Social Media

Signature events were promoted through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter throughout March and April with static posts, stories, photos and video content. Promoted signature events included:

• Desert X
• BNP Paribas Open
• La Quinta Arts Festival
• Fashion Week El Paseo
• Palm Desert Food + Wine
• Indian Wells Arts Festival
• LPGA ANA Inspiration
• Club Skirts Presents The Dinah
• Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
• Stagecoach
• White Party 

Our event-related social media posts for this report period totaled over 315,000 impressions​.

The CVB is working with its social media agency of record, Sparkloft, to produce two summer-specific influencer campaigns to promote brand awareness and Chill Deals to the CVB’s target drive markets

CHILLspiration
For this awareness campaign, the CVB will host three influencers with an itinerary including six summer activities. Assets will be captured in video, stills and audio and be distributed through Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, YouTube and Twitter.

Chill Deals
The CVB will host two influencers to promote 10 Chill Deals for our summer Chill Deals campaign. The program will also target audiences that were exposed to the CHILLspiration campaign, offering multiple user touchpoints to drive users to the CVB’s Chill Deals landing page. To offer engaging content through this promotion, the campaign will focus on creating cinemagraphs, which are seemingly static images with only one moving element, such as waves in a pool or palm trees swaying. This campaign will link to partner deals on the CVB website.

The top-performing post for engagement during this time period was a video, which is a preferred content type on Facebook. The video also included a unique selling point (USP) of boutique hotels. This actionable type of content allows users to start planning a trip around the content consumed. View the video here.

During this time period, carousel ads were also introduced as a third level of link click ads to drive engaged social media users to the CVB website.

In addition to major signature events, April also saw the reopening of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The reopening was covered on the CVB’s Facebook Stories and led to record engagement from a single Facebook Story.

On Instagram, the highest performing post was also the reopening of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Users were highly anticipating this announcement and engaged with the timely “social buzz” that was created online around the reopening of this iconic local attraction.

In addition to supporting the Tramway reopening, Instagram Stories were utilized throughout March and April to support signature events. In particular, Instagram Stories provided a timely channel to distribute real-time content during the two festival weekends of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and one weekend of Stagecoach. The CVB also renewed a partnership with country music artist CAM to host a takeover on the CVB Instagram.

Recent link click ads on Twitter achieved a Cost Per Click (CPC) of $0.04, the lowest cost per click seen on the account in over 12 months. Additionally, ad spends were reduced during this time period as to reallocate budget to promote the upcoming summer campaigns. Despite the reduced budget, these ads performed exceptionally well and drove a significant amount of traffic to the CVB website. 

In April, the CVB again participated in the annual CSR Share Day event, a 24-hour Twitter campaign that champions discussion around corporate social responsibility and sustainability. The CVB hosted a one-hour Twitter chat around health and wellness in the destination and as it relates to meetings.

Twitter also offered a real-time opportunity to successfully join conversations around significant events, such as the Tram reopening and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The excitement around these events created a sense of urgency to engage on such a quick-moving platform.

Followers continued to grow organically in April, regardless of media spend. Continuing to grow engaged subscribers will increase organic video views moving forward, as new videos will be pushed out to a growing and loyal audience.

The dineGPS channels are focused on promoting the upcoming Restaurant Week event. The Facebook event is live and allows users to easily RSVP, receive reminders and updates, and invite their friends to attend. The dineGPS Twitter account is promoting all menus submitted by the Restaurant Week deadline with dedicated Tweets.

Additionally, an April Facebook contest captured more than 2,500 email addresses that will be added to the dineGPS email database. A second Instagram sweepstakes with influencer promotion started in mid-May, with the goal to increase Instagram subscribers ahead of the Restaurant Week event.