The City of Richmond plans to continue to capitalize on its strategy last year of hiring a blogger to promote the city’s food scene.
Blogger Lindsay Anderson ate at a different Richmond restaurant every day and posted comments about her experiences during her year-long stint that ended June 6.
Her posts will all be online for at least the next year, and the city plans to collate and publish a dining guide based on them this summer.
“Residents are thrilled in having their city celebrated and highlighted in the way that it was,” Tourism Richmond’s director of communications Michelle Dunn told Business in Vancouver.
“They’ve also had the local Asian restaurant scene demystified for them. For us, it’s put us on the culinary-destination map of the world.”
Ever since Tourism Queensland ran a competition in 2009 in which it agreed to pay the winning blogger $131,000 to live on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef for six months, companies have been increasingly hiring bloggers to generate media buzz and raise awareness of their products and services – particularly among younger adults.
The Vancouver International Airport Authority hired blogger Jaeger Mah to live at the airport for 80 consecutive days in 2011 and blog about his experiences.
Cathay Pacific in 2011 provided Toronto’s Michael Corey with free flights for 80 days on the condition that he blog and tell stories about his adventures.
