Beautiful Destinations’ Jeremy Jauncey on the New Language of Engagement at Skift Forum

Jeremy Jauncey, founder of Beautiful Destinations, spoke today at the Skift Global Forum.

The serial entrepreneur is the cofounder of Tictrac, a digital health company that uses data to engage individuals in their health, a fellow of the British American Project, and deal maker with UK Trade & Investment’s Global Entrepreneur Program.

Today, Beautiful Destinations has the largest community on Instagram with over seven million followers spread across four accounts themed around destinations, hotels, cuisine and lifestyle. The followers are located in all 50 states and 180 countries.

Jauncey addressed the topic of “Why Visuals are the New Language of Engagement for Consumers” specifically through the lens of Instagram.

Here are the things we learned:

• Instagram has over 400 million users per month sharing over 80 million images everyday, second only to parent company Facebook.
• Jauncey said about 353 million pieces of content on Instagram are travel related, which people create and share to inspire themselves and others to travel.
• Travel industry has been the second slowest industry after financial services to adopt Instagram, which Jauncey said is very confusing. Because Instagram is social and inspires travel, every brand should be active on Instagram.
• Facebook launched an ad platform for Instagram four months ago with clickable links in the ad units.
• Travel brands have to create authentic, engaging and social-first Instagram content versus advertising content to be effective.
• The best Instagram travel content shows a unique perspective of a destination or travel experience.
• Choosing to partner with Instagram influencers based on the size of their following alone is wrong. Brands need to work with influencers who have great content, like your content, comment on your content, shout out your brand, tag your brand in their content, and follow your content.
• If brands want to be successful on Instagram, they need to determine which factors drive their account growth.

Keep track of all the activity at this year’s Global Forum by bookmarking our #skiftforum tag.

And thanks to all the sponsors that made Skift Global Forum 2015 possible: Adobe, Amadeus, American Express, Boxever, Big Bus Tours, CendyneOne, Cheapoair, Criteo, Gogo, HelloGbye, Hornblower Cruises, MasterCard, Mindtree, National Geographic, NewsCred, Sabre, SiteMinder, Travel Channel, TurkeyHome, Uber, Underline, Virtuoso, and Yahoo.