Alberta Business Marketing

Apple has introduced a slew of new products in their annual iPod makeover. This year however, it’s really time for more than just the back to school kids to pay attention.

Here are the four most important reasons why your tourism business should invest in a new iPod and benefit from understanding the possibilities of iPod / iTunes makeover to improve your business.

1. High Definition video is built right into the iPod Touch. Are you kidding me? Go to your favourite big box store and look into buying an HD video camera to shoot video for your business. For $200 you can have an HD video camera that does a heck of a lot more than shoot video!  Your international guests can even make person to person video phone calls over wifi networks – with an iPod!
   
2. Experience how easy it is to make handheld reviews and give recommendations. iPod Touch with it’s inherent wifi and instant access to apps makes it easy guests to review your business.   Another reminder to open up the wifi in your building (and beyond) and invite guests to leave reviews.  Traveler reviews is the currency of social networking.  If you are still charging guests for wifi, get an iPod, and learn how easy it is to post reviews on the likes of TripAdvisor, Yelp! and others.  Maybe once you see how guests use it, you’ll give wifi away (like you do with the towels and napkins) like the cool hotels and restaurants do.
3. Start building your location-based information resource for guests. The introduction of camera on iPod Touch will create a larger uptake in the use of QR (Quick Response) codes and other optical triggers like Microsoft Tags to allow you to provide rich media to your ideal guests.  Consider, what information, photos, video, music, audio can I share with my guests here and now that would enhance their experience.  QR codes let guests with iPhones Touch instantly link to that content.  Serve the family market, put QR codes on garden gnomes and send the kiddies on their way. (thx @nancyarsenault).  Got an amazing piece of art hanging on your wall, link to the artists Wikipedia page.  Got a translated verson of your menu online? Link to it from your existing menu. …. etc.  QR codes is how McDonalds in Japan provides nutritional information on their food products.
   
4. With Ping Apple has made it easy for fans and followers to give music recommendations.  Could Ping be the next social network your guests want to follow you on. You play music at your location right?  Ever had a guest wonder who your favourite musical artists are?  Who is playing in your background music?  I wonder if your guests might want to follow you for your musical tastes?  The future of Apples social network could make it THE location to share photos and video along with music. Is Facebook’s lunch next on Apple’s menu?   Wouldn’t it be easy for Apple to let you share your calendar, status updates, etc. with your iPod or iPhone contacts through such a network as Ping?
   

Got any ideas on a fifth reason your restaurant, hotel or inn should buy a new iPod?

Tags: apple, iphone, ipod, ping
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This rocks.
If you are still not using Google services to enhance the management of your tourism business, consider getting on board the G-train.
I’m delivering a training program in the fall that will be focused on helping tourism businesses streamline their CRM processes using the plethora of free tools on the Web, many that Google provides.

As a Gmail user, I’m already addicted to Google Calendars, Tasks and Documents – especially the free Google Forms tool which makes tracking inquiries and leads amazingly simple, but now, we can make free phone calls fromour computer right in our email client!

It’s as easy as clicking call phone from my google chat window and I’m making calls using my computer speaker and headset or built in computer microphone.

Watch out Skype.
I’m seriously thinking of dumping our expense for outgoing phone calls from the telephone and moving exclusively to Google calls within Gmail (free-for-now across North America and seriously cheap around the world).

Since the major telcos have been ditching their telephone booths, watch for someone like Google to come into your community and offer free services to fill the void.   For the 20% of North Americans who don’t carry a cell phone or for travelers in airports who don’t want to pony up the $2 bucks a minute to talk to folks overseas while they are traveling.

HECK, consider setting up a computer in your lobby and set it up with a Google account to provide free North American phone calls for your guests!  Now that’s something your ideal guest could really appreciate!

Be sure to hang a sign that says – “Tell your family and friends you are calling for free from – ‘YOUR Business Name’ “.

In the process, you might recruit a few new fans.

Tags: free phone calls, free web marketing stuff, google, google news
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Cell phone has already replaced landline for 30% of U.S. Households

Also this report on cell phone use and adoption for online payments shows 15% of folks have bought things with their phone.

Where we are now: 50% of cell phones are web-enabled and there are 3 billion cell phone contracts across the planet.

Can you see the future?

Here’s my guess at the new communication landscape in 2014:

• 80% of Cell phones are Web-enabled.
• 50% of audio / video person to person communications take place over a handheld device that is not a landline phone.
• 25% of people will regularly be paying for goods and services with their cell phone – linked to financial services.
• More people will be accessing the Web by phone than by computer.
• People will use computers primarily for work and school, handhelds will be the device of choice for accessing information that matters – when and where it matters most, HERE and NOW.
• Computer banking will be replaced by handheld apps for most people.  (hopefully banks won’t fall into the trap of making the handheld a premium revenue-generating service!)
• Office space will become cheap, cheap, cheap as businesses move away from clustered office cubicles and embrace an open-office standard where business is transacted wherever people are.

What is your best guess at the new communication landscape in 2014?  What do you think the implications are for travel and tourism businesses?

Tags: free web marketing stuff
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By now, most of us have heard that the Web is social, but are you taking action to encourage social actions on your blog or website? Of course we can socialize with our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like, but now even our websites and blogs can become places where social actions can bring big benefits.

Three Steps to Earning Tweets and Likes

Step 1: Create great content, stuff that gets people excited, interested and enthused about the content you create.  Think beyond basic website information, think about providing something that your fans will want to tell others about.

Step 2: Ask for the action you want people to take.  Be straightforward – instead of leaving it up to your website visitor to decide how to share, ask them to Tweet about it or Like it.  I like to call this action “a small yes”  vs a “big yes”, like opening their wallet to get out a credit card!

Step 3: Make it easier to take that step by providing buttons that make it easy! Grab the new Twitter Tweet code http://twitter.com/tweetbutton and make a customized Facebook Like button http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like.  Then just paste the html code into your blog or website.

Benefits of Buttons

The nicest thing about using Facebook and Twitter buttons is they are interactive and easy for the users.  It is a very small request to ask a visitor to Like or Tweet about you when all they need to do is click a button on your webpage.  If a visitor likes what they see, engaging with it, brings some sense of personal satisfaction.

A big benefit is that this action is social, letting the website visitors spread word about your offer to all of their friends and followers. Actions produce results that are instantly visible to the clicker.  As the button is pressed, the counter updates, showing number of times the page has been Liked or Tweeted.  It’s a small bit of feedback that encourages users who are social to take action on your page.

Sharing can be viral:  When visitors see others have tweeted or liked your content, it encourages others to share it too! Tweet Button is very well designed

Tweet Buttons Well Designed

The Twitter button is well thought out and features text you can define (default is the page title), a shortened URL and a link to your preferred Twitter account. Users of the code can also recommend a second twitter account to follow once the user confirms their tweet.  Twitter users can also edit the tweet to their desire.

Using the Code

Twitter Tweet Button code is super user friendly, because wherever the code is used, the tweet that is generated automatically creates a shortened URL to the page that was liked.  Once you’ve decided on the design of the button you want for your site, you can use the same code over and over again on any page that you would like tweeted.

The Facebook Like button is highly customizable.  Website editors can even choose to show the Facebook avatar (photo) of the last person who liked your stuff.

Facebook Like button could be better

One of the downfalls of the Facebook Like button code generator, is that the Url to Like must be updated for each page the code is placed on so that when people Like your content, the link in the Facebook status update links directly to the content that was liked.

Think about your site users and fans before determining how social to make your button.  Adding a counter encourages action, but I think most users might be hesitant to see their face show up on the webpage of a tourism business.  My preference is for a simplified counter to save page space.

Get Social on your Webpage or Blog with Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons

If you are in the tourism business, there are big benefits to be had by creating content that engages your audience, just make sure you are making it easy for webpage visitors to share your content with their fans and followers by using Facebook Like buttons and Twitter Tweet buttons.

Tags: Facebook, facebook like, tweet button, Twitter
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

By now, most of us have heard that the Web is social, but are you taking action to encourage social actions on your blog or website? Of course we can socialize with our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like, but now even our websites and blogs can become places where social actions can bring big benefits.

Step 1: Create great content, stuff that gets people excited, interested and enthused about the content you create.  Think beyond basic website information, think about providing something that your fans will want to tell others about.

Step 2: Ask for the action you want people to take.  Be straightforward – instead of leaving it up to your website visitor to decide how to share, ask them to Tweet about it or Like it.  I like to call this action “a small yes”  vs a “big yes”, like opening my wallet to get out my credit card!

Step 3: Make it easier to take that step by providing buttons that make it easy! Grab the new Twitter Tweet code http://twitter.com/tweetbutton and make a customized Facebook Like button http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like.  Then just paste the html code into your blog or website.

Benefits of Buttons

The nicest thing about using Facebook and Twitter buttons is they are interactive and easy for the users.  It is a very small request to ask a visitor to Like or Tweet about you when all they need to do is click a button on your webpage.  If a visitor likes what they see, engaging with it, brings some sense of personal satisfaction.

A big benefit is that this action is social, letting the website visitors spread word about your offer to all of their friends and followers. Actions produce results that are instantly visible to the clicker.  As the button is pressed, the counter updates, showing number of times the page has been Liked or Tweeted.  It’s a small bit of feedback that encourages users who are social to take action on your page.

Sharing can be viral:  When visitors see others have tweeted or liked your content, it encourages others to do it too!

Tweet Button is very well designed

The Twitter button is well thought out and features text you can define (default is the page title), a shortened URL and a link to your preferred Twitter account. Users of the code can also recommend a second twitter account to follow once the user confirms their tweet.  Twitter users can also edit the tweet to their desire.

Using the Code:

The Facebook Like button is highly customizable.  Website editors can even choose to show the Facebook avatar (photo) of the last person who liked your stuff.  One of the downfalls of the Facebook Like button code generator, is that the Url to Like must be updated for each page the code is placed on so that when people Like your content, the link in the Facebook status update links directly to the content that was liked.

Think about your site users and fans before determining how social to make your button.  Adding a counter encourages action, but I think most users might be hesitant to see their face show up on the webpage of a tourism business.  My preference is for a simplified counter to save page space.

Twitter Tweet Button code is super user friendly, because wherever the code is used, the tweet that is generated automatically creates a shortened URL to the page that was liked.  Once you’ve decided on the design of the button you want for your site, you can use the same code over and over again on any page that you would like Tweeted.

If you are in the tourism business, there are big benefits to be had by creating content that engages your audience, just make sure you are making it easy for webpage visitors to share your content with their fans and followers by using Facebook Like buttons and Twitter Tweet this buttons.

Tags: Facebook, facebook like, tweet button, Twitter
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off