CASE STUDY: SORORAL TRAVEL
Instagram audit + strategy
Sororal Travel does amazing things: group trips that power women-owned businesses AND support anti-violence organisations on the ground?! I loved it immediately.
Nobody else is doing anything like Sororal - but that wasn’t coming across on their Instagram page, which is what we targeted with this strategy.
Early strategy results:
+41% engagement rate improvement
+46% increase in link taps
3.00% → 4.23% average engagement rate
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Keep scrolling to dive into the nitty-gritty
Before strategy
Before strategy
What the audit found
When I first looked at Sororal’s Instagram, it didn’t feel like a travel company selling trips. It felt more like a travel blog. There were beautiful images and interesting ideas, but:
It wasn’t immediately clear what they offered
The trips weren’t being promoted enough or in the most engaging way
The depth of what made them different wasn’t being communicated
The content felt slightly too neutral for a brand with such a strong point of view
This is something I see often with small businesses (and something I’ve done myself in the past), where we hear that ‘content is king’ and to create as much ‘valuable content’ as possible. But when you just focus on aesthetic posts and general inspiration, that doesn’t translate well into trust, clarity or conversion. It fills the feed, but it doesn’t move people towards booking.
Key audit findings:
Editorial content was dominating the feed. Around 80% of posts were mission-led or aesthetically driven. The content that visually grabbed attention had almost nothing to do with the trips or guides on sale. Meanwhile, competitors were promoting their core product in nearly every post.
There was no clear pathway to action. Strong individual posts - great testimonial videos, beautiful destination imagery - had no follow-through. No push to a waitlist. No trip dates. No CTA. Interest generated by posts wasn't being captured or moved forward.
Trips were being promoted without first building desire for the destination. Content jumped straight to the sell without making the audience want to go there first. People need to understand why a destination is worth their time before a booking prompt lands. That groundwork wasn't being laid.
Key messages weren't being repeated enough. Trips and guides appeared sporadically rather than being reinforced. Given that passive scrolling is now the norm - audiences aren't seeing every post - repetition isn't lazy, it's necessary. The same trip needs to be framed in multiple ways, multiple times.
Instagram was operating in a silo. Without an email strategy running alongside it, warm leads generated on Instagram had nowhere to go. Interest was being created and then lost.
“Overall, we thought the audit was excellent. It was informative, well-structured, and drew attention to some real blind spots — particularly around how we were showcasing our brand, our products, and the key pillars that were later identified in the strategy. The fact that it went into specific patterns we kept repeating, and explained why they might not be landing, was genuinely useful. The examples from other brands doing it well gave us something concrete to pivot toward, which we appreciated.
”
The Strategy
Sororal already had a strong brand and a mission people genuinely connected with. What was missing was a clear line between that mission and the moment someone decides to book. The strategy I built was designed to close that gap, shifting the account from an editorial presence into something more intentional, more conversion-aware, and honestly, more exciting to follow.
It's built around four content pillars, each serving a different stage of how someone goes from discovering Sororal to actually travelling with them:
Spice (Attention): Bold, ‘spicy’, opinion-led content designed to attract and differentiate
Inspo (Desire): Story-driven content that helps audiences imagine the experience
Trust (Proof): Testimonials, behind-the-scenes, founder-led content, and real traveller perspectives
Product (Sell): Clear, repeated communication of trips and guides
Every post has a purpose and every pillar serves a different stage of the decision. Alongside this, a stronger emphasis was placed on:
Storytelling over static inspiration. The strategy only works if the storytelling is strong.
More distinctive positioning that really showcases the USP of the Sororal trips
Repetition of core messages and trip details
Founder-led content to bring depth and perspective
Urgency signals and trip launch sequences that create momentum
Implementation
As the Sororal team were responsible for implementing the strategy, the handover was designed to be as actionable as possible - including content pillar weighting, a suggested 12-post content mix, destination post ideas across all four pillars, repeatable content formats, storytelling guidance, and metrics to track progress.
Early signals
The strategy is still in the process of being implemented, but these are the signals after 3 months.
+46% increase in external link taps from Instagram. More users moved from Instagram to the website during the first quarter of the year - a stronger conversion signal than reach or follower count alone.
+41% improvement in average engagement rate. An analysis of 48 individual posts before and after the strategy showed that the average engagement rate increased from 3.00% to 4.23% — a 41% improvement.
Strong performance of founder-led content. The highest performing posts after the strategy were almost entirely Spice and Trust content, reinforcing the strategic shift toward more intentional, values-led content.
Challenges
Instagram reach declined during this period. This is consistent with what typically happens during a strategic repositioning. As content becomes more specific, the algorithm takes time to recalibrate. The early signals make me think this is a transition challenge rather than a sign the strategy isn't working, especially when the engagement rate data supports that.
Strategy vs execution: the project deliverables were the audit and strategy. This meant the execution relied on the existing team to apply the thinking, which slowed things down in practice. While the strategy was detailed and actionable, it still required someone to interpret the thinking in real time - to choose the right image, write a strong hook, know when a caption is too safe and needs more edge, and so on. That layer of judgment is difficult to hand over in a document, no matter how thorough the document is. This isn't a reflection on the Sororal team - it's a structural challenge that comes with any strategy-only engagement. A content strategist holds a vision for how a brand should show up, and translating that vision through someone else's hands inevitably means something gets lost. The early signals are encouraging, but the full potential of the strategy hasn't yet been realised.
Learnings
Founder-led and opinionated content consistently outperforms polished, neutral content. The posts that performed best were the ones where Sororal had a clear point of view and wasn't afraid to say something.
Product posts need the groundwork first. Content that sells without first building desire and trust tends to underperform and can suppress reach by signalling to the algorithm that the audience isn't responding.
Most brands post content without thinking about where their audience is in the decision-making process. Someone discovering Sororal for the first time needs completely different content to someone who's been following for six months and is almost ready to book. A good strategy serves both simultaneously, which is what the four-pillar approach is designed to do.
Engagement quality matters more than reach, especially during a period of repositioning. Reach going down while engagement rate goes up is a sign the content is becoming more relevant, not less effective.
Work with me
I work with travel and culture brands on Instagram strategy and account management.