Professional travel bloggers: The dynamic marketers of the future

Wednesday, 10 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Sarah Hannan Organised by Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts in partnership with SriLankan Airlines, 50 professional travel bloggers from around the world who are also part of the Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA) were hosted on a four-day tour which ended with an insightful conference on 18 November at Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo.

From left: PTBA Board Member and Founding Member/Flashpacker HQ Writer and Photographer Travis Ball (moderator), Four bgb Communications Associate Director and Travel Specialist Sara Whines, Monkeys and Mountains Founding Editor Laurel Robbins and Travel Blogger Kate Mcculley The first of its kind, the Travel Bloggers Conference, TBCAsia 2014, witnessed a gathering of specialists from the hotel, travel and airlines sectors along with destination management companies and local bloggers. The industry track of the conference kicked off with panellists sharing four case studies followed by a panel discussion focusing on the ‘Effective use of travel blogging’. The discussion was moderated by PTBA board member and founding member/ Flashpacker HQ writer and photographer Travis Ball, while Fourbgb Communications Associate Director and Travel Specialist Sara Whines, Monkeys and Mountains Founding Editor Laurel Robbins and Travel Blogger Kate Mcculley were the panellists. Travis Ball: What do you think is a good tip for industry members who are looking for bloggers? Laurel Robbins: I think it is really important to find the right blogger, if you have a luxury hotel you don’t want to work with a backpacker. If you know your clients and they are tourists in the higher end, then it won’t work for a backpacker. It does not matter whether they have bigger numbers. P

eople get really concerned when they see numbers. Even if the numbers are huge they mean absolutely nothing if they are not reaching the right people. Numbers are really important but it is important to see that they fit. Sara Whines: I think you should look at the bloggers and the engagement they have. A blogger is talking to nobody out there and nobody is listening. Are they interacting and are they having conversations with people? That’s the kind of thing you have to look for. Travis Ball: Kate, what would you say is a better use of travel bloggers and the companies that are working with them? Kate Mcculley: I think it is important to have great trips that are important for bloggers. Hosting somebody really great when it comes to food, have an experience lined up for them. Kind of along the lines of what Laurel was saying about how to find the right blogger you also have to target the correct experiences. When hosting photographers, they have to be absolutely at the best spots at the best times of the day. They take photos at sunrise and at sunset, need to be at great locations; definitely account for that when you are hosting a photographer. Laurel Robbins: I think you really have to work out what your actual objectives are. The same way you have your objectives as a part of your business, you need to work out what those businesses are in relation to the bloggers; what you need to promote, what the outcomes are going to be. I think you need to look at it in that kind of way, very much strategically, which can be a bit of a pitfall for a lot of people. Travis Ball: Laurel, as a blogger, what do you think? Is a blogger more effective or differently effective than traditional writers? Laurel Robbins: What happens when you have an advertisement or an article on the newspaper? You cannot measure how many are seeing it for one thing. The next thing is you have the monthly magazine. Maybe it is picked once a month, again you cannot measure it and then it is gone. This trip I did to Everest base camp was in May and people are still tweeting about it. I just saw it on Twitter two days ago. The bookings are still coming in. What bloggers would do is we share our content again and say, “I remember last year I was visiting the amazing Golden Monkey in Rwanda.” Kate Mcculley: Bloggers are personalities. They follow blogs because they like following people and they like their stories. They have a level of trust with them that you do not get in a magazine or a newspaper with an anonymous follower. A lot of people reach out to me because they want to do the exact same thing that I do. I write about it and make it look like it was a lot of fun and write it in a lot of angles and they want to do the same thing. So don’t under estimate the power of personality.

Steve Hanisch

Sara Whines: I agree with the trust thing also basically in a technical level the SEO benefits for bloggers is huge. You have to try them and for you to get your website up and have an impartial person saying that your brand is a top one that is about it. That is really worth it. Equally as many as the bloggers themselves can give, you obliviously have your own ability and should be looking at Google Analytics etc. behind your own website what’s working for you and what is not. Audience: How do we associate bloggers with our own blogs? Sara Whines: It is really important for you guys to have your own blogs. But the end of the day you have great content as a part of that. That is the whole point of having your own blog and these guys know the business and know what works. They can take your information; who your customers are, who you are targeting and write great content or produce great videos. I think you need to use them almost as content producers for your blog at the same time. Laurel Robbins: The really important thing is before the trip starts and before the deal starts have some kind of an agreement. How many blog posts within a month or a year? You can also negotiate to have three blog posts on your own blog. To be honest if you are asking for content for your own blog, the bloggers will charge for that. But remember it has more value. In this case the blogger has a personality that is known and people are more likely to read one of us bloggers who are neutral than your tour company saying we are an amazing tour company. But when I say people think it is more believable. Kate Mcculley: As bloggers you can provide writing, photography, provide video, some of us do these for businesses we consult. But then again typically it is an add-on you should not expect to get that kind of deal from simply hosting a blogger. That thing is more of an add-on separate expense. Laurel Robbins: Travis another thing we can talk about is creativity, with airlines it is difficult. When we have are promoting a hotel chain we are not going to write about the locations directly. That is why you come to bloggers saying you know we have this product and we have an idea but we would love to hear your idea. I think that is going to be really useful when it is collaborative, when you think about how did it get created and bring the best ideas together and end up with a really amazing campaign.

Golden monkey by Laurel Robbins

Kate Mcculley: Another mistake a lot of people do make is that they see a blogger they like and say I want to do this and do not go to have a discussion about it, probably what would be better is coming and saying here’s my product, this is what I want to promote what would you do with it. Laurel Robbins: That was the case in Rwanda I was promoting the Golden Monkey and they were promoting other products. You got something you can only find in Rwanda and you can find this and they feel like they are competing for Africa but they have one thing that you can compete with and nobody else can compete with. So they were very successful, you see what they did with the monkey, you can do so many other things. How to find and work with travel bloggers Addressing the industry specialists the presenters who took the stage next were PTBA President Elect and Travel Photographer Laurence Norah and PTBA founding member and Blogger Elizabeth Carlson. Norah in his opening remarks stated that there is quite a lot of travel bloggers out there. It is not necessary or that easy to figure out which travel blogger to work with; “There are a lot of different travel bloggers they cover a lot of different niches: luxury, adventure, couple travel. So it is really important from your point of view to find the right travel blogger to work with. You cannot just pick a travel blogger and assume that they are going to be the right one for your brand.” Qualitative analysis The quality of the site: If a site is well designed that is a good start and if you visit a website and you don’t like the look of it, if it looks cheap, if it looks tacky and you will point-turn and anyone who looks at the site will have the same opinion, cutting down the audience you want to reach. Self-hosted sites: A serious blogger would have a self-hosted site by investing on a domain such ashttp://youngadventouress.com, http://findingtheuniverse.comIf their blogs are on public domains such as myblog.blogspot.com/ myblog.wordpress.com they are not taking it very seriously. Check out the niche: Bloggers can have more than one niche. It is important that they have one. You want to have someone who has something specific and they are really reaching a specific engaged audience.

Lawrence Norah and Elizabeth Carlson Age of site: Select a blogger who has been blogging for at least over nine months “In PTBA we have a requirement; the bloggers have to be blogging for at least nine months. Really looking at bloggers who have been blogging for longer than that. They are more likely to be around in a couple of years. Someone who has just started a blog, you just don’t know whether they are going to keep going,” Norah reiterated.

Christopher Staudinger and Tawny Clarke at TBCAsia

Elaborating on what Norah stated, Carlson went on to say that you need to see how long they have been blogging professionally. Some might have started off as hobby bloggers: “We started blogging because we enjoyed it, we travelled anyways. But you want to be working with people who already have done projects, are established, know how to work with in a professional capacity. You have to make sure that you are working with bloggers writing about things that matter for your brand and your destination.” The industry stakeholders and the bloggers need to co-exist, so make sure that the audience matches you, shares the same values, and sort out appropriate content. Look into the content the bloggers are producing. It’s not just one travel blogger; there are people who do videos and they do destination pieces or narrative ones which are more about themselves. By reading through couple of their stories, watching the videos and going through their pictures, you could select the bloggers that match up with your brand. Reader engagement is important A blogger may have around 100,000 followers but if these followers are not engaging with the content the blogger is sharing, you are not reaching the target audience. “When you look at a photo, you can say it is a good photo. You can watch a two minute video and say it is a good video. Read a blog post and tell it is a good blog post. Just take a little bit of time to check out these bloggers and make sure they are at the quality level you want to associate with your brand,” stated Norah. Use of social media Select the right platform: The use of social media platforms is becoming important. Figure out what social media platforms the bloggers you want to work with are using and make sure they match up with the brand want to be recognised. Know who their followers are: It is really important that you ask the bloggers who their followers are? Any serious blogger will be able to give you data about their audience.

Steve Hanisch, Tawny Clark and Christopher Staudinger Frequency of posts and interaction: Select a blogger who is actively updating their social media channels. Even if they are updating their channels regularly you will need to also look at the interaction it creates among the followers. It is really important to see comments, likes, shares, re-blogs, etc. You want to be looking at the talking about numbers, the reach. This information is available on the demographics of the fans on Facebook. “It is easy to see if somebody has been running a cheap campaign in a country that does not match their brand. Although their Facebook fans are based in one place, they are not the main audience. Then it is not an effective blog to be using.” Audience engagement: Turning the focus over to the Twitter platform Norah informed that it is important to have a lot of followers. But it is also important to see whether these followers engage with your tweets. “A person has a lot of followers on twitter, and putting out scheduled tweets, not replying to people and not having a conversation then their engagement is not so high. You want to be looking at those numbers, just click on it and see how many have favourite it, see what the replies are, see what the retweets are. Are people actually engaging with the content this blogger is producing?” He further stated that quantity is equally important as quality. The blogger produce the greatest content in the world but if the followers are not engaging then it would not be a great idea to work with them.

Stats from Google Analytics: Ask the blogger to provide a screen shot of their Google Analytics. This will give you a clear understanding of the demographics of their followers. Previous projects/referrals: Ask the blogger who they worked with before and talk to them. It is really important to ask questions when doing a campaign with a blogger for the first time, look at the campaigns online and see what they have done. Question: What is the value for money working with a travel blogger in comparison to traditional media outlets? Laurence Norah: In comparison to other media outlets the value for money is much higher. You try running a full page ad on the New York times you are going to pay quite a lot of money for that, you have no idea how many people are going to see it, how many people clicked on it, etc. You hire a travel blogger for a campaign, they are going to reach a very large audience, tell you who that audience was, who clicked through; you are going to be able to track all the metrics. In terms of return on investment a travel blogger is a lot cheaper, there is much greater value for money. Elizabeth Carlson: If you are working with a professional travel blogger most of them without being asked would providing you all of these stats and all the things from the campaign when it is finished. Every time I finish a campaign I track all the stats through it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and click through page views and put it all on a beautiful pdf or a graph and send them along as a follow up. It is a great way to base your engagement and see how many people are participating. Laurence Norah: Travel bloggers can also create content that you could use. If you hire a media writer, they are going to write for their publication. Travel bloggers can give you content to use on your channels; video, photography, more content you could use in term of text, audio whatever it is. Travel bloggers are not just people who write content for their own sites. They are content creators across the whole spectrum of media. The value for money is much higher.

Question: If I host a blogger, will they write an independent review or will they promote my brand?

Laurence Norah: They will write an independent review. The most valuable asset that a travel blogger has is their audience and the audience has to trust them. So if you are pushing out a lot of branded content which is not honest, then the blogger will start to lose their audience, which is their only real asset. Elizabeth Carlson: When I am interpreting different types of campaigns I always make sure that I provide the people what I am interest in working with the examples of previous projects. If you put me in a hotel I would show examples of other hotels I had worked with, show those types of stories, same with the tour operators, destinations, activities, anything like that. Laurence Norah: This is why it is really important to work with a right blogger. So a professional level blogger would say No if you are not the right brand to partner with. When you are working with a travel blogger just make sure you are working with the one that is right for you and you are going to get a great story out of it. Elizabeth Carlson: A lot of times bloggers would try to build relationships with the people they are interested in working in the future. So I make sure I follow them on social media. I started following hotels in Sri Lanka before even I came to Sri Lanka to find the thing that matched what I am interested in. That is a great way to start a dialogue. Reach out, respond and talk to them. Video blogging in collaboration with brands and DMOs The next session focused on how video blogging to assist in promoting brands and destination management operators. Sharing their experience as professional video bloggers Captain and Clark Video Bloggers Tawny Clark and Christopher Staudinger was joined by Back-Packer.org Video blogger Steve Hanisch. “As destinations and industry you are in the golden age. In this era you have six billion plus people in the world. The objective essentially for you good guys is to get the not everyone there but two million people that are not only going to come to your destination, but loves it so ecstatically; that they keep returning. They are going to build that story with it, their children and their children’s children will start coming here,” Staudinger remarked. Visually-engaging content: Why work with travel videographers? One may ask, responding to that common question Clark explained that; “It is very visual. We can write which is awesome, but we kind of the bridge the gap between the two. We are in front of the camera and we have our trusted audience that just come along in the journey with us. By watching a travel video the viewer builds a pre-nostalgia and they would want to have those memories as well.” Building credibility: A video produced by a blogger directly targets the selected audience. At the same time an extra layer of credibility is also added. “We have been building this audience for a long time telling these authentic travel stories. So when people watch a video they know what we are saying to them is going to be an honest account of our experience. Made doubly credible by that fact that it is just us not saying it but they could see us there and interacting with it,” Staudinger noted. Intimate content: Going through videos produced by bloggers one may notice that they are not exceptionally polished. The content they share is more intimate and a regular person could relate to it. “We film half of our stuff on our DSLR cameras and the rest on our iPhones. If you look at commercials these days where there is this family sitting and holding their iPhone and say hey guess what we are eating for dinner? I am watching this and I am getting this, we are skyping together. Travel videos does not have to be a crazy polished amazing sunset shot,” Clark describes. Building relationships: Do not try to compare a bloggers video with a commercial video. Travel videos are self-narrated, shot and edited with the limited resources they have. This builds a good relationship with the audience as the experience becomes more personal and not commercial. “If you launch in to a huge video campaign and get a remarkably polished very high end striking like someone like Jean-Claud Van dam will narrate it for you, it would be very impressive. With good video blogging what you are trying to get is that relationship with the audience,” Staudinger noted. Clark reiterating on finding the right video blogger to work with stated that; industry stakeholders should research and find the videographer that fits their brand. It keeps the authenticity. Further explaining on how to find the right videographer, Staudinger noted: “You go to YouTube and watch some travel content, find someone who resonates with you then talk to them. If they have only 200 people in their audience, you know those 200 people are then going to share with another 200 people who are in their specific group. So you are giving one video blogger to make a video and the shareability of that has a magnitude that is unquestionable.” Audience engagement: The audience engagement with a video is easily measurable: “Scroll through YouTube, Facebook and you see video after video. Dave and Deb talked about Instagram; the possibilities to get this out there are endless,” Clark added. Facebook new algorithm features video contentmore highly than standard photo or written content. What Staudinger and Clark do is that they create a one minute and 30 second piece about a destination, but will take 10 seconds of that video and put on Facebook as a teaser. “It goes up higher on their feed and they click it. They are enchanted by it of course and they click on the link to follow to the actual video.” Cost effective: According to Clark, hosting a video blogger is not as expensive as you think it is. They would film the content, be the on screen presenter, narrate it live/ dub the video and do the edits as well; “You are not paying extra money to put up a film crew of 10 in a hotel and pay them individually. That being said, it is a business and the quality content we do, we expect to be paid. But it is so much cheaper that hiring out a big crew.” Fast turnaround: Video bloggers could save you a lot of time as well, mentions Staudinger. “With most video bloggers today, what you do is start a conversation, tell us what is exciting about your destination; we can come back to you and say these are the things that we are interested in, let’s set something out. We come out, we can film it, edit it and we can talk to you at the end of the day and get your feedback.Then we can do the necessary amendments deliver the end product. Where as you might have two or three months to turnaround a video and get content from a film crew, while a video blogger can just do it in a week.” Sharing his experience on the projects he has worked, Back-Packer.org videographer Steve Hanisch remarked: “I have different touch points in the customer journey. So with video you can do inspirational videos like the one we saw now. You make people want to go to a destination, but you can also have travel tips.” “You get a slice of the experience of who is actually travelling the country, going to your hotel, doing your tour. But you also see their emotions and experiences in that and people follow them and they actually see themselves there,” Hanisch noted, elaborating on the benefits of working with a travel videographer. Question: What is the ideal length of a video? Christopher Staudinger: One minute and 30 seconds to two minutes and 30 seconds. The best thing with video is you can track it, that is the beautiful part of it. You can actually go to your google analytics, watch people how long they are on your video and then stop watching. Steve Hanisch: Well, it depends. For example for hotels, try to keep it short. You just upload it to YouTube and you can embed it everywhere. So for a hotel it should be short because the people who are visiting your website, they actually have the mind to stay with you, they need a little bit of convincing. So they play the video to see let’s say in 30 seconds what your rooms are like or if you want to go for 1:30 minutes then you should include experiences which are possible to discover not in your hotel but in your place. Tawny Clark: You don’t just have to have one video for your client or destination; you can divide them into five different videos – one is about the hotel, one is about elephants, and one is about a river cruise, so it is totally up to you how many videos you want. Question: Will you edit and make videos if I already have high quality footage? Christopher Staudinger: I would say yes! But I add an addendum there; we can as videographers do that for you. But you are losing our already-built audience, which is one of our greatest strengths. Since we already come with a group of people who listen to our opinions and trust us, actually having us in the footage is a great strength to them. Steve Hanisch: When I don’t have a whole week to spend in one resort but have some professional footage from the rooms and the public areas, I can make use of that and combine it with the video. So I could make it look like I was going through Sri Lanka. Question: How do you work around music copyrights and what is a cost-effective solution? Steve Hanisch: There are several ways and if you work with us we are on several platforms. YouTube now has its own music section and it is growing and they have some quite good music. But if you want to have something for your own, you can actually buy music. But there are other platforms where you have more exclusive rights. It depends on what you want. Sometimes it is also an option that the client does the research they have certain needs, matters of video or even a band or something like that. Tawny Clark: You could also work with a local artist.