Blog in review

So I've been blogging for a couple of years now - how time has flown by.

I'm fairly sure no one is reading it but I persist.

If only so I don't have to update my email signature. That's such a pain...


Depending on your business, blogs still have their place, though probably not as separate entities like this one, probably some page on your website that you update a lot during your peak season and periodically the rest of the time.

A lot of the purpose behind the blog has moved to social media. The conversations and interactions take place on Facebook. However Facebook hides behind a user account system, don't just assume all your followers have Facebook accounts. While a blog is out there for all to see and read.

Until we reach the realm of one username and one password for all, we'll always be multiplatform.


Unlike traditional media, there aren't blog or Facebook salespeople who call you up to renew like there are for your radio ads, or print materials or newspaper ads. Internet marketing is all about you; your time, your memory, or a trusted employee.


Here's a couple of posts from 2009 that I thought would be good to read again, or for the first time:

The 12 days of Website Best Practices


Just get the job done


I guess I didn't have anything earth shattering to share in 2010, doesn't surprise me, it was crappy year personally, not professionally

Professionally, I did 24 mentoring sessions, finally meeting project targets. Operators are starting to seek me out, rather then me pestering them. Awesome.

Some really great new tourism sites went up this year.

NB Trails

Auberge Les Jardins

Discover the passage

Festival Western

and I'm sure there's many more. I'm hearing from mentoring session clients every day who are in the process of developing a new site or new social media strategies.


Bring on 2011 !

Happy Holidays :)

Beth

beth@@tianb.com

How your website is like your car...

I drive a 2006 Hyundai. I bought it new, off the lot. Yes, I probably over paid but that's not the point.

Every month I pay a little on that car.

Every three months, I take it for oil changes or something and pay some more.

And every now and then I look at the new scratches, or a rock hits it and I witness its slow death.

As soon as a car leaves the confines of the auto plant, it's starting on its slow death. Even a car that never gets driven will eventually succumb to rust and elements.

And so does your website. You just don't realize it.

Every month that you don't look at your website and update content, it's dying.

Every season that goes by and you don't post new pictures, it's dying.

Testimonials that don't get posted, are like arrows through its heart.


Sure you can rebuild the engine, but the exterior will still rust out on you.

Eventually you have to stop and admit defeat.

And get a new car.


Or a new website.

Unless you're a mechanic - cars and their repairs are expenses that you just have to accept in order to get on with your life. (Besides public transit options etc)

So unless you're a web developer - technology costs of running a tourism operation is something you have to accept in order to market your business.


Website code that you bought in 2006 doesn't run as well as website code you can buy now.
Was Vista or Windows 7 out when that code was written? Nope.
Was Firefox and Google Chrome and IE 7 / 8 out? Nope.
Was the iPad and the iPhone out? Nope.

You need code for all these applications and devices.

Does my iPod sync with my old car? Nope.
Does my car talk to me or recognize my voice? Nope.
Is my car a hybrid? Nope.

These are all the improvements I must weigh against the cost of a higher monthly payment or being payment free - does that even exist anymore?


So find the money, find the will, find the determination and put out some bytes that the internet can be proud of!


I'll get off my soap box now.

If you need any help with any of that, you know where I am


Beth

Vancouver - it really is the other coast

Hi All,

Just back from a week in Vancouver visiting friends and I knew, I just knew, that you would want to hear all about it.

Background - Vicki and I went to University together. She now lives in Vancouver (Burnaby) with her husband, her daughter who is eight and her son who is two and their dog Horton. She runs a daycare in her home. She and her kids are active, busy, and fun! I only get to see her every three years or so, and I miss her already.

The first thing I noticed on the ride in from the airport was the lack of billboards. Vicki says they are working on the highways and the ads should be back soon. Whew.

The next thing is the guest room, cause it's like 2 AM AST and I'm not as young as I used to be.

Running a daycare from your home means early starts, lots of activity and sometimes late evenings. There's no time to check things out on a desktop / laptop in the office upstairs. She relies a lot on her mobile phone. Everything from finding contact numbers, to directions, to Elmo's official last name :)

Snack hints, quick game solutions, and other kid related tidbits are accessed via her mobile.

At night, recipes for cookies and breads are on the laptop in the kitchen while we bake for the next day.

She facebooks while we're at the amusement park and uploads photos of my green face after the last ride.

(note - she's not obnoxious about it, mostly while we're in line)

When we go out for the day and leave her assistant in charge, they text every now and then to make sure everything is OK

She doesn't have a GPS device in the car

And another thing I notice is that the cars are like 99% BC license plates. Which makes me realize not a lot of people drive to Vancouver / Victoria. They fly in. And maybe rent cars, which would also have BC plates.

So there probably is more reliance on mobile directions then GPS devices

In the end, the big take away is that every corner of this country is different. The method visitors use to arrive, tour, and interact varies a lot with geography.

But I think, and this is just me thinking out loud, that Mobile is finally here, there and everywhere.

Fright nite at the PNE - goulish

Print Ads - their time has come

So I was thinking the other day - I know you could smell the smoke from your house !

Be serious for a minute

Let me lay something out for you, and if I'm wrong then feel free to enlighten me

A print Ad in a newspaper costs at least $600 - at least

If we took 600 and divided by 12 months we get 50

A monthly social media budget of $50

At $10 per hour, I know that's probably low but we're just using round numbers here, at $10 per hour you could get 5 hours of someones time

A whole morning

How many tweets, facebook updates, blog posts, and you tube clips do you think one talented, computer literate, enthusiastic person could create, write, post, and edit in 5 hours?

The secret to making Social Media painless is to write it in advance and post it when it's relevant!


Where does your print ad end up?

The recycle bin.


Where do your tweets, blog posts, videos uploads end up?


GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS!



Where would you rather have your marketing messages?

In the recycle bin or in cyber space for all eternity?

Just asking.

Social Media Examiner

Greetings,

I've recently come across Social Media Examiner - not only is a super knowledge base, it's cute to look at :)

I think that a recent article on How to Turbo Boost your facebook page is super relevent and easy to understand.

What I want you to take away from here is that Facebook business pages can be exciting and interactive spaces, and it's high time you learned how it works.

Check out the video, the 8 minutes goes by quick, and there is a bit at the end about facebook contests - super important to us in the Tourism industry.






Also - check out this gent talking about content.

Joe Pulizzi Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

Full interview and links HERE

In Summary:

1. Social Media examiner is a great resource that's fun to use

2. Sign up NOW for facebook and learn how to use it

3. Create your content - you all have interesting stories and tidbits and insider info to share

4. Launch your social media campaign

And as always I'm here to help

beth@@tianb.com

Update on the new computer

So it's been a solid 10 days with the new computer and both my parents and myself have learned a few things

I copied off several gigs of pictures onto CD from the old computer. I didn't bother to put them on the new computer, however as Mom points out, "How am I supposed to send them to people now?"

Which is a valid point. While I assumed that all the pictures on the old computer had already been sent or facebooked or emailed, there will always be someone who is "new" and hasn't seen the latest pictures of my nephew. Perhaps she/he just got online (we are talking about my parents friends here) or perhaps she/he rarely goes online. Perhaps they had a computer failure and lost all their pictures (heaven forbid) and are wanting to recreate some of that.

Needless to say, there is always someone new online somewhere looking for something that you thought everyone already had.


Next, it was like pulling teeth getting my Mom to Google everything. In fact she point blank said she was "tired of Googling". Like it was some kind of torture I was making her complete.

I next resorted to "did you check their literature" when she asked for the 100th time "Where was the TD banking site?"

I was teaching her see, teaching her to read all that marketing crap that is on every TD ad, every TD statement, and every TD calendar in the house!

She didn't appreciate my teaching method.

And frankly I don't know what the heck she was doing that she couldn't google TD bank...

So I left it at that and added it to her favorites when she wasn't looking.


We also had a few days of fun because I forgot to install flash, shockwave, and java for their favorite game sites, and I also created the desktop icon for IE 64bit instead of IE 32 bit, apparently the world is not ready for IE 64 bit. My bad.

And they haven't mentioned the Aero effect or smooth scrolling, start bar quirks or any of the other fantastic changes that come with Windows 7 - frankly I don't think they ever have more then one window open at a time.


I think we're pretty much over the hump now, but if things change I'll keep you posted.


PS We also use Royal Bank but she didn't seem to have near the trouble with that one...

I won't mention it

I'm not going to mention how remiss I've been in my blogging, and I don't expect you to either.

Nuff said.




I just wanted to bring to your attention that in November 2009, facebook did some changes to its contesting policy - check the lastest version out at:


http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php


I'm not sure that you're allowed to run contests on facebook anymore ... and I wouldn't want them to freeze your page because that's a night mare you'll never get out of - Facebook doesn't seem to care about the individual business or person for that matter - ironically enough



I believe that you can have a retweet contest on twitter but not a member contest on facebook. So I'm not sure how to get out of that public relations mess if you happen to be mid contest, other then to maybe drop references to it and hope no one notices


Or you'll have to turn it around and have them send you an email as well.


Also make sure that you have more then one admin on your facebook fan page, if for some reason your account gets frozen no one will have admin access to your fan page.


Facebook is putting in new security every day and I've heard about people trying to log on from another country and / or from their mobile and their account gets locked because Facebook may deem it as hacking. Once your account is locked, again it's a night mare you might not get out of


Facebook doesn't seem to have any sense of customer service or a procedure for things like that.

So best practice is to have at least two admins, even if one is an account you create for your fictional grandmother and only log into once a month !


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On another note, I bought my parents (age 65+) a new computer for back to school ... well it was on sale because it's back to school.

It's an upgrade from their Win XP to Windows 7 - essentially skipping over Vista for them, not on purpose, Vista was/is a great operating system, it just worked out that way.

And I just left them to it. It's my own social/blogging experiment. No instructions, no introductory session while they hovered over my shoulder.

So we'll see how they make out.

Already they asked where one of their favorite websites was and while I did copy their favorites to a CD and could potentially put them back on the new computer, I responded with Google it.

Thus getting them in the mindset of googling things, and hopefully reshowing them how to create new favorites.

We'll see how it goes.


Later
Beth

The Mind Set

Why should I invest in a better website?

Why should I invest in online booking?

Why should I spend time on social media?


It's all about the mind set of a certain segment of consumer. I happen to be in that segment so let me share with you a story about my mind set.

It's hot, we're having a heat wave. My mom isn't feeling well, and the elderly don't fair well in the heat anyways --> Mindset: low tolerance

I ask my parents to buy an Air Conditioner ages ago, and they didn't --> Mindset: little patience

Now I'm at work, barely time for lunch and must source and purchase an air conditioner -- > Mindset: Frustration


So putting together my mind sets of low tolerance, little patience and frustration, I started with Google

Firstly I learn what an air conditioner is all about, and what specs I should be looking for based on how I expect to use it

Secondly I start visiting the websites of local retailers.

Futureshop --> low prices, no instore stock, only ground shipping

WalMart --> great prices, no online inventory checking system

Canadian Tire --> Ok prices, online inventory checking, unit in stock - SOLD


things we can learn from my experience:
1. I only visited three stores online and ONE store in person, I'm not in the mood to mess around
2. I spent more money just to save myself some hassle


While some vacations are thought out and planned in the greatest detail, some are last minute and born from frustration. The easier you make it for that consumer to stay with you, the more likely you are to complete the sale.



Here's another episode from the saga that is my life :)

Today while browsing facebook, I see that one of my friends status says that she's expecting a food basket from a local organic farm to be delivered today....sounds intriguing, and she's included the link to the farm's like page (fan page).

Fredericton is still having a heat wave. And although cooler in the house, I'm still low on patience and tolerance. So I check it out, this could save me time at the grocery store... if I stock up on dry goods, I may not have to even set foot there again til FALL ! Sounds like utter bliss to me.

Because this organic farm takes a few minutes a day to engage in social media, and because my friend likes them and engages with them, I may have found the route to a grocery store free summer!

Thus illustrating the power of social media.

And ending today's rant.

I hope it was educational :)


Stay cool,
Beth

Friday things to think about...

I'm sure you've all seen some form of this video over the past couple of years, but like all things technology, there's always the latest and greatest version

So for your viewing pleasure, the latest from May 2010





So you don't have to keep rewinding and reviewing, cause the music can be a bit annoying:


Over 50% of the world's popluation is under 30 years old.
96% of these people have already joined a social network

In 2010 Facebook topped Google in the rankings of weekly traffic in the US

One out of eight couples married in the US met on social media

Facebook added over 200 million users in less then a year

80% of companies use social media for recruitment

Generation Y and Z consider email something from the past, and many Universities have stopped distributing email addresses

The number TWO search engine in the world is You Tube ( I told you this one )

25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content!

34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

Social Ostrich!

I've got a new term of the week - Social Ostrich - referring to those who still have their head in the sand regarding the uses and benefits of social media in driving brand recognition and sales.

Ha, awesome isn't it?

No I didn't think of it myself, I found it somewhere on the internet.

Whew,
What a great annual conference last week ! You should have been there.

TIANB launched their new website - it's also awesome - check it out here.

And A Couple of Chicks did a great social media boot camp ... yeah there were other speakers but I'm only interested in the technology related ones :)

I brought back a terrible nasty cold and so this week has been almost a complete write off but before it ended I did want to share one great tip - Google Local Business or Google Places or whatever name they give it this week ;-) Point is, create your account now and get a free detailed listing in Google search results that is mobile friendly !

www.google.ca/lbc

Excellent for those who can't afford a mobile website, excellent for helping customers find your phone number, physical address, quick photo, and other details without having to load up your website.

It's like as amazing as the Yellow pages were when they first came out. Remember??? Does anyone remember life before the Yellow pages? Well I'm sure folks were amazed to have all that information at their fingertips and in one location.

Remember party lines ... my mom had a party line growing up, she used to say that the lady across the street would listen in on her and her boyfriend. And now all kids have their own phone, and a cellular phone at that !

When I was a kid - I WAS the TV remote !

I'm starting to ramble now, must be the cold medicine.

Anyways your homework til next post is to create a Google Place for your business.

Welcome June,
Beth