A branding expert has recently posted an interesting expert on ‘Luxury being a feeling’. He was inspired to write the article after he and his daughter recently visited the Teen Paradise Mall in Shibuya, Tokyo, when she asked: “Papa, how would you tell a fake Louis Vuitton bag from a real one?”
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recently read a fascinating article about how The New York Observer is incentivising its journos with bonuses for well read articles and the amount of Twitter followers (see it here) and felt compelled to write something on the matter.
Personally… it’s a fantastic idea, especially with all the tracking tools available today… why haven’t others thought about this?
Obviously a paper or magazine survives through its readership. The more readers the more sales and ad revenues – it’s a simple model… so incentivising its core knowledge sharers in this way makes absolute sense. Bonuses will help journos think outside of the box to get more followers (for the publication), embrace the trends around social media and online publishing fully and ultimately make for a more exciting reader experience. The only problem is (and has always been) – how do publishers make their money online in the future. Obviously The Times (UK) is launching their ‘paid for’ online subscription but from a personal perspective I really don’t hold out much hope for this model when you can get the same information elsewhere for free.
Ad revenues online will almost certainly increase along with the introduction of affiliate marketing techniques (which we are starting to see emerge), but I’m hearing that many publishers are petrified and rightly so. Perhaps the way forward therefore is to diversify away from publishing or perhaps develop a more exciting, value adding means of sharing their content… but that’s the million dollar question right!
Here’s how The New York Observer are measuring journos bonuses on:
• Pageviews
• Number of posts
• New Twitter followers
• Number of comments
• External pickups
The scheme is being trialed for three months with the first place receiving $500. The second place will receive $300. There is a $2500 cap per employee in total awards. This means that one employee can sweep each month; but also there is a caveat that the same employee cannot win in consecutive months. Finally, web only employees are not included!
I’ve got a feeling that Ney York’s SEO trainers are going to be having a bumper year if this takes off.
Check out our beginners guide to social media marketing for Hoteliers and once you’ve got to grips with the basics see if you can start putting some of the following ideas into play:
1 – Set up a Foursquare account. Not come across FourSquare yet? Well, it’s yet another social network… but before you jump this paragraph know that this tool is incredibly powerful for attracting visitors and subtly marketing your hotel. In summary, FourSquare is a location based network and allows you to add attractions to your local area providing valuable visitor information to potential guests who will appreciate the advice. It’s FREE and takes minutes to set up, just take your time to get the information around what attractions you suggest exactly right.
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The world’s gone social media crazy tweeting this, facebooking that and blogging whatever and whenever we can! But look a little deeper in to this albeit fickle (on the outside) communication revolution and you’ll find an incredibly exciting marketing opportunity for hoteliers.
Whilst some of us may already have a twitter account or perhaps even a Facebook page, the fact remains that these marketing mediums are relatively untouched in the industry simply because we either don’t have a dickie what to do with it all, or possibly because there simply isn’t enough time in the day to run a hotel and put time into something with no any proven rewards.
Well, the good news is that after reading this article you’ll hopefully have a better understanding of what social media is all about, and more to the point, how a hotelier should be making the most of it in order to fill more beds.
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The importance of blogs within the Travel Industry is set to increase over the next few years. Changes in the way content is aggregated across search engines and social media will push companies towards placing blogs and social networking at the forefront of their online marketing strategies.
Whether you have a blog already or you’re thinking about integrating one, this article aims to give you crucial insights into using corporate blogging as an incredibly powerful marketing tool.
Here are our 7 essential tips to corporate blogging:
Step 1 - Choose your blog platform
There’s a wide variety of choice out there when it comes to blogging platforms. We recommend Wordpress, which offers many thousands of easy to use plugins for bespoke functionality. The blog should ideally be integrated into your website as a Sub Domain (e.g. http://www.mytravelagency.com/blog). Other blogging platforms to consider might be Drupal, Typepad or Expression Engine.
Step 2 - The Content Strategy
Many blogs fail because they have been insufficiently planned. A content strategy should essentially lists out; who is going to write editorial, how the blog will be promoted, principal topics, content ideas, regularity of content posting, which other blogs to align with, what keywords are to be targeted. Read on and this will make more sense!
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