Using Blogging and Social Media

Who am I?

Michael Hodson

President, Professional Travel Bloggers Association

Member, Navigate Media Group

Today

• Why work with travel bloggers?• How can you find good travel

bloggers?• How the Professional Travel Bloggers

Association (PTBA) can help you• Some case studies from blogger

projects and social media campaigns to inspire you

Why Work with Travel Bloggers?

Advantages

• Dedicated followers• Living in Social Media• Ambassadors, not just content sources• Timing of content• Duration of online content• Also can be content creators for you• Co-marketing campaign possibilities• Developing relationships with bloggers

as a future knowledge resource

Real-time Social Media Campaigns

An Important Note on Quality

• Numbers alone are NOT the key– What social media platforms do they

use?– Do they have a well defined niche?– Are they contributing regularly?– Are people interacting, in social media

and on their blog – actual conversation or just broadcasting?

But How Do You Find Good Bloggers?

The PTBA

The PTBA

• Formed to help develop the travel Formed to help develop the travel blogging profession with a set of blogging profession with a set of professional standardsprofessional standards

• 50 bloggers and 10 industry members 50 bloggers and 10 industry members worked for 12 months to develop worked for 12 months to develop structurestructure

• Almost 200 blogging members right Almost 200 blogging members right now and growingnow and growing

Customized search

• Search by location, language and nearly 40 niches

• Industry standard statistics for site evaluation

• Metrics for all social media platforms• RSS subscribers and newsletter

subscribers• Outside evaluation included (Klout,

PeerIndex, Kred)

Search Engine

Blogger Profiles

Your Temporary Free Account

If you attended the Arabian Travel Market and want access to the PTBAsearch engine until the end of May,

please emailcontact@travelbloggersassociation.co

m

Traditional Blogger Campaigns

• Finland January Campaign by Navigate Media– 177 Facebook posts with over 5,000 likes and 5,000 total

comments– Over 2,600 tweets using #visitfinland– Over 100 Instagram photos with 7,250 likes and over 500

comments– 47 blog posts so far with over 27,000 page views

• An iAmbassador campaign now -- #meetsouthafrica -- with 15 bloggers on 4 different itineraries

• Visit Jordan’s 2011-12 campaign– 25+ bloggers– 300+ blog posts– Results: top places to visit lists for Conde Nast, New York

Times, Lonely Planet and Virtuoso on Fox News

The Future is Video

Telling a Story

Adding a Unique Voice

Tourism Australia and Facebook

Tourism Australia and Facebook

Discover Australia

Visit Costa Brava and Instagram

Instagram Your City

So far, Visit Costa Brava has had 5 Insta-Meets:– 7,100 photos– 160,000 likes– 550 users – 483,000 reached

•In the future: 27 more Insta-meets planned using #InCostaBrava or #InPyrenees•Also using #Insta(Village)•Additional Instagram events, such as the contest to get to meet the Roca brothers, chefs of the new number 1 restaurant in the world

Small Rewards Work

A Quick Experiment in Video

Thank you

Michael Hodsonmichaelshodson@yahoo.com

@goseewrite on Twitter

For PTBA inquiriescontact@travelbloggersassociation.com