Adventure traveler, TV host, and early Expedia govt Richard Bangs has been exploring the byways and backwoods of the arena and the Internet for decades. Now, with Steller, he is finding new methods to inform cell-friendly and visually striking memories of approximately the world’s most thrilling locations. Along with the manner, his platform promises compelling new ways to attach the locales and tour businesses there with audiences and influencers.
Bangs indicates Steller “may be the world’s largest travel storytelling platform.” Unlike generalist sites, including Instagram, Steller is targeted solely at travel-associated clothing. Unlike many websites, Steller’s built-in gear makes it highly clean for cellular customers to mix text, fonts, frames, images, videos, and more, then share the result with other Steller customers and other social media structures.
Steller was founded more than a decade ago as a hobby by Richard McAniff, a distinguished tech government who is also a travel image fanatic. Last August, Bangs worked with McAniff, his former Microsoft colleague, and current website online CEO Pete Bryant, to refocus and reboot Steller. Bangs took the title of Chief Adventure Officer.
To keep the website free of marketing, Steller monetizes its operations in distinctive ways. One technique, like that of the highly famous picture manipulation and sharing app PicsArt, is to sell upload-on equipment that provides new layouts and looks for creators.
“We are evaluating ourselves to some of the one-of-a-kind systems, but one might be LinkedIn, with their freemium model,” Bangs stated. With Steller, “you may search for any destination and get testimonies from people there, which may be very interesting. But we can see that certain inns and houses have memories to inform and don’t have products that allow them to try this.”
Bangs stated that the company is building a “prosumer” version, such as templates that accommodations and comparable corporations can buy to construct on-website showcases in their properties, services, and environment. Importantly, unlike Instagram, Steller Tales can encompass outbound links returned to a site, carrier, or journey.
That approach also leads to some other potential moneymaker, branded content, and influencer-marketing projects, fueled with the aid of the contacts Bangs has constructed because of his early days as founder of adventure tour provider Sobek Travel, now referred to as MT Sobek.
Steller has already constructed some of its testimonies around MT Sobek expeditions, which nonetheless provide the edgy adventures that first fired Bangs’ mind as a younger man.
“It lends itself very well to that; it’s a tale journey,” Bangs said of the MT Sobek expeditions. “There’s a cast, challenges, risk and hazard, and determination at the cease. It’s the proper component for a Steller tale. Many locations we speak to sense that journey is crucial to their tapestry.”
Steller just debuted its first important branded-content material deal, a formidable challenge with Tourism Ireland, the USA’s official tourism marketing arm, and two other nearby groups, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland.
The result is a virtual version of the antique “A Day In The Life” collection, Rick Smolan’s genius layout for coffee-table books that featured work by dozens of photographers, all shooting a single us off on a single day.
A Day in the Life of America became a massive hit. However, plenty of other countries got the remedy, including 1991’s A Day Within the Life of Ireland. Tourism Ireland might be a high-quality idea to revive the Irish version for a digital generation.
“We recognize that travelers are increasingly using cellular devices and social media to consume inspirational tour content,” Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons stated. “It is a superb manner to fill your coronary heart with Ireland.”
The content for the updated experience, A Digital Day within the Life of Ireland, changed into a shot on April 28, led by a set of prominent non-Irish social-media influencers Steller recruited via CreatorIQ. This Los Angeles agency tracks millions of influencers and their overall performance in their deals with brands.
The Day Within the Life influencers focused on journey content, including Tom Skerritt, Annette White, Stef Michaels, Garry Norris, and Kim Tate. CreatorIQ calculated their combined social-media reach at more than 76 million fans.
