In recent years, the whole world seemed to have been hit by the travel bug. Travel, which is and has always been a universal commodity, is currently more of a trend than a leisurely hobby. All of a sudden, there was a rise in the number of travel bloggers and the so-called digital nomads.
Building A Social Media Empire From Traveling The World
One of the pioneers in the travel blogging scene is Jeremy Jauncey, creative mogul and founder of Instagram account Beautiful Destinations, which currently boasts a following of 9.7 million strong – and counting. Jauncey, who started the account as a passion project, has turned it into way more than that.
Jeremy Jauncey: How I built a social empire from Beautiful Destinations https://t.co/tLIuUUBxTY pic.twitter.com/9rZeBYIlvv
— Campaign Asia (@CampaignAsia) September 20, 2017
Today, Beautiful Destinations as a brand has expanded into other Instagram channels: @beautifulmatters, @beautifulhotels, @beautifulcuisines, @beautifulhomes, and @beautifulapparel. Along with this, it has a Facebook page, a Youtube channel, and two Snapchat accounts which have all garnered a significant amount of followers. And to say that Beautiful Destinations is the biggest social-centric travel organization is actually an understatement.
If you check out its website, one would see that the company’s description writes itself off as a creative agency and not just a travel brand. Last year, Jauncey and team launched a campaign called “The World’s Coolest Job,” which aimed to discover fresh talents with a distinct perspective on travel to join their company’s pool of creatives. Needless to say, the campaign proved to be a success — with a staggering 65,000 applications received.
Influential Beautiful Destinations Conquer Travel Brands
At the moment, Beautiful Destinations holds 30 employees from New York, London, and Manila under its wing, and it shows no signs of stopping when it comes to expansion. As mentioned, the company already offers not just the travel aspect of the business, but also the production side of things. Some of the services include content creation, photography, and video production – three things which the page is known for. This social media savvy, along with accurate analytical data, has gotten the company to where it is now.
Their roster of clients ranges from corporate giants like Mastercard, to travel brands like Airbnb and even tourism boards like the Department of Tourism in the Philippines. In May of 2016, Jauncey and his team of content creators embarked on an intimate exploration of the Philippines. With the help of social media, they were able to reach almost 15 million people across two of the biggest platforms in the country — Facebook and Snapchat.
The step towards Asian expansion was not accidental. Jauncey, whose careful calculations have paved the way for the company to grow, knows that Asia would be a game-changer. Thus, Beautiful Destinations set their eyes on learning more about the platforms that apply in the area.
Jauncey believes that measurability is essential.
With this in hand, the company has gathered ways to calculate scale and conversion. Each photo is analyzed, all engagement broken into pieces. The creative social media mogul knows that every social platform entails a different strategy and that penetrating countries like China would be a totally different ballgame altogether.
An immediate goal for the company is to break into the country’s massive community of WeChat. They have already gotten through Weibo, which gained them almost 2 million followers in a span of only nine months.
“Localisation in terms of translation is certainly one aspect,” Jauncey says. “But also what we have found is actually coming to China and shooting Chinese content was the thing that really changed the trajectory of our growth. Before, we were sharing content from all around the world on our account, and we were growing, but when we actually came to China and created a mini-series called ‘Beautiful China’ in Sichuan, that was the starting point for the account really exploding.”
With the rate it is going, it can be said that the company is flying towards the beautiful destination of success.
