Our top performing social media posts of 2024

Using social media to reach consumers

Our consumer social channels includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X. 

The core purpose of our social channels is to inspire and influence people to connect with an authentic Scotland.

Our social content is guided by our marketing calendar which focuses on seasonal themes with key messages, positioning Scotland as a sustainable, year-round destination.

Organic social media activity plays the greatest role at the start of the visitor journey. Organic social is content that doesn't require paid for posts to drive results.  

We create awareness of Scotland using engaging and authentic content at the start of the visitor journey. 

Reaching people pre-arrival, we can have greater influence and impact on their decision making before they have finalised their plans; including encouraging visits in the off-season, travel to lesser known areas, and to make sustainable travel decisions.

Instagram

Our top performing post on Instagram has reached over 3 million people.  

Carousel posts (posts with more than one image) perform well for us and allows us to post about more than just one thing - whether that be location, activity or theme. In this case, it's all about the coos - our #Coosday posts are some of our top performing posts on Instagram. 

Instagram stories

Instagram stories are predominantly shared with existing followers. We therefore make the assumption that they must have some knowledge of Scotland already. For example a resident planning on a day trip, an international visitor that has already been or a visitor who might be here right now.

With a captive audience, we can be more detailed on our stories. Using the @mention, we're able to send people directly to tourism business' Instagram accounts.

TikTok

Our top performing TikTok video this year was about the Enchanted Forest light show in Perthshire, which reached almost 800,000 people. The video uses footage from last year but was edited to fit with current video trends. We also monitored search trends and noticed the search "Hidden Forest" rising.  

Posting content right before a trend peaks means you can take advantage of popular keys words, and your posts will be seen by more people.  

X

The top performing post on X was a video of the Highland games.

This video has over 125,000 views and is a great example of how to use eye catching content in the first three seconds of a video. Even with sound on or off, an audience is able to tell that this post is most likely about Scotland and will be drawn in to watch the rest.

Facebook

A great example of a post on Facebook was captured and posted by Isla Sea Adventures.  The post features a stag swimming in a loch in Scotland. 

This post reached over 1.7 million people with 1.5 million non-followers - so reaching a new audience. The post was shared over 8, 000 times which also helps us reach new audiences.

This is a great example of resharing content from a business to help promote Scotland to a global audience while showing support for the business too. 

Check out the post and see for yourself.