happened. According to my YouTube analytics, Shorts had almost exactly the same number of views as standard YouTube videos during December and January but only accounted for 165 new subscribers (compared to over 1,000 new subscribers that came from standard videos). Unfortunately I didn’t have a proper tracking URL set up in my TikTok profile in December but in January I tracked 62 visits from profile to website. 62 website visits off of over 2-plus million video views feels pathetically low.
More directly, the majority of customers on my private tours mention either my YouTube channel or podcast. Those two platforms are incredibly valuable to converting private tour bookings and have been my bread and butter for years. I did give one private tour in January from someone who specifically said they found me on TikTok. So it may not be a huge lead generator but it’s more than nothing!
Short video is an emotional roller coaster
I grew a following much faster on TikTok than I did on any other platform. In fact TikTok is now my single biggest platform — even bigger than YouTube which I’ve been growing for half a decade.
Short video is feast or famine. I had my first million view TikTok during this experiment, but it was an outlier. The median number of views per TikTok video was 7,727. Three videos accounted for more than half of the total views.
I am confident this is why TikTok coaches and gurus urge their clients to post as much as possible. Each upload is like pulling the handle on a slot machine. Most pulls won’t be winners but the more you play the more jackpots you hit. Of course if uploading short videos feels like playing a slot machine you can see how this could become an unhealthy addiction and terrible for mental health.
I’ll be honest — posting every single day was exciting at first but it quickly became a grind. By mid-January I was sick of it. I dreaded it. I didn’t want to do it anymore. But I finished out the month for the sake of the experiment. I can’t even imagine the grind of posting 3 or more times every day like some coaches suggest.
Each upload is like pulling the handle on a slot machine. Most pulls won’t be winners but the more you play the more jackpots you hit.
TikTok also has, by far, the most toxic comment sections on the internet. I feel like I have pretty thick skin. I’ve managed a YouTube comment section for years, but comments on YouTube are a delight compared to what you get on TikTok. When you post on TikTok you will be called an idiot (and worse) on a daily basis. Meme accounts will crop your video out of context and re-upload it to dunk on you. It all takes a toll.
What’s my takeaway?
Short video will get more eyeballs on your content than any other medium. It just will. If your currency is likes and views this is where you want to be. But for tour operators I think converting those eyeballs into tour customers is a much steeper climb than with other forms of content marketing.
My observation is that right now short video platforms are primarily used for entertainment. I think one of the most damning things I’ve heard about them came from tech reporter who said in an interview something to the effect of: “if I sat down and watched TikTok for half an hour, then you asked me what I just watched, I don’t think I could produce a coherent answer.” Think of it another way — if the average user spends 30 minutes on TikTok every day and they flip through all 30-second videos, by the end of their session you’re just one of sixty people they saw fly by on their screen.
“If I sat down and watched TikTok for half an hour, then you asked me what I just watched, I don’t think I could produce a coherent answer.”
One of the biggest problems with short video is that there isn’t enough time to provide proper context on any video. In every single one of my YouTube videos I say hello, introduce myself, and explain the purpose of the Trip Hacks DC channel. With short video there’s none of that. If you watch one of my YouTube videos it will be clear it’s meant for tourists who are visiting Washington, DC. If that’s not you it’s OK. But on TikTok they literally call the default view the “for you” page and the assumption is that any video that appears is supposed to be tailor made for you.
All of that said, just because short video is not highly valuable today doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever. YouTube was once cat videos and funny clips but morphed into something much more mature. Facebook in its infancy was used exclusively by college students before it became one of the best targeted advertising platforms online. TikTok and its competitors are constantly changing and evolving, paving the way for it to become something more than just low-effort entertainment.
So I’m not going to quit or walk away. I will probably post occasionally but not on a fixed schedule. Was the approximately 62 hours I spent on short video in December and January the best use of that time? Probably not. But it wasn’t worthless either, because keeping my presence alive on these platforms means that if and when they morph into something more valuable I’ll already have a head start.
