This year I am doubling down on the power of experiences and communications that are shareable by design in my own businesses and the attention grabbing solutions we build for our clients at COFFEE Business Stimulus. Watch this space (or better yet subscribe) to see a collection of our and other’s outputs that capitalize on the Socialgenic ethos (stimulating peer to peer sharing by design).
As I work with my clients UclueletBrewing.ca, CameronOceanAdventures.com and TheTantalusGroup.com I have identified some great tools and simple SEO tips that I am happy to share. Please hit me back with your top simple SEO tips in the comments so we can learn together and build a resource.
Hulk smash! Why is there no good Brand Positioning Chart image on web!?!
While it is a great time to be an entrepreneur with almost every visual asset you need can be found quickly through a Google Search, a great example of a brand positioning chart is not one of them. As I was searching for one to use with my COFFEE Business Stimulus clients I found it to be as elusive as a cagey super villain. So I decided engage the help of a few super friends to do my part to make the internet a better place and upload one here.
Tied closely to another mythical marketing tool – Origin Story – Positioning is the most essential part of any brand strategy. Are you clear where you fit in and how you can soar above your competition? Your origin story is the unique set of circumstances and choices that lead to your super powers (a combination of skills and attributes) that few others have.
If you would like a higher resolution version please reach out in the comments.
I had a lot of fun this week hosting a Tourism Edge webinar for a group of businesses in the Kananaskis region of Alberta, Canada. In the session we addressed how feedback from your past guests is a wealth of information for tourism businesses. We also discussed how being vigilant about responding to reviews is important to attracting more guests. “Raised in reviews” and well versed in their nuances, many potential visitors evaluate businesses on how well operators respond to (negative) reviews, as much as the review itself.
While important, constantly scanning for comments and reviews related to your business is untenable. You have a business to run. Fortunately there are some affordable tools you may choose to invest in that can make the task much easier.
Rated from cheapest (free) to most expensive here are 4 tools that can help you keep you head above water while keeping your eyes on your online reputation.
Google Email Alert System (FREE)
You can sign up for Google Alerts quickly and relatively easily. Identify your brand/business name, common mis-spellings and other topics related to your business. Google will continually scan for instances when these terms appear together and you will be sent an alert straight to your inbox when they do.
As I have learned from experience, if you have a common business name or are interested in a common keyword make sure that you focus the search or you risk being overwhelmed with irrelevant alerts.
Google lets you use boolean logic rules to focus your search. It’s as fun to use as it is to say! 🙂
For example if you are a whale watching business in California consider including the state or nearby city as a keywords in combination with your brand, product or service. I.e. “Whale Watching + California + San + Francisco”
Reputology ($29 US/Month – Free trial)
Reputology helps you monitor and manage online reviews with alerts, dashboards, and analytics. A nice feature is the summary reports that help you make decisions based on consumer feedback.
ReviewPush ($39 US/Month – Free trial)
ReviewPush offers multi-site monitoring, keeping an eye on new reviews on Yelp, Google, YellowPages, and more. They send you an email when new reviews are posted and you can respond to that review directly via email.
Review Trackers ($49 US/Month – Free trial)
Review Trackers allows for multi-site monitoring in one spot, and attractively for tourism and hospitality businesses covers industry-specific review sites like TripAdvisor and OpenTable.
Give one of the tools a whirl and see if the time savings justifies the cost. I’d love to hear which system you preferred and how things went.Did you uncover reviews you did not know existed? Did you address a problem and gain a fan?
Want to get more guests with less work? Get realistic help for the tourism bootstrapper. Read more and drop me a line.
As I continue the journey of bringing my tourism business marketing expertise online, I am preparing to host my first free tourism marketing webinars Feb 1, 2017 (Procrastinator’s New Year).
Gear wise, in the tradition of the 4 Hour Work Week I am focused on being mobile so I am getting small transportable equipment as I build up my mini-webinar studio. First on the list was a webcam.
Looking at the options it was tough choice between the Logitech C920 and the C930e. Both are considered better than most other webcams on the market. To get the 90 degree field of view so I can show my students on screen examples over my shoulder (and not be smooshed into the frame) I went for the C930e. I will post an update with my impressions.
After working extensively in Affiliate Marketing in 2005 this is the first time I am an affiliate myself. I decided to see how the Amazon Associate system works. Monetizing online content is another experiment I am running for myself, my friends and students. If you are in the market for a webcam or anything on Amazon please use the links below.
Discovering my love of coaching was my biggest breakthrough in 2016 and I am going after it in 2017. I am ready to solve problems and inspire students across the globe as an online content provider. If you are on a similar path lets connect and share secrets! For any of you that have already taken the plunge I’d love to hear about your hurdles and successes!
And, for those of you who have not taken the plunge drop me a line for some tips. Subscribe to Socialgenics as I will be sharing regular insights. And, consider getting a Logitech c920 or Logitech c930 for yourself!
Happy new year to everyone and especially those of you marketing tourism businesses!
Having worked with over 100 tourism businesses I know two things to be true, you all work incredibly hard, and since time and money is limited, you need the Social Media marketing tactics that deliver big bang for little buck. For that reason I focus my advice into actionable and high potency hacks. Feeling revved up to hit your marketing goals this year? Start here!
Two Tasty Tips for Online/Social Ad Targeting
I had a lot of delicious treats over the holidays and hope you did too. I did not however have any Oreo cookies and it shows. They are on my mind so this post packs a two part punch on social ad targeting tips for travel businesses. Thanks to Claude Faerden from kananaskisoutfitters.com for the inspiration! Check him out when you are in Canmore, Alberta, Canada!
Read how to create the perfect Facebook audience for your travel business.
Read how to create a Facebook audience based off your past customers.
There is more free help where this came from.
Salivating at the thought of these tasty tactical treats? Take advantage of free practical tourism marketing advice. Drop me a line for a 15 minute coaching call. The more people I help the better I get, so reach out we’ll both learn something!
Shy? Don’t like free help? Follow me on Twitter.
Famous for inspiring a cult following and even an anti-Christmas controversy the #RedCupArt Campaign is an annual bellwether moment for Starbucks and social media marketers. While you likely don’t have their global reach, you can find a few gifts of wisdom in Starbucks’ campaign that will show returns for your marketing in 2017.
As you can see from the Instagram gallery above, #RedCups has a different meaning in binge drinking circles (and I don’t mean COFFEE) that could likely bring up some #NSFW posts in a random search. Starbucks has been deliberate in circulating #RedCupArt to maximize their ownership of the term, and minimize the potential for embarrassing content confusion.
As with the word photogenic, things that are “genic” – cause or produce, or are well-suited to something. Therefore things that are Socialgenic produce or are well-suited to social sharing. You heard it here first, Socialgenic strategies are THE hack for businesses looking to turn their customers into their best marketers in a world where every guest is a broadcaster. Employ this tactic to create value through your social efforts and be relevant in fan’s social feeds rather than imposing your own content on them like an unwanted guest at the holidays.
By providing a canvas for creativity (red cups) and sharing the stage (their global social media accounts) Starbucks turns talented and ambitious fans into content creators. Importantly, since the iconic green circle logo is inextricably “baked in” to every user-generated red cup creation, each post is in fact a “user-generated ad” not just user generated content. Because the creator is the star and the brand is the stage, red cup art is shared to a fan’s peers with pride as an expression of their personality and will be welcomed with a much warmer heart than a brand initiated message.
Consider how you can make your product and promotion more Socialgenic. People are looking to express their personalities and take part of something bigger than themselves. How can you create a canvas for them and share your stage? If you can, you will be a welcome guest in their social conversations rather than unwanted visitor.
Looking for inspiration on how to make your brand or experience more Socialgenic? Drop me a line or ask for help in the comments below.
Pat Kelly, the award winning co-anchor of the CBC’s popular satirical news program This Is That has abruptly tendered his resignation.
Immediately following the taping of the network’s flagship culture program “Q” Pat Kelly” notified CBC brass that he would be pursuing “other opportunities”. Pat was a guest on “Q” discussing the changing nature of satirical news in the age of social media and search algorithms. He seemed stunned to hear that teenagers were earning “thousands of dollars a week” distributing fake news on Facebook.
Recently social media algorithms have been a hot topic for their role in spreading “fake news” and polarizing the information people have access to. Events as significant as the recent election of Donald Trump are being sited as outcomes of the new media landscape.
It is unclear what the future holds for the program. Neither Pat Kelly, Peter Oldring or the CBC could be reached for comment.
(This article was originally posts on FLIPP.ca in 2015. I am posting a series of my past work to archive and share it.)OK, well that headline is a bold statement but we have it on good authority there is a counter-intuitive secret that leads to success. And that secret is failure.
We heard it from the aptly named Dr. Astro Teller, head of Google’s bleeding edge development wing, Google X. Google X is responsible for Google Glass ( a famous “failure”), Google self-driving cars, Project Wing – which is pursuing self-flying delivery drones and Project Loon, defined as “a balloon powered internet for everyone” and best described here. The gist of his talk at SXSW 2015 has value for anyone, and especially marketers. “If you want to make a ton of progress you have to be willing to make a ton of mistakes.” This does not mean taking on risk without purpose. The key is to fail with intent, analyze the results and avoid making the same mistake over and over again.
As advertisers that are aspiring to be more innovative and successful everyday, the team at FLIPP can embrace the “Fail to Succeed” philosophy. The beautiful thing is that for most marketers you don’t have to send a satellite into orbit to test a theory (and if you do we’d like to hear about it). There are lower risk avenues in which to test new ideas and judge their effectiveness before going “all in”. Why not test new creative via Facebook ads? AB test on landing pages? Deliberately analysis the failures you’ve already had and see what you can learn from them?
So there you have it – the not so secret, secret that will help you reach a new level of success. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Consider them essential to succeeding. When you and your team sit down to de-brief a project or begin thinking about a new one, try to focus on the 5 things you could improve on rather than the 5 things you do right. We know we will.
Tourism Marketing and Socialgenics. 