How to brand your destination with bloggers

37

Transcript of How to brand your destination with bloggers

BRANDING WITH BLOGGERS KASH BHATTACHARYA

BUDGETRAVELLER &

BLOGGER OUTREACH EXPERT

TOPOSOPHY

!4

Blogging at BudgetTraveller.org for 7 years

Winner of the UK Travel Blogger Vlogger of

the year at the Travel Media Awards

Featured in the Guardian, NY Times, CNN, Lonely Planet & Vanity Fair

2.5 million people have come to my site for

travel inspiration. I wrote a guide to Luxury Hostels which you can download for FREE from my blog.

Award winning digital travel marketeer,

creator of #Blogville, #Blogmanay & as part

of iAmbassador and also run

#MustLoveFestivals

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

I am the blogger outreach expert for the destination marketing agency, Toposophy

WHY WORK WITH BLOGGERS?

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

66% OF MILLENNIALS USE TRAVEL BLOGS WHEN

PLANNING THEIR TRIPS WYSE MILLENNIAL REPORT

WHO ARE THE INFLUENCERS IN TRAVEL?

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

BEST BLOGGERS NOT ONLY CREATE GREAT CONTENT ABOUT YOUR CITY….

THEY ALSO CAN PROMOTE IT GIVING YOU ACCESS TO HIGHLY ENGAGED COMMUNITIES

Professional bloggers don’t work for just free trips and ‘exposure.’

They not create great content, they offer your destination access to highly

engaged communities, their powerful social networks & can offer valueable

insights. Isn’t that worth paying for?

BUILT MY BRAND OUT OF SERVIVING THE

UNRECOGNISED NEEDS OF TRAVELLERS

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

LUXURY HOSTELS #LUXURYHOSTELS

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

LUXURY HOSTELS: More than just a bed, an experience.

Featured in New York Times, Guardian, Cosmopolitan, CNN, Grazia to name a

few publications.

12000 downloads of the e-book till date (download for free from my blog)

Booking widget to launch on the blog in May 2016, powered by Hostelworld.

Lisbon Cascais Sintra Porto Milan Munich Cologne Krakow Rotterdam Haarlem Amsterdam Copenhagen Hamburg

Barcelona Malaga Granada Cordoba Sevilla Paris Lille Ghent Leuven Berlin

Stockholm Saint Petersburg Gothenberg Tampere Reykjavik Edinburgh Rijeka

Zadar Zagreb Belgrade

#LUXURYHOSTELS TOUR MAY- JULY 2016

MUST LOVE FESTIVALS

!20

‘We wonder if you have any ideas of how you can help raise awareness of some of our lesser known

festivals?’

Kim Heinen, Rotterdam Marketing

@BudgetTraveller @Toposophy #ECMMadrid2016

!22

Festivals needs a rebrand

MUST LOVE FESTIVALS

Digital storytelling project (www.mustlovefestivals.com) with 16 top travel bloggers covering 80 of Europe’s coolest and quirkiest festivals. Developed in partnership with Expedia.

Working with 16 tourism boards (Austria, Germany, Hague, Rotterdam, Finland, Slovenia, Ireland, Puglia, Malta) + Meininger Hotels & Generator Hostels

240 blog posts published which have received 1.8 million views so far.

April 2015: Must Love Festivals 2014 e-book to be sent out to Expedia’s database of 2 million people.

Project went global this year with new partners that include Canada, Latvia and Poland.

@BudgetTraveller @GoVisitDenmark

“Increasingly we see people travelling not just to see a destination, but to experience something

characteristic of that destination.

Working with Kash and Must Love Festivals we wanted to highlight the wide range of festival

experiences out there and in so doing to help our customers discover both new destinations and a

new side to old favourites”

Andy Washington Managing Director, Expedia UK

BLOGVILLE ITALY

4 YEARS OF BLOGVILLE2 LOCATIONS: BOLOGNA AND MILAN

180 INFLUENCERS FROM OVER 5 CONTINENTS

1200 ARTICLES PRODUCED

15000 PHOTOS & VIDEOS SHARED

1.8 MILLION VISITORS TO THE POSTS

18 MILLION USERS REACHED ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Travel is an emotional sell. You have to give bloggers the

trust, to build an emotional relationship with you destination.

#LoveDublin hashtag has so far generated 193.4 million opportunities to see (OTS) (Target was 40 million)

#LoveDublin social media coverage during this period was equivalent to an advertising spend of €2.47 million.

Engagement: Of the 38,500 hashtag mentions, 22,000 were shares and replies. This translates into an engagement rate of 57.1%. From our experience, the engagement rate of similar campaigns average between 30-40%.

#LoveDublin twitter chat generated 21.5 million impressions on 28th January, reaching 3.5 million Twitter accounts!

#LOVEDUBLIN

#ThisisAthens

8 top travel bloggers from across Europe experienced Athens for 6 consecutive weeks, each representing a specific persona as defined by the creative team matching their profile. 

Experience Design Workshop involving all key stakeholders: Bucket list of experiences created for the bloggers.

My Experience Fellow app: bloggers gave useful feedback to the AVCB and partners

#ThisisAthens hashtag generated 35 million opportunities to see (OTS) reaching 8 million people.

155 pieces of content created.

#ThisisAthens

'Evangelists are the tide that lifts all boats'

Carl Shepherd, cofounder Homeway

Work with the right, professional travel bloggers who can be evangelists for your

city

www.iambassador.net

http://www.captivatedigitalmedia.com

LETS KEEP IN TOUCH

EMAIL [email protected]

[email protected] TWITTER @budgetraveller INSTAGRAM @BudgetTraveller LINKEDIN https://pt.linkedin.com/in/budgettraveller

FURTHER READING

Download the iAmbassador white paper for working with bloggers http://bit.ly/21kvZwY

9 suggestions to DMO’s to improve their blogger outreach http://bit.ly/1PtB5kv