Quetico Internet Marketing » Blogging

What Should I Blog About?

Doug — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:01:40 +0000

This morning over coffee, I read the Hubspot Report The Essential Guide To Internet Marketing.

I highly recommend that your read this report with a pad of paper near by so you can write down the ideas and questions that are sure to flow!

Read it here: The Essential Guide To Internet Marketing

This is a fantastic resource that should serve as a baseline for everyone who owns a tourism business. After reading through with gusto – this one passage stood out to me: I read it several times…

A great way to start blogging is to think about the 10 most common questions you get asked by prospective new customers.

What Should I Write About?

In my ten years experience as a web designer I have repeatedly found the same question appearing time and again… after all the technology is put in place, the same question comes up with every blog and with every internet marketing initiative:

What Should I Blog About?

This tip from Hubspot can help your business. “…think about the 10 most common questions you get asked?”

Take the time to think deeply about the questions that people ask you at the Sport Show Booth. What do you talk about, over and over, to these face-to-face trip shoppers? What part of the experience are they asking you about?

What If I’m Not A Writer?

Free Writing That Will Rock Your World

Learn the easiest way to write content for your website, blog or Facebook page: Ed Dale provides a 13 minute guide on how to create content for any type of business. This concept of free writing for The Challenge will blow you away.

Easy Free Writing For Your Tourism Blog

Sit with your staff and come up with a list of the 10 most common questions you get asked by prospective new customers. Take some paper and write one question at the top of each page. Fill the page with point form answers. Do this for each of the ten questions the group came up with.

Set the questions and point-form answers aside for a day or two and reflect on the fact that you now have content for ten different monthly blog posts! After a few days then take one of the questions and point-form answers, set the timer for ten minutes, and write the first draft of your full answer to the question.

Ed Dale says “Be sure to set the timer. This is critical that you do this.”

Set the timer for ten minutes, and write your draft of the answer without any editing. Wing it, free-form it – just get the answers on paper, non-stop, the full time the ten minute timer is ticking. Don’t edit, don’t punctuate, don’t even stop to spell check. Just get your thoughts out – as though you were talking to someone face to face.

After the ten minutes are up, close your draft and leave it until the next day before you edit. Now, in just a few days, in just a few short sessions, you have crafted something unique and awesome, that helps answer one of the top questions that your clients ask you!

How Do I Market My Blog?

Finally, take this edit of the ‘question and answer’ blog post you have created, and work with your web team to implement all of the steps recommended in the Hubspot Essential Guide To Internet Marketing!

Be certain your web team can do everything from implementing your keyword strategy to leveraging social media to promote content online, all the way through to analyzing and refining your strategies.

If you are searching for a fishing lodge web designer, we can help guide you through every essential step you should be taking to effectively market your tourism business on the web, whether you’re a canoe outfitting company, a drive-to American plan lodge, a resort, or a remote fly in fishing business, to name a few.

Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool

Doug — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:49:33 +0000

Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool. A Presentation made by Brad Greaves, owner of Ignace Outposts Fly in Fishing. http://www.ignaceoutposts.com.

A timeless non-technical review of blogging for tourism marketing – Presented at the NOTO Conference in 2008

Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool – Pt 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgD5rH6Unc4

00:52 The Number One Secret Marketing Tool
01:39 What To Blog? A Few False Starts
02:50 Does everyone know what a Blog is?
03:23 Talk to Doug
04:08 The Internet Is Changing
06:06 Blogging, blog, blogger
06:37 Why would you want to blog?
06:54 What is your Brand?
07:37 Tourism Keys Workshops by Todd Lucier
08:35 Why do people read blogs?
11:27 Ten Tips To Effective Blogging
12:03 Post Regularly – Plan Ahead
14:13 Is this important to you?
14:42 The WORST thing to put on your blog!
15:06 Polish the piece before you publish
17:00 How To Come Up With The Ideas
19:31 I prefer to be in an airplane

Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool – Pt 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW8ouVtLT5M

00:00 Part Two – Continued – Write down your ideas
01:04 People Get The Nobel Prize For Research!
01:58 Quick List of Blogging Ideas
04:41 Who is the most important person in your camp?
06:57 Fall Fishing is good in September!
07:20 Father and Son Fishing Trips
07:49 The Untethered Vacation
10:43 Use Short Sentences
11:11 Use Lots of Pictures
11:44 Format your pictures!
13:10 Sorry – Did want to wake you up
13:30 48 Inch Northern Pike Story

Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool – Pt 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5O5el16bkM

00:02 Want your picture on my Blog?
00:18 Time to get the camera out!
01:10 Why you should use photoshop – clone tool
02:03 Videos are very easy – use movie maker
02:50 Keep your videos short
05:10 Do It Your Way
06:15 Questions
06:20 How do you get people to your blog?
07:40 What about comments on your blog?
08:54 How do you schedule your posts?
10:42 What about Traffic Stats – Google Analytics?
11:57 Do you find it harder to blog in the off-season?
17:42 Meet other bloggers

http://www.ignaceoutposts.com – Brad Greaves of Ignace Outposts presents Blogging As An Effective Marketing Tool at the 2008 NOTO Conference.

Presented by
http://www.marketingtourismwithsocialmedia.com

Web Design for Fishing Lodges and Hunting Camps

Doug — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 17:05:17 +0000

Web Design For Fishing Lodges

Fishing Lodge Web Design

We are a Canadian Company focused on providing Internet Marketing for Tourism and Travel Businesses in Canada, specifically – web design for Fishing Lodges. We cater to the annual cycle of small, seasonal lodges who service between 500 and 1000 guest per year.

Web Design and Business Development

We regard each piece of online real estate we build for you, as an asset established for your business. But, like a car without a driver, web properties are not much use without web marketing strategies.

Successful Website or Successful Business?

In my town, tourism businesses were the first to establish websites. In the early days of Web Design for Fishing Lodges, a tourism business site was considered successful if they ranked well in the search engines. These days, the tourism business themselves are successful if they are well represented in the Social Media arena.

Social Media Traffic vs Search Traffic

It’s important to understand the significant difference between traffic from the search engines and traffic from Social Media sources. Once you do, it will transform the focus of your marketing.

Search traffic comes to your website with interest, perhaps, but generally without any prior relationship to your business. Of course I’m not talking about people who search for your business name – those people know you, or have been exposed to you by word of mouth, print etc. By search traffic, I draw attention to the audience of new people who find you through the search engines – and I want to compare them to the audience of new people who may find you through Social Media Channels.

People who find you through organic search, or worse, through paid Google Ads, are starting a relationship with you from a cold start.

On the other hand, if people find you through Social Media, it is because one of their friends or family mentioned you online. When traffic lands on your site from a social media source, odds are much better that this person was referred to you through online word-of-mouth.

Referral From A Trusted Source

Word-of-Mouth marketing has always been recognized as The King for building sales. For this reason, all of our web design projects for Tourism Businesses like Fishing Lodges, Resorts, Camps and Outfitters – now include a strong component of Social Media Marketing.

Web Design for Fishing Lodges

Websites are getting easier to run – and we shorten your learning curve.

If you are a Camp Owner or Manager with a traditional static website that your webmaster must update, it’s time to invest in an upgrade.

If you are a Camp Owner with plans to sell your business in the next few years to a decade, it’s time to invest in establishing online real estate that will increase the resale value of your business.

Web Design for Fishing Lodges and Hunting Camps

Video Course For Camp Owners, Lodges and Outfitters

Doug — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:58:37 +0000

What is this course about?

This is a technical course – with a personal guide.

Together we create a blog and the entire marketing system that makes it work.

Who is this course for?

I’ve designed this course for Tourism Business operators, but this same marketing strategy will work for any different subject or product.

Are you a web designer?

This course itself can become a step-by-step guide that adds a new product line to your business.

Customize Your Options

www.tourismmarketingvideos.com

Tourism Blogging Survey

Doug — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:56:52 +0000

I’d like your participation in this tourism blogging survey for three reasons:

First, I want to know what you think.

Second, after you have completed the survey, you will see the poll results – and you will get to know what other tourism business think.

And the third reason I want your participation, is because one of those answers *is* the #1 Reason More Tourism Businesses Are Blogging Than Ever Before.

Here are the Survey Questions:

Are More Tourism Businesses Blogging To:

1. Reach a different audience?

2. Build a relationship of trust with readers?

3. Update their own website and pictures?

4. Automate their marketing so they can spend more time on their business?

5. Get Web Marketing Results that are more measurable?

So, what were the results of the poll? Do you wonder if you choose the same answer as most everyone else?

Of course, as I’m making this, I don’t know what the results of the poll are going to be… But I imagine that each of those reasons will get a vote by somebody. Because the truth is, any one of those reasons is powerful enough on it’s own – to get you out there and start blogging.

Before I reveal the answer – before I reveal the answer I’ve come to know after nine years of professional web design, I want to take a moment to review each of the reasons for blogging in our survey, to highlight the benefits that a tourism business can experience… benefits that might not be directly obvious just by looking at a blog.

First Reason: To Reach A Different Audience

The best clientele for fishing lodges have been coming to Canada for years. The trouble is, the best clientele are now baby-boomers, and they’re just not taking as many fishing trips anymore. So Reaching a different audience has become more important.

A blog can help you reach an audience of younger people, younger professionals… Professionals who are accessing the internet more of the time through their mobile phones.

The Second Survey Opinion: To build a relationship of trust with your readers.

It takes time to establish trust. Studies show that it takes 5 to 7 contacts with a potential customer before they will make a major buying decision. Your blog helps build trust in two important ways: Your blog gives you the power to proactively reach out and make contact with trip planners while they are in the trip-planning phase. They can get to know you in a way that is much more personal than any static website.

Second of all, your blog can allow people to leave comments below your posts. These comments, and your replies to them, act like “Word of Mouse” Advertising for your business. There is nothing more trust building than a third-party recommendation. And remember, the comments on your blog are always fully moderated, so only the good stuff goes up!

The third reason in our survey, that more tourism businesses are blogging – is so they can easily update their own website and pictures.

If you can format an email and send an image as an attachment, you have all the skills you need to update your own website.

Aren’t you sick of sending things to your webmaster, waiting weeks for the work to get finished, and you still have to make corrections when it’s done?

The forth reason people are blogging: To automate their marketing so they can spend more time on their business.

There are two critical ways that your blog can save you time.

First, you can pre-schedule your posts to publish themselves on specific dates and times. You can do you blogging in advance, and it will publish the scheduled entries while you are servicing your customers.

Second, blogs contain a key piece of technology that may revolutionize your marketing. This technology is known as the RSS Feed. (Really Simple Syndication). Your RSS Feed can be used to automate your marketing in some groundbreaking ways:

Your RSS Feed gives you the power to publish your content to news sources and several popular websites – all at the same time. And, your RSS Feed sends an automatic notice to your website subscribers – who are often reading these notices on their mobile phones.

Your RSS Feed lets you get your information out across the internet – and – delivers a personal note to each subscriber – all from a single blog post.

And the fifth answer in our survey: To get web marketing results that are more measurable.

Before the internet, measuring the results of your marketing dollars was a game at best. And while the internet was young – many tourism businesses treated their website like a brochure, and novice web designers reported useless statistics like: the number of unique visitors and the number of top search engine rankings you have.

Today, the knowledge from other profitable online business plans can be applied to Tourism Marketing. With your blog, you can quantify a relationship development process that has been proven to lead to sales.

If your planning to sell your business in the next 5 to 10 years, TAKE NOTE! These numbers add measurable equity to the value of your business!

I want to thank you for stopping by, and for reading all the way through! I hope I’ve helped to reveal a number of tourism marketing benefits that might not be apparent when you look at a blog.

Now, if you want to participate in the survey and get the answer to the Question – What is the #1 Reason More Tourism Businesses Are Blogging? – sign up here!

http://www.tourismmarketingvideos.com

I hope you’ve found this post helpful – just on it’s own. But if it has just peeked your interest and you’d like to learn more – I have a special offer for you. Please sign up at Tourism Marketing Videos and follow the three simple steps!

Building Traffic Trough Article Marketing

Doug — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:26:57 +0000

I am very excited to introduce our new Professional Link Development Service!

There is nothing else in web marketing that can compare to the long term advantages of building links.

Step One – We create A Series Of Search Engine Optimized Articles About Your Business.

Our Online Traffic Specialist visits your website – takes the content of your website, and reorganizes/optimizes it around your best keyword phrases. Then, he creates several custom-made articles that are carefully embedded with a rotating selection of search engine friendly links to your website pages.

Step Two – Getting The Word Out

Phase One: Your Search Engine Optimized articles (with relevant links to inner pages of your website) are slowly distributed across an out-sourced network of over 13,000 established blogs! This creates a natural growth of more and more one-way links pointing to your website!

Phase Two: Your Search Engine Optimized articles are slowly and methodically bookmarked throughout our network of over 13,000 social medial profiles and social bookmarking sites! This natural pattern of social voting, provides credibility to your articles, and over time, helps to broaden the awareness of your brand, boost your search engine rankings, and establish your main website as an Authority Website in your niche!

Step Three – Monthly Link Reports… and your VITAL Follow-Up.

Each month you will receive a complete list of all the places your article is posted, and all the social bookmarking profiles where your articles are linked.

You can tremendously increase the cumulative benefit of all your new links by ‘Commenting’ on the posted articles, by ‘liking’ the bookmarks, and participating in other social options that help add credibility to the new links pointing to your website.

Read more about our new Professional Link Development Service!

Nothing else compares to the advantages of links!

Have you been considering a Blog for your Lodge?

Doug — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:40:09 +0000

Not sure where to start?

We Specialize in Web Design For Fishing Lodges!

In fact, we have created an annual marketing plan exclusively for seasonal tourism business. It is a fisherman-centered plan that rewards your guests for participation in your communities like Facebook and Youtube to increase online word-of-mouth exposure, uses customer-generated content to build top search rankings that last, and improves booking rates via internet sources.

Get your copy of the plan! Request a no-obligation quote and receive:

a copy of our white paper: Annual Online Marketing Plan for Seasonal Tourism Business

a video benchmark of your present online visibility

a 20 minute phone/skype consultation to review your needs

Register Today!

(It’s easier than you think – we are here to help! And you get to keep the video benchmark and Annual Marketing Plan as our gift.)

I’d like to introduce you to the Blog Coaching Service created especially for Fishing Lodges:

Annual Overview:

Early January to Early April is Sports Show Season
Mid-April to Mid-May is preparation for opening weekend/general season
May to September – fishing season
October and November – hunting season
Nov to December – Annual review, system upgrades, seasonal newsletter, preparation for following year.

Benefits

Immediate Traffic to your website by joining our Network.
Benefit from the Stability of a WordPress Platform.
Help Desk with Personal Blog Coaching Available!

Tight Lines,

Doug Lampi,

More Traffic, More Subscribers and More Followers

Doug — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:24:43 +0000

Recent Updates

Recent changes to the CanadianFishingBook.com project have really made an impact!

Overall, the network of five themed fishing blogs and the Fishing Lodge Directory have seen a 47% increase in traffic! Individual Lodge Owners may login and view detailed stats on the performance of your listing:

New Strategies

Social Media is evolving every day, and CanadianFishingBook.com is keeping pace!

Our New Twitter Strategies are gaining over 60 new followers each day! Working in concert, our five themed Twitter accounts are providing a new and fast-growing source of traffic – directly to the member listings!

Better Conversions

The following three changes have boosted our eBook Download Rate by over 200%!

Traffic from Web 2.0 Tourism Marketing strategies converts better
Recent updates to the blog layouts improve response rates
Recent updates to the eBook Squeeze page and sign up sequence provide more perceived value and clearer directions.

Stats I check after a weekend away.

Doug — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:02:09 +0000

May Long

I went and enjoyed the May long weekend at a remote cabin on the lake shore. You can picture the rustic Canadian wilderness – no running water, a woodstove to keep the chill off, a path to the biffy out the front door – and no internet access. It was great!

Back to my computer – Twitter First

After nearly 96 hours offline, the first thing I check is my number of Twitter followers. I reply to direct messages, then I return any @replies. While I’m working with twitter, I take another ten minutes to follow the daily routines to continue building my Twitter Follower List.

Downloads and Subscribers

Next I checked my email subscriber lists to make sure the numbers are still growing. Presently, I’m not running an email-subscriber-boost campaign, but when I’m managing such a promotion, I include a close review of sign-up conversion rates and also review the geographic location of the new subscribers. Watch for a video of email subscriber analysis, or take a test drive of Aweber.

Visitor Stats Detailed Review

Third, I complete my daily review of my website visitor stats. Each project has it’s set of keywords that it targets for search engine traffic, and an ideal target footprint of referral traffic that it is trying to attain. I use Google Analytics and recommend it to you – even if you have additional visitor tracking on your site.

Reply To EMail

Now that I have a handle on the marketing results for the weekend, I turn my attention to email replies and important newsletters.

Create a Blog Post

After chatting to my Twitter friends, reviewing stats and replying to email, it’s easy to come up with ideas for a new blog post. A new blog post that will be helpful to my intended audience, while at the same time, bringing better focus toward my ideal keywords.

Follow My Own Advice

In an earlier post, I set up a social marketing campaign I was to follow as a means of building the Fishing-Trip-Related search engine rankings and traffic I was aiming for.

My Aim?

To demonstrate that YOU can gain immediate and lasting exposure for your fishing or hunting travel-related business – by blogging.

These results are very significant:

As you’ll see by the keyword phrases in the screenshots below – this is very targeted exposure.
These results were achieved in less than two months – and you CAN do the same!

Your Website Is A Business Asset

An original blog is an asset that increases the value of your business – it is not just another marketing cost.

Find out more about how I can help you leverage your daily activities to increase the traffic to your website, to increase your bookings – and to increase the re-sale value of your business – with live, real-time Blog Coaching.