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.

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!

Tourism Blogging Survey

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Mostly, it’s because I’m just too darn busy!

Seriously though, I haven’t taken on a new client since June of 09; and have been referring leads and customers to my trusted colleagues.

Marketing for Tourism Businesses, specifically, Hunting and Fishing Lodges in Canada, have been my core clientele since I started my business in 2001. As a web design architect, I’m constantly finding and testing new marketing strategies and technologies with the aim of bringing them back and increasing the effectiveness of Tourism Internet Marketing.

In my research, I’ve created dozens of websites in niches that are unrelated to Tourism. Over the years, have become more and more successful at creating websites that are online businesses. Virtual businesses that starts and establishes a relationship with new people, builds an audience and converts visitors into happy, paying customers – with minimal maintenance.

As a result, I have stopped marketing my web design services and reduced my client load.

Over the past two years, my business has specialized, and became exclusively focused on coaching business owners and entrepreneurs who run and update their own website or blog. I have a deeper relationship with fewer clients – and it’s been very good for all of us.

I’m very grateful to work with the people I do.

Giving Something Back

The success, the free time, and the fantastic clients I’m fortunate to work with – have helped to inspire and create something of fantastic value that I hope gives something substantial back to the Tourism Industry – and is helpful to entrepreneurs and bloggers everywhere.

Over a year in the making, we are finally down to the last few weeks of production!  We  expect to have everything ready for release by the beginning of March, but I’ll be blogging here to drop some hints and start raising awareness as we complete the last details.

I’ve Been A Bad Blogger

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Today I start on the complete rebuild of blog.canadianfishingbook.com to make it easier incorporate the latest RSS technology.

The upgrade consists of dumping the old K2 Theme for Wordpress and upgrading to my own custom skin for the Thesis Theme.

Although it amounts to a complete rebuild of the graphic design of the site, this upgrade is necessary in order to benefit from a powerful set of wordpress plugins, combined with the amazing flexibility of the Thesis Wordpress Theme, to provide a QUANTUM IMPROVEMENT in our marketing effectiveness for Fishing Lodge Owners who blog.

By the end of today, the site will look almost like it did before – it’s easy to make a skin for the thesis theme to mimic almost any design.

Complete Website Rebuild

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How Much Is Your Traffic Worth?

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