This is the first video to Case Study improvements I make to websites I manage, based on the recommendations in Tourism Tim’s Marketing Success Course  and the feedback from the close group of International Tourism business owners!

The most exciting aspect of Tim’s Course is the way he quantifies the elements of your marketing message that lead people to trust you enough to take action and book a trip online. I have a plan for blogging, for social media and for SEO – but my plans were lacking this critical element! Like cake without the icing!

As you see by the video below, the stats tell the story of how we are already doing better with the same website traffic.

Here’s The Brief:

Decreased Bounce Rate and Increased Page Views Per Visit after initial changes to incorporate some of Tourism Tim’s Marketing Strategies into my first of several case study websites.

And I also show Google Analytics close up to review incoming traffic around a target geographic location in the Upper Midwest USA as I monitor the website traffic that is generated during a real-time sport show event.

More Short Case Study Videos To Follow.

Do you have a question?  I’d be happy to answer!

I just had an amazing experience on Google, and I had to stop what I was doing to make this social media case study video.

While updating a website for a client, I did a search on Google for a specific Geographic location. I wanted to find someone to link to, when I did a search, the Google Search Results are turning up google + profiles.

It occurred to me that I’m logged in, and that is changing my search results for a town location. WOW that is powerful for google +

Then I scrolled down more and I found that my twitter connections were also showing up in my search results.

I’m following Kashabowie Outposts on Google + and, because they shared this link, it is turning up in my search results when I search for topics that match the information they have shared.

From these top results, five of the top in the first page of the search results were because of social sharing and not because of search engine optimization – I found it completely startling to see how the rankings were changing in google based on your social media connections.

It’s amazing now, what this means for tourism marketing – it influences what choices people have available to them, right at the beginning of their search.

Profound Significance For Tourism Marketing

I consider this to be an incredibly positive step forward for user experience on the web. The significance of this real world example is profound. Tourism marketing and travel planning well forever be changed by the social connections you establish with your guests.

Are you a tourism business wanting strategies for developing your social media?

Consider the long term impact of a single ‘Like’ or ‘Tweet’ - so long as that individual grows their social media network over the years, their entire network of connections will continue to be influenced by that recommendation – starting with the choices they are presented with when they begin a search.

Three Critical Take-Aways

These are busy days of awesome web! Tourism Tim’s Marketing Success Course is changing the way I have to build websites - right from the bottom up!

In fact, I looked at my own business web design website and thought

‘WOW! I’m missing all of these core components on my *own* website!’

I now see opportunity to increase the effectiveness of all the top search rankings I have achieved, by including these components on all of the websites that I have created!

When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Appears.

I feel really lucky that have taken this course right now because I have three or four different projects that I’m working on where I can get the practical experience of directly implement all of his recommendations!

These projects are all in different stages of development – some of them are long-standing websites I’ve been doing for years, and some of them are brand-new redesigns where I’m switching an old website over into the WordPress Publishing Platform.

I’m really keen to review how Tim recommendations can benefit my tourism clients – however, after completing his course, I believe the very same things that work on a tourism website will work on any different website.

Worksheets For Everyone

After completing Tim’s Course, I’ve spent the past week contacting clients, doing a ‘Tourism Tim Worksheet’ on each page of their website, discussing the changes – and starting on the updates to their websites – knowing that Tim will be personally reviewing one or two of these projects!!

I’m very excited with the new learning – and a bit overwhelmed!

Presently I am implementing the step by step plans on adding Tim’s Components to the design and layout of my current projects.  I’m meeting with clients over skype, bringing up the Tourism Tim Worksheet and filling out the form with each client.  Then, after we complete the worksheet, we review their individual websites and start planning the changes to be made that will incorporate Tim’s recommendations – changes in design, graphics, layout and text… even color changes are considered as we reflect on these critical updates.

Next is the phase of doing.

Core concepts have been learned, meetings with clients organized and completed, now the updates are underway on the first sites that will be placed on the Hot Seat for review!

The Tourism Tim Success Hotseat

I just watched the webinar replay that Tim Warren Hosted for the people who are presently taking the course – and it gave me even more clarity about the elements of a page that can be improved to help increase bookings!!  Sorry I missed the Live Event, but completely awesome to watch the replay!

My Next Two Month Goals

• • to update my clients sites
  • have Tim and the crew on the Webinar give it a review and suggestions
  • complete the suggested updates

…And then… complete the case study with a testimonial from some happy Fishing Lodge or Outpost Camp Owner, because their website is getting more contacts, more calls, more enquires, and – more bookings!

Then the Success Cycle will be complete, I will compile my ‘Before-And-After Test Results’ and create a Case Study to share with other seasonal tourism businesses and web designers.

I am super excited to get back to work!! Many thanks Tim!

More updates to follow!

To Your Success,

Doug

With all the buzz about social media and the Internet for vacation planning, one might forget about the awesome power of meeting people face-to-face when selling trips.

Sports Shows and Trade Shows are sometimes portrayed as being a marketing method from the past – but beware – the people who are telling this story are biased toward online marketing.

I know this from first-hand experience.

You see, I firmly believe that tourism marketing is made far more effective with a website, email list and social media presence – and I used to think the Internet was the answer for all marketing needs… that is, until I attended a 10 day sports show with a Fly-in Fishing client, Kashabowie Outposts, in February 2011.

Should You Still DO Sports Shows?

The simple answer is YES.  And your online marketing should be carefully crafted to boost the effectiveness of the shows you attend.

Plan ahead to use your blog, email and social media – to pre-market your fans to walk past every other booth in the show, and come directly to YOUR booth!

Using The Internet To Market Your Shows

Hubspot recently released a report that should be required reading for all Tourism Business Owners, Managers and Employees who may be involved in working your booth at any sports show or travel, trade, adventure, boat and home show!  I continually scour the net to find gems of information about how to market Tourism businesses from Canada, and I’m very happy to share this powerful report.

Register and Free Download:

http://www.hubspot.com/The-Inbound-Marketing-Tradeshow-Planning-Guide

Use the handy chart that lays out the detailed step-by-step methods and strategies you should use in the months leading up to the show, what you should be doing online while you are at the show, and most importantly, what you can be doing to increase the bookings you get from each show by using a specific follow-up routine after the show is completed.

Twylah

I just learned about an amazing new Twitter service called Twylah – that may help you get more value out of Twitter for your Travel and Tourism business.

My friend @tinalussier told me about a blog post by @adamdince that shows all the steps required to Optimize Your Twitter Feed with Twylah

You can see an example of my trending tweets here:

http://tweets.queticointernetmarketing.com/

Shaping Your Twitter Content With Twylah

Once my trending tweets were live, I was surprised to learn that my top topics were the following:

winnipeg
social media
wordpress
business
video
tourism
facebook

This is a great insight into how I’ve been using Twitter in the past while, and provides me both with feedback about my recent content, and a way to start selecting my twitter content more deliberately so that I’m correctly focused on my Niche.

Shmap.it

My friend @tinalussier also told me about Shmap.it, a free service that will analyze your followers on Twitter – and tell you some pretty amazing things about them!  Here is a screenshot of the report I received:

Click To Enlarge

Get your own Twitter Follower Analysis and let me know what you discover!

How Twitter Could Help Your Tourism Business?

Twitter is an excellent way to connect with people – specifically, your customers.  These two tools will help you create a better content strategy for your twitter feed, while helping you see more about the audience of people who follow you, and even target sub-sets of your twitter followers by interest or geographic locations!

Social Media for Marketing Tourism.

What Social Media Tools do you find the most effective for marketing your travel destination?

Do you know of a Twitter Tool that should be shared here?

More Businesses Choose WordPress For Tourism Marketing

In it’s early days, WordPress was almost exclusively used for Blogging. Over years of continual development, WordPress is released as a publishing platform, not as a blogging platform. More and more small businesses like fishing lodges, outfitters and hunting camp owners are benefiting from the unmatched SEO and Social Media integration provided by WordPress For Tourism Marketing.

Wikipedia reports that, in 2009, WordPress won the best Open Source CMS Award, and in 2010, WordPress has won the Hall of Fame CMS category.

Web Technology Surveys reports that WordPress is used by 14.0% of all the websites they surveyed, that is a content management system (CMS) market share of 54.6%.

Social Media and WordPress For Tourism Marketing

Social Media works seamlessly with WordPress For Tourism Marketing. Why is this important? Because Social Media has created a changed consumer-scape for all business sectors, not just travel and tourism.

National Tourism Week Social Media Seminar

“Visit Bucks County has been embracing the revolutionary changes that have impacted the tourism and hospitality industry by speaking directly and interacting with the people that fuel our economy,” said Jerry Lepping, executive director of Visit Bucks County. “Hosting this seminar during National Travel & Tourism Week was the perfect time to encourage the importance of this transition as well as the impact travel has on our economy.”

Watch This Slide Show – Interesting Social Media Data For Business

Rural Tourism Marketing Recommends

The Wharton Internet Marketing Blog sums up the benefits of WordPress for Tourism Marketing: At a recent workshop, Joanne Steele from Rural Tourism Marketing recommended that business owners make sure their websites are built using WordPress.

Using WordPress As A Content Management System (CMS)

Evoke Design writes “As WordPress has developed into version 3, it is slowly becoming a top choice for CMS solutions for designers and developers. It provides great flexibility and it’s easy to work with. This means that WordPress has moved on a long way from being heavily biased on a personal blogging system.”

9 Great Reasons to Use WordPress as a CMS

Today, WordPress is released as a publishing platform, not as blogging software – which means it’s even better to use as a CMS. In this article WordPress Ninja explains why WordPress is such a good choice to use as a CMS.

WordPress For Tourism Marketing

A quick message to give you a heads up about the new
“Marketing Tourism With Social Media” report
that I have just released!

A social media marketing Business Plan with numbers you can measure.

http://www.marketingtourismwithsocialmedia.com

My report is written in the form of a business plan that reflects a Seasonal Tourism business as they examine and re-define their Marketing strategies to make better use of people’s existing friendship networks on the huge Social Media sites like Facebook.

Whether you’re already on Facebook with a Business Page, or wondering whether it’s worth it, this report will give you hard numbers to inform your business mind.

I must admit, the numbers are pretty compelling, the marketing potential is amazing!

I’m happy to share this report with you:

http://www.marketingtourismwithsocialmedia.com

Marketing Tourism With Social Media

P.S. Special Pre-Release Webinars !

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