Promoting Sri Lanka Online
When I attended my CIM graduation last week the CIM Sri Lankan Region Chairman mentioned in his keynote address that it’s the responsibility of marketers to promote Sri Lanka abroad.So as an e-marketer I think I can give some ideas here to promote Sri Lanka as a small miracle abroad.
Initially I would like to mention that your fullest support should be extended to SLTDA (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority ). They have requested volunteers to help them. You can be a student or can be a professional with spare time in hand. Please visit SLTDA web site if you want more information. Those who have an interest please send a mail to the email id which has been mentioned in the site.
So what are the other techniques people can use? You might be a student, or an undergraduate or a working professional. I would prefer you to allocate at least one hour per day in order to do the following tactics. I’m sure you must be browsing the Internet every day and it is not a big issue to allocate your one hour for the betterment of your country.
As a Sri Lankan you might have visited many places every month and it could be a business travel, a family trip, an educational trip or competition. When you are staying in a hotel with good surrounding do not forget to take photos and videos. Upload the photos and videos and then write a review about your stay. Try to spread it all over online. When writing the review, remember to mention the country at the very beginning. The most famous sites used by foreign tourists are -
1 – Tripadvisor
This site has millions of reviewers and it is a source of information tourist look when they decide a trip. Make sure when writing a review mention about the country, the location, nature and people then about the place you stayed.
2 – HolidayWathc Dog
Most popular among UK Travelers.
3 – Virtual Tourists
The above is another popular site among world travelers and most popular among US travelers. This is not only a review site but also can share your opinion with others. There are chances people look for travel advice, and they request preferred destinations to travel. Just register an account, update the reviews, upload photos and show them you are a real traveler. Tell them how beautiful is Sri Lanka and request them to view your photos and send sources to check about Sri Lankan tourism.
Following are also similar sites which you can consider on
4 – Travbuddy
5 – Lonelyplanet
6 – e-Travel Reviews
7 – Real Travel
Video Marketing – When ever you visit any part of Sri Lanka do not forget to catch your moments in videos. Try to spread the videos all over internet. Remember to upload the videos with an attractive description too. Here sometimes you can target at
You also can do the same in the review sites as well.
Blog Marketing – Start a blog and write about Sri Lankan places, beauty and Tourism. Always write your real experience. Add the embedded code of the videos and add photos too. Keep updating your blog every day or even post once in a week. For related keyword searches your blog post will come up. Make sure your blog posts are fair enough to attract the visitors. If they are planning a holiday they should be able to get convinced. ( wordpress blogs are always better)
Try to promote your blog in the blog directories and make sure your blog has high visibility in the search engines.
Forum Marketing – Take part in online travel forums. Try to answer travelers questions and then convince them about the country. If can send them your blogs and the other video channels which you have created it would give you good results
Twitter – Register an account with www.twitter.com, and try to follow people in abroad. Follow them, tweet country stories, if any updates try to tweet that as well. Send them personal message, search for people who are planning a trip or holiday, send them direct messages stating about the country. It is the better way to reach the target audience.
Facebook – Try to be friendly with people in other countries, once you get a set of good audience start communicating with them. Market the country through social media and create pages and group and update it regularly. Join in other travel social networks and make friends, be the country promoter
The other sites are
1 – WAYN
2 – Zoomandgo
3 – Trip Connect
4 – iExplore
5 – Bootnsall
Last – Now you might be having most of the pages created online and also your video channel but you have to increase their search engine visibility. Bookmarking is the best way to do it. So once everything is done go to www.socialmarker.com, get register with each social bookmarking sites and then start book marking the pages. Try to do this every time when you update a page, answer something, upload a video, tweet something etc.
I will update this post with some more tactics soon.
While reading seths blog post about “Welcome to Isalnd Marketing” I came across this Zappos.com. Zappos is an online shoes, handbags and purse seller which is famous for high end shoes Zappos Couture. It serves the niche shoe marketing and they has started to sell eyewear, appreal and watches as well as electronic devices.
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