Top 10 China Influencers (KOL) – Travel
Travel KOL are the biggest hit in China when it comes to planning that long awaited trip! In China, young travelers tend to choose planning their own trip as supposed to joining a tour group.
Survey shows that more than 70% of China travelers use online resources to plan their trips. With a four days three night trip for example, the average Chinese user spends an average of 42 hours on the internet for research. On top of all of this, travel KOL are the largest source that effects the destination, hotel or airline choices in China.
Key-Opinion-Leaders (KOL): A powerful tool for companies to increase their products’ exposure and build up the brand image.
This blog will give you all you need to know about China’s booming travel industry KOL marketing.
Table of content (Click to read)
1. Top 10 Travel KOL on Weibo Read Now
2. Case Study: How to Become a Travel Influencer(KOL)? Read Now
3. 4 Industries in China Who Need Influencers the Most? Read Now
4. Why Have Collaboration with Travel Influencers Become a Trend? Read Now
5. Collaborating with Travel Influencers Read Now
Check out our other KOL industry blogs!
Top 10 China Influencers (KOL) – Beauty and Fashion
Top 5 China Tech Influencers (From KOL to CEO!)
If you are interested in any China marketing services, you can speak with our social media experts directly!
Top 10 Travel KOL on Weibo
1.旅游约吗
旅游约吗, a professional traveler and well-known travel influencer with 4.17 million followers. “Believe in the magic of dreams and to realize people’s travel dreams”
Main Content: Sharing popular tourist attractions and travel notes
Form of Communication: Short video clips
2. 踏马行者
踏马行者, a senior traveler and well-known travel influencer with 4.15 million followers. “The dream is to travel around the world”
Main Content: Travel guides about different destinations
Form of Communication: Picture-text
3. 全球旅游攻略
全球旅游攻略, a popular travel blogger with 3.63 million followers. “Plan your trip and let me be your guide to the most beautiful season to the most beautiful places”
Main Content: Introduction and sharing about different destinations. Posting travel guides of online contributions.
Form of Communication: Picture, Picture-text
4. 猫力molly
猫力molly, a famous traveler with 3.36 million followers. “Love travel and encourage people to pursuit what they really love bravely. Always sharing her daily travels.”
Main Content: The daily travels of her own life with the introduction of scenic spots
Form of Communication: Pictures
5. 我的旅行小马甲
我的旅行小马甲, famous traveler and photographer, popular travel influencer with 2.82 million followers. We-media that has signed a contract with Sina Weibo.
Main Content: Daily travel of his own life
Form of Communication: Live videos, Short video clips, Pictures
6. 北石同学
北石同学, Global travel talent and travel influencer with 2.27 million followers, the author of Toutiao, We-media that has signed a contract with Sina Weibo.
Main Content: Daily travel and travel guid
Form of Communication: Short video clip, Picture+Text
7. 咱们去旅游
咱们去旅游, a famous travel Kol with 1.90 million followers. “Encourage everyone to travel around the world, enjoy the beauty of nature.”
Main Content: Travel guide, Sharing of tourist attractions.
Form of Communication: Picture+Text
8. 北京小风子
北京小风子, an undergraduate from Cumbria University. Famous traveler and travel influencer with 1.75 million followers. We-media that has signed a contract with Sina Weibo.
ps. We-meida: We-media refers to the personal communicator, and civilian, generalization, and customized, with modernization, electronic means, to no specific most or a specific single people passed the floorboard of the normative and normative information of new media, also called “personal media”. Including BBS(bulletin board system), Blog(Blog), Podcasting(podcast), GroupMessage(mobile phone group), etc.
Main Content: Travel guide, Sharing of daily travels and tourist attractions.
Form of Communication: Picture+Text
9. 旅行日常
旅行日常，popular travel Kol with 1.01 million followers. The author of Toutiao, We-media that has signed a contract with Sina Weibo.
Main Content: Travel guide, Sharing of tourist attractions.
Form of Communication: Picture+Text
10. 旅行囧记
旅行囧记, famous travel video We-media Kol with 950k followers. Signed contract with Sina Weibo. Fan of travel and food. Enjoys using video to record journeys.
Main Content: Travel guide, Sharing of tourist attractions.
Form of Communication: Short video clips.
Case Study: How to Become a Travel Influencer?
北京小风子 is a famous traveler and travel influencer with 1.75 milllion followers. Different from other professional travellers, she is very young, an undergraduate and born in 1993. What makes her such a popular travel influencer? What are the key factors of her success? Let us see from her personal interview.
Picture of 北京小风子
1. Find things you really love and are really good at.
The most important thing, in the beginning, is to find what you are interested in and what you are good at. It’s the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from doing it. This feeling is unlike anything else. You can like to sleep, play games, go shopping or smell beautiful…all of this is okay, as long as you can take one thing to the extreme and create value, that’s what makes sense.
2. Sharing and be a valuable person.
It’s the worst of times, the pace of life is growing so fast you’re being brushed off by others. This is the best of times, as long as you have something that will be recognized by everyone. New media, the core of self-media is content.
Sleep, for example, is unique, such as various tips to solve insomnia, suitable sleeping music, or how to improve the quality of sleep. Stress is so high in a city environment, there might be demand for this. A friend of mine played games throughout university and later developed a live broadcast platform. The price of this platform is now immense.
It may sound a bit distant, but a lot of the influencers I know develop their popularity with their own interest and persistence. The main goal should be to entertain yourself, create value and bring joy to all.
3. Multi-platform development and accumulates influence.
Accumulate influence and sum up several platforms that you can explore with. Below are some platforms that you can use to enlarge your influence in the beginning.
Zhihu: Suitable for people that have professional knowledge, skills or the true talent studies.
Weibo: Suitable for interaction, many methods of promotion, chance for many fans and can become very valuable
IQIYI, Youku, bilibili: Produce video classes
4. Having your own style.
There’s something special about it. The Internet platform has made it possible for everyone to be heard, and thresholds are gradually reduced. It is no longer dominated by mainstream media and because of that, everyone has a chance.
Find your own speciality.
It is more important to find your niche such as unique locations and travel points. Learn to take amazing pictures, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
The problem is how you can have your own characteristics and not be copied by others? Answer, you can’t just rely on your face. There are always more beautiful and younger people. Think about what’s special about you?
5. Sensitivity to content.
Utilize social hot spots and understands what makes users happy and interested. Create a clear position and make content that is easily readable on all platforms!
4 Industries in China Who Need Influencers the Most?
1.Fashion
Many fashion brands are trying to send their clothing and accessories to travel KOLs in hope that these popular influencer can wear their product during their travels, take pictures and upload them on social media.
Some influencers share good foods during travel.
2.Hotels
Some hotels will offer discounts and even free check-in for famous KOLs in exchange for exposure on their primary account.
3.Restaurants
Enjoying the food is part of the journey. If the KOL is willing to post food pictures on the Internet, many fans will ask for the restaurant location.
4.Technology Brands
In a digital era, KOLs use high-tech electronic equipment to capture their travel stories and better present them to fans. Technology brands have the chance to utilize this opportunity to show their products.
A sharing of “recommendations of traveling goods “
Why Have Collaboration with Travel Influencers Become a Trend?
Our emphasis here is on the travel bloggers, not Internet celebrities in other areas.
Their blog posts tend to record real travel, and your product can be seen as part of a trip, naturally occurring on the camera. The likelihood for the evaluation of a KOL to cause a big discussion achieves the effect of word of mouth marketing.
The fans of travel bloggers have a variety of characteristics. With the influence of bloggers, you can pass brand information to people who like to travel, and to those who are only interested in bloggers and bloggers who are not interested in traveling. Moreover, compared with bloggers in other fields, travel bloggers and fans are more interactive.
Travel KOLs produce visual content that is attractive. It is undeniable that visual content is more advantages and has potential to capture attention quicker than any other promotional technique. As a premise, travel KOLs have always produced viaul content, which is clearly in line with the current trend.
Most travel Kols use short videos and pictures as their main form of communication, which easily attracts people’s attention.
Travel KOLs usually open multiple social media accounts and post on all major social media platforms. So working with a travel blogger can also boost the brand’s exposure on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Collaborating with travel influencers
Strictly review the account information of the influencers. Before you cooperate, use tools to check the flow, visual design, content, and topics.
The more cooperative the influencers the better. Many brands only work with an average of travel KOLs in order to keep good relationships and closely track their content to make sure they are in unison with their own brand image.
Plan some more exciting and interactive content. Don’t just send pictures to KOLs! Try to be imaginative and blend the brand imagine with the KOLs content seamlessly. This results in better adaptation and better user interactions.
Cooperation with travel influencers often involves problems such as distance, logistics and transportation. Brand to blogger cooperation may take a long time. Also, considering travel KOLs plan their trips early, brands must also communicate their ideas and plans early.
Conclusion
Nowadays, with Chinese people becoming more and more wealthy, they tend to choose to travel during holidays. And this trend is become more and more obvious in young people. As a result, travel influencers have a huge market in China. Travel KOL themselves have a passion for travel which keep their content in high quality and interesting. This contributes not only to market value but also personal value.
Besides Weibo, there are some travel apps such as Mafengwo(马蜂窝) and Qiongyou(穷游). Compared with Weibo, they are more integrated and specialized.
Dragon Social understands that it can be very difficult to find the perfect KOL. When moving into a new market it takes a lot of time to begin to find out about the digital marketing landscape, let alone begin to research different KOLs. Dragon Social can do all of these and even more! If you would like to know more about what we can do for you, visit our services page!
Dragon Social stays are up-to-date with any trends in China social media marketing. Contact us or read more about marketing in China below!
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