TruTourism Consultancy
A new multi faceted contemporary consultancy offering a fresh ‘on the ball’ approach to tourism solutions, destination management and strategy. Pride ourselves on bringing a modern twist to tourism consultancy with a more dynamic and creative edge. We are a group of specialist tourism and hospitality consultants all of whom have been carefully selected to join TruTourism.com probably because they’re good, very good or lead the way. In fact, that’s what we’re all about. It is about leading, it’s about being contemporary, up to speed, engaging through our online discussions. It’s tourism advice with a twist. We want to be able to talk tourism and be up front about the issues that concern us most, and provide you with an insight into us as people before you decide to pay us for anything. Brave? Some say. We just say it makes perfect sense.
(TruTourism is a trading name of TruPlaces Ltd (registration number 6404433) registered in Wales. Registered office address: Tremle, 55 Ynyscedwyn Road, Ystradgynlais, Swansea SA9 1BH. Email: info@trutourism.com)
Hi!
I found your site on Stumbleupon and I am interested in your opinion about using travel blogs to promote your clients services. I feel that many PR agencies still don’t understand the potential of blogs. Perhaps the term blog alienates them?
Regards Karen
Hi Karen, sorry about the long delay in responding to your comment below, it’s been a pretty hectic time of late!
Interesting comments indeed, and in my experience I think the area of online PR is certainly misunderstood by small traditional PR agencies, (yet they claim they can do it for their clients!). Merely posting a press release on a blog and sending it out to the travel media via email does not constitute an online PR offer of course. I think this is partly due to the way small marketing agencies and PR agencies are diversifying and actually starting to occupy each other’s territory and in so doing diluting their core offer. It is a sign of the times I think with small agencies having to chase every pound they can get instead of sticking to what they’re good at, in other words, they simply don’t say ‘no’. I suppose it is difficult for a traditional PR agency to say “I’m afraid we don’t do online PR and social media” when at the back of their mind they’re thinking “hang on, we can have a go at this!”….and there lies the problem. It’s the ‘have-a-go’ attitude responding to a client’s needs.
Anyway, about blogs specifically. Blogging has become an essential and extremely powerful marketing channel for my tourism businesses which includes the tourism consultancy http://www.trutourism.com and small self catering agency http://www.truplaces.com. For instance, I can post some last minute availability on my blog and within minutes can achieve a high ranking on Google and start driving relevant and targeted traffic to my site. However, this is not something which I have just turned on overnight. There has been a careful online strategy adopted to develop and raise my personal and business brands but I achieve this partly through diverse blogging to a range of audiences, and not just posting press releases (in fact, I don’t do that at all!). To achieve the full potential of a blog, I think that it’s important not to use a blog in isolation, but through an integrated strategy that makes full use of the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other applications. Personally, I have mashed together all these applications to create my own online PR or social media ‘cocktail’ and I wonder how many small traditional PR companies could have done this for me in Wales? Very few I would expect. Ironically, I would have had much more success approaching a digital marketing agency to do this online PR for me, and that’s another debate for another day I guess.