5 ways influencers actually help your tourism brand

In earlier posts, we've seen how influencers have become an important part of tourism digital marketing efforts and  how you can reach out to engage with them. Today, we will take a look at the actual and tangible ways in which social media influencers can help grow your tourism or travel brand. The fundamental reason to reach out to social media influencers is well established - they have a unique and popular take on nice topics and enjoy a certain amount of clout in the online space. So reaching out to them has a very good justification. In addition to the bigger picture, here are some specific ways in which engaging with influencers can help.

1. Peer recommendations

Most followers of influencers follow them due to their own interest. As such, they view the influencer as someone who is a peer or a trusted friend. They follow the social feed of the influencer in order to gain access to curated and personal information, knowledge or entertainment. Hence, anything that the influencer recommends (in a natural, honest manner) serves as a positive reinforcement of your brand and its products/services. The more specific the recommendation, the better!

2. Influencer created content

While your brand may be creating, curating and collecting content on a regular basis, collaborating with influencers will give you more unique content you can use. Most influencers, especially in the travel and tourism verticals, prefer to experience the brand or destination first-hand. This will allow them to create blogs, photos, videos and other multimedia posts which are personalized and incorporate their unique perspective. This is something that can prove to be invaluable to the brand.

3. User generated content

Having your influencer promote a contest (centered around your brand) to their followers is a great way to not only encourage participation, but also to get hold of relevant user generated content. When the reward is a personalized travel experience, you can be sure that the number of participants will rapidly grow - as will the amount of usable content centered around your brand. Rather than using generic gifts and giveaways, it is better to offer brand experiences to winners. This will weed out the contest junkies while giving you high quality content.

4. Promotions and discounts

Giving your influencers the opportunity to offer their readers/followers with relevant promotions and discounts is a great way to create engagement. Not only does the influencer get the opportunity to reward their followers' loyalty - your brand also get deeply integrated with their audience reach. These promotions and discounts can be used in a multitude of ways. Probably the most effective are time-sensitive discounts which ensure that any unsold inventory you have is quickly disposed!

5. Newsletter Audience

Most influencers who have a blog have the ability to offer a newsletter service through subscription. Getting your brand message integrated into these newsletters gives you yet another way to capitalize on the reach of your influencers. Most subscribers read through the newsletters at their own pace which makes them ideal for reinforcement messages which are not time-sensitive.

These are just some of the tangible ways in which influencers can help your tourism brand reach a larger and more relevant audience. However remember the basic tenets of influencer marketing like allowing them their own tone of voice, giving them relevant inputs and rewarding their followers and you stand to reap great benefits. As digital platforms evolve and more come up every day you need to experiment in order to stay relevant. It is best to plan this as an activity for the longer term, not just as a one off to realize its full potential.

How to use influencers in Tourism Marketing

Of all the categories of blogs and social media posts online, it is safe to assume that a very high percentage is related to travel and tourism. Platforms like Instagram and Snapchat seem almost custom-built for travel, tourism and allied topics like food and fashion. Needless to mention, the ranks of social media influencers are swollen with followers of this niche. However, very little is common among these influencers. Take travel for instance. The spectrum ranges from shoestring budget travellers, to backpackers, through adventure travelers all the way to luxury and bespoke travelers. This becomes a challenge for tourism digital marketers who hope to reach out and recruit influencers to help with their tourism marketing campaigns.

This post deals with some tips to choose the right influencers and the things one can do to make the most of the symbiotic relationship. Specifically, how the right influencers can help grow the brand online.

Finding your influencers

Before you go about trying to locate the right influencer, it is important to know who your brand's current audience is. Where does your audience hang-out online? Whom do they follow in social media channels? Who influences them? What is the authority of these influencers? As you listen to online chatter and monitor social media, you will come up with a lot of insights. Not all thee insights will be in line with your planner positioning for your brand. All of them however will reflect the interesting ways in which your audience chooses to interact with your brand. Spend time finding and mapping these out.

Choosing the right influencer

It is important for a tourism brand to choose the right influencer. In order to do so, one needs to definitely look beyond the numbers. The questions you need to ask yourself before you shortlist influencers to help amplify your tourism or destination marketing efforts are as follows:

• Are they relevant to your category? - No point using a fashion blogger as your influencer if your niche is travel and tourism. Unless your destination has some fashion-association you need to amplify!
• Are they an authority? - Do they have a follower base that follows them for their unique style or insights? Do they have an original point of view about topics relevant to you?
• Are they regular and active? - Do they post consistently? Are all their social outposts updated regularly?
• Are they engaging? - What kind of traction do their posts on social channels get? How often are they shared or liked? Do they get comments? Do they respond to comments? What is the true reach they have?
• Is there a brand fit? - Is the prospective influencer a good fit for your brand? If you are focusing on luxury travel, a budget travel blogger might not be the direction you want to take, irrespective of the authority and numbers!

Do you have any personal travel and tourism bloggers you follow? Please send me your preferences.

Inviting your influencers

Today, a number of companies exist which claim to work with a set of social media influencers across verticals. However, my personal experience with such outfits has not been great. While it is true that they take the hassle out of managing an influencer campaign (think logistics, communication, emails, responses, clarifications, billing etc.) they often don't have the ability to give you a truly custom-built experience. As a tourism marketer, it is expected that you know your brand and its strengths & weaknesses better than any 3rd party agency. Hopefully you are also passionate about your destination or product. Spend some time trying to reach out to influencers to convey this passion across to them. Trust me - they will appreciate it.

What works best is a personal appeal to each identified influencer. When you get to know them, their style, their audience and their work, you will know exactly how they can add value to your brand. And when they see that you've taken the time to understand all of these aspects, their respect - and consequently engagement with your brand - will only grow. It also helps to follow them on social channels and to start sharing some of their relevant updates to your own audience/followers. Remember that you are not engaging with a vendor; you are actually trying to establish a relationship with an influential authority who can help your brand grow.

Getting the most out of your influencers

One of the biggest mistakes a brand can make is to treat influencers as an extension of their PR program. Any influencer worth her/his salt will never be comfortable with simply posting a press release issued by a brand on their channels. Remember that these influencers have spent an enormous amount of time and effort to cultivate an audience that trusts them and their opinion. A sure-fire way to disaster and audience loss is to 'plug' brand messages between their posts.

Invite your influencers to experience your brand. Let them savor everything that your product or destination has to offer. Allow them time to wallow in the experience. Let them write/blog/post about it in their own, inimitable way.

Most importantly, respect their beliefs and principles. Don't ask/force them to commit to anything they are not comfortable with. Provide them with the experience, the facts, the data and the information. Let them craft their own story. If you've done your homework, you will be pleasantly surprised!

In another post we will look at the ways in which your brand can specifically benefit from engaging with influencers.

How influencer marketing is changing tourism marketing

Contrary to popular belief, influencer marketing is not new. It has existed for as long as (or even before) marketing has been around. The very first influencer in the history of mankind was someone who recommended a way to do something or to try a new something. In principle, it stays true to that even today. Another misconception is that influencers have to be celebrities. That is good to have, but not a mandatory requirement. In fact, the more evolved the consumer, the less they are taken in by marketing-speak or brand endorsements. However, they are still open to recommendations from friends, peers and others they willingly follow on social media channels.

At the fundamental level, an influencer is someone who specializes in something of interest to you and has the social presence to distribute their message. They could offer knowledge, inspiration or even just entertainment in a specific niche. But what adds value is the manner in which they do it. Their specific tone of voice, sense of humor or eccentric mannerism that make it resonate with you. Which is why they command the clout they do and why brands - especially in the travel and tourism space are rapidly waking up to their potential.

Most online consumers have been through the entire marketing hype cycle. They are wise to the ways of brands and even wiser to the way advertising hopes to manipulate their feelings and emotions. Which is probably why conventional online channels like display media are slowly losing traction. They have literally become a blind spot for savvy consumers. Search is still very relevant, but the onus of initiating action lies with the consumer. All a brand or marketer can do is to lay out the groundwork and wait for the consumer to show up. Influencer marketing however makes use of the concept of peers - people like you who care about the things you care about too - to reach out to consumers.

Answer this. Would you much rather have a travel company stalk you with multiple messages online on every possible channel or would you seriously consider a vacation destination on the basis of the recommendation of a travel blogger you follow - and admire? Pretty elementary, right? That is in essence the thought behind using influencer marketing for the tourism industry.

In another post, we will look at what you need to do in order to identify the right kind of influencers and the advantages your destination marketing efforts can get by doing so in a planned manner.