Blogging for a Tourism website and Guest Posts

Blogging does not only help your visitors with more information about your company, experiences and destinations, it's also a crucial component of your SEO strategy. As a tourism organization, your blogs represent a platform to showcase your expertise. They allow you to share your knowledge of various destinations, share unique experiences, and tell engaging stories that align with your organization's activities.

The Impact of Value-Driven Content

When your blogs provide valuable information on topics that interest your visitors, you'll likely see an increase in website traffic. People often search Google for relevant topics, and regular blogging allows you to create a wealth of content within your niche. This makes it easier for Google to understand your products and services, directing more interested visitors to your site. Blogging is a very powerful tool to get new customers, where you want your website to be a quick (visual) overview of what you offer and why customers should book with your tourism organization. Blogs are meant for more detailed, highly targeted topics that educate or solve questions of your audience.

Aligning Blogs with Visitor Interests

It works well when you write about topics that resonate with your audience or answer their questions about your destination and experiences. Where it works best to focus each blog on one topic and one audience. Research what kind of information your target audience is looking for. Look up the questions customers have - in search console and Google suggest. Do they want in-depth knowledge of a tourist destination, visa info about how to get into the country, are they searching for things to do? For example: best temples to visit in Yangon. Other examples could be detailed itineraries or in-depth articles about the cultural and natural highlights of your destination.

Try to weave your organization's vision and values into your text so you create a preference for your way of working.

For instance, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) effectively incorporates their branding in their articles, such as in their piece about AI:

"As the global leader in Travel & Tourism, WTTC is committed to driving innovation and supporting the sector to embrace AI and other cutting-edge technologies. To promote sustainability and excellent customer experiences, WTTC acknowledges the crucial importance of AI in revolutionizing the sector."

WTTC clearly states what the goal of their organization is driving innovation, promote sustainability and excellent customer experiences and connects that to AI.

Keep the Reader Entertained

Though blogging can work with long texts keep the way how you present your blog versatile to keep the readers attention, short headers, 2 paragraphs, images, videos, infographics. If there are side stories to tell, create separate blogs and link to them from your main article. If the blog becomes really long consider a faster version of the blog.

Try to keep following the Inspire, Help, Proof & Sell framework also in your blogs. Especially inspiring and convince your audience, with the first Alinea that you add value for them. Aligned with the title that you created for your blog and which was probably one of the main reasons to click on your page.

Part of selling your experiences

Your blog is always a part of your sales funnel, weather its inspiring, helpful, shows that your capable, you want to make your audience easy to learn more about your organization or destination. You can do this by encouraging to sign them up to a newsletter, show relevant offers and or lead the reader to other useful information.

Show your an expert

A blog becomes really interesting if it shares things you can not find anywhere else online and that is your perspective, knowledge and expertise of a destination and the experiences. Make sure your blogs reflect that, whether you are writing it with AI, yourself or a professional company, make sure those unique details only your company can deliver are there. By for example showing every quarter the latest new tourism experiences, in-depth stories that make your destination or experience more interesting or by answering questions your customers might have.

Another great blogging platform example is Africa Geographic.

Drive readers to your newsletter

If your content has real value it makes sense people want to get your content fresh in their mailbox. Make it easy for them to subscribe with clear and easy to fill in Call To Action subscribe boxes. For example; “Join our newsletter for more travel content like this”

Setting Up Your Blogs:

Make sure your blogs also follow the Inspire, Help, Proof & Sell Structure.

• Inspire: Create content that inspires your audience by linking experiences you describe to products you offer and the USPs you set in your strategy. Use customer experiences to make the blogs authentic.
• Help: Provide detailed and helpful information that addresses common questions and needs.
• Proof: Show previous customers that love your experiences, destination and company, but also show reference of trusted magazines, and or awards.
• Sell: Integrate subtle sales messages that encourage readers to consider your services.

Travel Blog Titles

Try to keep following the Inspire, Help, Proof & Sell framework also in your blogs. Especially inspiring and convince your audience, with the first Alinea that you add value for them. Aligned with the title that you created for your blog and which was probably one of the main reasons to click on your page. When working on your titles, you want to think about your most important keyword and a triggering sentence that makes your audience curious to read your blog because they expect to learn something, get inspiration to go on holiday, or get their questions answered.

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Using AI

AI tools can assist in generating content ideas, improving writing efficiency, and maintaining consistency across your blog. Working with Chat GTP, Jasper will significatntly speed up and improve your blogging.

Utilizing Guest Writers

You don't have to write all blogs yourself; consider hiring guest writers. Collaborating with travel bloggers can be particularly effective. You could invite a travel blogger to write about your services on their blog or yours, offering them a free or discounted trip in exchange for their content and links to your company.

Choosing the Right Travel Blogger

When selecting a travel blogger, consider the following:

• Find bloggers focused on your niche or target countries.
• Ensure the blogger's audience aligns with yours.
• Look for engagement like comments, likes, and shares on their blogs and social media platforms.
• Check if the blog is actively promoted online and on social media.

Expanding Your Reach Through Other Channels

Another strategy is to write about your company's experiences or destinations and offer this content to online travel magazines in your target markets. Search Google using terms like  : submit travel article to find submission opportunities in your niche. Platforms like on medium.com, or other blog sites also offer avenues for publishing your content. Additionally, consider using the post function in Google Business Manager to distribute articles

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