Optimize the new digital ecosystem of Bonjour Québec
Context and Mandate
Bonjour Québec is the digital and interactive platform of the Ministère du Tourisme du Québec, which allows tourists from here and abroad to plan their vacations/activities in the province.
Seeking to improve the effectiveness and impact of the platform's content, Bonjour Québec approached our team to obtain recommendations and strategies for its entire digital ecosystem.
Achievements
The strategic support requested by Bonjour Québec was divided into two parallel parts: the first focused on SEO strategy, while the second focused on the content strategy to be adopted on social media. These two distinct yet interconnected aspects covered the entirety of Bonjour Québec's digital ecosystem.
We conducted audits and produced a strategic guide with editorial and technical recommendations for each of the two major parts of the mandate.
1) Strategic Support for SEO
Initially, the digital team at Bonjour Québec sought strategic guidance in optimizing the SEO content used on their website. They also wanted to adopt best practices in content and technical SEO for their blog, which was currently under development and scheduled to be launched in the coming months.
This analysis and SEO recommendation phase were divided into two parts:
- Analysis of the existing content on bonjourquebec.com, which enabled us to create a strategic guide for SEO optimization for the entire site.
- Technical requirements and SEO best practices to be applied to the blog.
This SEO support was further reinforced by several quarterly follow-ups (dashboards, analysis, and recommendations).
Thanks to this first part of the mandate, Bonjour Québec now has access to various semantic analyses, keywords, measurement tools, editorial recommendations, and suggestions for backlinks (adding external links) to implement the best SEO practices online.
2) Strategic Support for Social Media
Alongside the SEO recommendations for Bonjour Québec's website and blog, there was also a need to think more broadly and consider their entire digital ecosystem, which, of course, includes social media! This second part of the mandate was carried out in synergy with the first.
The strategy for social platforms aimed to establish a clear and consistent vision among the various stakeholders involved in content creation and distribution.
In addition to this strategic work, we also needed to step back and conduct a thorough assessment to develop an overarching social media strategy, drawing inspiration from practices employed in the tourism industry. All of this was done while maintaining the organization's tone, personas, and brand image.
We also supported the Bonjour Québec team in identifying short-term best practices and potential areas for improvement in their content creation and distribution process across various channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or their upcoming blog.
An Unexpected Game-Changing Event
The suspension of advertising investments on Facebook/Meta announced by the federal and provincial governments due to the conflict related to the adoption of Bill C-18 completely changed the game for our team during the mandate.
Indeed, overnight, the Ministère du Tourisme du Québec was no longer able to amplify its publications on the platform. To address this new reality, our team implemented an emergency plan that relied more on organic engagement from subscribers for each publication on Bonjour Québec's Facebook pages.
This serves as a prime example of the importance of being flexible and agile in response to new realities that can arise during a mandate, especially in the digital world, where things move very quickly!
"Several companies rely on their amplification budgets to achieve a good reach on Facebook, but it's a risky game as it always requires more money to succeed. Our plan with Bonjour Québec was to increase the number of publications that naturally generate engagement with subscribers: open-ended questions, more playful quizzes or polls, etc., in order to improve organic reach. This aspect of the social media strategy was originally scheduled to be presented one month later, towards the end of the mandate. However, given the situation, we proposed to our clients to address this aspect immediately, allowing them to have a plan that, hopefully, would compensate during this amplification pause. The day after the announcement of the suspension of advertising investments on Facebook, we presented these recommendations, and the Bonjour Québec team was able to adapt their operations immediately."
Nicolas Pelletier, Digital Strategist at Tink.
An Ever-Evolving Ecosystem
With all the strategic guides, audits, dashboards, and performance indicators implemented by our team throughout this mandate, Bonjour Québec now has a range of tools and best practices to maximize the reach of its tourism content. And even as things continue to evolve rapidly, we will be there to support Bonjour Québec in the next stages of its ascent!