Recently published in it’s third edition and available here we wrote the chapter ‘The digital challenge’. The book asks whether tourism places get the reputations they deserve and discusses brand concepts, challenges and topical cases. It tackles how place perceptions are formed, how cities, regions and countries can enhance their reputations as creative, competitive destinations and the link between competitive identity and strategic tourism development. It goes on to discuss how successful destination management organisations increasingly engage in conversations rather than campaigns and handle controversial questions of authenticity, brand narratives, leadership and authorship, story-telling, aesthetics, ethics and evaluation.
Authored by place brand consultants, destination marketers and academics including Simon Anholt, Philip Kotler, Wally Olins and other leading authorities our chapter ‘The digital challenge’ discusses how digital channels have grown up and how it represents a fundamental and revolutionary change. Customers are getting increasingly turned off by one way dialogue. Customers are now truly empowered and they are taking control of their relationship with brands – they are shaping those brands. We discuss tools, technologies and channels – what’s available and how are they currently being used in the area of travel and tourism. We outline the four key challenges facing destination branding within the context of digital – content, socialisation, integration and measurement. Finally we discuss what this means for destination, travel and tourism brands.
Why not go buy the book … it’s already picking up some good reviews …
Tags: branding, destinations, tourism marketing
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As a follow up to Jon’s post ‘Content is King. More than ever’ I thought I’d outline the foundations that underpin a content strategy.
A content audit
Start by formulating some real clarity around existing content within the organisation. There’s no escaping it, an audit on some scale will need to take place to establish what content is a genuine asset, what content is performing well and what existing content can potentially be re-purposed for a new channel.
Understanding the current patterns of content production
Start with some key questions. How is content currently planned and produced? What resources are being spent on production? Where are the content creation specialisms within the organisation?
Defining business and user goals
Users want useful and engaging content, they also want it to be easy to find and share. The business wants to raise awareness and engagement across key products and services – and ultimately sell more stuff. It also wants to wrap it’s products and services in a brand position, point of view and tone of voice.
The challenge
The challenge of defining a workable content strategy is to mesh these foundations together and make them the foundation of the strategy. Beyond that there’s getting organizational buy-in, creating an editorial board, implementing work flow process and creating content production guidelines. Easy pips!
The reward
Developing a content strategy is potentially a really rewarding digital journey, one that if planned and executed well could put the organisation in a great place. Working more collaboratively with a renewed sense of purpose.
If you’re new to content strategy I’d highly recommend this book Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson and maybe start following this new elite of digital darlings, the Content Strategist, Colleen Jones, Jonathon Kahn, Erin Kissane.
Tags: content strategy, digital marketing, planning, user generated content
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He’s the patron saint of Wales. Today is Saint David’s Day – he died 1422 years ago. They’ve been celebrating this day in Wales ever since. Happy Saint David’s Day!
Tags: nice stuff
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