Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Conferences

Greetings,

Just a short note to let you know that next week I'll be attending two premier conferences in Montreal.

Online Revealed Canada is one of the best Online Marketing conferences with a Tourism focus. Produced by A Couple of Chicks e-marketers, I'm looking forward to learning lots of new ideas to share.

Canada e-Connect , Canada's Tourism Online Strategy conference organized by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC) is also shaping up to be a great two days of exciting speakers and presentations.

The organizers of the conferences have placed themselves back to back to bring a full week of learning to tourism operators, DMOs, governments and folks like myself. My aim is to bring back and share the best of ideas with you.

Take care, and I'll have my first post conference post in February!
Beth

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

What I learned from watching TV marathons

Greetings,

I hope you enjoyed your holiday, whether you only had the mandatory days or extra days, I hope you made the most of it like I did - watching TV show marathons!

Holiday programming consists of marathons and seasonal movies. Frankly after four weeks of this, I've forgotten all the "regular" season shows I used to watch.

The more you watch a show, the more involved you become in the characters, plot, outcomes. To the point where after watching 5 hours of Mad Men, I really wanted a drink of scotch and a cigarette, and I don't smoke.

Compelling TV almost made me want to start smoking.

And that's what I want from your website. Compelling content and imagery that makes me WANT to book a vacation immediately.

At the very least short list the destination and come back to revisit it.

This is why fresh content is important from month to month, and for repeat visitors from year to year. While I enjoyed those 5 hours of Mad Men, I can't imagine myself doing that every weekend...but in a few months... I may watch 5 different episodes.

I'm not talking vastly different changes. I mean it wouldn't be Mad Men without Don Draper :) The characters would be the same but the plots would be different. Like those locations working on being four season destinations. I should notice a subtle change up in the content for each season. Varying photos.

Seasonal activities should be highlighted and move to the top of the list as they become applicable.

Engaging video

Local personalities

Content that conveys first hand knowledge


Just little things like that will make your website more appropriate, engaging, relevant, enticing and make me CRAVE to visit you :)


Beth