Jessica Bertolini started her career in tourism while living in Italy, guiding tours through the Vatican Museum. After moving to the Canary Islands in Spain, she worked for a windsurf and kitesurf school and helped build a multilingual tourism website for the island of Fuerteventura.
Moving back to the U.S., she joined a Belize tour operator that also ran a retail travel agency. “I got to see all sides of the tourism industry,” she says. Then, five years ago, she brought that range to Visit Sarasota County. “I love that no two days are the same, and I get to inspire people to start planning their next vacation,” she says.
Small team, big digital ambitions
Jessica is Visit Sarasota County’s Director of Web and Digital Engagement, overseeing web, content and social strategy as part of a small but mighty marketing team.
“Because we’re a lean team, I’m very hands-on with our day-to-day social and digital content,” she says. “Having the right tools in place helps us work smarter and gives us more time to focus on the creative and strategic side of what we do.”
Visit Sarasota was already working with CrowdRiff when Jessica joined the organization, and since then, the relationship has expanded from DAM to Creators and, most recently, Content Planner. Along the way, Jessica has also become a trusted source of feedback for the Content Planner team as the platform continues to evolve.
“I continue to use CrowdRiff because they’re always innovating and finding ways to make our work easier,” she says.
Today, Content Planner has become a central part of Jessica’s social workflow. “It’s really become my home base for social. Planning, ideating, writing, it all comes together there.”
And the platform gets plenty of use. At the time this post was written, Jessica had used Content Planner to create 146 pieces of content in the previous 90 days.
From hodgepodge to hands-on
Before Content Planner, Jessica’s process was, in her words, “a bit of a hodgepodge.” She used a task manager for to-dos, spreadsheets for planning, Meta for scheduling, and the occasional new platform tried on for size.
Tracking partners added another layer. Visit Sarasota works with about 450 across hotels, vacation rentals, and attractions, and reconstructing who’d been featured and when meant scrolling back through the Facebook feed by hand.
“The team at CrowdRiff listened to what my struggles were in the early demo stages, and when we met again about Content Planner, they came back with solutions, which was nice to see,” Jessica says. “Partner and places tagging along with performance insights were the two things I was missing in my processes before.”
That transparency matters beyond her own team, too. Partners want to see what’s being done for them, and Jessica’s stakeholders want the same. “We’re getting there,” she says. “The biggest change is that the information feels much easier to get to. Partners definitely want that visibility, and now when those questions come up, we have a better starting point.”
That back-and-forth hasn’t stopped since launch. When the Planner team is testing something new, Jessica is still one of the people they check in with.
Putting Planner to the test with Savor Sarasota
Savor Sarasota is Visit Sarasota’s annual dining event, bringing prix-fixe lunch and dinner menus to restaurants across Longboat Key, Lido Key, Venice, Sarasota, and Englewood, a lot of moving pieces to promote in a short window.
Jessica used Content Planner as her hub for the campaign, testing how far she could lean on Smart Drafts instead of her usual habit of drafting in ChatGPT. “We are still learning together, but it is getting much easier,” she says.
“It was great for such a short campaign,” Jessica says. The campaign brought in over 38 posts and 163k impressions.
“I’d say it’s definitely saved us a few hours, especially when we’re looking at a specific campaign like Savor Sarasota,” she says. “Before, there was a lot more jumping between platforms, pulling numbers and trying to piece everything together. Having more of that in one place makes it much easier to get a quick read without turning it into a whole project.”
Jess’s tips for staying organized
When asked about Content Planner’s biggest benefit, Jessica has consistently answered, ‘more organized planning.’ When you wear many hats, this is a huge help. Here are a couple tips she shared for staying organized while managing different types of content:
Color-code by format. A video emoji next to anything that’s a Reel, a link icon on posts that need a URL. “It just kind of gives me a visual of what’s getting posted,” she says.
Use it as a catch-all. “I have started using the planner as my main list, so it’s nice to be able to drop some starting ideas in and have Smart Drafts help formalize that concept,” she says. “This way I can loosely plan around one of our content pillars.”
“I’ve found the team at CrowdRiff to really listen to their tourism partners and build a solution that works for them.”
Thank you, Jessica, for taking the time to share your experience with us!
