Part 7 of many – Blogging as an Effective Marketing Tool

I’ve got Ten little Sub-titles, Effective Blogging, I’ll just kind of read those through quickly and I’ll discuss each one individually,

• Post Regularly
• Polish your Pieces
• Capture Your Ideas
• Guest Testimonials
• Where you get your ideas from
• Repeat Yourself
• Don’t pay to much attention to ‘how to blog’ – so what I tell you is not the Bible, Ok?
• Keep Going
• Don’t Overwrite
• Don’t be a Jerk/Jerkette
• Be You

Next: Post Regularly

Part Six of Many – Blogging as an Effective Marketing Tool

Who doesn’t want to see himself on the internet?

I guest comes out – they give you pictures right out of their digital camera, you put them on your computer, you find one or two good ones… put them on the blog – before he gets home!  He can go on there and see himself.

You know what he’s going to do?  He’s going to call Uncle Joe, he’s going to call his coleagues at work, he’s going to call his kids, he’s going to call everybody that he knows, saying “check out this website”. And guess who’s it is?  It’s mine. And on my blog is a link back to my business website.  Everybody wants to see themselves, so, it’s a breeze and they do it.

And another reason – I didn’t post it on here (the slide show) – but I’ll guarentee you, a big reason people read blogs, is, it’s a diversion.  Sometimes if I’ve got nothing to do, I’ll go on and I’ll read a blog and just find something new – just something to do…

People read blogs at work.

And the reason they do that, they need a diversion.  They have a 2 second break, “Ok, let’s see what’s happening in Ignace…”

One of my guests is the CEO of the largest compressed gas manufacturers in North America, it’s called Air Gas. And he told me that he reads my blog before he starts his work day every single day.  He goes into work, and he say’s his secretary knows not to put anything on his desk until he’s checked out my blog.  Not bad!

And, because of that, he actually booked a second trip this year, because he was up in June and started checking my blog.  By the end of July he was so anxious to come fishing again, that he called and booked a trip for August!

So, you know, it does really work.

Next: Ten Tips for Effective Blogging in Tourism Marketing

Part Five of Many: Blogging as an Effective Marketing Tool

I put a blog up… why would somebody be interested in what I put up there?

There’s many reasons:
They might want to just stay connected to me and my camp, (or you and your camp).

They go home, they had a great experience at your camp, they start thinking about fishing again… why not keep them connected to you rather than to have them going off and checking out somebody else? So if you can establish that regular relationship with them, they’re going to do that.

Maybe they want to learn something.

People go on the internet all the time to learn stuff.  On my blog,  I’ve got videos on how to fillet a pike, you know, bones?  I put a video with stuff about Caribou… I explain to my guests how we do things…

For example, I take it for granted when we take an airplane from the water to the hanger – it takes us two minutes to do.  We do it so often, we don’t even think about it.   But my guests, constantly, when somebody drives in the yard and sees an airplane in the hangar, on floats, they go “How’d it get in there?”  You know, I try explaining to them, I posted a little blog to show how it’s done… So, they might just want to learn something.

They want to keep up with news;

We had a grandchild this summer, we posted it up.  The comments, or the emails were comin’ in from all over the place! I couldn’t believe that people were reading that!

You know there’s a rule about blogging; they say don’t blog about your kids,
and the second rule is: Blog about your kids.

Your guests become part of your relationship.  You have a personal relationship with them – they’re interested in what’s happening… you don’t want to over-do it, but they’re interested.

Next: They like to see themselves.

Part Four of Many: Blogging as an Effective Marketing Tool

Why Would You Want To Blog? For me,

• it’s a very inexpensive, but
• very effective way to stay in touch with my guests,
• to market my business, and
• to establish my Brand.

Does everybody understand what a Brand is?

That word gets tossed around all the time. We heard it a little bit this morning with the OTMPCWXYZ guys, but what a Brand is, is essentially, a perception people have of your business.

So, they see your name, they think of something… You can have a good Brand that is a result of you doing a lot of good work, or you can have a bad Brand because you threw something lousy out once.

You Brand is important, it’s what people think about as your business – that’s the simplest way to put it.

You want to keep your company brand out front. That’s how yourself in front of me and in front of Marg…

Tourism Keys Workshops

I don’t know if any of you have taken the Tourism Keys Workshops; a fella by the name of Todd (Lucier) does those.

He calls blogging his Number One Tool for Internet Marketing.

And he gives a few reasons, I’ll just tell you:

• It’s very simple, anybody can do it
• It’s very quick – it takes three minutes or less to put a post up, and I’ll talk about how I do that
• It’s very easy to distribute the content. You can put text up, you can put images up, you can put videos up and you can put audio up.
• Very simple and very easy to get it all up on your blog.
• It’s very very subscriber friendly
• And it’s very adaptable, you can change it as you go. If you don’t like something, it’s gone, you can change it.
• It keeps your business front and center with your guests.

Next: Why Do People Read Blogs?

This is Part Three of Many: Blogging as an Effective Marketing Tool

The Internet Is Changing and most of us have web pages.

The web pages started out as a static brochure. They didn’t change very often. So what happened is somebody would go on your website, then they go on your website a month later – it’s the same thing, a month later it’s the same thing, a month later… a year later… it’s the same thing, it’s the same pictures – nothing was changing. It’s like you had the guy your brochure and he just keeps pulling it out of the cupboard and keeps looking at it.

What’s happened with the internet over time is now what is referred to as Web 2.0 which is more interactive. People go on the internet to find new stuff. so they go on to read newspapers – it changes every day, they go on to find stock quotes – it changes in minute by minute. Blogging has become one component of that, where you can change it every day – it takes very little effort, but it gives somebody a reason to come back to your website.

It’s like imagining being able to talk to your guests, every single day, for zero cost. And you’re copying their schedule and it doesn’t interrupt your schedule. You know, why not? That’s what blogging is all about.

If you have questions, just pop up a hand… there’s no bad questions, I may give you a bad answer… but there’s no bad questions. I’ll do my best… If I know the answer, you’ll get it right away, if I don’t know the answer, I’ll take a second, I’ll think of something – I don’t know if it’s true or not but I’ll try anyway.

Definition – What is a Blog?

Essentially it’s a contraction of weB LOG, so you take the ‘B’ and the ‘LOG’ and it’s BLOG. It’s a journal, like a diary that you put out. It’s interactive and it’s available on the internet.

Ok, someone who does the work of ‘blogging’ – is a ‘blogger’. And when you’re a ‘blogger’, your ‘blogging’. That’s the actual doing… so if you hear those terms it all has to do with the fact that the blog is the little diary and blogging is putting it up; blogger is what you are as you do it.

One thing about blogs is that they’re just about always arraigned in chronological order with the newest being first. So you end up with a whole bunch go down the row and as they get older they fall off into an archive, however there’s still readily available. And we do have our blog over here, after you can take a look at it, Karen’s got it up on our computer.

Next: Why Would You Want To Blog?

…more on Ignace Outposts

Does everybody know what a blog is?

I will get into a definition of what it is, like I said, I’m not going to get technical on you, but I want to keep it as simple as possible about what a blog is. It is a huge topic. You could probably spend three days just doing a talk on blogs. There’s a lot of technical data involved, search engines and RSS feeds and Keywords and Social Networking and Web 2.0… All these things are associated with blogs. If you want to know any of that stuff, talk to this fella right here. Doug (Lampi), he’s a technical guru – that’s his field, he know’s all about how to make your blog.

I’m also not going to get into any debate with anybody about which is better, wordpress or blogger, and I know there’s another couple other ones out there. I use blogger. I’m familiar with it and it works fine for what I want it to do.

Ok. I’m going to try to make my little conversation so that your blog will become effective, as apposed to just sayin’ “put this widget over here, put that picture over there”… just how to promote some of your stuff

The Internet Is Changing

The Internet Is Changing and most of us have web pages. The web pages started out as a static brochure. They didn’t change very often. So what happened is somebody would go on your website, then they go on your website a month later – it’s the same thing, a month later it’s the same thing, a month later… a year later… it’s the same thing, it’s the same pictures – nothing was changing. It’s like you had the guy your brochure and he just keeps pulling it out of the cupboard and keeps looking at it.

— Like what you’ve read? Get the whole series! –

MC – I’d like to introduce Brad Greaves of Ignace Airways outpost camps for a quarter century, a bush person, just like myself, flying, cutting wood, doing everything around camp… imagine – he’s blogging!

Totally amazing! So, I’m sure this is going to be very interesting and informative, but I can’t leave without introducing his resource person too, Karen is in the room. So, enjoy it everybody.

Brad – Well that concludes my talk… (laughter)

MC – well I can give you your gift right now…

Ok, I’m going to do my best – I’m not a high-tech person, however I have started blogging and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the number one secret marketing tool that can put your company ahead of somebody elses in this industry.

And I think that if you’re here with an interest in blogging, you’re a step ahead of most in our industry. If you are already blogging, you are miles ahead. And I know there are some who are already blogging (points out three others in the audience of about 25 NOTO members)

What I’m going to do is this is entitled “Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool“.

I’m not going to talk about the technical aspects of blogging, I’m going to talk about how to make your blogging effective because the biggest hurdle I had in setting up my blog was – what do I put on it.

And I would run out of material. I would have a great idea for one day, and I’d get that up there, but then the next day I’d be sort of scratching my head…

To be honest with you I started blogging about four years ago and my first blog went up, then it was about a month before I put up my next post, then I put another one right away… then it was about three months before the next post. So I thought this is stupid, no-one is reading it, so I deleted the whole blog and started again. Put one post up, put another one up, it was a couple weeks before I put another one, then it could have been several months before I posted the next one because I, I just didn’t have the time… and I thought I didn’t have any ideas…

After a few false starts I tried it again this year with commitment, and you know what, it doesn’t take a lot of time if you think through the process.

So hopefully some of the thinking and some of the process I’ve gone through will help you so when you want to set up your blog, you’ll come up with some ideas, come up with some material, and come up with something that’s going to be effective in marketing your business…