Bloggers! #MeetSouthAfrica

image: Mzansigirl 

Are you searching for your next dream destination?,the iambassador #MeetSouthAfrica campaign should be of interest to you because unlike looking at different websites for people’s reviews on those locations you would like to visit; why not stay in touch with the #MeetSouthAfrica campaign for more insight.

The iambassador #MeetSouthAfrica campaign is based on creating awareness of South Africa and to encourage others who are prospective travelers that have the interest in visiting SA, through the use of the most popular social media channels such as YouTube, Google +, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Vine.

The partnership between South African Tourism and Cape TownTourism along with iambassador and Indaba began a project in 2013 to establish a historical travel blogger campaign by having 15 international travel bloggers to embark on a journey to explore different regions within South Africa which included Cape town, Johannesburg, Garden Route, Eastern Cape, West Coast, Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, Free State and reaching their final destination which was Durban.

Talk about the ideal opportunity to travel around the country with all of your expenses paid for, and as for myself the only provinces I've been to is Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and Limpopo; so just imagine the exciting experiences these bloggers had.

image: 15 travel bloggers

Want to a be travel bloggers?, here is a quick description of the job. Travel bloggers basically share various types of multimedia information/content based on their thoughts, experiences, and destinations on their professional blogs. This allows the campaign to reach their targeted audience, produce relevant or interesting content, to increase the social media engagement, to have online ambassadors, creating exposure and personal views to make it more authentic.

The impact on social media:

·         3.3 million Twitter accounts were reached.

·         1059 photos taken were posted on Instagram based on their experiences.

·         77.8 million Opportunities of twitter engagement.

·         31 500 single photos posted were viewed on Facebook by individuals who were not even the targeted audience.

·         And +60 000 viewers on YouTube

image:Graffiti

My thoughts, the best social media campaigns make use of their visual aids which is of interest to the targeted audience, and what follows is allowing your audience to engage or participate in the campaign which makes them feel like they are a part of the marketing/advertising team. Now let’s be honest, social media generated campaigns are the most cost effective campaigns even for a non-profit organisation, but most of the time audiences, like myself always want to be awarded for the time we take to share content, like videos or make videos of ourselves  and to advertise something on their social media platforms. So if I was part of the marketing team, I would look at what angle of publicity would I provide to my targeted audience?