Tourism Internet Marketing U

Maximizing Media Relations: Advantages of Interactive News Releases

Online news releases take the same standard format as offline news releases, but the online news release can be interactive, with links to a variety of interesting information that supports your message. When your news release is provided by email and you provide a hypertext link in that email, the journalist is just a click away from accessing all the information he or she needs to complete the story. Helpful links to include in your interactive news releases are:

• A link to the email address of the media contact person in your organization so that with the click of the mouse a journalist can ask a question via email.
• A link to the company web site so that the journalist can quickly and easily access additional information as part of his or her due diligence, or can find required information.
• Links to articles that have been written about the company and related issues, both on the corporate web site and on other sites. Don’t provide a link to the site of a magazine that has written the article; rather, get a copy of the article and place it on your own web site to ensure a live link.
• Links to graphics and pictures for illustration. If your story relates to your destination, have a link to a graphic that can be used.
• Links to key corporate players, their biographies, their photos, and possibly some quotes. Journalists usually include quotes in their stories.
• A link to the FAQ section where you can have frequently asked questions and a few that you wish were frequently asked.

Still want to learn more? Check out my book 101 Ways to Promote your Tourism Business Web Site - Now in its second edition!

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Increasing Traffic Through Online Publications: Some Article Ideas

When you are looking to increase traffic to your travel and tourism web site, you’re going to want to be sure that you are looking at online publications. By writing articles and submitting them to directories, you will find that your articles are reprinted in online publications - newsletters, blogs, web site- you will find that you’re able to do a lot to get the word out about what you have to offer.

However, when it comes to increasing traffic through online publications, many travel and tourism web site owners understand the benefits of article writing, but just aren’t sure of where to start. So, for today, let’s just look at some article ideas that can help you to get information into online publications:

• Write articles about each of the destinations that you represent so that you can be sure that people know what’s out there
• Write articles about travel packages that you offer to your current and prospective clients
• Write articles about the benefits of a particular type of travel - cruises, biking vacations, ski trips and even bus tours
• Write articles about the importance of working with a travel agent

By looking at options - whether they are the article writing options above or others - you will find that you are in a position to be inspired; when you are, you’ll find that you are able to increase traffic thanks to others using your content for their online publications.

For more information on publishing successful online articles, consider the newest edition of my book, 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site!

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Productive Online Advertising: Maximize Advertising with Your Objectives in Mind

When developing your online advertising strategy, start with the objectives of your overall advertising campaign. The most common objectives for an online advertising campaign for a travel and tourism operation include:

• Building destination awareness
• Increasing web site traffic
• Generating leads, bookings and sales

You have a number of choices to make such as what type of advertising to use and where to advertise. These decisions should be based on your objectives. If you objective is to increase overall destination recognition, a nicely designed banner ad on several of the high traffic search engines would be effective. If you would like to develop leads and find new customers, then a more targeted appraoch should be taken such as placing a banner ad on a high traffic web site that is frequented by your target market.

When deciding how to proceed with your online advertising strategy, consider how many people you want to reach. Do you want a high quality response from a small number of targeted people, or do you want to reach a mass audience of grand proportions?

Always keep your budget in mind when you are devising your online advertising strategy. If you have a reasonable budget you may want to work with several online advertising agencies. If your budget is small or nonexistent, there are many ways to stretch your advertising dollar. If you have the time, you can find promising sites to trade banners with.

If you’re looking for more help with advertising, one of my most popular programs has an entire section devoted to this important topic. My Internet Marketing Training Program is a must for the person who is truly dedicated to making their online business successful. . Check it out and consider what it could do for you!

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Using Blogs on Your Travel and Tourism Web Site

Search engines love blogs - simply put, blogs are updated regularly and keep the spiders coming back and looking for more information. Therefore, it just makes sense that if you want to be sure that you are attracting more business to your travel and tourism web site and you’re looking to improve your search engine ranking, you’ll find that it’s a great idea to take advantage of blogs.

Of course, when it comes to blogs, you’ll find that you have a few different options. The two options that are going to rise above the rest both include self-hosting your blog - either on your travel and tourism web site or on an independent web site.

When you keep your travel and tourism blog on your web site, you’ll find that you are adding content to your site on a daily basis which keeps the search engine spiders coming back to your site. When you keep it on a separate web site, you’ll find that you are able to increase the number of links coming into your web site which can also help you to get the word out and improve your site rank as well.

Ultimately, the way that you choose to use blogs is up to you, just keep in mind that you will get the best results when you use original content, give your readers the information that they are looking for and when you are able to focus on building relationships.

Still curious about blogging and if it will work for you? I’ve got a fantastic webinar course available all about Blogs & Wikis, to get you up to speed on these brand new technologies. This CD can be listened to whenever you wish, keeping you in the loop at your pace!

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Winning Awards, Cool Sites and More: Becoming a Host of Your Own Awards Gala

You can also create your own awards program to draw traffic to your site; however, this requires a considerable amount of work to maintain. Hosting awards may be a very appropriate strategy for a destination marketing organization or industry association.

The benefits of having your own awards program include having links back to your site from the awards placed on winners’ sites. Having links back to your site is important for search engine placement because of link popularity. If you are the host of the awards program, you control the text that takes people back to your site, so make sure you include your most important keywords to enhance your link relevancy score and to further improve your search engine ranking.

There are also great opportunities for permission and viral marketing.

In addition, having your own awards program provides you with “bragging rights” and the opportunity for press releases to announce your awards, which gain exposure for your web site and increase traffic. You need to work at it daily or weekly, so you must be committed to it.

Be sure there is a benefit from a marketing perspective before you design and develop your own awards program. You must also be prepared to conduct your own searches to find sites worthy or your award if the quality of sites being submitted to you is not up to your standards.

Working with awards and viral marketing can be tricky when just starting out. For more tips, advice, and expertise, pick up a copy of my book 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site. I’ll show you just how easy the process can be.

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Planning Your Web Site: Identifying Target Markets

One of the most important things that you can do when it comes to planning your travel and tourism web site - as well as when you are planning online marketing campaigns, blog posts, landing pages, site content, videos and even editions of your email newsletter - is to take the time to clearly identify your target market.

Simply put: if you don’t know who makes up your audience, if you don’t know who you are trying to reach with your web site or with a particular marketing campaign, you’re going to find that it is incredibly difficult to send out the right message.

Identifying your target market is an essential step when it comes to planning your web site because it will help you to determine the best possible message to send, however, that’s not the only reason to focus on your audience while you are planning your site.

Simply put, when you’re planning your tourism web site and you’re thinking about your target market, you’ll find that it’s easier to understand not only what they are looking for, but how they are looking for it - which will make your site much easier for them to navigate. You’ll find that you’re able to better identify the sites on which to market you web site (later on) because you will be able to identify where your prospects spend their time.

The more that you are able to identify with your target market while planning your web site, the more effective your site will be. It really is as simple as that.

Your target market is so important, I dedicate a large portion of my book 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site just to it! Check it out, I know you’ll be impressed with what you learn.

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Enlisting Meta Indexes for Optimal Exposure

To ensure that you are taking full advantage of meta indexes:

• Search for appropriate tourism and destination meta indexes
• Request a link
• Provide the details necessary
• Look at sponsorship or banner advertising opportunities

Meta indexes can be arranged by subject or by geography. As mentioned before, the major search engines are a good place to start. Once you find a good list and start to check the links, you will likely find other lists. Bookmark or keep a record of the meta indexes you like for future reference.

When requesting a link to your site, send an email with “site addition request” in the subject of your message. Include the following in the body of the message:

• URL
• Description of your site
• Why you feel your site is appropriate to be listed
• Your contact information in your signature file

Once you have identified indexes that appeal to your target market, determine whether additional opportunities exist for sponsoring or purchasing banner advertising on the site. Meta indexes that relate to your target market are a great place to advertise because that are accessed by your potential customers.

To make your link stand out:

• See if you can have your link positioned at the top of the page
• See if you can add a graphic
• Provide a call to action to get people to visit your site
• Grab your visitor’s attention with the text or description you use
• Consider buying the banner ad space at the top of the page

It’s hard to believe just how important things like Meta Indexes can be for the success of a website. That’s why I had to create a program dedicated to teaching people about it, as well as the other crucial basics that can sometimes be left behind. That program is my best-selling Internet Marketing Training Program. It’s helped so many people already… why not add your name to the list?

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Planning Your Web Site: Understanding Your Business

When you are taking your business to the web and you are planning your travel and tourism web site, one of the things that you will discover quickly is that planning your web site is a lot easier when you have a solid understanding of your business.

Simply put, when you are planning your travel and tourism web site, you are going to want to be absolutely sure that you understand your business. If your goal is to sell travel packages to a particular region, for example, you need to be sure that you are planning a web site that will help you to reach that goal. Likewise, if your travel and tourism web site is all about encouraging others to visit your town or city, one of the things that you are going to want to be sure of is that you are able to get those who visit your web site to act on the information that you provide.

By taking the time to understand your business and the goals that you have for your business, you’ll find that planning your travel and tourism web site can help you to reach your goals. Whether you are looking to get more information requests or you are looking for more bookings with your web site, knowing your business goals can have a dramatic impact on your ability to reach your goals. When you know and understand your business, you will find that it is a lot easier to design a web site that is tailored towards those goals - it really is as simple as that.

There are so many steps to remember when planning a new web site that it’s so easy to get confused, or feel lost. Don’t let that happen to you! I can help, through books like 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site; or through my webinars on CD, such as my explanation of Web site Design and Development Methodology.

-Written by Susan Sweeney

Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy: Finding Potential Sites

Other Potential Link Strategies

Another strategy for finding potential link sites is to visit the many different search engines and do a search on keywords you feel people would search for if they were looking for your site. The top results get a lot of visits from your target market, so they are always good potential link sites.

The following is a step-by-step strategy to get linked from these sites.

1. Make a list of your most important keywords for your web site using your master keyword list and meta-tags.
2. Develop a list of the top five search engines.
3. Go to each of the five search engines and input your most important keywords as identified in step 1.
4. Copy and paste the top 30 results into a Word, Notepad, or other file that you can access later.
5. Enter the next keyword and copy and paste the results into the same Word, Notepad, or other file, adding to your list of potential link sites.
6. Repeat Step 5 until you have used all the keywords in your list. When this is done, you will hve 150 potential sites for each keyword. ou now have your potential link list.
7. Now develop a link request and keep it open on your desktop so that you can copy and paste is into an email when you find a site you’d like to have a link from.
8. As stated above, visit every one of the potential link sites to determining whether or not the site is appropriate for you to be linked from. If so, send your link request. If the site is not appropriate for whatever reason, delete it from your list. Also delete duplicates. When you get to the bottom of your list, it has changed from a potential links list to a request links list.
9. Again, as already stated, follow through and follow up. Follow through and provide an appropriate link to those who agree to a reciprocal link. Follow up to make sure that they provide the link to your site as promised, that the link works, and that it is pointing to the correct page on your site.
10. Submit the internet address of the page that has provided the link to the popular search engines so they will know it’s there. This will help boost your link popularity scores.

There’s even more information about links I want to share with you. If you want to learn all you can about this important topic, consider taking my webinar all about link popularity and link relevancy.

-Written by Susan Sweeney 

Planning Your Web Site: What Content Will You Include?

While you’re planning your travel and tourism web site, one of the things that you’re going to want to be sure that you’re thinking about the type of content that you’ll include on your site. After all, it’s not just about the text that you use on your travel and tourism web site - there’s a great deal of additional content that you’re going to want to think about.

When you’re planning your web site, don’t forget about the importance of adding:

• Photo content. When you’re planning your travel and tourism content, keep in mind the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words; don’t just tell people about your destinations - show them what they’re missing.
• Video content. Let’s say that part of your travel and tourism business includes helping would-be vacationers rent time shares; with video content, you can provide them with virtual tour comparisons so they know which spot to choose.
• Customer testimonials. When you’ve got a great product and your past customers or clients haven’t been afraid to tell you so, why not use their words as content?
• Audio content. When you add a podcast to your travel and tourism web site, you’ll find that you’re able to tell people about your destination, the products or services that you offer or even to give them some information about what they can discover.

When you’re planning your web site, it’s important to think about more than just the text that you’ll include on the site; it’s important too to think about more than just the keywords and key phrases that your prospects will use to find sites like yours. You’re also going to want to keep in mind that search engines love audio, photos and videos when you plan the content to include on your site.

What else do the search engines love? Find out with one of my most popular webinars, all about Designing your Site to be Search Engine Friendly!

-Written by Susan Sweeney