Why Focusing Your Content Strategy is Critical for Success

Why Focusing Your Content Strategy is Critical for Success

In a recent conversation with , she asked a simple question in reference to our recent thoughts about content marketing: What factors are causing this shift, and why is travel-enticing content important?

I am paraphrasing Katie, but that is pretty close.

Unfortunately, Katie and I are too far apart to share a beer while discussing the finer points of content strategy, but I did want to conclude our stretch of travel-enticing content articles with a few final thoughts on why it is important to focus your content.

Common Content

There are too many travel and tourism content sources available to merely be average.

The barrier to creating a tourism destination website, mobile site or mobile app is extremely low. Basic content and information about a destination is plentiful and easy to replicate.

And not only from the major powers in the travel industry…OTAs, guide books, review sites…no, we are now seeing consumers with a slightly heightened interest in a specific city, region or country creating content and sucking up market share.

See visitboston.org. (No link, they don’t deserve it.)

Or .

And the brand efforts of .

There is certainly nothing wrong with competition. But you need to realize that there is competition, especially at the low-end of the content ladder.

Travel-Enticing Content Strategy Workflow

A Trend to Help

The consumer, now overwhelmed with a plethora of content opportunities, Facebook like requests and demands to hashtag everything, is slowly becoming numb to average content.

Distributing easy-to-use and helpful content is path forward for many organizations.

Call it a trend but the formula is a simple one.

High-value, useful content > mass-produced, evergreen content.

No offense to the evergreens.

Your content actually needs to contribute, answer a question, help someone.

Not just lie there in an overgrown evergreen forest.

Inspirational Goals

The third factor in our theory of travel-enticing content is a need for measurement.

Our DMO client has plenty of content, but we needed to know, definitively, what content is working and what content is failing.

Particularly for destination marketing organizations, a focus on content is important considering the average digital consumer interacts with a DMO once.

Not 2 or 3 times.

Once.

The consumer is visiting a single page and determining in less than 10 seconds whether or not your content is helpful to them. If it is, your chances of moving that consumer closer to the moment of travel increase. If it is not, the consumer clicks the back button and looks elsewhere.

Therefore it is critical that the DMO or NTO knows exactly what the goal of each page is, but also how well it is converting.

The strong content stays, the weak content gets deleted.

Unfortunately too many DMOs simply add content and forget it. Unaware of what is working and what is failing.

Now and How

The idea of useful content or travel-enticing content should not be a new development. It should be the only type of content that every tourism organization develops and distributes.

Alas, as we have discussed, political motives and profitable eyeballs have got in the way.

But now we are seeing a shift toward clear and effective content.

To truly be successful in this new world of competition and Youtility, one must be able to measure the successfulness of their content marketing efforts and implement a strategy that truly delivers travel-enticing content.

Otherwise, your destination will just be one of the trees in a very thick evergreen forest.

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