In the last chapter the jobs are assessed and the completion of the objectives is. The aim of the whole thesis is to create content for marketing functions of Outdoors Uusimaa project. It positions adventure tourism in the industry and presents definitions and characteristics of the segment.
Megatrends and trends in tourism industry
In the categorization, cycling is considered a soft adventure activity (Adventure Travel Trade Association & George Washington University 2013, 4). In both definitions, cycling is an essential part of the journey, but according to Sustrans it does not necessarily have to be the main activity. Another phenomenon in the adventure tourism industry is an increasing number of companies with adventure as their main brand identity.
Trends in adventure and cycle tourism
The increasing interest in cycling tourism was noticed by World Travel Market and is. discussed in their 2014 Global Trends Report. Newer destinations have a chance to become more popular if they offer bike-friendly services and robust infrastructure, e.g. easy roads (World Travel Market). In this case, the theme and site come from the client, it is so relevant to continue with the post types and find out what writing good blog posts requires.
Blog post types
The intention is to be educational, but at the same time bring a human aspect to the blog and inspire the audience. Van Marciano (2017) also discusses case study articles, emphasizing the value to the reader. Q&A posts are great because they really address the needs and interests of your audience.
The writing process
Target audience
They are interested in combining activities with relaxation and visiting neighboring countries, such as Sweden and Norway, on the same trip. Some of the bike commuters dedicate their vacations only to bikes and are called dedicated cyclists. The largest segment is also interested in other activities, such as canoeing, hiking or fishing, and are called participating cyclists.
FinRelax elements as possible topics
The author does not speak German and in order to be able to produce the content in the language of the target audience, British people have been selected.
Search Engine Optimization
high-quality content will lead to a higher bounce rate, i.e. the number of people leaving the site after only visiting one page, which will have a negative effect on visibility. Descriptive file names, captions, and alt text around those media make them more understandable to the algorithm. All pages on the site should be reachable in three clicks from the home page and breadcrumbs are a good tool to provide that.
It can help build your site's credibility, but the quality of the linked pages should be checked. Otherwise, it will only harm the site, both in the eyes of users and in search engines. It presents the destination to both users and search engines, but it should be created with the user in mind.
Prabhu (2016) discusses blogging as an external function of the page and in that case links from the blog to the page can improve page ranking. Nevertheless, the blog in connection with this thesis is part of the website, so it would be internal to link to the page. To begin with, the background to the project is elaborated and a project plan is presented.
In addition, the product development is made known with various examples, and the outcome of the project is demonstrated.
Background and the project plan
The rest of the report and completion was scheduled for the latter half of March. In January, when the presentation days were announced, the closest possibilities for the thesis presentation were the end of February and the beginning of April. The author knew that the end of February would be too early, so April 5 was chosen, and the original deadline for completing the thesis was moved to the end of that week, i.e. week number 14.
Product implementation
- Selecting topics and working titles
- Writing introductions and drafting
- Writing and researching
- Editing and inserting CTAs
- Optimising for on-page SEO and finalising titles
- Revising some steps
Creating a video from the existing photo material would have been an intriguing task for the author, but videos were not really discussed in the theory, so that was ruled out. Despite the delay of the website, it was time to edit, proofread and fix formatting. For some of the posts, the addition of the CTA came naturally, as the ability to link to the bike route descriptions was considered when the topics were chosen.
The final selection of the photos was done when they were added to the posts on WordPress. The block quote feature was tested and the author decided to use it at the beginning of the posts to grab the readers'. Even though the author checked the preview countless times during the editing, the visual consistency of the posts after the changes was double checked.
One of the last steps was to add the author's name to the end of the posts. While working on the site, it was found that the author's name is not automatically displayed in the post. Since there was no objection, the author wrote her name at the end of the publication.
The visual appearance of the posts was checked after the change and a few sections had to be split.
Five blog posts as an outcome
This chapter dissects whether the general objectives of the thesis and blog posts were met and assesses the usefulness of the theoretical framework. The subchapters focus on the feedback from the client, ideas for improvement for the future and, last but not least, the evaluation of the thesis process and the author's learning outcomes. The first objective, creating marketing content for the client, was fully realized by creating five blog posts related to the cycling routes.
Since the contributions were not published, the online visibility of the path during the thesis did not increase. All in all, the author is happy with the infographic, especially regarding the limitations of the free version and the fact that this was the first infographic the author ever created. Given the limited layout options, the author believes that the visual appeal was well executed.
As for the headlines, they all managed to get to the 65 character limit. Last but not least, all the anchor texts were more creative than "click here". A shorter overview of the industry and the trends would have been enough for the implementation of the blog posts because they were not chosen as the topics as such.
On the other hand, thanks to a thorough discussion, the trends were fresh in the author's mind, and it influenced, for example, the definition of the topics.
Feedback
Conclusions and development suggestions
After the changes and the publication of the drafts, the person is still needed to administer the site, because digital marketing, including the website as one of the channels, should be a continuous process (Zastrow 2017). A style guide, or at least some kind of guidance regarding the tone of voice and style of the posts would already be needed in this thesis project and also by the project team to create coherent posts. In principle, the author could have produced a style guide in this thesis project, but it only affected future posts because the project team had already created their own posts at that point.
The main reason why the directory was not made was the uncertain future of the site. The style is not only crucial for harmonious posts, but it will affect readers' image of the organization; whether the readers view the organization as professional and trust it (Ellering 2016; Ries 2016). Third, publishing the posts should not be the last step in the process, as Ellering's (2016) guide demonstrates.
Outdoors Finland uses Facebook and Instagram, which are channels that fit the purpose, but it is recommended to also share the messages on groups, forums and communities that the target group uses. Anyway, many other successful post-publishing practices have been recognized and they include, for example, participating in the social media conversations, sharing the teaser of the posts on the email list, reusing the post, encouraging influencers to spread the word, look for great backlink opportunities, add internal links, update top performing posts, and boost posts with paid campaigns (Cleary Ellering 2016; Fernandez 2017). The author does not know if Outdoors Finland has some kind of overall marketing strategy, but as far as the blog and social media channels are concerned, the strategy was missing.
In any case, it would be helpful to analyze the performance of the messages to learn which are working and which are not, and improve accordingly (Bergstrom 2018; Cleary.
Evaluation of the thesis process and learning
In fact, the author noticed a lack of strategy regarding blogging and social media in general. Therefore, the author recommends the development and strategy of Internet marketing and then its implementation. Writing the theoretical framework took longer than originally planned, but the author had reserved enough time to write the posts.
When the theory part was finished, the author thought that there was still enough time to create the posts, but it was. In addition, the challenges with communication and website delays reduced the author's motivation which in turn reduced the time used in the project. Furthermore, if the posts could be developed on the site from the beginning, the creation process would have been faster since the author would not need to go back to many of the steps.
The time management challenges even surprised the author, as she used to be very precise with deadlines. In a way, the time-related challenges make sense since the author is quite a perfectionist and shows great attention to detail. On the other hand, the author started a sprint at the end of March and the empirical part and the discussion were quickly completed.
To summarize, the author learned about the nature of project work and project and time management.
The blog posts
