Arun councillors looking into using influencers to promote local tourism
Social media personalities would be paid to promote Sussex online
Councillors in Arun are investigating using social media influencers to promote Sussex as a county as part of a local tourism campaign.
The 'Sussex by the Sea' initiative is designed to attract visitors to the region and highlight the area's benefits of being so close to the sea.
At the Council's meeting last Monday (November 20th), the strategy was considered as they try to encourage tourism through the 'Sussex by the Sea' campaign online, through the authority's Digital Destination Awareness Campaign launched last year.
Conservative councillor for Rustington East, Shaun Gunner, said that the council should be investing more time and money into promoting the area on TikTok, paying influencers to come and film short videos of their time in the Arun district.
Several levels of government have already tried and tested this method to success, including the Cotswolds, Scotland and Iceland.
Speaking during the meeting, Gunner insisted: "Ditch Linkedin completely, ditch Twitter completely – and I would ditch Instagram completely. If there’s any spare budget, put that towards TikTok – look very strongly at having TikTok influencers.
He continued: “Anybody who’s on TikTok, you will see that there’s a whole host of people advertising locations with lovely, short, ten, 20-second videos of beautiful landscapes that get several million views. I appreciate this is something very new and unknown to this council but there’s a reason why people do it: it works.”
As well as this, Mr Gunner added that data the council has on tourism should include where people are looking the videos are from, so as to adapt and fine-tune their content to viewers.
Arun District Council currently has no presence on TikTok, as have most local authorities in Sussex as a whole. The only two district councils in the county that are on the app are Chichester and Hosham.
Following the last Digital Destination Awareness Campaign, which ended in June, the campaign was a success, which allowed for a second year to be given the go-ahead into 2024.