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March 2007
The Archives
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tourism bc
User Generated Content and HelloBC
People love to talk about travel and share their stories with their friends. On the internet, people can now do this in a global context. BC residents love our province and they’re passionate about the way we market BC as a holiday destination. I have plenty of emails to prove it.
Throughout all the research we do, we keep hearing from our website users that they like our website and content. But they’re missing to hear about the things you only know if you live here. Nobody wants to be a tourist and they like to know from BC residents about what they like to do and the hidden gems we don’t mention in our official content. We call this insider information.
2005
To facilitate this insider information, we started a blog in 2005 where some of our staff at Tourism BC could share their own experiences and tips with our website users. It didn’t take very long before this became a great success. Our users liked the content and we received healthy traffic.
2006
In 2006, we expanded the scope of our writers. We have a network of over 110 Visitor Centres in the province, covering as many communities. We asked the staff at these Visitor Centres to join the blogging efforts, and many did. This expanded the content of the site beyond just Vancouver and Victoria, where Tourism BC’s offices are located. This made the blog website even more successful.
2007
The next logical step is to extend the party to the next group of stakeholders; out BC residents and past travelers. Today we’re launching the first phase a significant new release on HelloBC.com today. We’re asking people to share their BC Great Finds. These can be anything, from an awesome viewpoint after a four hike, to a great little restaurant in Chinatown.
We’re posting these Great Finds as regular blog entries. But we’re also categorizing every entry with a location and an activity. So a Great Find about a fishing trip in Ucluelet will be categorized accordingly. These categories mirror the website structure on HelloBC.com. This allows us to present relevant great finds alongside the official information. It will add credibility and depth to all content on the website.
In addition, we also post all entries with a photo on our Flickr photostream. This way, we’ll be able to reach a new audience who might not be aware of the great experiences in British Columbia.
In order to seed some great finds, we send an email blast to a select group of consumers in our database. The entries we have received are of great quality. This is exciting stuff, have a look yourself and submit your own Great Find.
Next
What’s next? The one thing I’ve learned it to be clear about your objectives and core strategies, but leave room in the tactics for learning and new technology developments. Our intent is to develop a community of past travelers and BC residents assisting new visitors plan their vacations to British Columbia over time. What that exactly will look like will be based on what we’re going to learn over the next while. -
personal
Back from a Hiatus
It’s been almost 3 months since my last post. Besides the fact that I’ve been busy, I was also re-thinking the purpose of my blog. I notice that it started to look like a collection of funny YouTube videos and random links. I didn’t spend enough time to write about the stuff I would really like to post about. So here are my intentions for the future.
- Tourism BC’s websites. We’re doing some interesting things with our websites. I’m going to share some of our thinking and ideas behind our releases.
- Travel and Tourism. Other tourism organizations and businesses are also doing interesting things. I’ll share what I hear and observe.
- Management. I believe that team=product. Without the right people and processes, you can have all the great ideas in the world, but nothing will get done. I have learned a lot about how to get things done.
- Personal. My family lives half way around the world and they like to know what I’m up to. So expect travel pictures and updates about my cats. I also have some views about life in general.
I’ve re-organized my categories according to the above list. I intent to post at least once a week.
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William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
