KDCA AGM 2011

I am very excited by the invitation from the Kenora District Camp Owners Association (KDCA), to make a short presentation on Social Media Marketing for Tourism and Travel, during their spring Annual General Meeting!

KDCA AGM at the Waldhof Hall

With about 70 Camps and Lodge Members, and about 70 Allied Members, the KDCA is a large and influential lobby organization who work closely with Ontario Sunset Country Travel Association and the Northwestern Ontario Tourism Association (NWOTA) to promote the well being of tourism and travel in Northwestern Ontario.

KDCA AGM, May 6 2011

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

A Review of the Facebook Fan Pages of TWENTY different Fishing Lodges in Canada. How to use Social Media for Tourism Internet Marketing.

How to Market Your Tourism Business on Facebook

We review the Business Fan Page for a random group of Fishing Lodges from across Canada – and notice TWO important elements you should include in YOUR Fan Page on Facebook!

Are YOU MISSING THESE CRITICAL FACTORS?

Be sure to watch the second video that shows you how to update your own Facebook Fan Page for much better better effectiveness in less than 15 minutes time.

Let’s start the tour with Woman River Camp – they have 115 fans, and I’d like to point out that there is no logo for the business used in the profile picture. We have Aikens Lake Wilderness Lodge has 78 people like this, Mattice Lake Outfitters – no logo – has 259 people, Nueltin Fly-In Lodges has 343 people like it.

Neglected Fan Pages

I want to point out something that I failed to mention in the video. If you watch at time index 0:58, you’ll see The Wall for this Fan Page has a spammer recommending a work-at-home affiliate program. My recommendation is that you set your Fan Page as your home page on your computer, or Subscribe to the RSS feed from your Fan Page so you can monitor wall posts and discussions.

Taltson Bay Big Pike Lodge has 67 people liking it… 274 people like Wilderness Air… Ganglers Lodge has 24 people liking it, and Ganglers Lodge fan page has a nice logo that makes it easy to recognize. Wollaston Lake’s Minor Bay Lodge & Outposts also has a good logo that is easy to recognize – 111 people like this fan page. Slim’s Cabin – has 171 people, 33 people like Sunset Lodge & Outfitters.

Moosehorn Lodge has 1205 people like their Fan Page – that’s fantastic! North Star and North Haven Resort have 10 people, Kashabowie Outposts have 81 people on this profile and over 100 on another profile. Hatchet Lake Lodge has 118 people and Bolton Lake Lodge has 153 people.

Then here is something significant – Clark’s Resorts – their Facebook fan page landing page is different than their public ‘Wall’. That way you land on a big recognizable logo area where you can put in your call to action. In this example, the Call-To-Action is to ‘Like’ their page to help build their numbers. Currently they have 245 fans right now.

If we go on to Fireside Lodge, they have 155 fans – no logo. Nungesser Lake Lodge, has no logo and has 152 people… and here is Andy Myers Lodge, I love this one – really great graphic design, really nice – it doesn’t really have a strong Call-To-Action though. The page doesn’t really direct me to do anything – except that the phone number is nice and big… they have 580 people who Like their page… that’s pretty good compared to the averages we are seeing throughout this survey. Wolf Lake Wilderness Lodge Ltd has 123 people.

That concludes the Tour if 20 different Facebook Fan Pages. And from this Tour, we can identify two main things that you need to have on your Fan Page. First, you need to have your business logo included in the profile picture for the page, and Second, you need a custom landing page that includes a strong Call-To-Action tht encourages visitors to click on Like, and to Like your page.

Watch the video below for a Tutorial that shows you exactly how to improve those two critical elements on your business page on Facebook.

How to market your Tourism Business on Facebook

We review two essentials that will help you to improve the effectiveness of you Business Fan Page on Facebook.

We’ll start off with a good example of a bad fan page and I’ll improve this Fan Page that I created just a short while ago.

The two components we’ll review are – first of all, the profile picture of the Business Page itself, and secondly, the main landing page that new visitors initially land on when they find your page.

Presently you can see that this is a new fan page, and as the administrator, I see this page – but apparently if you land on this page – you won’t see this ‘Getting Started’ page, instead, you’ll start off on my ‘Wall’.

The first thing I learned about the profile image was after I searched around and came across this Fan Page Factory – and I noticed that their site has a profile image that is 200 pixels by 600 pixels.

So the first thing you need to do, is to create a 200×600 banner so that you can put in your business logo, more of your branding and more of your information that will be featured on your business fan page. To do that, hover your mouse over the current profile picture, click on change picture in the menu that pops up – and click on upload a picture and upload your logo into place.

The second aspect we want to review is how to add another tab, to add a new landing page that encourages people to take the action of ‘Liking’ your Business page.

Here’s how to do that: The first thing we need to do is click on Edit Page. That will bring you to a panel like this. In this panel, scroll down to the very bottom and you’ll find the Static FBML under the More Applications Tab. When you click on that link, you’ll be taken to this page: This is where you can add this application to your business fan page by clicking on this link right here: Add To My Page.

After you’ve added to your page and you go back to your admin area, you’ll find the FBML box has been added and you have more options that are available to you. If you go to your page itself, you’ll also see that now, you’ve got a new tab that’s available – and there is nothing on that tab. When I go to the Admin area and I click on Edit under the FBML box, and I’ll be taken to a page like this, that is blank – and now I can put in the information that I want.

If you come to this spot, the best thing that I can recommend is that you copy and paste in the code that your email newsletter provider gives you. It will look something like this – this is what I get from my email autoresponder service, Aweber, and I just copy and paste the hole thing into place. When you view the page itself instead of the code that runs it, it looks something like this – so when people land on this page they can simply enter their email address, click on the option and they are subscribed to my email newsletter.

Advanced features on your Business Page on Facebook

When I was looking around, I found that the Fan Page Factory charges $20 to teach you how to hide the content on your new page until the user ‘Likes’ the page – and when they ‘Like’ the page, new pictures, new content becomes available to them.

They charge $20 for this code, but if you go to www.douglampi.com and sign up for my email newsletter, I provide 15 minute emarketing tips that tourism business owners and managers can use to market their own website.

I provide information on how to upgrade your business page on Facebook with more advanced features. I provide you with all the code so you can just copy and paste – and you can have some of these advanced features on your Business Page on Facebook.

How to market your blog on Facebook for Tourism Marketing to increase your website traffic and boost your search engine rankings in Google.

Canadian Tourism Internet Marketing

In this short video I demonstrate how tourism operators can get more benefit out of their blogging efforts if they take the time to include a link back to their own website from within the first couple sentences of each new blog post.

Facebook For Tourism Marketing

I logged into Facebook today and I wanted to share a few tips for tourism operators and resort owners who are blogging, and who may be starting to use Facebook for Tourism Marketing.

When I logged in this morning I see a notification here that there has been some new stuff posted to the WalleyeBook Fan Page . This is part of the network of CanadianFishingBook.com websites that pull in blog posts from fishing lodges in Canada. It search engine optimizes the content, and then re-distributes it across a range of social media websites in our network.

As you can see, people who ‘like’ WalleyeBook on Facebook, they get a notification right in their news feed when they login when ever there is a new update on walleyeBook.

Facebook For Tourism Marketing

Now here’s what I wanted to share with you:

When you make a post to your blog, be sure to hyperlink one of the keyword phrases in the first couple sentences and link back to your own blog. That way, each time you do a blog post and it is syndicated across the CanadianFishingBook.com network of social medial sites, you get links back to your website with the keywords you want from a whole bunch of different places.

And it’s great to get links back to your website right from Facebook For Tourism Marketing – that’s a very big powerhouse.

Here is an example of how your information is syndicated out and how people see it in a number of different places where they would never have seen it before.

And – some important search engine optimization tips on how to link back to your own website to give yourself traffic and search engine optimization juice!

Facebook For Tourism Marketing

Passive Destination Marketing or Proactive Social Marketing?

In this example I show how the CanadianFishingBook.com Social Media Network helps a Canadian Fishing Lodge Owner get published across the internet. By carefully syndicating your RSS feed, our network can provide instant traffic to your website and help you establish top search engine rankings by giving lodge owners a way to directly control their off-site linking strategies. Facebook For Tourism Marketing

Interview Question #1: Why Did You Create CanadianFishingBook.com?

Doug Lampi: I saw an opportunity to provide fishing lodge owners with the means to send fishing reports to thousands of anglers in the Midwest USA by taking advantage of Social Media Marketing, using a powerful technology called the RSS Feed.

Rather than giving the angler the power to send an inquiry to many lodges, we enable the lodge owner to send a message to many anglers who have opted-in to receive fishing reports from Canada!

Traditional Online Tourism Destination Marketing strategies include attaining top search engine rankings with a large set of websites, collecting trip inquiries and forwarding them to the appropriate travel service businesses.

The travel business then replies to each inquiry that is forwarded to them from the tourism marketing organization.

The CanadianFishingBook.com Lodge directory sends information and updates the other direction – from the Lodge to the Angler. This is accomplished by syndicating the content from the Fishing Lodge’s Blog, and distributing it across a range of authority Social Media websites.

Interview Question #2: Who is the audience of the CanadianFishingBook.com website?

Doug Lampi: Our starting approach to finding an audience for our Tourism Marketing of fishing trips Canada is different than traditional destination marketing because our database pairs up listings of Sport Shows from the Midwest USA with Fishing Lodges in Canada, rather than pairing up Lodges and the community information about their geographic locations in Canada.

Canadian Fishing Lodge Directory and Midwest USA Sport Show Listings.

Sign up for the free video where I explain the difference between traditional tourism destination marketing organizations online marketing strategies and the CanadianFishingBook.com Network of Social Media Websites.

Traditionally, the online strategy of a Tourism Marketing organizations is to channel inquiries to their membership. Each time an inquiry comes to the travel business from a potential guest through the tourism marketing group, the business owner must stop and reply to each general inquiry. This may take up considerable staff time to privately communicate a similar message to each inquiry, one person at a time.

The CanadianFishingBook.com Social Media Network turns the information flow around, and sends fishing reports from fishing lodges directly to anglers who have opted in to receive notifications. This way, staff time can be more effectively spent on creating a customer communication, such as a blog post, which creates an instant notification to thousands of subscribers – in addition to syndicating the content so it can be found within the major online Social Media Communities like Facebook, FriendFeed, Squidoo, Aweber, Twitter, Blogcatalog, Scribd and many others.

We created a Social Media Network to gain permission from anglers in the Midwest US to send them fishing reports that are collected from Blog Posts of participating Lodges in Canada.

Our Social Media Network Does Two Things:

First, A notification is sent out across our social media network each time one of our fishing lodges posts something new to their blog. This creates an immediate flow of traffic to the new content.

Second, the blog content is syndicated across several points of our Network of social media profiles. This provides an opportunity for you to create new links pointing back to your website – a very important part of your long term search engine optimization strategies!

Review of Ed Dale’s Challenge 2010, and why I think this free course is ideal for tourism marketing.

Challenge 2010 by Ed Dale and his associates have been providing a cracking good course over the past week!

My favorite bit has been Market Samurai, and I think this simple tool would be very helpful for Fishing Lodges in Ontario and Manitoba in Canada, to improve the effectiveness of your present Tourism Marketing.

Get top page search engine rankings with greater ease. First Market Samurai helps you find exactly the keywords your customers are using to search for your business, and then Market Samurai helps you focus down on the high traffic keywords with low competition from your competitors.

From one business owner to another – I encourage you to take the

http://www.challenge.co

It is FREE. I like their slogan:
There is no charge for awesomeness!

Introducing…

A new Twitter Marketing Experiment designed to promote Canadian Fishing Lodges.

Twitter has been getting a great deal of attention within the Marketing Circles so I’ve been researching the Twitter methodology of the most successful Twitter accounts online, and using their strategies for Tourism Marketing, specifically, for fishing and hunting trips.

Growth of Twitter

The exponential growth in the uptake of Twitter is partly because Twitter works so well with texting to and from a mobile phone.

Mobile phones now outnumber land-line subscriptions four to one – and represents a fundamental change in the way people are accessing the Internet.

WHO

WHAT

If fishing in Canada interests you, then so would these Twitter accounts! Because all that these Twitter accounts talk about is fishing! Fishing News, Fishing stuff on eBay and real Fishing Reports from actual, real, Fishing Lodges in Canada!

I’d love to hear your feedback — good or bad!

Twitter has become one of my top referring traffic sources, and I’m excited to send new, targeted traffic – directly to your websites and blogs!!

Join The Experiment

Contact Me for all the details!

Today is insanely cold.

It’s easy to put together and publish a 90 second video clip. On any subject.

Watch for more Video Posts that show you how to DO Video Posts for your Tourism Business!

See what this video looks like on YouTube, Metacafe, Google, DailyMotion and Blip.tv

After I created the first internet guru watch podcast, my sister reviewed it, and she asked – “who is your target audience” – I gave her a quick answer, but, after thinking about it for some time, really, the audience is… me.

I’m doing this podcast for my own eductation, and so, you may not be on the same path as me and you may not find all the tips that I’m searching for and that I’m finding useful, they may not apply to you.

But you never know when I’m going to talk about something that could be useful for you, as I share the path of my quest.

Many of you have been thrown into this quest of learning how to market on the internet, because, all of a sudden, you busines is dependant on getting your bookings online.

And so you’ve been thrown into the internet marketing business and you’re on the same path as me now,

• Learning how to make your website convert,
• Learning how to connect with your visitors.
• Learning how to make money,
• How to make a living,
• How to sell your product over the internet

 …to people you may have never met before.

In the spring of 2008, the Internet Guru Watch Podcast is going to focus in two main areas. Mostly because of the projects I’m working on, and that I want to develop.

I’m taking some good advice from Micheal Campbell, to only bring into my marketing mix, the strategies that are going to go with will the projects that I currently have ongoing right now. Strategies that will push and add to what I’m already doing, rather than start me off in a different direction.

And so, as you listen to the Internet Guru Watch podcast through the spring of 2008, I’ll be focusing on how to set up and interconnect with people using all the social networking and social bookmarking sites that are out there.

Right now that process may seem daunting and overwhelming, there’s just so many of them, if you go to prophilactic.com, you see over a hundred of different places where you can set up a profile and start building a community.

Just the hours of registering to all those places and setting up your profile, and managing all those logins and all of those accounts, its overwhelming to start off with. But, like most hills that we choose to climb, the effort of the climb is well worth the view at the top, and it’s sure easy coasting down the other side…

The other area the Internet Guru Watch Podcast will focus on, is the process of launching an ebook – The pre-launch and the launch process, and I want to learn from Gurus who know how to set up venture partners for Launching the eBooks.