Content marketing has a crucial role in most businesses, and especially so at Klook where we seek to “inspire and enable more moments of joy”. Combined by storytelling, content marketing allows us to bring the experiences of travel to life and share them to spark joy and wanderlust. What’s interesting about content marketing is it’s not locked into just one type of content. While blogging is the oldest type of content marketing in the digital world, we have seen a transformation to visual-centric content like photos (Instagram) and now short videos (TikTok).
To understand more about our content marketing team and their efforts, we decided to check in with our content people in global and local teams, and ask them about the importance of content marketing as well as its challenges and opportunities in the future.
Why text still matters
While we’ve been living in the era of visual-centric content for almost a decade with the pervasiveness of social media giants like Instagram, YouTube, and now TikTok, text-based content remains an important aspect of our content marketing strategy. Almost every local team at Klook has a dedicated person handling blog content, and we’ve set up a Central Content team who leads the overall content strategy. So why does text-based content still matter?
“My short, unbiased answer? SEO!” says Lara Antonio, Manager of the Central Content team. “When content is fully optimized to target certain keywords, it’s a fantastic and free way to gain new audiences and new users.”
Lara Antonio, Manager, Central Content
The keyword here is free. Marketing can be so expensive: you’ll need a big budget to book a billboard at the airport, or hire influencers to promote your products, or give away big discounts to make your customers interested to shop more. SEO or search engine optimization – which is a way to make your content discoverable by making them rank the highest on search engines – on the other hand, is free.
Moreover, people always search for information before they travel, and text-based content could give them more detailed and thorough information, something that can rarely be done on social media.
One example of how a Klook blog article is SEO-optimized to appear on the first page of Google search results
“When you’re planning a trip, you will almost definitely search for information like immigration and visa rules to make sure you’re following all the regulations. You will also search for guides to your destination to know the must-go local attractions, and which transportation is the best for travelers to explore the city,” added Cindy Chang, Associate Manager for Social & Content in our Taiwan marketing team.
“Text-based content is the best way to share detailed travel information, and this is the reason why our blog exists: we are dedicated to make travel information more accessible and travel itself easier.”
Cindy Chang, Associate Manager, Social & Content, Taiwan
But to make sure our content ranks high on search engines, it has to be relevant to readers’ interest. The only way to do it? "Research. Lots of research. And definitely making sure we always have a pulse on what’s happening on-ground, especially for the destinations we want to push and prioritize,” answers Lara.
“For example, during the first half of the year, so many destinations were reopening their borders and most of the time, they had their own Covid-19 safety regulations for inbound and outbound travelers. Though we never used to cover travel news before, we saw this as a perfect opportunity to rebuild our authority as an international travel brand and decided to create timely and relevant content covering Covid-19 Rules & Regulations for the different destinations we wanted to push, providing our readers with factual content.”
Readers have been flocking our Japan travel guide blog articles every day since the country’s border reopening announcement
“We also always add Klook’s touch at the end of every article: showing them what experiences they can book and take part in if they do travel to that destination,” she adds.
As people are eager to plunge into revenge travel after staying confined for over two years, our blog has become a sought-after platform that helps our customers find updated information – whether it’s about travel regulations or the newest must-visit attractions.
When our readers chance upon an activity, click the link, and book with us through our blog article, it brings in revenue for our business too. “The way to let the article generate revenue is to make sure the products you recommend are truly what the readers want,” says Cindy.
Swiss Travel Pass is another popular product on Klook that is visible in our Swiss travel guide articles
“When we’re deciding on the topic we want to write about, the first thing we do is open the Klook app, browse the newest products, and check bestselling activities. The next thing is brainstorming with team members. Thinking about what kind of content is related to these products, and what other products readers of this content will be interested in.”
Conquering visual-based content
While text-based content remains important to gather traffic and revenue to Klook website, it’s no secret that visual-based content on social media like Instagram is an important avenue to spread awareness about our brand and products, and inspire people to find joy by traveling more.
Our Instagram is a prime example of how we use visual-based content to do marketing. We don’t stop at just sharing stunning visuals, but also giving tips and other travel information to accompany them. We believe that while visual is a perfect way to gather people’s attention, it’s our captions and storytelling that would pique their interest to visit the places we promote.
And when social media shifted their algorithm to prioritize short video content ahead of beautiful photos that used to be the king in the land of travel content, our approach shifted too.
Feeling the itch to visit Japan after watching this mouth-watering video? (From tiktok.com/@klooksg)
“Instagram is a visually-driven platform and a fantastic place to share travel inspirations and wanderlust. Besides photos, we are also riding the trend of using Reels to increase our reach and seek new audiences. We also continue to accompany them with useful travel tips and information in our posts as a value-added to our followers,” explains Malcolm Koh, Senior Manager for Content & Social Media in our Singapore team.
”Meanwhile, TikTok has been a growth channel for Klook Singapore as we see it as a platform to reach a new generation. We’re not only using it to serve travel inspiration and showcase local activities, but also to build a more personable Klook brand by creating trending videos that feature our own Klookers.”
Malcolm Koh, Senior Manager, Content & Social Media, Singapore
Different forms of content offer varying challenges. For visual-based content, the biggest challenge is sourcing content and curating it. Thankfully, Klook is a global company with teams in many different countries, and we’re able to tap into our large network to overcome this.
“The challenge for a travel brand like Klook is the lack of original travel content as it is not feasible for our team to always be traveling around the world to shoot such videos. So we work creatively by tapping on the large Klook network across different destinations, while at the same time working with like-minded content creators to get their videos in exchange for activity sponsorships during their travels,” says Malcolm.
Qualities of a good content marketer
Now that we understand the importance of content marketing, both text-based and visual-based content, we asked our three experts about qualities that make a good content marketer. Feel free to take notes – these will come in handy when you apply for one of the content marketing roles available at Klook right now!
Cindy: Besides always catching up on the latest news, an SEO mindset is also very important for a content marketer. Even if you have distinguished skills in writing, you are beating a dead horse if no one could find this article. Knowing what kind of content our audience would like to read - and find via search engines - will definitely help you generate traffic and revenue.
Malcolm: There are three things that I think make a good content marketer. First, you will need to be able to find the common ground between business needs and what audiences demand. It’s about first knowing your product well and how it will actually help a fellow traveler or reader. It really isn’t all about pushing sales after sales.
Second, you need to be agile to move swiftly to tap on emerging trends, be it in content formats, delivery, or platforms we use. What worked last week might no longer work today.
Lastly, it is about being personable and genuine in your content delivery. This will go a long way in building a stronger community who are genuinely interested in the brand and what we have to share.
Finding inspirational content like this is one of the responsibilities of a content marketer (From Instagram.com/klooktw)
Lara: Aside from your basics which are having good grammar, writing, editing, and proofreading skills and knowing how to research (and research well), a good content marketer should be:
- Ambitious and purposeful – they understand that content marketing is not just about creating content after content. The content they create has to be purposeful and aligned with the company’s goals – whether that’s to be the go-to thought leader for certain topics, or to drive sales, generate leads or even build authority.
- Creative and natural storytellers – Storytellers are able to get people to care about the content they create because it’s relatable, funny, or just plain human (it’s always so much more fun to read content that feels like an interesting conversation!)
- Organized and detail-oriented – Content creation deals a lot with deadlines. Make sure things are published on time, and files like photos, interview transcripts, videos, and other materials are easy to find.
Last but not the least, and this goes for any profession, they should enjoy what they’re doing! A good content marketer enjoys consuming a variety of content -reading articles and books, watching TV, films, YouTube, scrolling on social media – and doesn’t just do it because of 'work'.
This is one way to keep their pulse on what’s happening but also get inspiration – to write better, shoot better videos, come up with wittier captions, or even jump on (or start!) a new trend.
Interested to join our content marketing team?
Posted by Klook Careers
