Sean Blocksidge was five days away from folding his West Australian tour business when a handful of posts on a social media website completely reversed his fortunes.
He'd poured tens of thousands of dollars into traditionally marketing his one-man Margaret River Discovery Company, which provides 4WD tours of the rocky coast and canoeing on the town's famous waterway, but was generating little interest.
"It was a disaster - I couldn't get my message to the right audience," he told AAP.
"I thought I'd done my last few tours and had to walk away - couldn't keep going."
Then something wonderful happened.
"Somewhere along the way, three or four couples came out and wrote pretty nice reviews on TripAdvisor.
"I didn't understand the power of this thing.
"And the algorithms behind it suddenly spun me up into the number one thing to do in Margaret River.
"That was it. The next morning, everything turned around.
"The phone and email went nuts and I've never looked back. Chock-a-block every day."
For two years straight, it was then listed as the number one tourist activity in Australia.
And every day, Mr Blocksidge spends 15 minutes taking and uploading a photo of the region to his Facebook page, which auto-links to Twitter, and he then re-posts it to Instagram.
If it's picked up by TourismWA, his image is viewed by millions.
"It's so stupidly easy.
"The whole social media thing has taken off for me."
Mr Blocksidge said tourism and wine marketing in WA had changed dramatically in the past five years. Previously, there was a heavy reliance on alliances with industry associations.
"Nowadays, it's up to industry itself to tell the story a lot better."
He said many other tour operators hadn't realised the benefits of social media marketing, which if used right, could promote a whole region.
"I'm surprised more people haven't figured out the potential for their business. And I wish they would. The more people that do it, the bigger our push to a global audience."
Share
