EP 234 Scroll-Stopping Content: Retreat Marketing with a Social Media Pro with Alessia Tenebruso

The Retreat Leaders Podcast

Content provided by Shannon Jamail. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Shannon Jamail or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.

14d ago 18:37

MP3•Episode home

In this episode of The Retreat Leaders Podcast, Shannon Jamail is joined by Alessia Tenebruso—founder of One Girl Travel, retreat content creator, and social media strategist—for a juicy convo on how to create social media that actually converts.

Alessia shares the importance of having a dedicated content creator or social correspondent at your retreats to capture authentic, behind-the-scenes moments that build trust and spark FOMO (the good kind). They dive into how retreat leaders can stay visible and aligned online without burning out, plus tips on using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok strategically.

Whether you're documenting a retreat or planning your next one, this episode is your blueprint for scroll-stopping, story-driven content that fills spots and builds your brand.

🎧 Tune in now and learn how to transform your retreat visibility—one post at a time.

🔗 Links Mentioned:

Alessia’s Website: https://www.onegirltravel.com
Follow Alessia on IG: @one_girl_travel

The Retreat Leaders Podcast Resources and Links:

Thanks for tuning into the Retreat Leaders Podcast. Remember to subscribe for more insightful episodes, and visit our website for additional resources. Let’s create a vibrant retreat community together!

Subscribe:

Apple Podcast | Google Podcast | Spotify

-----------------

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Speaker 1 00:00:00 Welcome to the Retreat Leaders podcast, your sanctuary with retreat experts. Where we spill the tea on retreat success. Here we dive into crafting transformational guest experiences. Talk about how to avoid pitfalls and unlock marketing secrets. Whether you're a seasoned guru or a budding enthusiast, we've got the inside scoop for you. Join us as we learn how to flourish in this magical world of retreats. Hey guys! Welcome to or welcome back to the Retreat Leaders Podcast at Shannon and I am over the moon excited about my guest today. She is another amazing human being that I met in France. This is not the same because we are not sipping on champagne in France, but I am getting to record with her and I am so excited. Welcome Alexia to the show! I'm so excited you're here.

Speaker 2 00:00:48 Thank you. It's so good to see you. I definitely miss you and all the fun we had in France.

Speaker 1 00:00:53 Oh my gosh, it was seriously life changing on so many levels, but probably the biggest one was meeting the people that I've met there.

Speaker 1 00:01:00 I have recorded shows about it and I have made posts about it. But if you are not up leveling yourself by getting into rooms with people who think higher, you know are just dreaming and envisioning and working towards bigger things. You're in the wrong spaces. And so that was just such an incredible experience. Plus, we're in France drinking champagne. I mean, come on.

Speaker 2 00:01:20 Exactly.

Speaker 1 00:01:21 It was a combination of amazingness. So why don't you first start off by just telling us who you are and what brought you to where you are at today?

Speaker 2 00:01:28 Sure. My name is Alessia Russo. I'm the owner of One Girl Travel. I am many things I like to consider myself, like the Martha Stewart of the internet. I'm a certified life coach. I am newly a certified travel advisor. I am a content creator. I am a brand visibility consulting coach, and I am also a event Social Media coordinator.

Speaker 1 00:01:52 Yes, to all of those things. And I saw quite a few of those things in action when we were in France.

Speaker 1 00:01:58 And I want to talk about that stuff, because when I met you and I was realizing what you were doing and what you do, and I saw your content, which just blew me away, I was like, oh my goodness, this is so important for retreat leaders, because I do think a lot of retreat leaders are willy nilly. They're social media and they're digital content in general. And one of the things I always talk about is my number one goal is to grow my email list, my email list. But the number one way to do that is through social media, y'all. If you only knew how many times we've tried to record and the oopses that I have done today, I'm just going to blame it on a very busy, fruitful, amazing weekend I had with my retreat alumni. I did a lot of yelling and screaming, so my voice is done and so is my brain almost. But what we're going to talk about is super important because number one, building our email list. But we have to do that through our digital presence.

Speaker 1 00:02:48 And the first thing people are going to look at when somebody is considering you or as a host or your business is your social media presence. It's a form of validation and it needs to be curated properly. one of the things I was talking about before we hit record was, you know, I see a lot of retreat leaders, especially new ones, but even some that have been trying to to kick around retreats for a while where they're like posting a cute picture of their kid and then their dog and then the retreat. And then, you know, this I don't know thing they saw on the news and then the retreat, like it's just all over the place and it's inconsistent. So could we just first talk about the importance of social media, the consistency of it, just, you know, in general why it's important to retreat leaders?

Speaker 2 00:03:31 Yeah, absolutely. And first, I totally agree with you about your mailing list because you don't own your followers on these social platforms. But like you said, like this is like where your credibility is.

Speaker 2 00:03:40 This is where they're getting to know you. So you're building community with your social media platforms, all of them. And each platform is very different. I in my opinion, I don't know if you agree with me on this, but I feel like Instagram is more of the curated, you know you got your whole like, page and it's all curated. Nice TikToks a little more rogue. I feel like I can have a little more fun, a little more behind the scenes on TikTok. Facebook is Facebook's Facebook. for Facebook, right? Like it's been around for a long time. But pretty much everything I post on Instagram just goes to Facebook. But basically, that's where people are going on your page to get to know you. And I know you mentioned about like posting family and kids and dogs and things that that's great for your personal page that doesn't belong on your business page unless it is carrying over to what you are trying to get across to your community.

Speaker 1 00:04:33 Right?

Speaker 2 00:04:33 But that's what stories are for, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 00:04:35 Stories, I think, are a great way to share behind the scenes of your life. People love stories. They love seeing what you do on the weekends with your family, your friends, but your actual social media feed. It should be intentional and you should be posting with purpose each time you post.

Speaker 1 00:04:52 Hey, it's Shannon here. I'm just popping in really quickly to ask a big favor. Would you pause the show and go review it for us, please? Reviews really help us to be able to get more guests and more experts on the show to help you transform your retreats, so if you wouldn't mind pausing and leaving us a review, that would mean everything. And if you're not already subscribed, do that too. I love that you're saying it like this because you literally nailed what I see as a user, let alone, you know, a business that's that's using the platforms. I agree with TikTok, by the way. We only started our TikTok account so we could do like pranks on the ranch and like show some funny behind the scenes goofiness.

Speaker 1 00:05:34 And we've done some of that and I got to get better at it. But that is why I started TikTok. I thought that could be the more sassier branch of us. And then Instagram is very curated and Facebook is more like, here's an event, here's just some information, here's where we post our articles. It's SEO driven. It's, you know, it's got good stuff. Don't get me wrong. Depending on the age that you're targeting also might depend on which social media platform that you're spending a lot of time in. Very true, but I do agree. Each of them have their own kind of feel and layout to it. And I love that you said personal stuff. Personal page, unless it's stories. I totally agree with that so much. The stories is where people really, really get to know, like the person behind the brand, I think, or people behind the brand, like what's really happening, you know, behind the scenes. What are your struggles? What are your your successes? what are your your learning points or failures however you want to call them? And so I'm really excited that you you mentioned it that way.

Speaker 1 00:06:28 Are you laid it out that way?

Speaker 2 00:06:30 Yeah. I think it's a great opportunity for people to like, know and trust you. Right. Like that's the purpose of building your community. And they have to see that you're a real person, you know, especially if you're asking them to pay you for something. They need to know who they're paying and if they want to invest in you as a business owner.

Speaker 1 00:06:49 See, this is so funny about, I don't know. It was probably eight, eight or so years ago. I was hosting a retreat in Northern California, and those of you that were on this retreat, you'll remember this. And we're going around the table, you know, the opening night and just introducing ourselves. What do we do? And all that kind of fun stuff. And I don't know, about halfway through. So we probably have about seven women who've already gone, well, like, this next woman was like, my name is so-and-so, I work for the FBI, and I background checked you to make sure that this was a legit thing.

Speaker 1 00:07:17 And I was like, what? I mean, okay. And she was just very honest, like, you know, I just I didn't know if everything on social media was fake. If you know what was real, what wasn't real. And I just decided that I was going to use the tools that I had at my resources to check you out and make sure that I wasn't just giving my money away to some weird situation. Well, this was before, you know, the way social media is today. today, I think it's a little bit it's a little harder to curate a fake relationship on social media. You can. Absolutely. But if you're using the stories and you're using all the tools that are involved, and there's really you showing up the way, you know, you would want to show up to create that relationship. It's a little bit harder. But I just thought that was interesting because that once again, shows like to your point, if they're going to pay you money and they're going to show up to this space with strangers, like they need to feel like they can trust you.

Speaker 2 00:08:07 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:08:08 And so I just I'm so glad that you're pointing that out. Okay. When I met you in France, you were one of the participants, but you were also a social media curator, and you killed it. Because I remember going to bed every night, and I would scan what was going on in the social media world, and it would be like, oh my gosh, look at her post. And she like, did a recap of I think it was the day before. It might have been, I don't remember if it was that day or the day before. I think you were on purpose doing it a day behind. and so it was like, oh my gosh, how you curated it gave me such FOMO. And I was there. Like, I was like, if I wasn't a part of this, I would be like, how can I be a part of that and talk to me about that and why you like. Why is that part of one of the things that you do and how important that is?

Speaker 2 00:08:52 Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:08:52 And exactly what you said it is creating that foam because only a, not everybody can code to a retreat, right? Like you have. Oh 1015, 20 people at a retreat. There are hundreds of people that are watching you, and we're debating on attending the retreat and what I'm doing as a participant of the retreat that is documenting what is happening. I am bringing it to life for everybody that's not there because I am somebody that I. The way I network is by being in the room at events and I love it, I love conferences, I love just being in those rooms because of the energy, because you're with like minded people, like you're just vibing off each other. You're getting excited and like, you know the feeling when we were together, it's not something that can be really shown through photos, right? It's like by me talking to the community and telling them what's happening. And by sharing, like, these behind the scenes clips that nobody else knows about except for us, and I'm sharing it with everybody.

Speaker 2 00:09:58 Like they're getting to see what's really happening at these retreats. They're getting to see the transformation in real time. And I think it's such a great way of marketing your retreats because then they're seeing, okay. Like, look how much fun they had. Look at the transformations they had. Look at all the connections that were made. I want to go on that retreat. And so then they consider joining another retreat.

Speaker 1 00:10:21 So there's to me, there's a couple things that this is like hitting on. First of all, you're there. You're a participant. You're creating, curating content to create this FOMO, to create this future marketing. And what I highly suggest is, is if you decide to do something like this, which we're going to talk about in a moment, that you already have your next date available. So that way when someone's watching this curated content and they're having this immense FOMO, which I'm telling you, y'all, if you if you were to saw the stuff that we did and the magic that we were creating together as a group, you would have absolutely been like, I need to be there.

Speaker 1 00:10:54 And so you need to be able to say, yes, here's our next one. Here's our next one. Right. So so just being prepared for that at least a wait list. Like here's the landing page for the wait list at minimum. Right. But this was so powerful. So that being said, we've talked about how important social media is. The content on social media is the platforms on social media is talk to me about if somebody wanted to do or hire someone like you or hire you like, talk to me about the things that you provide that helps them build their marketing and build their business as a content creator or brand builder.

Speaker 2 00:11:25 Absolutely. So consistency is key when it comes to social media. You want to make sure, like if you have a retreat that you're posting consistently about, that retreat and what I help retreat host do is I post on their behalf, getting the excitement going for the retreat or whatever it is they're selling, like talking about it and just showing my experience through what they are offering.

Speaker 2 00:11:50 so really just build up your social media share, like where are we going to be? What are some of the things we're going to do? Tease them a little bit to get them excited and to follow along on that journey up until the actual retreat date. And then at the retreat, like that's where the magic is happening, you know, in real time. And the thing is, if you're a retreat host, it's hard to be in the moment and also try to capture your own content. And that's why, like.

Speaker 1 00:12:17 Really near impossible.

Speaker 2 00:12:19 Right?

Speaker 1 00:12:19 Like it is.

Speaker 2 00:12:21 I can't imagine it like it's very difficult. And I know, you know, you can hire professional photographers, but they're not getting that behind the scenes detail and like really the energy that's happening. So that's why I think it's great to have a content creator with you that can document everything. Because what they're doing, what I do is I am capturing thousands of videos and photos, and I am using them for future content for the retreat host.

Speaker 2 00:12:51 So after the retreat is over, all that content is getting repurposed and it's being used to sell the next one. It's being used to market whatever else is coming next, and you can just keep repurposing it over and over and you're getting a library full of content.

Speaker 1 00:13:07 Hey, retreat leaders, pause that retreat planning for just a second, because I've got something you do not want to miss. I'm headed to London this October to host a live event that's all about teaching you how to host a retreat that's not just transformational, but actually profitable. Imagine sipping tea or champagne with other like minded leaders while mapping out your next sold out retreat. It's happening at the gorgeous Waldorf Hilton in London. I'm spilling all the secrets from pricing to planning, marketing to mindset, and you'll walk away with a strategy you can actually use. No fluff, no BS, just results. So head to retreat mastermind training and come join me across the pond. So what I'm hearing is having a content creator who helps you market ahead of time, market during as well as capturing, and then even help you create content after for future retreats.

Speaker 1 00:14:00 So it really just sounds like that we just need a content creator all the time. If I'm being honest.

Speaker 2 00:14:07 I mean the afterwards, like then you can you can use their videos because you'll have access to their library and then you can repurpose it as you want. If you don't want to keep them on to continuously make the content. But it's really, I think, having that creator on retreat with you, where you don't have to worry, you don't have to be on your phone, you don't have to do anything except be with your people. I think that is the biggest thing.

Speaker 1 00:14:32 I agree with you so much. one of the things that we do at our retreats is I have my retreat coordinator who helps me do that is I have a person that that's that's what they're doing. but she's not a content creator. She's she's young and she's, you know, got a little bit of that brain, but she's not a content creator. And so the difference to what she does, which is amazing to what you do, which is mind blowing.

Speaker 1 00:14:55 I think it's important to really look at, like, who's the person that you're going to invite into this role that's going to do this? because your content, you guys have to go back and find it, and I'll see if I can try to link some of the things. I know that some of them were stories there, but a lot of them were post anyway, my point is, is like from you throwing back the covers and grabbing a cup of coffee and walking the ground. You know what I mean? Like these things, those those details that create that feeling and that emotion of being there with the group, really getting a feel for like what the lodging really looks like and what the food experience really is and what the magic of the moment is, like all those little pieces that we try to explain in pictures or just descriptive words just don't care. They just don't even. Honestly, to me. Come close to the way you did in your content creation.

Speaker 2 00:15:47 Exactly. And I'm showing it from the point of view as an attendee, you know, so if somebody is worried about attending a retreat by themselves.

Speaker 2 00:15:56 And my focus with one girl travel originally was solo travel empowering women to travel the world by themselves, I've now expanded to empowering women to do anything that they want in life confidently. but it really helps ease their mind to like, okay, this is what it's going to look like on this retreat. Like, if she can do it, I can do it. And it's kind of just like giving them like those training wheels, like, okay, I can do this. I see somebody else do it. This is what I can expect to do.

Speaker 1 00:16:24 Ooh, that's such a good point. That really is such a good point, because there are a lot of first time retreat goers, and especially on the the female side of the world that are afraid. They're afraid to make that, that that commitment and show up to something that they really don't know if they are going to feel safe in. And I don't just mean physically, I mean all of it just feel safe and feel, you know, like this is a place that they're going to be accepted, that they're going to, you know, feel comfortable or they're going to love or they're going to like or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 00:16:51 They're just afraid to do it. And so when they can really see and actually feel through this content, it's really empowering.

Speaker 2 00:16:58 Absolutely. And I feel like when it's relatable, it's just it's so much more powerful because if we're just seeing, you know, models posing, like pretending to do things like that doesn't feel real. Like I want to see a real person go to this thing and see their, their actual, you know, how they feel when they're doing it, their actual experience. And that's what I'm sharing.

Speaker 1 00:17:24 Yes. Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, if somebody wanted to work with you, how would they get Ahold of you and where can they find your information.

Speaker 2 00:17:32 Yeah. So you can email me at contact at. You can also go to my website. Com and I have all the ways you can work with me there. I'm on social media. it's at the word one. Underscore girl. Underscore travel. I'm all over the internet. You will find me if you type in one girl travel or Elisa.

Speaker 2 00:17:53 I'll be there.

Speaker 1 00:17:55 Yay! And I'll have all of that linked in the show notes. If you are driving or unable to, look it up right now. I'll have everything in this in the show notes. Well, I'm going to have to have you out to the ranch, so don't go anywhere because we are going to chat about that. And have you come experience a ranch retreat. But thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 2 00:18:12 Yes. Thank you. This was my pleasure. I love talking about this.

Speaker 1 00:18:16 Me too. Thanks for listening to The Retreat Leader's podcast. Learn more at the Retreat. Com. See you next time.

102 episodes