Are you answering the social media telephone?

I recently attended the Canada e-connect Conference, billed as e-tourism strategy focused. Among the sessions, some of the same themes were repeated. One that struck me was this:

It's 1999 again.

Remember back to 1999, people were just starting to sign up for email addresses. Businesses were fussing and fretting over who would answer all these emails, where would the personnel come from? What would you say in an email? What was the optimum response time?

Well it's 1999 again, only instead of getting an email address, it's time for you to start promoting your business online via face book, twitter, blogging, and including customer forums on your website.

Again we're faced with personnel issues, response times, and managing risk.

And just like when we first got our email addresses and learned how to make that modem work - we will learn how to leverage social media.

We will prevail !


Beth

e-connect

Canada's e-tourism strategy conference, Toronto, January 22 and 23, and guess who is attending?

That's right, me.

As one speaker put it "Consumers have seen the economic headlines and now expect to see the deals. 2009 has been proclaimed the year of the travel deal"

I'll be hanging with my friends at TIAC.

I'll be learning how to engage the tourist via e-tourism, and many other exciting things which I will be sharing with you over the coming posts.


So have a great week, and I'll see you again at our usual Friday post.

Regards,
Beth

And so 2009 begins

Greetings all,

I hope that the New Year is treating you well so far. As for myself, I spent a great holiday with my family, only to be taken down by a cold the first day back to work. Ironic - yes.

And so the first post of the year which should be full of fresh ideas and tidbits is going to be short and sweet...I'm too wiped out to look up anything new and exciting for you.

If you didn't do any of the following at year end, what better time then year's beginning to complete them:

Back up your files. Back up, back up, back up ! And put a reminder in your outlook or day planner to do it every week (that way you'll at least do it every two weeks !)

Clean out your email clutter, learn how to creat folders in outlook and move stuff around. Delete your deleted items. Clean out your sent items.

Go through last year's planner and find projects that are not finished. Move important dates into your new planner - such as my birthday July 15

Organize your sticky notes...and stop using sticky notes, it's not environmentally friendly, create a task list in outlook - much better.

Curl up and read those books you've been putting off. Winter days are perfect for that...this should not interfer with your casusal web browsing time that I recommended you do about 3 posts back :)

And so I leave you with this pearl of wisdom:

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight - Phyllis Diller



PS - My calendar is wide open for January and February if you would like to get together for a website mentoring session visit here for more information