Brand Your City
We often hear that social media is the present, that any company today should think itself as a tech company in some way or another in order to stay relevant in the decades to come and that consumer habits are changing so fast and so strong that traditional metrics and studies are not that useful because of the inability to catch up to the behaviorism of the current population.
Today I read an article from one of my go to daily urbanism/real estate blogs http://brandondonnelly.com where Brandon expreses how many cities are not taking branding into account and how this should now be more important than ever before, I couldn't agree with him more, the competition rules for tourism and even industry investment have changed and the biggest tool to win lays in social media and branding, in a similar way you would brand a product or even your company.
This phenomenon is easier to see with examples like Portugal and Croatia that have increased their influx of tourism revenues by crazy amounts in the last decade due to proper branding and advertising of their cities, targeting young people in social media which combined with lower than ever travel expenses makes it easier to see new places. Everything that is meant to have a sustained success n the future has to be branded, cities, companies and even people, This should be a bigger discussion that it currently is.
See Brandons article in the link below: