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Your Guide to Leveraging User-Generated Tourism Content to Drive Higher Engagement and Referrals

user-generated tourism content

User-generated content is vital to the tourism industry. In fact, 83% of travelers make booking decisions based in part on reviews from travelers like themselves.

But there’s another reason why user-generated tourism content is so important, and it’s unique to the tourism and travel industries.

Have you ever heard the saying “Money can’t buy you happiness?” Science has proven this statement is correct, with a pretty big caveat: Money CAN buy you happiness IF that money is spent on EXPERIENCES. If money is spent on products, the satisfaction you have with the purchase typically is at its peak at the moment of purchase, and it continues to fall over the lifetime of the product as its usefulness fades.

Yet when money is spent on experiences, such as when traveling, the opposite occurs. Because those experiences become memories and those memories are shared with the people who traveled with you, and with others. This is why user-generated tourism content is so important; it’s a wonderful selling tool for your destination or attraction.

Let’s explore proven ways travel brands can effectively source, showcase, and maximize the impact of user-generated tourism content:

Strategically Sourcing Relevant UGC

The first step is developing ongoing streams of authentically created, relevant user-generated tourism content you can pull from. Some key sourcing tactics include:

  • Actively encourage visitors to share photos and experiences during their trip through prompts, signage, and incentives. This captures UGC directly. Along with this, regularly survey your visitors about their activities at your destination in order to uncover where visitors are creating content organically. For instance, if your visitors are telling you that they frequently stop to take a picture at a particular point, add a prompt or sign to encourage this behavior.
  • Monitor traveler review sites, Instagram hashtags, Facebook groups, etc. to identify photos, videos, testimonials to potentially feature. This allows you find UGC directly, but it can also give you ideas about the type of content that travelers are creating. Also, it can help you identify potential travel ambassadors that your attraction or destination could work with.
  • Run UGC contests and campaigns where travelers submit entries for prizes. This incentivizes volume and quality. The tourism case study More Fun in the Phillipines is a classic example of utilizing UGC from travelers, as well as locals.
  • Contact recent visitors who created stellar content for permission to feature their posts. Seek varied perspectives. Never assume that because a traveler posts content that you can grab it and use it as you wish.  You can’t, but this will likely lead to huge online backlash against your attraction or destination if you use someone’s content without permission. Always contact visitors about any user-generated tourism content, and you may actually begin a working relationship with that traveler!
  • Source user-generated tourism content tied to your unique selling points – ex. family-focused for resorts, honeymooners for tropical locales, adventure for outdoor spots. This helps you stand out from the pack. You can also brand your destination to particular groups. Such as how Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism is promoting Alabama’s white sand beaches to females for a ‘girl’s getaway’. I think this is a great example of tailoring your destination to a specific audience. (Disc – I have spoken at a Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism conference on tourism marketing before).

The wider the content sourcing net, the more diverse and engaging user-generated tourism content you’ll have to leverage across all your channels.

Showcase UGC Prominently Across Touchpoints

Now that you have a library of user-generated tourism content to choose from, amplify it where travelers are engaging and converting:

  • Create website galleries and testimonial sections to build credibility and expectations during research. Let your best salespeople, your happy visitors, sell for you.
  • Feature photos and stories from recent visitors in your email newsletter. This is a great way to effectively promote your destination and create more content as well.
  • Paid social posts should heavily utilize UGC rather than purely polished ads. Real photos from real people are shown to drive higher levels of engagement.
  • Retargeting campaigns reminding potential customers of real traveler perspectives. Consider promoting the testimonials or other UGC in your website galleries as mentioned earlier. This makes a past visitor to your site aware of new content, coming from visitors instead of the destination itself.
  • Local display ads featuring UGC paired with special offers target nearby travelers. This can be particularly effective if paired with UGC or a testimonial from a local traveler who would be known in that area. This can create additional word of mouth for their inclusion in the ad.

The more platforms where you feature user-generated tourism content, the greater the exposure and impact.

Optimize UGC for Maximum Discoverability

Making your user-generated tourism content more discoverable in organic search and on social media enables broader reach and engagement.

  • Add UGC galleries and sections optimized with relevant titles, URLs, metadata, alt text. Pro tip: Publish blog posts that focus on these relevant keywords and phrases, married to the corresponding UGC that has the same focus.
  • Encourage travelers to use your unique hashtags when sharing on Instagram, Facebook, etc. to associate the content with your destination or attraction. Sharing content that includes your hashtags also encourages other travelers and visitors to use your hashtag organically with their content.
  • Syndicate UGC on travel info sites optimizing with keywords travelers are searching for.
  • Ensure experiential UGC is easily shareable to encourage word-of-mouth.
  • Leverage geotags and location categories so UGC appears in relevant results.

Precision optimization makes your user-generated tourism content work harder as travelers often search destinations, attractions, experiences, and more. Taking into account visitor behavior and tailoring your UGC for the traveler’s needs is simply smart strategy.

Motivate Referrals and Loyalty with UGC

The benefits of user-generated tourism content extend beyond the initial prospect. UGC also fuels referrals from happy past visitors and nurtures their loyalty.

Some ways to maximize lifetime value include:

  • Contacting recent visitors to thank them for UGC contributions and encourage sharing with networks. Reward the behavior you want to encourage. Simply saying ‘thank you’ goes a long way.
  • Featuring UGC from loyalty program members to make them feel recognized. Additionally, if a particular ambassador or member of your loyalty program excels in content creation, acknowledge them for their content. But also, point out why their content is exceptional. This makes the member feel appreciated, but it also communicates to the other members how to create better content. When the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association sends out a ‘welcome pack’ for its ambassadors, it includes instructions on how to better create content and post on social media.
  • Sharing visitor content contributions when announcing new offerings, events, etc. as social proof. This can serve to remind your followers and subscribers about your destination or attraction, but it also attaches content from your best salespeople to your new offerings.
  • Reward repeat UGC contributions with loyalty perks, profile badges, and recognition. Also, vet these contributors as candidates for your ongoing brand ambassador or advocacy program.
  • Repurpose visitor content across multiple channels and touchpoints to reinforce memory of positive experiences. Visual content such as photos or videos can perform better on social media sites like Instagram and Twitter, while a long-form story or testimonial is perfect for a blog post or an issue of your email newsletter.

The more you spotlight satisfied travelers in ongoing communications and marketing, the deeper their engagement becomes while spreading positive word-of-mouth among current and potential visitors.

UGC is the Authentic Storytelling Today’s Traveler Craves

At the end of the day, user-generated tourism content is your destination’s best marketing. Leveraging real stories, stunning visuals, and genuine advocacy directly from past visitors forges an emotional bond and credibility that your brand alone cannot manufacture. Smart tourism marketers understand this, and are willing to cede some communication control to their visitors, in order to realize more revenue in return.

With abundant sources and creative presentation formats, user-generated tourism content provides a foundational ingredient to engage and convert audiences across multiple online touchpoints covering the entire travel journey. Are you leveraging UGC to inspire travelers and build visitor loyalty? The rewards make the strategy well worth the effort.

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Study: User Generated Content is More Effective Than Content From Influencers

User Generated Content

Before your company invests in that new influencer marketing campaign, you should know that you can get better bang for your buck by tapping your current customers for user generated content. That’s the top conclusion from a new survey by Entribe into the drivers of consumer behavior.

You can view the study’s findings here.  Let’s breakdown the results into respondents’ attitudes toward influencers and UGC (User Generated Content):

Influencers:

  • 81% of those surveyed said content from influencers either had no or a negative impact on purchase decision
  • 51% of those surveyed ignore content from influencers
  • 29% of those surveyed hate content from influencers and find this untrustworthy
  • 62% have never purchased a celebrity endorsed product and 40% of those who have made an influencer-endorsed purchase, regret the purchase

UGC (Content created by customers):

  • 86% of those surveyed find brands that use UGC over content from an influencer to be more trustworthy
  • 90% prefer to see content from actual customers
  • 83% are more likely to purchase from brands that use actual customer content
  • 80% prefer a recommendation from a friend or peer versus an influencer recommendation, and 90% of respondents say they have made a purchase based on a peer recommendation

 

We Buy From People We Trust

The common denominator running through all the above data points, is trust. When we see content from an influencer recommending a product, we understand that on some level, they are likely being compensated to create and share that content.  On the other hand, when we see content from a friend or peer recommending a product, we understand that they are likely creating and sharing that content for free, they simply love the product.

An influencer recommends a product because they are paid to do so.  A peer recommends a product because they love the product.

That’s not to say that influencer marketing is worthless, in the right circumstance, it can be quite effective.

But there’s nothing quite like being in a store, and struggling to decide if you should buy Product A or Product B. As you go back in forth in your mind, a woman who is walking by mentions “I have Product B, and I absolutely love it.”

When that happens, we understand what motivated that woman to say something:  She really does love Product B, and she wants to see other people love it like she does. We know that, because we are the same way with the products we love.

We can RELATE to wanting to share the love we have for our favorite products. Most of us aren’t influencers and we can’t relate to being paid by a brand to promote a product that we don’t use.

If you want to create content that converts into sales, leverage UGC. Focus on content from your customers. We buy from people we like, we buy from people we trust. That’s our friends and peers.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Communities is Here, Where Reddit Users Spend Their Time, NIL News

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are ready for a productive week and getting ready for the Fall weather that is almost here! Here’s a few marketing and digital stories that grabbed my interest:

 

So I have to say, Twitter Communities is the first thing Twitter has done in years that actually has me excited. Twitter Communities will be rolled out on Wednesday. At first it looks like there will only be a handful of Communities based around really broad topics. I hope that with time they will let us drill down into some really niche topics.

What interests me about Twitter Communities is that only members of that community can Like and Reply to each other’s tweets. So there will be conversations happening behind a ‘wall’ that are only available to members of that community.

We’ll have to see how they implement Twitter Communities, but the idea itself has a lot of promise.

 

Tying into the previous story, Reddit is going to soon let advertisers buy placements within highly-trafficked comment sections, directly in the comments. I suspect that Twitter has something in mind along these lines with the coming launch of Twitter Communities. Also, I found it very interesting to note that Reddit says that its users spend almost half their time in the app, reading the comment threads. That’s the power of UGC.

 

NIL laws being passed across the country is one of the biggest marketing and branding stories of the year. So much is happening so quickly.  My friend Kristi Dosh has been all over NIL from the drop, and has created a very valuable hub on her site to collect all the latest news and information.

 

So that’s it for this week! Hope you have an amazing and productive day, see you here tomorrow!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Moves Into Ecommerce (Again), UGC Drives Sales, What We Will Pay For Digital Content

Happy Monday, y’all! We are already into the second week of March! Over the last week, we began to see several states announcing that they are partially or completely reopening from covid restrictions in the coming days or weeks. As we move into warmer weather and out of cold season, hopefully we are setting up for a much better Spring and Summer. We all certainly need it! Let’s jump into the news…

 

Twitter is making another run at incorporating shopping features into its platform. Twitter tried this a few years ago, I think in 2014, and it really didn’t go anywhere. I’m unsure this effort will be much different. The reality for Twitter is, after the last couple of years, many users don’t trust Twitter as much as they once did. Twitter is rolling out a lot of new initiatives aimed at increasing revenue from users, but if the users don’t trust Twitter enough to engage in the activities that are required for the site to generate revenue…well you see where this is headed. These moves seem like good ideas that arrived about 3-4 years too late.

 

Your happy customers are your best salespeople. A lot of companies aren’t willing or ready to accept that, but it’s completely correct. Who do you trust more; Your favorite brand, or your best friend?  If your best friend says to drive out a new product, will you listen? Well there ya go. I started noticing about 10 years ago some restaurants encouraging diners to take pictures of their meals and post to social media. Such a smart move, and the companies that accept and embrace their current customers’ ability to sell to new customers, are the ones that reap the rewards.

 

One of the hot topics in 2021 will be content creators monetizing their content. Substack has made waves by giving content creators a way to make money off their newsletters. Twitter recently purchased Revue to compete against Substack. eMarketer posted this chart from the What If Media Group that claims that the majority of US adults were willing to pay up to $10 a month for digital content. I would assume that amount would be more for an individual content creator that the adult is a fan of.

 

So that’s what caught my eye over the last week! Another post here tomorrow, and then on Thursday I will be sharing last week’s Backstage Pass newsletter issue with you to give you a taste of what you are missing if you aren’t a subscriber. Want to subscribe now? Click the image below:

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Marketing and Movies: The Dark Knight

The original Batman film from 1989 was a critical and commercial success. In particular, Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Batman nemesis The Joker, as well as director Tim Burton’s efforts were particularly praised. So when it was announced that the Batman series reboot would again feature The Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight, many fans were rightly skeptical of actor Heath Ledger’s ability to match the performance that Jack Nicholson had brought to the character two decades before.

Ledger proved up to the task, not only meeting but surpassing the work of the screen legend Nicholson. Ledger’s performance of The Joker was simply a masterwork, his work dominated the film and made you believe you were actually watching an insane serial killer. Ledger was that scary good:

As it turns out, the marketing for The Dark Knight was scary good as well. I wrote about one aspect of the film’s phenomenal marketing campaign in my book Think Like a Rock Star:

Sometimes the best marketing doesn’t ‘look’ like marketing at all. When Warner Bros. was promoting the movie The Dark Knight, it put together all the standard online and offline marketing promotions that you would expect to see for a summer blockbuster. But the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight also had an element of ‘fun’ to it. Warner Bros. created an elaborate online marketing campaign, one element of which required you to ‘decode’ online websites that tied into the movie. If you were the first person from your area to decipher the website, you would be given the address of a local bakery that was holding a cake for you to pick up under the name Robbin Banks (robbin’ banks, get it?). When you received the cake, the icing said ‘Call Me Now’ and included a phone number. If you dialed the number, the cake itself started ringing! Inside the cake there was a packet containing a cell phone and other items from the company Rent A Clown, apparently set up by Batman’s arch-enemy in the movie, The Joker! Campaigns such as this were great fun for fans of The Dark Knight, and helped create a lot of extra buzz around the film.

Here’s the cake that you received for solving the puzzle:

Keep in mind this was done in 2008, just as YouTube was starting to take off, so The Dark Knight was one of the first films to really leverage UGC to help virally promote the film online. Also note that such a campaign isn’t aimed at casual fans of the franchise, but rather at fans that were already invested in the film as soon as it was announced. These fans are more loyal to the film and loved the idea of ‘solving a riddle’ to figure out the online puzzle, then to get the reward of getting the cake AND the phone and materials inside. The marketing is giving an incentive to the winner of the puzzle to promote the film even further. If you won one of these cakes, you wanted to brag about it, you wanted to share with your friends on social media, which simply leads to more promotion of the film, for free!

If you somehow haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet, please watch it ASAP. Heath Ledger died during the filming of The Dark Knight and this film left the world with a complete understanding of what a brilliant talent he truly was.

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Twitter’s Political Activism May End Up Costing All Content Creators

Over a year ago, Twitter launched its ‘Managing the Conversation’ initiative. This was adopted, according to Twitter, to start monitoring and moderating interactions on Twitter based on user intent or perceived intent. In other words, if a Twitter user was engaging another Twitter user in a way that didn’t break the current Twitter rules, but that Twitter felt was harassing or hostile, then Twitter would have the ability to censor that user.

This idea immediately grabbed me as being a bad one, because Twitter was creating a way to shift from one-size-fits-all rules that apply to the entire community, to Twitter having the power to make judgement calls and independently police content. It created a scenario where two users could engage in the exact same behavior, but only one of them be policed by Twitter, with Twitter saying that the first user had a a negative ‘intent’ behind his content that the second user did not.

I follow a small group of reporters on Twitter who have a track record for giving accurate and credible information. It’s how I keep up with national and political news. Earlier this year, I began to notice that they were mentioning with frequency that ‘conservative’ Twitter users were having their accounts banned or blocked for ‘no reason’. At first I didn’t really pay much attention to this, the person being banned rarely thinks they deserved it. But a few months ago, Twitter began actively censoring President Trump’s tweets.  That got my attention.

A few days ago, Pres Trump, upon beating covid, tweeted that he was now immune from catching covid. This is a claim that many doctors around the world agree with. There is no consensus, but many doctors believe that covid patients who survive do have immunity from catching it again, either for a limited amount of time, or permanently.

When Pres Trump tweeted that he was immune from catching covid, Twitter labeled his tweet as being a violation of Twitter’s rules and potentially ‘harmful’ information:

https://twitter.com/Alan46285607/status/1315347487004086273

 

And as we can see, other Twitter accounts making essentially the same claim, aren’t being censored:

 

Doubling-down, Twitter recently announced that it will be very aggressively moderating content created about the US Election in 3 weeks:

 

Twitter is saying that any content created on election day that claims that someone has won a race (either congressional or presidential) that hasn’t been called by a ‘credible’ source, can be removed by Twitter. Twitter says it will also add ‘restrictions’ to any content that Twitter deems to be ‘misleading’ concerning the election.  For instance, if on election night I tweet that ‘Wow, I really don’t think (candidate) can win’, Twitter could censor that tweet or identify it publicly as ‘misinformation’.

You can see how this creates an environment where Twitter’s team can let their own political biases cloud their judgment and literally turn the site into a platform for election interference. By creating these broad ‘guidelines’, Twitter is signaling that it can and likely will censor political content that it doesn’t agree with.  As we see above, Twitter has already shown to inconsistently apply it’s own stated guidelines toward political content.

Now, those of you that don’t like Trump or don’t like conservative viewpoints in general, I can hear you saying ‘So what? This sounds great to me!”  Here’s why you should care:  There’s a law called CDA 230.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is probably the most significant law protecting speech on the internet. In general, it says that content creators, whether they are individuals, or sites that host content from users (such as Twitter and Facebook), will be treated as if they are PLATFORMS, not publishers, under the law. But at the same time, they will have the ability to censor and moderate content left on their platforms by third-parties, as a publisher could.  If content creators were treated as if they were publishers under the law, then they would also be liable for content created by their users.  For instance, under CDA 230, as a blogger, I am not legally responsible for the content that a third party might create and leave here via a comment. Without the protections of CDA 230, I could be. That’s the advantage of being classified as a platform versus a publisher. CDA 230 was designed to shield us from legal liability for the content created by our commenters or users.

In essence, what Twitter is doing is skirting the good intentions of CDA 230. They are using the protections of CDA 230 to, it at least appears, censor content that supports certain political viewpoints. As we can all hopefully agree, this is not what free speech and open discussion is about. As you might guess, both President Trump and even the DOJ have signaled that they want to re-examine the protections that sites like Twitter have under CDA 230, and possibly modify it in ways that could hurt individual content creators like you and I, as well.

And before you take that as a reason to vote for Joe Biden, Senator Biden wants to go even further than Pres Trump, Biden wants to eliminate CDA 230 completely. Politicians on both sides of the isle have said they want to amend, change, or remove CDA 230 completely. As an individual content creator, that scares me.

So if you are a blogger like me, understand that your ability to create content and publish it as you have been could be on the ballot as well this November. Please educate yourself about what’s happening in regards to content moderation on social sites like Twitter and Facebook, educate yourself on CDA 230 and what it is, and finally educate yourself on what state and national politicians are proposing for the future of CDA 230. One of the most powerful aspects of the internet is that through tools like blogging, we all have a way to share our voice with the world. It’s vital that we maintain that precious freedom.

 

PS: This post gives a very mild recap of some laws regarding internet speech. This post is not offered as legal advice, and should not be taken as such. Please do your own research on these topics and consult a qualified legal professional if you have questions about how these laws might apply to you.

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Here’s What Every Perfect Product Review Has

Think about what would be the perfect review for your product. Think about the elements it would include, what the customer would highlight.  I bet you have in mind a list of features you want the customer to mention in their review, right? Maybe you want the customer to point out that your product is reliable, right? Also add some general statements about how awesome and trustworthy your brand is, perhaps? Put all this together and you would have the perfect review for your product, right? The perfect mixture of highlighting all the right features, while also pointing to the reliability of your brand.

I can assure you that none of that comes close to defining the perfect product review.

When many companies think about what defines a great product review, they focus on what they want the customer to say about the PRODUCT. They have a list of all the features and attributes they want the customer to mention, maybe a couple of gushing compliments about the brand in general.

Instead, the perfect product review is one where the customer talks about THEMSELVES. But…they talk about themselves in the context of how your product made them BETTER at something.

Here’s a snippet from one of my favorite reviews for my book, Think Like a Rock Star:

“Second, more than any other I’ve read, the book inspired me to take action. These are practical ideas that you can implement right away, not well-meaning tips to put in your idea file, never to be seen again. I hadn’t even finished reading chapter one, and I already implemented one of his ideas.”

See the difference? This review isn’t talking about me or the book, it’s talking about how reading the book prompted a positive change in behavior FOR THE READER. This is what I want to see as a customer reading reviews, I want to know how the product IMPROVED the life of the customer that wrote the review. Because if it helped the customer who wrote the review, that makes me believe it can help me as well.

The perfect product review is one where the customer talks about themselves positively. The customer talks about how your product made a positive change in their lives.

 

Which review for an SUV do you think is better?

“This is the best car I’ve ever owned.” – Positive about the car.

“Driving this car made me feel safer.” – Positive about how the customer felt driving the car.

 

Which review for dog food do you think is better?

“It was a great deal, easy to serve portions, and the price was right.” – Positive about the dog food.

“I noticed that my dog was more active and seemed happier as soon as he started eating this.” – Positive about the change in behavior of the owner’s dog.

 

Which review for a camera do you think is better?

“This camera comes with all the bells and whistles you need to take great pictures.” – Positive about the camera

“This camera made me a better photographer.” – Positive about how the camera changed the behavior of the customer

 

If you think about it, we don’t buy products, we buy the change in our lives that happens when we own those products. When we buy a car, we aren’t buying the object, we are buying what the car allows us to do.  We aren’t buying the laptop, we are buying what the laptop allows us to do. We aren’t buying the mattress, we are buying a good night’s sleep.

Think about how your marketing helps influence the reviews your products receive. The features you highlight in your marketing are often the ones customers highlight in their reviews. What if your marketing helped customers understand how their lives would change as a result of owning your product? Customers would buy your product based on the promise of the change or changes it would make in their lives. Then if your product met the customer’s expectations, that would be shared in their product reviews.

Sell the benefit of your product, more than the product itself.

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Case Study: National Geographic’s “Your Shot” Photography Community

One of the smart tactics many brands are leveraging is incorporating user-generated content into its social content streams. The idea is that you take content that your customers or fans are creating, and highlight it alongside your own. It gives the content creators a platform to get more exposure for their work, plus it helps the brand in getting more content. For example, Visit North Alabama is one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. They often use pictures submitted by followers in their Instagram feed, such as this beauty:

National Geographic has taken this idea a step further with its Your Shot community. Your Shot invites photographers to submit their photos to ‘assignments’ that are posted on the site.  The assignments revolve around a particular theme, such as ‘Close Encounters’ or ‘Adventures in the City’. The submissions are reviewed by editors at National Geographic as well as the larger community on the site, and the best ones are selected to appear on the site.

When asking for customers/users/community members to submit content that you will use, there must be a clear benefit to the content creator in doing so. In this case, the benefit to National Geographic is obvious; They get a ton of gorgeous pictures submitted from talented photographers.

But what is the benefit to the photographers? Besides additional exposure for their work, these photographers also have a chance to have their work critiqued by National Geographic’s editors, as well as by the community at large:

This is invaluable advice from both the editors and the community at large. The community can comment on the work as well as select the elements of each shot that they appreciated. It can give the photographer detailed guidance on where his or her work is excelling as well as what they can improve on.

If you are going to test the user-generated content waters, make sure that the users you are appealing to have a clear incentive to share their content with you, and that there is a clear benefit to them from doing so. By agreeing to share their photos with National Geographic, the benefit these photographers get is clear, and who knows, a few spectacular shots might even land an aspiring photographer on National Geographic’s short list the next time they are hiring.

Remember, if you give your customers/users a clear benefit to share their content with you, they will be more likely to share content with you, and the content they do share will be of higher quality. The goal is to have a clear win-win for both you and your customers/users.