It’s that time of year when the allure of springtime weather piques Memorial Day travel planning! And as a competitive intelligence company, we couldn’t help but use our platform to analyze the content from a few leading travel brands.
In comparing Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor on Pinterest, we stumbled upon a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of an inconsistent content marketing strategy.
Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor are well-matched Pinterest competitors. Both brands have produced a comparable volume of Pinterest content, with just under 80 curated boards and just under 10,000 Pins each. But despite the relatively even Pinterest matchup in content volume, Lonely Planet is blowing TripAdvisor out of the water.
For starters, Lonely Planet’s Pinterest audience is 7 times greater than TripAdvisor’s (701,704 versus 91,741 followers, respectively, at time of publication).
Lonely Planet’s Pinterest audience is also growing at 12 times the rate of Trip Advisor’s. From January through March 2015, Lonely Planet’s Pinterest audience grew by a quarter (24.29%), while TripAdvisor’s grew by only 1.87%.
From January through March 2015, Lonely Planet’s Pinterest page also saw 30 times more interactions than TripAdvisor’s.
The key to Lonely Planet’s Pinterest success is — you guessed it! — consistency. While Lonely Planet regularly posts 20 or more Pins per week, TripAdvisor has had only two spurts of pinning activity thus far in 2015, one in mid-January and one in mid-February.
The effects of TripAdvisor’s major lulls in posting activity are cumulative. From January through March 2015, Lonely Planet produced 576 Pins compared to only 35 from TripAdvisor, and reaped 17,967 interactions compared to TripAdvisor’s 605.
Consider this your content marketing cautionary tale! Fuel your audience with consistent, high-quality content, and they’ll remain engaged. Abandon them, and they’ll abandon you!