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.
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.
So you’ve got a website and hopefully your customers and target market find it easily (a whole other topic), but once they do find it what sort of experience do they have? Does it project a positive image of your business or turn them off? Does it engage them or bore them? Is it easy to read and use or painful and frustrating?
One of the key things to ensure about your website is that it is persuasive – the language, the images, the layout and the usability all combine to appeal to and convert your website visitors into customers.
A key part of this is the language you use, here are some tips to help get it right:
There are some good examples of how to do this in the article “How to write persuasively“. Have a critical look at your website and homepage – do you think it is persuasive from a customer point of view?
One of the most frustrating things for travellers in New Zealand is the lack of accessible free wireless internet. I think it is an obvious opportunity for tourism operators, particularly accommodation, to turn this around and make it easy for their customers to be online. It is actually quite embarrassing that New Zealand is so backward with infrastructure to provide this freely to domestic and international travellers.
For the cafes, motels, hotels, B&B’s and so on that currently do offer their guests free wireless internet access – good on you! I hope you promote this service strongly and get more business as a result. For those that don’t, do it now – it should be part of your service and built into your rates, don’t annoy your customers by charging them extra.
Let’s get our travellers online as much as possible so they can share their experiences with others easily and promote New Zealand for us – it’s obvious isn’t it?
Branding in any media in not just about visual representation of your logo and colours, it’s also about the personality of your business and it’s people. Online media provides some unique ways to effectively share and reflect your brand image that allows engaging and interacting with your customers at a one to one level. Businesses can really use this to set themselves apart from competitors with how they communicate and manage relationships.
Here are some ideas that businesses can use to build and manage their online brand:
What online activity has helped build your business brand? Keen to hear any other suggestions or examples of successful online branding.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
