Tourism Ireland has reached three million fans on Facebook around the world, making it the fourth most popular tourism board on the popular social networking site – after Australia, the United States and Britain.

  Social media marketing is a hugely important element of Tourism Ireland’s global promotional programme to highlight the island of Ireland. And the organisation’s ‘social footprint’ is considerable, with more than 50 social media presences in total – including Facebook pages in 15 markets, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube, as well as Sina Weibo and WeChat in China.

 

Tourism Ireland has more than 300,000 followers on Twitter at the last count, making it the number two tourism agency in the world, after Britain; it is also second among tourist boards (after Australia) on YouTube, with more than 21 million views.

 Reaching three million fans on Facebook is significant for a number of reasons. Each fan has an average of 200 friends – so Tourism Ireland is just one click away from having its messages and photos shared each week with a potential 600 million friend connections worldwide. Tourism Ireland estimates that the value of the conversations about holidays in Ireland generated by its three million Facebook fans – will be worth about €15 million this year (i.e. what those conversations, if paid for as advertising, would cost).

 

 

Tourism Ireland has grown its Facebook fanbase from a couple of thousand at the beginning of 2010 to the grand total of over three million fans today, across 15 markets – including Great Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa and the Gulf Countries (English and Arabic versions). The organisation also has Facebook pages for specific topics, including Ireland’s Family History and Titanic Stories. Fan numbers continue to grow across all markets.