Hot on the heels of being chosen by Royal Caribbean as part of its tour program when Radiance of the Seas arrives in October a Wollongong tourist attraction has achieved another major milestone.
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Symbio Wildlife Park this week reached 100,000 likes on Facebook and has had more than two billion views of its posts on social media.
Under the guidance of marketing and creative services manager Kevin Fallon the number of fans has grown from 10,000 a year ago. He said the Helensburgh tourist attraction had achieved what it had by not following any one else in the industry.
“We create unique content which is Symbio centric. It shows who we are and what we are about. We also get significant support from many organisations and media, who share our content on a regular basis, which further extends the organic reach of our videos. Short form videos have proved to be most successful,” he said.
Mr Fallon said high engagement Symbio was enjoying from its social feeds was now allowing the family run zoo to be more strategic.
“We can target specific audiences via our social feeds,” he said.
Mr Fallon said the strong the response and engagement was as a result of being able to allow people connect with the animals through video in a unique way.
“Posting to Facebook, Youtube etc is one thing, but you have to be able to get it viewed to an audience outside of what you currently have. That is why having strong PR skills is so imperative with any successful social site. You can have the most amazing video in the world, but without knowing how to get it out there to the masses, it means nothing and will come and go without any engagement,” he said.
Mr Fallon said seeing how much interest from around the world there was in what they do meant to the zookeepers was particularly rewarding.
Kevin Fallon’s social media engagement highlights from the last year:
- The #RaisingImogen video. It was extremely personal and showed the hard work of zoo couple Kylie Elliott and Matt Radnidge as they hand-raised little baby joey Imogen. It trended number in the world on Facebook for two days running.
- The behind the scenes video of a photo-shoot which was the highest ever viewed Australia tourism video on social media. It is presently up to around 50 million views on the Tourism Australia Facebook page.
- Harry the koala and zookeeper Tami having fun in the new Koala Sanctuary which trended number one worldwide on Facebook.
- Red Panda birthday video which went viral. It did not trend number one on social media but achieved news headlines around the world.
- Symbio koala photograph being chosen for the wall of the Australian Embassy just a few hundred metres from the Eiffel Tower.
Reach statistics on Symbio Wildlife Park Facebook page during the last 12 months not including third party entities that posted the zoo’s content onto their pages and broadcasting networks.
- Reach 101,292,062
- Video views of 11,493,666
Other stories about Symbio’s social media success
- Symbio koala makes it big in Paris
- Symbio koala video watched by 15 million
- IRT boss and Wollongong Citizen of the Year meets Symbio Wildlife Park's international social media star Imogen
- Symbio Red Panda Birthday video goes viral globally.
- Symbio Wildlife Park shares the love with Koala joey Imogen on Valentine's Day
- Symbio's baby koalas Imogen and Harry are thriving despite a difficult start to life: photos, video
