Understand the role of public relations in the digital world, how they work together with travel marketing and create opportunities to promote destinations online
The public relations – or PR – professional plays a key role in a company’s digital strategies, whether in tourism or not. But many entrepreneurs are unaware of what a PR does and what its importance is.
The most practical definition for PR work is caring about a brand/company and its identity. Traditional PR acts to maintain reputation, creating communication channels between the company and its audience – client or not.
With the digital evolution, this professional had to reinvent himself and started working within the online environment. Public relations in the digital world began to develop strategies to create a positive reputation on social media and consolidate the online presence.
However, if before the communication made by public relations was unilateral, with the generation of content without the interaction of the public, now the PR has to deal with the feedback, often immediate, on what it offers.
Any content published can be commented on. That is, the user of online platforms can react, positively or negatively, to the material that the PR person publishes. And it is up to this professional to establish a positive communication with this public.
For these and other reasons, public relations is fundamental for companies, in general, in the digital world. And in tourism it is no different. The more a tourism company takes care of its image and online presence, the more chances it has to attract customers. But then, how to promote destinations through public relations?
The Role of PR for Tourism
PR acts in conjunction with marketing in the promotion and consolidation of tourism businesses on the Internet.
This is because, while marketing is concerned with sales conversion, PR acts to increase exposure and consolidate online reputation.
To do this, it uses influencer marketing, guest posting, and content marketing. The goal is to expose tourism companies in a qualified way, to the point that the target audience is interested in sharing their content.
In other words, the role of public relations for tourism goes beyond giving visibility to tourism businesses by making customers their influencers.
The consequence is the consolidation of the brand in the online environment as an authority in its segment. By making your tourism company recognized as an expert, you gain credibility and improve sales possibilities.
Benefits of Public Relations for Destinations
Among the benefits of public relations for tourism destinations are increased exposure and consolidation of online reputation, as already mentioned. These two actions have a great impact in attracting audiences and, consequently, more sales for tourism companies without the need for large investments.
But that’s not all. Public relations can strengthen the authority of a tourism business in its niche and make it a reference.
In addition, PR actions help increase traffic to the tourism company’s website. They also convey messages that motivate the target audience to share the content produced, so as to further increase the brand’s reach.
How to Promote Online Destinations Through Public Relations
So, how to promote online destinations through public relations? The success of public relations actions depends on knowledge and technique. If your tourism company does not have a professional in the field, it is worth investing in specialized help.
As we have already said, public relations work together with marketing to promote online destinations. For this reason, tourism marketing agencies also offer public relations support.
This is the case with Travel Media PR, a strategic intelligence agency for the travel and tourism industry. With international operations, Travel Media PR leads a series of projects aimed at leveraging tourism businesses and making them stand out in the market.
This way, you will not need to worry about the marketing and public relations actions of your tourism company, because you will have a team of experts taking care of everything for you.
Check out, below, the public relations actions that can help give visibility to your tourism company.
- Helps Establish Partnerships
An important point of PR work is to establish digital partnerships. This is necessary to increase the authority of the online presence.
PR identifies journalists, bloggers, organizations and influencers in the same segment as your company to establish referral partnerships.
For this, it uses some online tools that help discover these potential partners. These include Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic SEO, BuzzSumo, HARO, and LinkedIn.
- Contributes to Social Media Management
PR works to open new channels of communication for tourism companies with their target audience, and social media are important platforms for this.
With social media, any user is a potential influencer. With the right content strategies it is possible to use the target audience itself to promote your tourism company.
By offering relevant content, with information and tips, you awaken the target audience’s desire to share it. As a consequence, it makes them a spontaneous digital influencer of tourist destinations.
Moreover, it awakens the interest of this same audience in learning more about the company’s work, creating a sustainable communication that can bear a lot of fruit – or sales.
- Assists in The Production of Content
In this sense, public relations assists marketing in the production of content that will be broadcasted on online platforms.
However, while marketing thinks about content to attract leads, public relations goes beyond and creates material that can be shared and thus increase the visibility of the tourism company.
For this, just like marketing, it uses SEO techniques – Search Engine Optimization – to make this content be found, mainly through keywords.
In addition, it uses various formats that can be shared, such as articles, interactive content, infographics, guest posts, videos, and podcasts.
- Promotes Email Promotion
The use of email lists to disseminate content to media outlets is one of the practices of traditional public relations. And in the digital world it remains active.
Digital PRs use email as a tool to communicate with potential partners, such as bloggers and digital influencers, and the press.
It is an efficient way to get your tourism company’s content into media outlets, making it newsworthy. This helps increase the visibility of your tourism business and gives you authoritative status in the community.
- Creates Authority
By the way, this is one of the attributes of public relations work: creating authority for a company or brand.
All public relations actions seek to consolidate the business in the online environment, and for this, it must be seen as an authority in the niche it operates in.
The production of guest posts – exchange of content with partners – and backlinks – directional links inserted in the text – are essential tools to create online authority.
- Conducts Market Studies and Trends
The PR professional is also responsible for studying the market and trends to propose the appropriate strategies for online dissemination.
In addition, these studies can be used as material for content production and, consequently, audience attraction. For example, if you are a hotel and share a study on lodging trends for 2021, you offer material to the press vehicles that, by citing your study, increase the visibility of your brand.