Michigan.org has earned the top spot for most visited state tourism website in the country for the seventh year in a row, says Experian Hitwise, an independent company that conducted the evaluation.
“The michigan.org website has always been, and continues to be, the flagship of the Pure Michigan campaign,” says George Zimmermann, vice president of Travel Michigan, part of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. “For many visitors, michigan.org is one of their first introductions to the state. We have worked hard to make it a place with an abundance of information, terrific visuals, and most importantly a helpful place to plan a Pure Michigan vacation.”
The Michigan website recorded more than 9 million Web visits in 2013, up from 8.8 million in 2012, according to Experian Hitwise. The state market share of 6.12 percent of all the Web traffic to state tourism websites was the best in the nation, followed by Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, and Hawaii.
Zimmerman says one of the top 10 drivers of traffic to the website is Pure Michigan’s Facebook page, which has more than 580,000 fans. The organization also has quite the following on Instagram and Twitter with nearly 80,000 followers on each site and more than 680,000 on Google+.
Pure Michigan’s social media presence has been ranked as the best in the nation among all state destination-marketing organizations by digital marketing agency Think Social Media in 11 out of the past 17 quarters.
“Our social media efforts provide a terrific platform to reinforce our advertising campaign by directly engaging with fans and guiding them to michigan.org,” Zimmermann says.
