Building Awareness and Search Demand in the Chinese-Speaking Market for Tagawa Regional Tourism Association

Scope of Work: Strategy / Research, On-site Production & Photography / Video Production / Traditional Chinese Content / Social Media Publishing / SEO Content

Our Approach

The Tagawa region had very little existing content or awareness in the Chinese-speaking market.

In this situation, the challenge is not about competing with established destinations. It is about creating interest among travelers and anticipating the questions that follow: How do I get there? How long should I stay? Can I fit it into my itinerary?

Based on our experience with similar destinations, we decided to address both sides of that journey at the same time.

Views do not equal intent. Saves and shares are closer to the next step.

A high view count only tells us that the content gained exposure through the platform's algorithm.

Saves and shares, by contrast, indicate that users took an additional action with the content. They are closer to the state of thinking, "I might need this later." For travel content, these behaviors can be viewed as early signals that a destination may have been added to a user's list of potential places to visit.

The problem with lesser-known destinations is not that no one wants to visit. It is that people cannot find them.

For travelers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, awareness of Kyushu is highly concentrated around a small number of familiar cities.

For other destinations, the challenge is often not a lack of appeal, but simply that travelers do not know they exist. Even when interest is generated, a lack of Traditional Chinese information can make it difficult to determine how to get there, how long to stay, or how to combine the destination with other places.

For destinations that have yet to establish awareness in the Chinese-speaking market, creating the first set of Chinese-language content that can be found through search and actually helps travelers plan a trip is more valuable than simply increasing the number of social media posts.

There should be no time gap between social media and search.

When a video generates interest, but there is nothing to be found when users search for more information, that demand can disappear in the moment.

That is why we did not wait for social media to produce results before creating SEO content. Instead, the search content was developed and published in parallel with the videos.

The idea was to make sure there was something ready to capture search demand first, and then use social media to generate awareness.

What We Did

Five Reels: Designing Content Around Early Signals of Intent

We developed new angles based on the interests of audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and produced and published five Reels.

Together, they generated more than 300,000 views and over 7,000 interactions. Saves and shares accounted for nearly 4,000 of those interactions—more than half of the total.

This indicates that a substantial number of viewers took an additional action after watching the content, rather than simply consuming it.

A Day Trip to Mt. Hiko: Turning Interest into a Concrete Itinerary

On social media, we focused on the most visually appealing aspects of the destination. Users who wanted to know "How do I get there?", "How long should I stay?", or "Can I fit this into my itinerary?" were directed to a comprehensive Chinese-language travel guide.

Within two weeks of publication, the article had generated more than 1,000 impressions in Google organic search, along with nearly 300 citations in AI search.

Before this, the destination had almost no presence in Chinese-language search results.

The Same Change Was Observed Across Both Social Media and Search

Following the video releases, Google Trends showed the first clear rise in search interest for the keyword in Taiwan in the past year, moving above its previous baseline.

During the same period, our Chinese-language travel guide generated more than 1,000 impressions in Google Search.

One data source comes from our own website, while the other reflects search interest in the broader market through Google Trends. The fact that both showed a clear change during the same period allows us to confirm, at minimum, that search interest in the destination in Taiwan and organic search exposure to our content both increased around the time the videos were released.

The Effect of Activating Both Sides at the Same Time

The videos serve as an entry point for discovering a destination that travelers may not have known before.

The search content serves as another entry point when those travelers begin thinking about how to incorporate the destination into an actual itinerary.

Social media traffic naturally declines as content loses its initial momentum, while search content has the potential to continue accumulating visibility over time.

The value of this approach is therefore not limited to the moment when a video is published. It lies in the ability of search content to continue capturing demand even after the initial attention around the videos has subsided.

Results to Date

• 5 Reels generated more than 300,000 total views and over 7,000 interactions, including nearly 4,000 saves and shares—more than half of all interactions
• The Chinese-language "Day Trip to Mt. Hiko" guide generated more than 1,000 Google organic search impressions within two weeks of publication
• During the same period, Google Trends showed the first clear increase in search interest for the keyword in Taiwan in the past year
• The content cluster is continuing to expand, with further results to be updated on this page

For destinations that have yet to gain recognition in the Chinese-speaking market, our approach is to build awareness and search visibility at the same time, rather than generating attention first and figuring out how to capture it later.

If you are facing a similar challenge, please contact us.

For more about our marketing strategies, see our Insights.