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by George

The Travel Blog Project Reaches the Halfway Point

March 18, 2011 in George's Observations by George

Today marks the Travel Blog Project’s 50th edition of The Daily Post. The project has over 200 travel agents signed up to receive the daily marketing information. This is a global effort with travel agents from all over world are participating. We have agents from the U.S.A., Africa, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Europe and the United Kingdom.We have been creating blog posts around a weekly theme for 10 weeks. In the beginning of the project, the themes were mostly to establish you as a knowledgeable specialist in your travel niche. We started by creating posts about the great aspects of your favorite destination or mode of travel. We also created posts about how you help people plan their vacations with a few client case studies. We spent quite a bit of time on creating a library of blog critiques of hotels, cruise ships and destinations that are perfect content for re-purposing on your websites and Facebook Fan pages.

We have spent quite a bit of time on search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. We began our SEO education by focusing on keyword phrases. We discussed how to research keyword phrases and what makes a good phrase. We also discussed how to use targeted keyword phrases in the title and within the post to increase online traffic.

We have examined Facebook business fan pages and how to create a professional looking site. We created a custom “welcome” tab and loaded a sales image on the left column of the fan page.

Twitter has also been a major effort of the Travel Blog Project. We have discussed Tweeting techniques and how to use Hashtags (#) and Retweeting to get more followers.

We have focused on communicating the value that you as a travel agent provide to the vacation planning process. We have discussed submitting press releases, how to write them and I provided a number of websites to submit them for free.

For the last couple weeks we have been conducting a SWOT analysis examining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Our focus has been to build on your strengths and turn negatives into positives. The main theme to the Travel Blog Project has been that positioning yourself as an expert in a travel niche is the main defense against threats and a way to build upon your strengths. We also made the point that the main threat to travel agents not making a commitment to use the marketing opportunities available to you to their fullest. Thus, the main threat is inaction.

We have had guest articles for The Daily Post from established travel celebrities like Richard Earls. We have also had some participants write some of the best articles with awesome ideas and a lot of enthusiasm for this industry.

One of the best aspects of the project has been the collaborative learning and sharing that participants have done by posting in the TBP Knowledge Center. We have posted some of the topics in The Daily Post.

We now close the first half of the Travel Blog Project and look forward to the second half. Hopefully, this has been a good learning experience for all.

Enjoy The Journey!
George

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by George

Social Media = Small Agent Advantage

November 8, 2009 in George's Observations by George

“Look at your enemy’s strength to find their weakness”
Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian General

Clearly the Internet has provided some really heavyweight competition for independent travel agencies; however in many ways it also leveled the playing field by creating new cost-effective ways to promote. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and user-generated resort review sites provide small travel agencies the platforms to compete on an equal playing field with the big online travel giants like Expedia, Orbitz & Travelocity. They may have the big name, but you have personality and experience!

Big agencies will have someone in charge of social media who is scared to death of loosing their job if they post something that doesn’t meet strict corporate policy. The result is either the constant sales pitch or bland “who cares” type of information. Either way, you have the advantage. In social media you must have an opinion. Otherwise, who’s going to care what you have to say? People will be interested in what you have to say, if you share your opinion. This affords you the opportunity to brand YOU. So I’m asking what are you doing to brand yourself by increasing your online footprint?

Social media, user-generated review sites and other online communities all provide a way to increase your online presence or footprint. Each time you post an article, review or response, you post your name, web-link or e-mail. Each of these posts creates an opportunity for people to click through to your web site. The neat thing about social media is that it’s cost effective (free) advertising to get your message out. Most important is that these sites provide the platform to sell your knowledge and expertise more than traditional advertising venues like newspaper and radio.

One of the major factors in the demise of traditional advertising was that it is so expensive. On a typical small business budget, you had to buy the bare minimum and that limited you to price based advertising. Competing on price is never a smart move, but communicating knowledge and expertise in a personal way is and social media provides a great way to do so. Therefore, the goal is to take full advantage of these promotional opportunities by creating as large an online footprint as possible.

  • Do you use Twitter?
    Tweets that you post send traffic to your website. The more you tweet, the more followers, the more traffic you drive to your site. Goal is to build followers. Follow other people and follow-back if they follow you.
  • Do you have a business fan page on Facebook?
    Facebook is one of the highest traffic sites on the Interent. You can set up a fan page for your travel agency…FREE. Post tidbits on your Facebook business fan page to drive traffic to your website. Join groups and become fans of others.
  • Do you have a BLOG?
    This is the cheapest website you will have. Blog software is free from WordPress. You only have to purchase hosting space which is like $50 a year. Blogs allow you to enter the Blog community, linking and posting comments to other blogs and sending more traffic to your web site. 
  • Do you post hotel and cruise reviews on user-generated review sites?
    Show people your knowledge and worthy of contacting to help plan their vacation. Did you know Trip Advisor allows travel agents to post reviews? For a shameless plug; www.ReviewResorts.com actively encourages travel agents to post resort and cruise reviews. In return, you get your name, web-link and e-mail posted on the review. FREE Advertising!
  • Post vacation classifieds on Craigslist and other classified sites.
    Once again in my shameless attempt at self-promotion, travel agents can post vacation classifieds on www.ReviewResorts.com More FREE Advertising!
  • Do you publish press releases?
    Type into Google; “Free Press Release” and you will find hundreds of sites to publish your press releases free.
  • Have you thought about creating a social community for your particular travel niche? www.ning.com is like a Facebook forum only created and promoted entirely by you. If you cater to a special interest or destination travel market www.ning.com might be your best bet. Once again, the goal is to create as large an online footprint as possible to create momentum for your business.

Good luck and happy posting.
George

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