Social Media as an Aceh Tourism Promotions Tool by Department of Aceh Culture and Tourism

Today's social media has become an excellent promotional tool for products and services, and, can be used to share stories or experiences about things or places they have visited, also the high level of social media access is one of the reasons why social media has great potential in advertising or promotional activities, especially in his case is tourism promotion. The aim of this study was to determine the form of tourism promotion through social media that has been applied by employees of the Department of Aceh Culture and Tourism. It uses a descriptive qualitative approach with data collection techniques using interview and literature studies. Triangulation was carried out by interviewing five employees of Department of Aceh Culture and Tourism, and observations on social media own by Aceh Cultural and Tourism Agency. The results show that the form of promotional activities through social media carried out by the Aceh Culture and Tourism Agency uses eight preparatory steps for publication on social media so that promotions produced has high quality, informative and up to date, The suggestions given is for employees and also the Publication Team of Department of Aceh Culture and Tourism is to use more sophisticated analytic system to monitor the progress of social media and utilizing paid applications so they can measure and monitor all activities that happened on their social media. Keywords─social media; promotion; tourism; Department of Aceh Culture and Tourism