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How trendsetters can help enrich your social media marketing
Park and recreation agencies seeking to elevate their social media presence have embraced a widespread trend: partnering with social media influencers. These collaborations help park and recreation professionals reach audiences interested in topics like local tourism, outdoor recreation, healthy lifestyles and local food. Influencers infuse their brand identity into messaging and visuals to appeal to their followers when promoting parks, facilities, events and programs, from a walk in the park to a visit to the farmers market. Missouri’s Great Rivers Greenway and the City of Overland Park, Kansas, are seeing the benefits.
Great Rivers Greenway
Great Rivers Greenway, a regional parks and trails district that comprises a network of greenways throughout three St. Louis-area counties, has engaged with local social media influencers to promote its programs and open space, says Communications Manager Dallas Adams. The district focuses on attracting a diverse group of area residents to visit the greenways and attend programs. Documenting experiences with their unique lens and storytelling strategies, influencers explore the greenways, take part in programs and encourage their followers to do the same.
“We partner with social media influencers to come and enjoy our programs and to create content about the greenways to share out with their platforms. We’ve engaged with both paid and organic influencers — so making an ask and an invite to just come out — and also, we have paid influencers to make unique content that we become collaborators on,” says Adams.
The district focuses on partnering with influencers who reach audiences within their local area, as they primarily seek to attract community members and weekenders to visit the greenways. “We work with what somebody would consider a micro or a small influencer, so people who have anywhere from…200 followers to…less than 10,000, because everybody has a circle of influence…” she says.
When staff noticed that the district’s social media audience wasn’t balanced among the different areas of the region they serve, they sought the help of influencers to expand their reach.
“[O]ur goal for success with influencers was primarily to attract a more diverse audience at our events. Boosting attendance was a secondary goal. We are definitely starting to see people of different races, ethnicities, ages and groups. We’re using influencers to get the word out, and we’re then responding to that with changing up our program offerings and days and times they’re offered so we’re able to welcome those new audiences in,” says Adams.
Great Rivers Greenway seeks to host an influencer event this year, during which the district will offer condensed samplings of its programs to influencers. “We have had a big dream to have an influencer event, maybe two influencer events a year, where we’re inviting content creators specifically to come out, capture their experience of the greenway and share it with their audiences. So, it’s a very direct ask, and what they would receive in return would be a unique ‘behind-the-scenes’ experience,” says Adams.
Influencers help shape perceptions of the greenways, showing that they are both for recreation and leisure. “You don’t have to own a bike. You don’t have to be running on the trail or use it for exercise. You can go look at birds, or you can have a picnic. The influencers capture what they like about the experience and share it with their unique audience,” Adams says. She adds that influencers will, hopefully, “draw people similar to them to experience our programs when we offer them.”
Engagement with local content and audiences helps Great Rivers Greenway find the right influencers to reach out to for partnerships. Adams regularly interacts with relevant local influencers using Great Rivers Greenway social media profiles.
“What we’re looking for, because we’re trying to diversify our audience, is somebody who’s in touch with the people. So, we follow them, we like their stuff, we organically comment on their content — ‘This is so cool’ or ‘This is so awesome’ — so that when we ask them, ‘Hey, will you come to this storybook walk with your toddler and take pictures and post it on your social?’ you’re not a stranger, you’re not a ghost, and I think sometimes people both overthink an ask — influencers are regular people, you can ask them anything you want — but also, undervalue relationship building. It’s like building relationships in real life! Someone who really likes you and is already doing the things that you want them to do and is already feeling the love from your brand interacting with them…makes it even better for your brand and [that influencer] to partner together.”
Overland Park Farmers’ Market
The City of Overland Park, located in the Kansas City metropolitan area, has partnered with local social media influencers to promote its farmers market. Recreation Supervisor Kristina Stanley, who oversees the market’s operations and social media, draws on her background forming partnerships when approaching her work with Kansas City (KC) area influencers.
The city’s influencer partnerships “truly started to develop back in 2019 when the Overland Park Farmers’ Market hosted a social media influencer day. After a careful process of recruiting a diverse and talented team of influencers, the Overland Park Farmers’ Market invited about 25 of Kansas City’s largest influencers to the market on the same day. We established an in-kind partnership that benefited [the influencers] and the Overland Park Farmers’ Market and its vendors. The influencers all had something unique to offer the community, each with their own perspective, ranging from foodies to lifestyle to moms to photography to health and wellness to fashion to travel to KC enthusiast,” Stanley says.
Stanley breaks her target audience into two groups and works with influencers to grow both audiences. The first is “grocery shoppers who get [there] early because they want the best produce, know what’s in season and know who they want to buy it from,” and the second is “the destination crowd, which is the family looking for something to do, the couple wanting a date day, the girls getting together for brunch [who] end up getting coffee and flowers and posting about it, or the person visiting from another part of the city or from out of town,” she says.
Influencers have helped the city attract people who fall into both categories. “The years that we extensively launched a campaign around working with them brought our highest attendance numbers and some of the highest sales for the vendors,” Stanley notes. “In general, social media influencers reached an audience we were not reaching through traditional forms of advertising — paid or earned. Additionally, they not only reached a new audience, but [also] they got their followers to act — they got them to the market, they bought goods and have returned!”
Influencer partnerships also have fostered greater diversity among the market’s attendees. “Our market shopper demographic has changed significantly over the last five years of working with influencers to be more diverse in every facet, which inherently just keeps drawing more and more interest, making our market better each and every year,” she says.
What’s more, influencers helped the Overland Park Famers’ Market earn national recognition. Stanley says, “In 2022, we were in the running to be voted the best farmers market in America. We not only tapped into the influencers we worked with over the past couple of years, but [also] utilized even more influencers to help the KC metro area vote for the Overland Park Farmers’ Market. It worked as we won! Many of these influencers have become frequent shoppers of the market and regular customers to vendors, so many of them were excited about us being the No. 1 market in America, which resulted in them promoting the market competition for free! They rallied behind the market and city and truly helped us win.”
The City of Overland Park prioritizes relationship building when partnering with influencers. “[W]e will continue to foster the relationships with the influencers themselves — caring about who they are as people comes first,” Stanley says. “We will certainly work with them in whatever creative, unique ways we can come up with that benefit the market, but also their platform. It has to benefit both parties for it to work and seem authentic.”
Building Community
Both Stanley and Adams suggest that park and recreation professionals examine their own social media habits — such as what content they interact with and what kind of accounts they like to follow — when looking to improve their agencies’ social media strategy and pursue partnerships with social media influencers.
Stanley says, “In my case, I worked with the market vendors and staff. I asked them who they see at the market, who they follow personally and professionally, and who tags their accounts to establish a core group of social media influencers that we might want to work with.”
“Whether it’s a parks and recreation communications person or a digital media specialist for the city, get a group of people together who are social media forward thinkers to figure out who your city’s biggest influencers are. From there, just reach out with your ask. That ask could be an in-kind partnership or a paid opportunity. Both concepts work well. Some influencers love in-kind offers, [whereas] others will only want to be paid. Just figure out what’s best for whatever it is you’re trying to promote and/or your budget,” she says.
Valuing Partnerships
Adams recommends that park and recreation agencies consider budget as a factor when pursuing influencer partnerships and evaluating social media strategy. “Great Rivers Greenway is…very fortunate to have the tax support that we have, and so we have a budget to be able to play with social media, which helps in our success. It’s advertising. So, if your budget is small, use it strategically. Maybe you only activate one influencer this year.... Be strategic, but understand that a lot of work goes into this content, and we should be willing to pay people for their reach and expertise,” she says.
If funds are not available, Adams suggests offering influencers thanks and compensation in other ways. “Build your relationships, value people how you can, even if it’s just free swag or hosting a custom event — in our case, we did a storytime and a stroll with a mom’s group and a greenway tour and mindful meditation with another popular influencer. Be creative with what you can offer people.”
Many influencers provide social media kits with information on pricing and performance metrics. Stanley says, “Five years ago, I wasn’t aware of a single social media kit from an influencer. Now, the majority of professional, full-time social media influencers all have social media kits with set pricing and are…operating their accounts as a [business]. However, I’ve learned there’s still usually room to negotiate.”
“It’s a game changer…” Stanley says. “It’s also much more cost effective than traditional forms of advertising. You just have to be flexible and creative, as each influencer will have their own idea of what works for their account.”
Alexandra Reynolds is Associate Editor of Parks & Recreation magazine.