You may have already heard that in the age of the Internet content is king. Companies that achieve most relevance in the digital media are those that have good stories to tell, that show an interesting lifestyle and create a significant dialogue with their audience.
This is an easily perceived trend in the digital communication initiatives of well-known companies that have large marketing budgets. But what can you do in your company, even if it’s small, so your brand can count on having relevant and strategic content that is able to make your customers loyal and convert initiatives into sales?
1) Find out what’s important for your audience
Companies commonly try and announce their products and services on the social networks, but it’s important to remember that the purpose of networks is the relationship. To convert this into more sales, you first need to win over the digital audience with content that is varied, useful and interesting.
Combine CRM data with social network statistics to analyse the profile of your clients and followers and talk to people to seek their opinions and get their feedback. Try and identify their preferred style of travel and try and understand what type of information they are interested in and in what way you can use your expertise to offer them useful content.
2) The Internet values authentic content
Offering travel tips on the company’s site is a great idea – if it’s done right. It’s a way of associating your brand with a lifestyle and constructing a relationship with your audience, thus inspiring your clients to travel and helping them do so. But it’s only worth launching a company blog if you can create original content. Sites that resort to copying and pasting articles from Wikipedia, that steal photos and plagiarize content from other blogs do themselves harm in Google rankings and damage the reputation of their brand (in addition to violating copyright laws).
3) Invest in partnerships for creating original content
An excellent alternative that will enable your brand to have original and gripping content to use on social networks is to hire bloggers, photographers and video-makers to create special series (published on their own channels, but sponsored by you) or to become freelance collaborators on your brand channels. Look for a content creator who produces quality material that has the same style as your target audience, and give them full creative freedom. We’re not talking simply about outsourcing content production, but of co-creation – two heads are always better than one.
4) Control the quality of the content
Select good articles and videos to post on the social networks. Provide a link to the original site (don’t copy the content onto your own site) and mark the official profile of the author as a way of giving them credit. If your page always shares top quality content, your followers will recognize it as a point of reference for obtaining information about travel. Moreover, by making the content visible and giving credit to the author, you can win over the support of opinion formers and generate more engagement in your profiles on social networks.
5) Generate topics for discussion between interesting people
Establish a relationship with people who are admired by your target audience in order to achieve more visibility and increase your credibility. Choose personalities, bloggers and content creators who share the values of your brand to try your products and services; if this is something really interesting for their followers they’ll publish posts on the subject.
In all digital marketing actions, remember that what you do and publish says a lot about your company. Pride yourself on your transparency and value your relationship with the public. When the next opportunity to travel arises, your followers will remember you and prefer to buy from those whom they admire and trust.
Fernanda Castelo Branco is a journalist who specializes in corporate communication strategy ad is the author of the blog Vontade de Viajar [Keen to Travel] (http://www.vontadedeviajar.com), associated with the ABBV.