A brief note to share a very interesting slidepack from our good friend Katrina Greeves at World Nomads.  This was her presentation from the Adventure & Backpacker Industry Conference 2009, held in Australia.

Katrina had asked us for examples of small businesses in travel and tourism who had found success online – and we didn’t have to look far, as our free do-it-yourself guide 7 Common Mistakes Businesses Make Online is full of them!  Katrina loved the story about Deneki (and so did we), but there are a few other great examples to flip through in this short but useful slideshow.

(click on ‘Full’ for easier viewing)

Some Key Takeaways

Let’s highlight some of the key points to pull out from this presentation:

• Online success looks different for everybody.  Look at all those pictures and see for yourself.  You need to experiment and find out what social media networks and types of content resonate with YOUR ideal customers.  A one-size-fits-all online business strategy does NOT work.
• Listen, listen, listen!  This should be easy because your business should have been listening to customers from the very beginning.  It now just got easier.  I think some companies are having a hard time with this because now it’s a lot harder to ignore customers (which was their previous strategy).
• “Commit for the long haul.”  Katrina hits the nail on the head; the time for playing around has passed.  Take advantage of these incredible opportunities and integrate them into the core of your business, and you’ll reap the rewards.  Can all of those incredible and successful business be wrong?

To Learn More….

For help formulating your own online business plan, our How to Nail Online Travel Marketing in Unfamiliar Territory continues to be a hit.  It comes with a free DIY Online Marketing Worksheet, which walks you through building your own line marketing strategy.  Some readers have said the worksheet is as just as valuable, if not more so, than the 100+ pages of information in the guide.  No fluff, no stress, just the tips and tweaks to make online technology work for you.