The profession of lifestyle blogger and influencer has become particularly professionalized in recent years.
Tourism brands and destinations have collaborated with numerous travel bloggers to create content, photos, videos, influencer campaigns and blog posts.
At the same time, the Lifestyle sector has exploded on social networks, and today benefits from an even bigger audience and engagement.
But is it effective for our sector?
Can we promote a destination through players from a different sector?
What are the advantages of these campaigns, and the pitfalls to avoid?
We interviewed lifestyle blogger Floriane Leost, better known as Floriane_lt, who agreed to collaborate with us on our latest project in the Dominican Republic.

• Can you tell us what your travel income is based on?

I’m rarely paid by the industry to go, so I accept the trip if I know I can create creative content in parallel for the brands I work with.
The idea is to place products in this destination to give them a new vision.
It’s an art direction job.
As I’m self-employed, the days I spend on it are necessarily days taken from paid content creation time.
Of course, I’m being offered a trip, and that’s a great opportunity, but it’s still a job for which there are expectations: of content on my part, and of quality on the part of the destination, the brand or the agency.

• You agreed to go on unpaid blogtrips, particularly to the Dominican Republic, why did you make this choice?

I try to remember that we’re doing a job and that it deserves to be paid for.
However, on certain projects, such as the Dominican Republic, I find a balance.
I was dreaming of this destination, and the program provided by the agency beforehand was extremely dense and relevant to my community.

This enables us to forge links with other influencers, exchange ideas about our profession and bring our communities together, especially thanks to our competitions.

I do these trips for the experience, the original content I can create.
The fact that I’m not paid by tourism brands means I have to take time out from my travels to create content for the brands I work with all year round.
However, when the trip is so qualitative and relevant, it’s not difficult to exceed the expectations of the service providers and create ever more content.
It’s an extra return for thanking the teams, and an exchange of trust.

• Do you think your content needs are different from those of a travel blogger?

There are similarities, as I always create a travel diary with practical addresses, so that the trip can be reproduced, and deploy communication on the same networks, led by Instagram.

My photos, on the other hand, are not pure destination shots, as I’m more involved in staging, by being present in the image myself.
This creates a sense of identification with my community.
I’m also always looking to surpass myself in terms of creation.
Sometimes on certain trips, lifestyle influencers are confined to food, hotel and activity content, while travel influencers are pushed into more specialized, purely destination-based photo content.
I’d love to develop this very photographic side too, working on lighting and viewpoints, and focusing even more on destination assets.

• At a time when the majority of travel campaigns focus on influencer profiles from the same sector, what do you think a lifestyle profile can bring to a destination?

An opening onto an appropriate target that corresponds to it, and a commitment that is often superior.

I get a lot of feedback, questions about my activities, my trip, and I get a lot of inspirational feedback: my followers in turn send me photos and winks of their travels and experiences on Instagram, so I see them following in my footsteps.
It’s a wonderful recognition.

• What do you think of travel contests on Instagram?

It’s a huge commitment, both for us and for the destination.
For example, for the Dominican Republic, we teamed up with 3 influencer accounts to offer the same trip we had experienced together.
This association was possible because we share the same values and our audiences are consistent without being similar.
On my post alone, I received over 15,000 participations (by the way, many Bretons now follow the Rep Dom page! laughs).
It’s a nice spotlight on the trip itself, it transfers the influencers directly to the host account (which keeps a good portion of them), and it also thanks the influencers and their subscribers for following the story.

• Do you have a way of identifying the success of a blogtrip with your audience?

Yes, thanks to the number of reactions in story and post.
I get more reactions when I travel.
People ask me for the complete guide on the blog.
I also get a lot of feedback on the photo reports I do.
I get about 20% more likes.

I also do affiliation and promotional codes (this works well in the hotel business).

• How do you see the Lifestyle offering evolving in digital tourism communications?

The community is not the same: more everyday, less in search of specific information, it lets itself be surprised and embarked on our adventures.
This audience, as long as it’s targeted (and authentic!) is central, I think, for Travel brands wishing to reach the 28-35 age group.

I’d like to develop more inspirational and artistic content, so that we’re taken more seriously in our content creation and work time.
I’ve been living 100% off social networks for 4 years now (7 years since I created my networks), a job that has become more professional and refined.
Of course, we influencers aren’t journalists, but our playful approach is no less creative and strategic.
And the commercial returns are there, I see them every day, and that’s what keeps us going.
An influencer, content creator or blogger, whether Travel or Lifestyle, is first and foremost a communications and image professional.
His creations and his time are spent on behalf of brands that exploit this content and their image.
While we communicate every day out of passion and passion for what we do, we can’t respond to creative and production orders without remuneration, especially as this devalues our work and an entire ecosystem.

If I could, I’d develop this angle, bringing along more equipment for more content, a vlog camera, my drone, and 100% of my day would be dedicated to creating content, inspirational video propelled on my networks and those of the inviting brands.

I hope that lifestyle will gradually find its place in the Travel marketing ecosystem, in the same way that Travel bloggers have recently opened the door to Lifestyle, with collaborations that have long been at the heart of our business.
And all the better for it!