• by Harvey Chipkin , Columnist, December 15, 2014

’Tis the season of sharing and a good time to talk about the importance of having your marketing messages shared on social media. A timely gift comes from the folks at ShareThis, a company that tracks and analyzes social media sharing. Their research shows that travel, not surprisingly, is a highly shared subject, and they have some interesting numbers to share, including:

• On average, each travel share generates 18 clickbacks, 40% more than other types of content

• 19% of consumers in the planning phase will share travel-related content

• Most sharing takes place on Facebook and Twitter, but when researching trips, consumers are more engaged with content on Pinterest, email and Blogger.

• Millennials generate 35% of total travel sharing, compared to only 22% of total sharing

• Deals, airfare and lodging are the most-shared travel topics

Those numbers come out of analyzing 52 million unique users between June and September of this year — registering over 1.9 billion social signals. 

Vivien Pillet, research manager at ShareThis, said that the numbers validate the fact that travel is a universally appealing topic and that “we tend to use social channels as extensions of our own identity. Travel is one of the easiest ways to show the diversity of your life. Also, we tend to share content that we are passionate about,” she said. 

Most of the sharing is done while consumers are planning their trips — as they look for information on where they’re going, how to save money, etc. Said Pillet, “Logistics are really big, including lots of advice and lots of clicking back on information like airfare deals. Social media can really help in cutting back on spending.”

As for platforms, 65% of sharing still takes place on Facebook but that share is shrinking and being replaced by other networks. 

What all this means for marketers, said Pillet, is that “we can target segments with specific travel content for specific travel situations. From a social media perspective, we can help inform the kind of content to deliver.” For example, since Pinterest is so natural for tablets, “a Pinterest tablet campaign to a specific group might be ideal,” she said.

Looking ahead, Pillet said that most sharing will be done on mobile devices because they are inherently more social. What will not change is that the targeting will depend on the demographic, the platform and the device. 

Just for fun, a few more pieces of data:

• The United Kingdom was by far the most-shared destination while the Caribbean ranked far down the list

• Travel sharing is overwhelming done by women

• Asians and Hispanics were most actively engaged with travel content

• New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles were the cities where residents did the most sharing.

Feel free to share this.