ADEPT Marketing

This is a great summary by Karen Rubin from Hubspot about how to manage and plan content for your business blog so you can keep coming up with useful blog topics that attract targeted traffic. The video is 29 minutes long but definitely worth the time if you have your own business blog or are considering starting one.

See our Blog Set Up & Management Services

[business:Adept Marketing]

I’m interested to hear from New Zealand tourism operators as to what tourism websites bring them the most traffic and booking enquiries and why. Is there a website that you would absolutely always maintain a listing on (free or not)?

I quite often monitor the website statistics for tourism clients to see where their traffic sources are coming from so we can make decisions on where to best spend marketing money for online advertising. The answers are not always clear cut, and some sites work better for some and not for others, often depending on how the site ranks businesses (alphabetical or paid vs non-paid listings for example).

So is your most valuable tourism website any of the following or something else?

• Our national tourism website newzealand.com
• High profile tourism websites that you pay to list on like AA, Jasons and New Zealand Tourism Guide
• Your RTO, regional and local tourism websites
• Sector or Niche tourism websites that you specialise in e.g. luxury accommodation, B&B’s, Eco-tourism, etc
• Instant booking websites like Wotif, Ezibed, Travelbug, Expedia and so on

Perhaps there are a few key ones, and if you don’t know then you probably should find out. It’s a good strategy to be listed on a combination of the above listed sites to ensure broad exposure, so it’s just a matter of figuring out which ones. In any case it would be great if you could share what you think works for you.

There are conversations going on everywhere, all the time by your customers. Whether good or bad it’s “word of mouth” and something we are largely ignorant of until it gets back to us in the form of a new booking because someone has recommended you, or a complaint about something that didn’t meet their expectations.

A lot of the time you will never know about these conversations….well not quite, fortunately there’s now a growing number of these conversations happening online. Social networking sites, travel review sites and blogs are all ways people are now sharing their experiences with others in a much more public and accessible way.

Many tourism operators are very nervous about this, but I say it’s an opportunity – to be part of the conversation. It’s an opportunity because you have the ability to respond, whether it’s a thank you or an explanation to resolve a situation that has been remedied, then you can have your say.

But how do you find out about these “conversations”? There are a number of ways and you won’t find them all, or have time to, but if you participate in a few simple ways you can at least find the one’s that will get the most exposure on mainstream websites, so here are some tips to help:

• Set up and guide your customers to your own social media pages to make comments, this is your best approach. Have your own Twitter and Facebook pages that are promoted on your website for people to connect to, view and share their experiences on. Encourage them to comment, share their photos and recommendations. Overwhelmingly, if you have positive content on your own pages then this will overshadow any “glitches” where negative comments may have been made.
• Embrace the key travel review sites and promote your listings with them on your website where you can place their logos and website “widgets” (like Tripadvisor, Rankers and Virtual Tourist) and link to read your reviews. You can see a bit more about this topic in an article I published in August 2009, “Tourism Operators: Make Traveller Reviews Part of Your Marketing Strategy“
• Do online searches for “mention” of your business name – you can google it or do this on sites like Twitter, Technorati and Social Mention.

Of course, if you are confident of your business delivery and service then you may not be bothered to do all of this, but then you’d be missing out on some great conversations!

I’ve been working away on a new initiative for the New Zealand tourism industry to connect together online, sharing business articles, ideas and comments related to all sectors of tourism. A great way to network online and help each tourism business or organisation to succeed in tourism.

This is an independant website where all New Zealand tourism professionals are welcome to participate, and even add their own tourism related media releases or job ads for free.

Check it out here!

[business:Tourism Industry Blog]

Having been actively using Twitter for my business the last 6 months or so, I have observed that the Tourism Industry in New Zealand is very active with Tweeting and it’s gaining momentum all the time. Key tourism twitter accounts such as @grabaseat, @flyairnz and @purenewzealand are amongst the most popular in New Zealand in terms of the number of followers. So bravo for being a proactive industry with social media marketing!

For those of you not yet using Twitter here are some reasons why you should consider starting:

• It’s FREE.
• Once you’ve established a good network of followers it’s a very easy way to share information and communicate online.
• You can use it to help build awareness of your business and drive traffic to your website without being a salesperson, it’s more about relationships than sales but the end result is positive online presence.
• It’s a perfect tool for “viral marketing” where the people you connect with can help you to spread the word with very little effort.
• You can use Twitter Lists to group followers into different categories for viewing their updates e.g. customers/travellers, tourism industry, media etc.
• There are ways to automate feeding your Twitter updates into your website and other social media pages like Facebook and LinkedIn.

So if you think it may be time to jump into Twitter then have a look at this article I wrote about Getting Started on Twitter for Business. I encourage you to come and try it out for yourself. You can also look at this Interview with Tim Cossar on TV’s ASB Business about the “Tourism Sector Looks to Social Networking.”

For those of you already using Twitter let us know how it’s working for you – got any tips, successes or failures to share?