Sunshine Matters

VISIT FLORIDA’s social media influencers program exceeded expectations in its first year, reaching new, more diverse and much bigger audiences — in ways they want to be reached. This program, which debuted in November 2015 and is administered by the SPARK marketing and advertising agency in Tampa, replaced the Insider program, which ran for 8 years.

Work by the Insiders, up to 12 of them at that program’s peak, appeared exclusively on VISIT FLORIDA platforms.  The Insiders, who covered beats, were great at content creation, but the program had minimal influence in social media.

Articles, photos and videos by social media influencers — and we’ve used about 100 of them so far — appear first on their own social platforms, all of which have sizeable followings, and then on VISIT FLORIDA’s platforms.  This way, we continue to produce fresh content, but also increase our social media reach to new audiences.

Some highlights:

• We grew from 73,000 followers with the Insiders to nearly 13 million with influencers.
• Our reach (based on total following) grew from about 15 million to 34.5 million.
• Our spread (additional impressions from retweets and re-shares) went from 13 million to more than 23 million.
• Views are up from 376,000 to more than 4 million.

Next steps:

• Focus more on visual storytelling: photos, slideshows, short videos, YouTube content, etc.
• Grow the metrics we’ve established by at least 10 percent.

Click the links below to see some great examples showing the wide range of things the influencers are doing for us:

• Camping in Florida: Ginnie Springs with Friends
• Florida’s Forgfotten Coast: Found
• Your Perfect Day in Sanibel
• Florida Flavors: The Fat Snook’s Golden Tile Fish
• Looking for Florida’s Best Grilled Cheese Sandwiches? Look No More!
• Exploring Florida’s 10,000 Islands