Recently, I joined a new Group on Facebook.  I’m very excited about this business, so I invited all my (220) friends to check out the Group.

Several of my Clients are also my Friends on Facebook.  One Client asked me

Why would I want to join the Souris River Canoe Group?

After I replied to this email – I thought “Hey – I bet a lot of other people were wondering that same thing!”

So, I’ve posted my reply here as a Blog Post:

The Souris River Canoe group on Facebook is a new community of people who, presumably, love canoeing.  How might that be a benefit to your business marketing?

In just 2 minutes of follow-up,

• • you have created an introduction to your business
  • the introduction reaches a very well targeted audience
  • your “Wall Post” remains there – serving as a permanent “booth” at this virtual sport show – the Souris River Canoe Group.

You don’t use Souris River Canoes?  Ok – that would take more imagination… 

Are there other groups like this?

Currently, I’m putting together a video training center to help teach
people how to use Social Media strategies to for tourism marketing -
I’ll be certain to give you updates as I get it ready to launch!

Just Ask Them

In the meantime tell people at the Sport Show about your Facebook Fan Page, Blog, Flickr Pictures, Youtube videos… 

Just ask them “are you on Facebook?”

Cheers!

Doug

Pre-Announcing: www.TourismMarketingVideos.com

A Glaring Need

Tourism Marketing Videos came to being in phases, as all good ideas do:

First, I saw a glaring need: Lodge Owners need help learning how to manage their websites.

Recently I’ve upgraded many of my clients’ websites to WordPress 2.7

Although their website is ten years old, many Lodge owners are just starting to Blog and update their own websites for the very first time.

I Can Help!

Second, I saw a way to offer much more help than I could provide on my own.

As I began researching what educational videos were available, I was – mostly – delighted with the results. I was delighted, because I started learning so much new information, I naturally started to bookmark and organize it.

Then a very curious thing started to happen;
My own personal marketing results began to change.

Without planning it, and without giving much thought to it, I had started to return to various bits of my video collection on a regular basis, and after a short while, I began realize this stuff was pretty cool!

I was making more sales but -
I still hadn’t realized the tremendous value
of the specialized collection of videos I was putting together.

Action Items and Examples

My marketing results were changing because I had taken action. I took the new knowledge and immediately put it to use.

This is so vital – but most people overlook it’s importance.

If you take action right away, take the new knowledge you’ve just learned and immediately put to use, you are 80% more likely to retain and use the new information in the future!

They don’t have to be big actions. Often, it takes less than 30 minutes to take one of these great ideas and increase your value!

Just 30 minutes to make VITAL changes to the presentation, layout, images or sales copy – and reap the ongoing rewards!

I can help you can do the same. www.TourismMarketingVideos.com

Relax, It’s Easier

Say you are a Fishing Lodge Owner, a Bed and Breakfast or the event organizer for the Annual Fishing Tournament; Relax, it’s easier to update your site than ever before.

Learn by Video

Stop reading manuals written by nerds. Sit back and watch a How To Video!

Back it With Action

Great marketing ideas are… great – but how can I put it into action if I’m not sure what my options are?

Good News! Tourism Marketing Videos offers new members an Introductory Tour that guides you through a sequence of educational clips to provide an Executive Overview of the range of the most important Internet Marketing strategies available today.

You may pause the Video Tour and start into the Action Items right away, follow through the entire sequence for an overview or jump off the Guided Tour at any time to investigate related videos.

Interested in Updates?

Opening Soon! Be the first to get updates on our Grand Opening Date.
Rolling Out Small

Limited Grand Opening

Only the first 100 get a spot.

This isn’t just a collection of easy-to-learn-from Educational Videos and Video Marketing Lessons for Camp Owners and Tourism Operators… and it’s more than real-world Actions you can take right now to make a difference in all aspects of your marketing…

Tourism Marketing Videos is a community of people. People who are your peers and colleges. They run a Tourism Business too. They do the “Song and Dance” at Sport Shows through the winter – and they have also been thrown into blogging, social media and running their own website.

Why Limit the Grand Opening?

Because I want to know and help each of you. I want to visit your website and learn what you offer, I want to invite you into our new Private, Members Only Community, and I want to help you start building your business assets by using the free and powerful Social Media tools.

www.TourismMarketingVideos.com

See you there!

Check out these new tutorials about online marketing for tourism operators.

The e-kit is a complete suite of tutorials that covers everything from the basics of developing a good web site to the more complex issues of Google ad words, search engine marketing and online product distribution.

As a tourism operator you can access a wealth of knowledge about how to maximise your online marketing opportunities.

Check out the Tourism e-kit – brought to you by the Australian State and Territory tourism offices.

http://www.atdw.com.au/tourism_e_kit.asp

Cheers!

Over the past few days I’ve had the delight of speaking with over 100 Travel & Tourism Business Owners in “My Backyard”, Northwestern Ontario, Canada.

I’ve come to realize that Tourism entrepreneurs are some of the most Web Savvy business owners in our region. Almost all of them have been through the experience of creating a website, and are experienced with answering email, and managing pictures and documents online as a matter of daily business.

However, oh yes, here it comes…

Out of the 180 calls I’ve made, I’ve left messages on 80 answering machines.

And, out of the ONE HUNDRED business owners I spoke with… not one single business owner asked where I had found their contact information!

NOBODY was seeking to find out what marketing was making their phone ring!

’nuff said… gives me some ideas for my email list.

Cheers,

Doug

I’m always following the online updates of the best internet marketers I know.

Today, the Tourism Keys Blog “Internet Marketing for Tourism”, featured a post on

How to get deeper insights into google search results

In this article, Todd Lucier points out the power of the detailed location information on where the volume of searches originate from – so you can plan your next advertising campaign based on a focused keyword set.

Here’s an example:
I start with the most general search term, then I copy and paste the list of related search terms to a note pad file, and work my way down the related search terms by clicking on each one and saving notes. (Limiting my search to the USA)

• Walleye
• Quetico Park

Try phrases that seem similar:

• Fishing Lodge
• Fishing Cabin

Take An Evening (2 hours)
It will only take 30 mintues to an hour to collect a list of related keyword phrases that are used within the geographic region where your prime Tourism Guests live and work, then you’ll be armed with some great specific keyword phrases to help optimize your marketing to match how your guest are searching.

I have keyword phrases, now what?
Now the fun part! (1 hour)
Put those phrases on a sticky note beside your computer so you have them for easy referance when you are creating new content.

1. Login to your website and touch up the wording of your webpages slightly to include these keyword phrases within the paragraphs you already have on your page. Note: generally, there’s no need to create whole new pages for the new phrases you’ve uncovered.
2. Finally – update your Meta Tags for your website to include the new phrases. (like you can with Dynamic Site Builder)

That’s it!!
In one evening, thanks to the new tool, Google Insites, you can make your marketing message better suited to the geographic location of your best Tourism Guest!

Now that you have this new set of keyword phrases on a sticky note beside your computer, remember, you can continue to refer to your list for all your future marketing plans, including:

• when you re-name images
• when you write descriptions for your images
• when you create a business profile on a new site
• when you post videos you YouTube
• when you write new blog posts
• when you create your newsletter and brochures
• when you layout your Sport Show Booth

Cheers all!

July is hardly finished, but I’m already planning for the January Boat & Sport Show Season!

My personal mission is to connect Tourism services in Northwestern Ontario with people who are planning a fishing vacation.

Get Started Today!

Here’s Some History:

While I’ve been building websites as a business since 2001, I’m always researching the latest developments in the industry. In December 2007 I experimented with some new Internet Marketing strategies I was learning.

As a means of helping my clients gain a better response to their Trade Show Marketing, I started writing articles about popular boat an sport shows that my tourism clients were attending.

I quickly took over many of the top search rankings in Google, and my websites gained a strong surge of traffic from people who were searching for Sport and Boat Show information.

Frankly, the instant success of this new marketing strategy was a big surprise to me.

In fact, one event organizer contacted me because I had taken over eight of the top twenty placements on Google for searches on his event!

Back then, I thought this fast success would be a flash-in-the-pan.

However, seven months later, I’m very excited to see that I still hold many top rankings in Google for searches on many different popular Boat and Sport Shows in the USA.

This success has given me a very exciting Goal for Tourism Marketing!

What’s my Goal?

If someone is even THINKING of attending a Sport Show… If they are searching the internet for details about a Show in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan or Missouri…

I want them to find information about that Event on our Directory that promotes Canadian Tourism Services.

If this is your audience, don’t miss out!

http://canadianfishingbook.com/compare.php

Doug

Where does your website get most of it’s traffic from?

Most of us still focus on getting search traffic, and most of us focus on Google, because, frankly, that’s where everyone gets the most search traffic from.

It will always be important to have a search-engine-friendly website – but if you are relying on search as your biggest traffic source, then you are missing out on the activities within massive online communities.

The internet is much bigger than it used to be, and as it’s grown, people have started to “group” together in communities like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, WordPress, Blogcatalog and many others.

In fact, there are so many places where you can create a profile and link up to friends, that a new breed of websites offer the service of collecting together, or aggregating all of your profiles.

Currently, I’m using a new network to promote the CanadianFishingBook.com Series of websites, blogs, ebooks and Lodge Listings.

The increase in traffic from various communities has encouraged further research and development, in fact, the results, in terms of

• downloads,
• subscribers,
• group members and
• participants,

are *much* more effective than search engine marketing.

Learn more about Working the Social Networks

Cheers – Doug

I’ve been pleasantly surprized while experimenting with a few of the better know social networking sites and Web 2.0 style services recently.

After listening to the Internet Marketing Secrets podcasts, getting new ideas, and then finding some new referral traffic, I’ve invested a few more long, tedious days to build a larger presence on Blogcatalog.

After listing a number of my blogs, I began surfing the categories of blog listings to do with fishing – and I joined the Neighborhood of any good fishing blog I came across. Later I also joined the Neighborhood for a list of web 2.0 blogs. At this point I have joined the Neighborhood of about 150 blogs, including some 48 Fishing Neighborhoods.

I also added some blog owners as friends on Blogcatalog, and I started Following a few of the more interesting blog owners as well.

I’ve been hearing from a number of Internet Marketers that they are getting a lot of traffic from www.stumbleupon.com, so I thought I would sign up and give it a try.

Now I’ll take 30 minutes each day to Stumble all the important pages of my websites and even news releases and articles about my sites.

To help make sure the search engines quickly index everything I Stumble, I’ll take the RSS feed from my Stumble account, and add it to a few active blogs that I manage.

http://douglaslampi.stumbleupon.com/