| In the Lounge |
| helping small businesses in travel & tourism with online technology |
Sunrise over Angkor Wat by flydime on Flickr
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If there’s a topic you’d like to see discussed in next month’s In the Lounge newsletter, just click reply and let me know. |
| Wilting in the Heat of Summer |
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| Hi, Welcome to the inaugural edition of In the Lounge. How exciting, eh!? I’m certainly looking forward to spending some time with each of you in this cosy space. We have lounge members from all around the world – so Happy Independence Day to the Americans and Happy Canada Day for our more northerly friends. As for us here in the UK, we’re wilting in the heat of summer – even here in Edinburgh, where it has been hot and muggy (an adjective rarely used to describe Scotland!). It was so hot, in fact, that I forgot to tell everyone that this monthly newsletter will be landing in your inbox around the 2nd Wednesday of every month. Why Wednesday? Well, that way you have a few days left in the week to glance through and see if you can find some inspiration. Since I write everything myself and hand-pick the topics and links, it might not always be the 2nd Wednesday, but I’ll do my best to stay consistent.
Lesson Learned: Consistency is good, and so is tradition. Are you providing a consistent experience for your customers? Do you have a tradition that you can engage them with?
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| Has social media gone mainstream? |
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| With headlines like “the death of the newspaper” and recent political events in Iran and elsewhere touting social media as today’s most advanced communication tools, you have to ask yourself the question: has social media gone mainstream?
I think it is far too early to tell, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I keep reminding everyone that we’ve had television for how many years, and the playing field there changed how many times over that period? Television and radio didn’t appear overnight, and they’re not going to disappear overnight either. (Having said that, things are moving faster and changing more quickly than they used to.)
One of the common threads that came out of the Preparing for Takeoff research, which might have not been self evident, was that nearly everyone was using a combination of offline and online media. Particularly in travel and tourism, we can’t forget that for people to have your experiences, they’ve currently got to be physically there, which in itself provides opportunity.
Moral of the Story: Ignore what is mainstream and ignore reports of ‘dead’ media. Do your homework, try a few things out, and find out what works best for you. Your business is unique, so why not take a unique approach?
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| Get One Hour of Consulting Free |
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There has been a lot of buzz and interest with our new fixed-priced consulting packages,the perfect way to:
- kick start a project
- get independent, objective advice about your service or product
- figure out what you’re doing wrong and fix it
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| Required Reading: Tale of the Pizza Wars |
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| Normally, for homework I prefer to suggest some reading that relates directly to the travel and tourism industry. But I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to examine two different companies and their on-line work in a different industry: pizza. We all understand pizza and we can apply some powerful lessons learned towards travel and tourism. First, have a read of this article over at Career Renegade: Small Biz Twitter Smackdown: The Pizza Wars.
Now, if you don’t “get” Twitter yet, don’t worry. Just pretend it was an online forum, a blog, or even a newspaper article. Did you see how the first company was:
- showing some personality
- engaging with their audience
- changing their method to suit the medium
The second company is in clear violation of Preparing for Takeoff’s mistake number one: not reacting to suit the medium. They’re that annoying person with the loud megaphone shouting at everyone. After reading all of their messages, how do you feel? Inspired, or running for the hills?
Moral of the Story: Online media offers you an open, interactive platform with tremendous opportunity to engage, interact, and add value. So do that. Don’t shout, repeat yourself, and focus only on yourself. As Jonathan says, spam doesn’t taste good on pizza – and nor does it inspire a traveller to become a customer.
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| Facebook Users: Have you got your “boutique” URL yet? |
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| Facebook’s made a change recently that you should know about if you’re already interacting with your customers there. Previously, your URL to your facebook pages were quite long and hard to read, but that’s all changing with custom URLs. So, for example, now my facebook page URL is simply “facebook.com/andrewghayes” – nice and easy, eh? (Feel free to go and add me as a friend if you like. I don’t bite!)
You can do the same if you have a page for your product or service – but there’s a catch. You have to have at least 1,000 fans to apply. I’m not sure why they’ve chosen this arbitrary rule, but that’s what we’re stuck with.
To set a custom URL for your personal profile or business pages, click here:
http://www.facebook.com/username/
If you’ve got questions, check out the frequently asked questions page here – recommended reading especially if you are worried about trademark or copyright issues:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=91106469821&ref=blog
As always, if you need some help or coaching or more advice on Facebook, don’t hesitate to click reply.
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When you’ve finished reading this month’s newsletter, be sure to:
- whitelist emails from “www.travelonlinepartners.com” so that they don’t end up in your Spam folder!
- forward a copy to a friend who might enjoy these tips and tricks – I’d love to see them here with us next month.
- click reply and let me know if there is anything I can do to help or if there is a topic you’d like to hear more about.
Otherwise, thanks for listening. See you soon.
-Andy |
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