Visit London uses social media to engage with events industry

LONDON - Visit London, the city's official tourism body, has launched a number of social media channels to engage with the capital's events industry.

Managed by the tourism body's contributing editor Mike Fletcher, Visit London is building a strong presence across Twitter, LinkedIn and events industry network EventCrowd.com.

Partner and industry news stories, which are updated on Visitlondon.com/business on a regular basis, are being streamed via RSS feeds to both its Visit London LinkedIn group and Event Crowd group.

Visit London's business Twitter stream @VLbusiness is also fed onto EventCrowd.com.

The @VLbusiness feed contains information about events and venues in the capital, and prompts followers to view Visitlondon.com/business news each time the website is updated.

Tracy Halliwell, director of business tourism at Visit London, said: "It's incredibly important for Visit London to be communicating to the events industry at all levels and through a number of different media.

"Many of our partners have news and special offers which are time sensitive and therefore it makes sense to communicate through platforms such as Twitter and RSS feeds.

"We also wanted to ensure that we had a forum where events industry peers could discuss and voice opinions -- and that's where the LinkedIn group and EventsCrowd.com comes in to play."

Visit London also has three consumer-facing Twitter sites, including @visitlondonweb, which features the latest events and tourist information, @Dine_out_London, which provides news on the London Restaurant Festival, and @Only_in_London, which follows the latest unique events happening in London.

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