In travel and tourism, earned media can be an important way to raise awareness and enhance sales.
Travel Bloggers
A new breed of media specialist is making significant impact on the travel and tourism industry today – the Travel Blogger.
Recruiting bloggers can generate more interest in travel & tourism than traditional media:
- bloggers generally start creating buzz before they travel to your location, while at your location, and after they return home.
- many bloggers live blog, tweet, and stream video – live as they are having travel experiences, bringing real time hear and now web to your business or region.(Live content is also archived and available online after the event.)
- bloggers listen, inviting the outside world to share their experiences and create buzz about your region.
- travel bloggers are masters of many media: print, photography, video, audio – many bloggers use them all.
- bloggers have followers, regular readers who ensure the stories they create get lots of eyeballs.
- bloggers love love love linking to your site and since their content is online, blogs deliver traffic to your site. (Some traditional publications outright edit links from copy -leaving the reader on their own to search, in order to learn more.)
- travel bloggers know SEO and can write text that finds its way into search engines.
- bloggers have niche audiences that can take your niche products and put them in front of audiences you want to reach.
- bloggers are easy to find – find hundreds of travel bloggers at: www.travelblogexchange.com (just be sure to pitch stories individually and match your pitch to what the blogger writes about.)
Links:
- If interested in attracting travel bloggers, you must read this post! What to Expect from Travel Bloggers – @sheilaS
- A conversation about travel bloggers and their networks
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Thanks so much for your post, Todd. I hope we can continue to add to the ongoing discussion of how tourism organizations can best navigate the new publishing world. Most simply need to remember that it’s all about connecting and telling stories (no different than it’s ever been) but now we have powerful tools to do it.
Travel bloggers have helped us out tremendously. They’re a great resource to any travel site & company. We constantly recruit and advocate our own writers here: http://www.socialsauce.com/travelWriters/ – great post!
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