Islands top social media channels

THE Isle of Mull, Kilchurn Castle and the Isle of Coll have topped the list of attractions in Argyll and the Isles to receive the most engagement on VisitScotland’s social media channels.

Images of a puffin on the Isle of Staffa, the floral shores of the Isle of Coll and the reflected ruins of Kilchurn Castle perched on a rocky peninsula overlooking Loch Awe captivated the social media world with more than 57,500 likes, shares, retweets and comments between them this summer.

Overall, posts about Argyll and the Isles across all VisitScotland media channels led to more than 721,500 likes, shares, retweets and comments from April to September.

The image which caught the world’s attention the most was with ‘ puffin perfection on the Isle of Staffa’ by visitor Marie Tatum which inspired comments from all around the world and more than 38,000 likes, comments and shares.

VisitScotland’s social media channels have some of the largest followings and engagement of any other destination marketing organisation globally. The channels provide inspirational images and information about Scotland to inspire people worldwide to visit the country every year.

With more than 2.3 billion people around the world (30 per cent of the total population) using social networking sites, VisitScotland has a dedicated social media team to ensure destination information about every region of Scotland is represented.

The majority of images posted on VisitScotland channels are provided by visitors to Scotland, with user-generated content of great importance to the national tourism organisation.

The top post overall for the summer was a group of images posted on Facebook of the beaches on the Isle of Harris basking in the sunshine, inspiring more than 310,000 shares, likes and comments.

VisitScotland launched its first ever global campaign – the Spirit of Scotland – in February this year, with a large emphasis on creating a social movement to help promote the country to the world.

The #ScotSpirit social campaign has been VisitScotland’s most successful social media campaign to date with nearly 200,000 uses of the hashtag across all platforms and more than 63 million views of the Spirit of Scotland advert and mini documentaries.