Celes Davar at Earth Rhythms is an experience provider in Canada’s Riding Mountain National Park. His use of streaming web video helps his ideal client understand how guests using his services can discover the story behind the sights and sounds of the National Park. Celes uses a dedicated wordpress blog to share stories of his customized adventures and learning experiences with words, pictures and videos.

Chipmunk harvests thistle seeds from Celes Davar on Vimeo.

How can you use media to tell stories about your guest experiences in a way that enhances your credibility with your ideal guest?

Probably not…but I think I took a good step forward on Saturday.

I have been a huge supporter of the blogging platform WordPress for many years.  Like many of you, I cut my teeth on the free versions of WordPress and Blogger.  However, when I started to take blogging seriously, I stumbled on a company called Siteground.com and the rest is history.  Blogging is now part of my daily routine and this blog reaches thousands of folks each day.

WordPress offers one of the most reliable and easy to use blogging platforms available today.  Over the course of my regular business day, I work with many Calgary and global companies on how they can leverage blogs in their business.  Ulistic offers a wide range of blogging consulting services for business.  From blog consulting to coaching.  Contact me if I can help you with your business blogs at anytime.

WordPress is evolving to a fully functional web development platform.

For many years WordPress has strictly been used as a blogging platform.  For a while, some of the leading web developers started developing great looking websites on WordPress.  However over the past little while WordPress has become more acceptable in the mainstream web development world.   WordPress is now making serious moves towards offering a full-featured and rich content management system and web development platform.

On Friday, I met up with a good friend of mine and fellow WordPress blogger in Calgary and we immediately jumped into sharing tips and tricks on how we can make our WordPress blogs really sing.  I shared a few great plugins that I have found and started to use every day.  Many of our Ulistic clients are also leveraging these great additional functions on their WordPress blog.  Some of the plugins allow you to scroll testimonials, perform grammar/spelling checking and a wealth of other great added features.  You can even send a thank you note to those folks who leave a comment on your blog.

Then my friend shared with me a service he has been using and having some great success with, headwaythemes.com.  Headway is a blog development platform for WordPress.  You can see it on this blog, this weekend I changed the layout of my blog to a headway designed blog.  It took a bit of playing around at first, but after you learn how it really works and read the manual  or watch the YouTube videos it is quite awesome.  Headway takes all the confusion of CSS and HTML  and offers a powerful interface for you to develop your own professional business blog.  Upload your own header, change colours and really take ownership of your blog.

Don’t kiss your web developer goodbye just yet, but here is another web tool you can take advantage of for your blogs.  Your web developer combined with Headway can really make your blog rock n’roll.  I am not a developer, but as an avid blogger and marketing professional…I get this and the power a great locking blog can do for business.

Headway only works on your hosted WordPress blog.

Sorry folks…you need to have your own hosted version of WordPress to make this work.  If you have your blog hosted on the free WordPress servers, you can’t take advantage of the power headway offers.  However, don’t worry I have a solution for you.  Get a hosted version of WordPress with your own domain name for only $9.95 for the first year.  Click Here – Cheap WordPress Hosting.  After the first year, your hosting is only $120 for the year.  Great deal to get started.

Headway is about $90 for a personal version which allows you to run it on 2 of your websites, upgrade to the developers version for about $160.00 and use it on unlimited sites.  This is an awesome tool for WordPress, if you are serious about your blogging – this service if for you.

Last weekend I made an impulsive decision to hop in my car and head to Manhattan and join the travel blogging event of the year in Greenwich Village. TBEX ’10. Although I spent almost as much time in my car traveling to and from NYC as I spent in the Big Apple, it was well worth the journey.
The Travel Blog Exchange has taken very little time to find it’s feet and its focus, bringing together travel bloggers from around the world to learn from one another and inspire one another. I first encountered many of the travel blogging community on Twitter. They were there on their little Ning site dreamed up by TBEX founder Kim Mance (@kimmance) to assist bloggers in getting to know one another before the first TBEX event, a one day get-to-know-everyone affair that was an add-on to the already popular BlogHer conference (creating opportunities for women who blog to gain exposure, education, community and economic empowerment) happening early summer 2009 in Chicago.

Being keenly interested in the direction technology as been taking tourism, I headed to South By Southwest in Austin Texas, 2009 where I first crossed paths with the vanguard of the travel writing community – those edgy folks even had their own travel blogging session at SXSW and the room was full to overflowing!! Congrats to that to Pam (@nerdseyeview) and Sheila (@SheilaS) for opening the door to the first real community event for travel bloggers.

After Chicago and the first TBEX gathering, NYC and TBEX ’10 came along.

Wow.

Hundreds of travel bloggers converged on NYC – learning how to craft stories, how to use multimedia, how to earn money by telling travel stories on the Web in two days of learning and networking events. Although the conference took place over two days, the social events and gatherings that were bookended on this event kept the party going for more than a week. Don’t believe me? Check out the #TBEX hashtag on Twitter to see who was there. You’ll see they are already getting ready for TBEX ’11 in Vancouver.  Early Registration has opened and the early registration blogger spots are almost filled already.

The only thing missing? The Travel Industry.
Tourism Folks, these are people you NEED TO KNOW! Travel bloggers are the cool hipsters who have been using the Web to tell travel stories since before you even knew what a blog was.  I know, some of us still don’t get it but that’s OK. Because since these folks get it, we don’t have to understand everything about the Web, we just have to get connected to more travel bloggers.

Top 10 Reasons I hope to see you in YVR

1. Travel Bloggers have a wide range of niche travel interests and they have an audience (your ideal guests) that shares their interests.
2. Travel Bloggers Get it!  The whole it.  They have access to places to distribute their stories about YOU and your community – cool places to go and things to do!
3. Travel Bloggers can help you learn what you need to know.  Over the past year a few of these travel bloggers have creating new business cards – cards because they  are sharing their expertise with the tourism and travel industry in online training.
4. If you like the social part of conferences, you’ll love TBEX.  Sponsored after conference gatherings are good opportunities to network with travel bloggers.  If you (like me) prefer out of the way gathering places, you’ll be sure that TBEX in Vancouver will help you connect with all the neato places to go and things to do so you can enjoy out of the limelight quality time with interesting folks you meet.
5. TBEX is sponsored by the tourism industry in Canada.
   http://tourismvancouver.com/
   http://www.canada.travel/media
   http://www5.hellobc.com/travelmedia/
6. Learn how to pitch stories and meet the people looking for interesting, out of the way places like yours.
7. Since not many in the tourism industry know about TBEX, you’ll get almost exclusive access to travel writers and bloggers.
8. TBEX is the least expensive travel conference on the planet, especially for bloggers, but for tourism industry it’s a great deal too!
9. Did I mention that TripAdvisor gave away three iPads at TBEX10.  I enjoyed the time to chat with my good friends at TripAdvisor and share my concerns about the new paid business listings for accommodation providers.  I’d have had a tough time getting my say at a traditional tourism gathering.
10. Get re-inspired about the latest trends in the uses of technology and social media on the Web in a language you actually understand.

Learn more about Travel Bloggers and their value to the Tourism Industry with these podcast episodes:

• A conversation with bloggers about their networks
• Podcast – a conversation with Travel Bloggers

According to a recent Nielson report, three quarters of Internet users are social, so surely by now you’ve dipped your toes in the blogging and Facebook pool.

Way back in the old days, 2006 or so, you might have been forgiven by your guests and prospects for not having a life outside your own Website. Conversely, today it is more than likely the first interaction your prospect has with you will be via photo or video sharing by friends and family, reviews of your services on sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp!, or a story by a travel blogger.

So this week, it might be worth considering how deep to dive into the social networking pool?

Since the average Internet user devotes 22% of their Internet time to social networking, how much of your online marketing budget time and money should  be focused around social networking?

Links:

• http://mashable.com/2010/06/15/time-spent-online-nielse/
• Nielson Report on Internet Use
• photo credit Seattle Municipal Archives

Professional writers blog: that is my short and emphatic answer to the implied question in a guest post by Larry Brooks on the Problogger blog.  His cryptic title, as he described it was, Why Professional Writers Need a Blog. Or Not.  His article raised some interesting questions and on some of these I profoundly disagree with what he said.

What Is A Professional Writer?

To avoid any unnecessary debate over terms, we should clarify what we mean by a professional writer.  In my book it is someone who writes for an audience and enjoys a success in so doing.  Success can be measured in monetary terms or perhaps merely in the number of readers that the writer draws to his writings.  Some successful professional writers are so well known that anything they write will attract a large audience.  For them is the luxury of doing what ever comes naturally and the audience will be there.

Should Professional Writers Blog?

Leaving aside the highly visible and well-known writers, what is the answer to our question for the average professional writer who may be unknown to his first time readers.  Larry Brooks divided such writers into two groups and felt different rules applied.  His groups were

• Non-Fiction Professional Writers
• Fiction Writers

If we examine what a blog really does, I think you will see that really the same answer applies to both. 

Blogs Versus Websites

A blog is really one type of website so in fact the comparison here is between blogs and websites which are not blogs.  Non-blog websites contain static web pages and normally little new content is added from one period to another.

A blog on the other hand has continuing new content added on a time sequence basis.  Very often it has an associated news feed, which is a file that automatically alerts aggregators of news that a new item has been added.  This double-up visibility is one of the key reasons why blogs are much more effective in bringing in visitors to the online property.

Blogs Have Heightened Online Visibility

An even bigger leveraging factor on blog visibility is that Google, the dominant search engine, in some ways overvalues blog post web pages relative to static web pages.  Google does not make public why its behavior should be like this, but one element in this is that the Google search engine values recent new web pages above more established and older web pages, at least for a few days.

This means that if someone wishes to have an online presence, a blog is far superior to a regular non-blog website.

Who Should Blog?

Given this heightened visibility for blogs, who then should be blogging?  A better way of opening up this topic is to ask, Who should not be blogging?  If you are aiming to communicate with the world via an online presence, then this online presence should be a blog.  It may be appropriate to add other more static website components such as a forum or a wiki, but their content will be slightly less visible through the search engines.

Some will question whether they have sufficient ongoing content to be able to create new blog posts with some regularity.  The answer to that is perhaps best illustrated by discussing the group that Larry Brooks suggested should have a static website.

Should Fiction Writers Blog?

Larry Brooks had the following advice for fiction writers:

Why doesn’t a blog work to promote a novel?

Because you can only blog about your book for so long.  And blog readers are almost completely intolerant of self-serving, thinly disguised promotional agendas.

You have to earn every single moment of personal mindshare from a prospective buyer through the delivery of content they can put to work in their lives.

Blogging also comes with another type of risk.

Even if you have valid to offer.

Blogging can be addictive and hungry, it can eat up energy, time and mindspace like no other intellectual pursuit you’ve ever been tempted to give in to.

If you dive in, you need to be all in.   And that’s a huge commitment.

Given that line of thinking, Larry Brooks pushed for a static website for each novel.  However he ignores the fact that blogs are several times more visible than static websites in search engine results.  The blog can be very effective during the buildup to the book launch and following the launch. 

Indeed even thereafter, devout readers may be interested in whatever further developments have occurred about the novel and any sequels. Such content may be less hot with human readers but it serves to maintain visibility among those search engines.  The importance of this is such that a blog is always worth the effort even though these blogs will require only limited extra content as time passes.  Nevertheless they create a much larger impression on the search engine radar screen around the static website that is specifically for the novel.  In this way, the visitor traffic to the novel website will be maximized on an ongoing basis.  That should lead to higher book sales, which is after all the key objective.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Professional Writers Blog

Related Posts

• February 24, 2010 -- Marketing Right Now For Winners (0)
• April 14, 2009 -- Three Tips For Choosing Great Blog Topics (1)
• March 6, 2009 -- Google Is Killing Its Golden Goose (11)
• March 16, 2008 -- Bell Canada Website Problems (4)
• July 27, 2007 -- If I Build It, They Probably Won’t Come (0)

That was the title I selected as the introduction for a post to launch the new free downloadable e-book: Marketing Right Now. I pondered long and hard on what title might be best. The book deals with the fundamental basics of starting up and growing a business. Almost by default I chose the title Marketing First. My implicit thinking was that any activity is best done if you first cover strategy and then work out the tactics. That is true in waging war and it is also true in growing your business.

An alternative title might have been Marketing Strategy First. When researching that title, I was struck by a website I found that dealt with ’strategic marketing for growing companies’. The strategic marketing expert had assembled a lot of the right stuff. However I was somewhat surprised to find that the blog was buried almost in the footer and the archive of blog posts, shown on the right, suggested this was not a high priority.

Strategy First, Blog Second

Although there are many important principles in the E-Book, Marketing Right Now, if I could choose only one that would have the biggest impact then I think it would be the title of this post: Blogging First And Foremost.

The sad fact is that blogging does not get the respect it should have. Blogging is all about the dialogue you should have with your prospects and clients. Even if that were not sufficient reason, the other important factor is that Google loves blogs. The RSS news feed for your blog is an instant alert to the world that you have something to say.

Nevertheless blogs, like Rodney Dangerfield, get no respect. Of course they most often started off as personal musings or journals, so why would anyone else care. In addition, blog is such an unfortunate and ungainly name. I often recommend that clients use a different name. For example News and Views is an upbeat kind of title. For some websites, Fresh Ideas can be an even better choice.

Dialogue With Your Market-Place

If you are not using your blog to make contact with your market-place at least once per week, you might adopt this discipline. As your week draws to a close, ask yourself the question, “What did my prospects and clients hear from me this week? Of course there is another question you should be keeping in mind. What did my prospects and clients hear from my competitors? With that thought in mind make sure that early each week you have something to say to these important individuals in your marketplace.

If you have nothing to say, are you sure you’re working hard enough to grow your business. At the very least, you may have seen something in the market-place from your radar screens (Google Alerts, RSS News Feed subscriptions) that your contacts will find interesting. Remember every time you write a blog post, you are improving your visibility with Google. That’s where prospects are looking for a supplier just like you.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Blogging First And Foremost

Related Posts

• January 19, 2009 -- Business Bookstore (0)
• February 24, 2010 -- Marketing Right Now For Winners (0)
• August 8, 2009 -- Email Marketing Requires Good Prospect Lists (0)
• October 15, 2008 -- SMM Newsletters Take A New Format (0)

1. Add a Feedburner Subscription Box.  Make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your posts by email.  Over time, you subscriber list will grow.  Think of your blog as an ongoing E-newsletter. Burn the feed for your blog at  Feedburner.google.com and monitor your blog stats.  Use the free widget to publicize your blog with an email subscription form.

2. Make your blog searchable.  Having a Search Box on your blog makes it easier for folks to find content that you may have written about in the past. Search on my blog is also useful to me. I use search when writing my blog to quickly find and link to relevant articles I’ve written in the past.

3. Add a Facebook Fan Box.  Alright, I know this blog doesn’t have a Facebook Fan box, but that’s because I don’t have a Facebook Fan Page.  Most Tourism businesses and regions are different in this regard – AT LEAST THEY SHOULD BE.  If you don’t have a Facebook Fan Page stop reading this post and build a Fan Page.  Read this post on the number of Canadians who use Facebook with some great charts showing how popular Facebook is these days in Canada!   Then check out this post and add a Facebook Fan Box to your Blog (updated).

4. Make your blog social by adding a Google Friend Connect Box that encourages your fans to connect with a Google, Yahoo! or Twitter.  I also recommend TwitterCounter.com Widget that is pretty nifty way of connecting your Twitter Community.  It shows the Twitter folks who have recently visited.

5. Add a Disqus Commenting System.  The heart and soul of any blog is the conversation that takes place with readers. Disqus Commenting System is a fav because it makes it easy for readers to comment with whatever social profile they prefer.  It also allows Guest Commenting.

6. Allow Guest Commenting.  OK, I admit it, this one is a pet peave.  I often come across blog posts that get me excited about commenting and they limit commenting to members!  PLEASE make it easier to comment by using a comment management tool and permit guest comments.  Comment spam takes a bit of time, but its a sacrifice your readers want you to make.

7. Visit your Blog Guests. Your readers often have an online life too! Follow them on twitter, visit their facebook pages, read their blogs and comment on their Web sites.  It’s just good karma and will help you grow of a wider community of fans and friends.  One of the reasons I enjoy Twitter and FriendConnect widgets is it  makes it easy to click over and see what my visitors up to.

8. Draft a new About Page. This is really high on my list of things to do for our tourism Web site as well as my blog.  What better time to consider what makes your blog tick than the turning of a new year.  Start by taking a few moments to answer three important questions.

1. Who are you writing for?  Think about who your readers are, what interests them and why they might subscribe to your blog.
2. What topics do care about? What kind of writing or multimedia content do you focus on?
3. What makes you tick? What gets you excited?

9. Make it easy to contact you.  Determine an action you want your readers to take if they want to connect, then provide the contact points that you want folks to use.  For most tourism industry folk providing access to your email address and phone number are critical, but consider also providing links to your Google Profile and other social networking profiles if you want folks to connect with you there.  If you have a Google account, you may also want to add a simple Google Docs Web form to collect incoming requests for more information.

10. Feature Guests and Link to Others.  If you see something that you think your readers would be interested in, link to it.  If you see someone doing something interesting in your community, quote them or invite them to join you for an audio podcast.  Writing about or featuring others on your blog can expand your audience by appealing to the audience members of your featured guests.  One of my favourite things to do is record Skype conversations with Audio Hijack Pro and post them on my blog.

Supercharge your blog in 2010

Choose one of these ideas that is new for you and spend a bit of time this week adding it to your blog.  Your fans and readers will thank you for it.

Got any ideas to add?  What are you doing to supercharge your blog in 2010?

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To do this takes gumption and honesty. It could not have been an easy decision, but assuming he is telling the truth, it is clearly one based on morality and I applaud him for this. We need more politicians who are willing to be open and honest with the public and who are willing to stake their career on correcting their mistakes.

Yet, that is where my applause for his and Heather Forsyth’s defection ends.

If you don’t read many Alberta political blogs then you probably haven’t seen an interesting phenomenon happening coming out of the Reboot Alberta conference. Average citizens who attended – and many who didn’t – have been taking the time to put into writing what they believe the definition of “progressive” is. “Progressive” being what Rebooters have branded themselves as. (My own thoughts on the subject will come in the near future in the form of a series of posts.)

In my mind, I find myself amazed at the number of Albertan’s taking the time, through this difficult exercise, to try and spell out what they want their province to look like – and how Alberta might get from where it is now, to that point.

I’m not seeing this kind of open idealogical and policy development happening with the Wildrose Alliance and that concerns me. Hardly anyone is talking about what it means to be a Wildrose supporter. Especially before choosing to become one.

Up until this point the majority of what the general public has seen is a party which is defining itself via negative statements: i.e. “We are not the Tories.” This was perhaps most clearly stated during the Calgary-Glenmore by-election when the slogan the Wildrose Alliance staked their claim with was “Send Ed a Message”. There was nothing in there about how their position would be any different, but that’s okay because it tapped into a societal urge to do just that: send Ed a message. (Remember the Liberals did come in second in the race, also beating out the PC candidate. Meaning many voters chose to send a message too, just via a different channel.)

The problem with defining yourself in such a way is you’ve left the power to define you in the hands of your opposition. It would be very easy for Ed Stelmach to simply illustrate ‘the message was received’ and suddenly you’re brand has dried up. To be truly effective, the Wildrose Alliance are going to have to illustrate what they are and just what they are not.

So who is the Wildrose Alliance? What do they stand for?

From the policy documents on their website and what their leader Danielle Smith has said in the media, I think they can be summed up as offering ‘change’ or ’something different’. While this doesn’t help solve my previous point it’s not a bad horse to hitch your wagon to. After all, it worked for Barack Obama.

But the point with Obama was, he really did represent a different way of doing things. (Arguments can be made that his results so far have been the same, but his methods have been near polar opposites of his predecessor.) I’m not convinced yet that the Wildrose Alliance really does offer a different way of doing things.

Case in point the addition of Anderson and Forsyth. If you’ve staked your entire brand on the fact you are different than the PC Party, how can you accept two of their MLAs as your own? This appears to be a quick – albeit short-term helpful – abandonment of the central pillar of the brand.

Yet, I think it goes deeper than just this. From what I’ve been told, the Wildrose Alliance party was founded by former PC supporters who feel the party has lost its way over the past however many years. Anderson and Forsyth and the framing of the by-election victory illustrate this disillusion as well.

Here’s my point: if voters are looking for something new – how does the Wildrose Alliance represent anything other than simply the PC Party of the past? That’s not new, that’s simply slapping a new coat of paint on the same thing we’ve already had before. Change for the sake of change, if you will.

I’m not deluded however. This alone may be enough to hand them a majority in the next election. The Liberals – despite David Swann’s best efforts – are looking to do nothing more than change their logo, while the Alberta NDP plod along contemplating no change of any kind. When these are the options you are up against, the Wildrose’s fresh face with the same tired out plan might be more than enough.

I may be wrong, but it strikes me the public don’t just want new people doing the same thing we’ve done before. If given the option, they want Alberta politics to be done in completely different – and better – way.

So far as I can see right now, those bloggers typing out their thoughts on what the province could be are the only ones offering anything “new”. And that’s too bad they’re the only ones.

In less than a day you can have a great mobile-ready Website that delivers all the content you need to satisfy the needs of your iPhone and other smartphone carrying guests before, during and after their visit to your region.

Why ensure your content looks good on a handheld?

• 60% of the world’s population have a cell phone. (3.1 Billion cell phone contracts)
• Cell phone users replace their phones every 18 months; the vast majority of new phones are smartphones.
• 91% of cell phone users have their phone within arms reach 24/7; providing users with impulse access to Web content during the “in-between moments” in a day.
• listen to podcast episode with Hilton VP on the explosive growth in handheld sales for the hotel chain.

Wordpress.com blogs are automatically optimized for iPhone and Google Android phones; another reason why it’s time you started blogging with Wordpress.

Make your Wordpress blog a fully functioning  iPhone-ready and Android phone-ready Website without worrying at all about being a code monkey.

Create an account at Wordpress.com and add a blog.  Treat your blogsite as a free iPhone-ready and Android-ready Web site.  Both phones use the Webkit engine that powers Safari Web browsers and these phones will co-rule the handheld landscape along with Blackberry.  Soon Blackberry is expected to join the Webkit/Safari browser handheld crowd too.

Get your mobile site started with the right content on a Wordpress blog

Choose a Theme and Banner

It doesn’t matter what theme you choose, just pick one that has space for a banner image.

Banner Image: In the theme settings for your blog choose a banner image.  Give your Blog your Business Name as it’s title and include your main phone number in the Tagline setting on the General Settings tab for your blog.  Remember viewers may be looking at your site on their phone. Your phone number will automatically be a link, allowing your iPhone/Android site user to click the number to dial you with their phone!

Create Permanent Pages you think handheld device users and blog readers will appreciate:

• About us:  Include Contact Info.
• Check Availability: Consider using a page with a Google Webform.
• Link to your TripAdvisor page:  Encourage guests to write a review from the road when they check out.
• Map: Embed a Google Map on this page. (iPhone users can click on the map to link out of the blog to iPhone Maps app)
• Seasonal Rates: iPhone or handheld specials?
• FAQ’s:  Include things to do en route
• Media: On iPhone, Audio Podcasts can play in iTunes app, Youtube Videos open in the Youtube app and photo libraries on Flickr or Picasaweb can open in their handheld media format.  Be sure to link to your favourite picture folder on Flickr.com or Picasaweb.com

Flickr Photo Page looks great on iPhone:

Turn on the Mobile Theme for your Wordpress Blog

By default, the mobile version of your site is on, but check just to make sure.

On the Appearance tab click on Extras.

On the Extras page, Display a mobile theme box should be checked.

What happens now?

When viewing your Wordpress.com blog on iPhone or Google Android device your new Wordpress blog site automatically renders beautifully with WPtouch theme by BraveNewCode. W0rdpress.org (self-hosted blog) users can choose from a few plug-ins to render your site for iPhone (WPTouch among them).  A nice feature of WPtouch is that users can choose to turn it off and access the full version of your website simply by switching the mobile on/off switch at the bottom of each page.

Publicize your iPhone Page

As with the regular Wordpress view of your blog, the site home page of your site shows the most recent posts first.  The permanent pages-list at http://YourURL.wordpress.com/?pages-list is a great page to link to from your existing Web site as the iPhone or mobile version of your Web site.   Consider treating this pages-list page as your mobile home page.

Ask your guests to bookmark the iPhone blog version of your Website on their iPhone.

Pages list view of your blog on iPhone:

The Drop Down list in the upper right corner of the iPhone site brings up:

• a search box,
• home page
• links to permanent pages,
• post archives.

Special Pages for YOUR Ideal Guests:

No one knows the needs of your guest better than you (except your guests themselves).  Create pages you know your ideal guest will appreciate. Imagine for instance that bus tours are a key market segment for you. Consider a page dedicated to the guests traveling on the bus. Give the link to travel trade and have them include it in literature to your bus-traveling mobile phone toting guest so that they can view your content en route.

Get Blogging!

There you have it: A free iPhone-ready, Android-ready version of your Website; another great reason to have a free Wordpress.com blog for your tourism business.

Links

• Screenshots taken from Todd Whyte’s blog at Ocean View Hotel in Rocky Harbour, NL, Canada.
• Mashable’s Guide to Mobile Design
• Smashing Magazines’s Mobile Design Showcase

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Get Greater impact from Twitter on your Website Search Ranking:

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the recently announced Google / Twitter deal is that Google can now see all those links that are tweeted.

Links have always been the secret sauce for getting your Website to rise above others to the first page – or even the top of the first page of the search results. The image above says it all.

Turn your Website into a Blog to get the most of Twitter

GET BLOGGING! No matter what business you are in. Produce real time content that your community will love. The more you do it, the more you will benefit.

Here’s Why:

• Each Tweet is a Web page on a Website with high authority granted by Google – Twitter.com
• Using Twitter, people are helping Google rank Webpages in real time by linking to them.
• If your content is good, Retweeted links will produce more incoming links to your content.
• Links in Tweets can point to Webpages of all kinds but most tweeted links go to Blog posts.
• Tweets are generally about real time, current news and content. What is more tweet-worthy (if it’s not a word it should be – get with it spell checker): a Website that is updated seasonally or a Blog that is updated daily?
• Tweeted links may have higher time-sensitive value that degrades over time.
• Your Website is not likely to generate much interest if you tweet about it constantly.
• Blogs are platforms for producing link-worthy content frequently.

Conclusions: How Twitter can improve your Website Search Ranking

Blog posts that provide value to your twitter community by featuring news, podcasts, video, photos, stories can earn you considerably more link juice and lead to increased position in the Google Search results.

Links:

• Twitter and Google Partnership
• Using Social Media is a lot like flossing
• How to get any kind of media into your Wordpress Blog
• Does your Website still look like it did in December 2008?

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