How not to book your honeymoon..

I’ve been tasked with the undesirable job of planning and booking (and therefore paying for…) our honeymoon in September.  I’ve booked a number of holidays before, and all have gone off without a hitch, so why is it that this is such an annoying task?  It’s a common problem faced by a large number of business, the problem of linking online and offline services.

I’ve always booked holidays over the phone after planning the travel and accommodation myself, yet for the honeymoon I decided to take all of the hassle out of it and let a travel company sort it all out for me.  Of course, for something so important as our honeymoon I’d like to talk to an advisor face-to-face, but of course want to enquire at a number of websites for basic prices before calling the company I’m interested in pursuing.  However, after entering my details, holiday requirements and budget into several sites, I began receiving call after call after call from interchangeable sales advisors hankering for my business.  What really gets me is how, after I’ve spent hours entering my details, they insist on asking me the same questions over and over to make sure they have it right.  I was even asked on one occasion how to spell my surname.  My name was on the sheet!  I know that because I put it there!

Oh well, I guess in this financial climate everyone is trying to provide a better service, but for me a better service would be a quick email to thank me for my enquiry and to provide some base prices and some great ideas for trips.  People don’t always want a painfully cheerful sales advisor calling them back the instant the form is filled in.  The internet is used by the majority of people to avoid having to talk to someone when making a purchase, so it should be understood by holiday companies that calls shouldn’t be made unless the customer has requested more in depth information.  If it really is essential, then please make it quick, and please, please, don’t be too cheerful…

Anyway, back to the honeymoon.  So far I’ve narrowed it down to Tanzania and Zanzibar, Malaysia or Thailand.  I’ll let you know when I’ve finally made my mind up.

Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand

A very social media Christmas period

I’m not sure if it’s right or wrong, but at least I find it interesting.  I’m talking about how social media relationships work over the Christmas period, and whether it’s perceived by the majority of people as a necessary pass-time during such a family orientated holiday or, more likely, as an anti-social behavior for the socially inept.  So what comes first for social media users, offline relationships with friends and families, or online relationships?

Many “non-tech savvy” people (read as normal people who don’t spend hours online each day) would be surprised at the activity levels online over Christmas.  Out of interest, I logged onto World of Warcraft on Christmas Eve (in between meeting the mother in law, followed by the father in law, followed by the fiance’s brother and wife, followed by having a meal with said fiance… Xmas was tiring..) and was surprised to find a huge number of people were choosing to spend their time with their online friends.  As I walked around, I was wished Merry Christmas numerous times, and left feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.  Following this, I logged onto a few of my frequented forums to, again, be happy to see people chatting away with their online friends.  In many of these people’s lives, their online friends are more important than offline friends.  No, this shouldn’t be seen as them being geeks, but it SHOULD suggest that online relationships aren’t just throw-away, part time and anti-social wastes of time, but central to people’s social calendar.  As work takes up more of our day, and the cost of living

I know it’s an old concept to some people, but I just thought I’d share the importance of social media as an intrinsic part of people’s lives.  For example, a good friend of mine recently spent Christmas in New York with his girlfriend.  They met playing Scrabbulous on Facebook.  My housemate met her boyfriend playing World of Warcraft and now are part of their own guild called “Just the two of us”.  Yes, sickening, but true…  If millions of people spend Christmas Eve online with their friends rather than being with their family then perhaps it should be realised how essential these online relationships are.

Two gamers marry on World of Warcraft

Innovative blogging…from the womb

This has to rank up there with the most innovative, yet also the most pointless social media ideas out there.  Kickbee is a band worn by a mother to be which is filled with sensors and wires.  No, it’s not to monitor the babies health and well-being, it’s design is purely social media.  When the baby kicks, Kickbee posts a Twitter post to inform all concerned of the occasion.

Great idea, but it needs some improvement.  Why not conduct a scientific study to learn the “language” of a babies movements in the womb.  Rather than informing us that the kid has kicked, why not INTERPRET what it’s trying to say.  “It’s dark in here..” for example, or “stop eating gherkins with custard, I hate them!”.  Either way, I’d like to see some babies express militant views or dislike for public transport etc, just to lighten the long 9 month wait.

So where do we go from here?  Sensors on your stomach to inform people when you’re hungry, Brain sensors to tell your friends when you’re bored, maybe a sensor on your car to tell all of your friends when your car gets stolen.  Ok, most would laugh but a few may help. Maybe..  Hey, why don’t we hook our pets up so we know when they sleep, go outside, chase cats etc? That would be AMAZING. In fact, I’m working on it now.  Next stop, Radio Shack..

We’re not stupid

You need to treat your customers with respect.  They’re not stupid, and can see through all of your fancy marketing ideas.  For example, here is a shortened version of an email campaign i was sent from a company that sells sports training books.  All names are made up to protect their identities…

First email (sent to ENTIRE customer mailing list…)

From: John Johnson (Marketing manager)

To: Sarah Sarahson (CEO)

Hi Sarah,

I just had a thought.  Why don’t we increase our 30% discount to 50%.  That’s right, i said 50%.  We have such great books so why not do everyone a favor for the holidays!

John

Second email (sent to ENTIRE customer mailing list…)

From: Sarah Sarahson (CEO)

To: John Johnson (Marketing manager)

John,

Are you nuts?  that’s far too cheap! I know we love our customers, and our books are great, but the company simply can’t afford 50% off.  Lets stick to 30%.  That’s still a huge discount!

Sarah

Third and final email (sent to ENTIRE customer mailing list…)

From: Sarah Sarahson (CEO)

To: Entire mailing list

Dear valued customers,

I’d like to apologise for the emails you received yesterday.  A gremlin in the system must have delivered them to you all, so I’m sorry.

I have recieved hundreds of emails calling me a Scrooge for not agreeing to the 50% discount, so in light of this I’d like to finally agree to it, but only in the run up to Christmas!  We can’t afford to offer such a CRAZY discount for any longer!

That’s right, we are now offering 50% off all books until the 25th of December! You lucky people!

Have a great Christmas,

Sarah Sarahson (CEO)

_____________________________________

There we go.  This email apparently “accidentally” slipped onto the mass email server and was sent out to thousands of contacts.  No, I have no idea how this happened either.  It’s either one INCREDIBLY unlucky accident or a completely obvious and lame attempt at a marketing ploy.  As I said earlier, please don’t think we are that stupid..

Link sharing schemes

Looking into web promotion, I’ve been aware of a number of websites who use traffic and links like a currency online.  Links, traffic and blog-rolls ARE indeed a great currency for online promotion, but it needs to be seen less as a monetary investment and more as a selfless act every time its used.  I’ll try to explain..

When promoting my personal blogs, I’ve very often been contacted by other bloggers and, more generally, companies, offering a traffic exchange.  Basically, “If you link to me with over 100 click throughs, I’ll link to you!”.  This is, in my opinion, thaw WORST thing about online promotion.  People thinking that links and traffic are the only way to promote themselves, and that if one guy doesn’t link to them, they’ll be damned if they’ll link to him.  Very often, bloggers or websites will refuse to write a post about another blog without a fair exchange coming back.  You wouldn’t go to the pub with a friend and say “I’ll buy you a beer, but only if you buy me one first… And my beer has to be bigger!” would you?  so why do people do this online?

I’ve worked with companies before who have had the chance to work with some highly influential and popular bloggers.  The blogger had requested that, as they were reviewing products, would the company be so kind as to link to the reviews from their website.  Stupidly, the company decided that this would lose them traffic and declined.  The campaign with the bloggers fell through quickly afterwards due to the companies lack of willing to support the bloggers, a huge amount of traffic was lost, as was a chance to improve brand awareness and link closely with their own customers online.

Traffic shouldn’t be locked away like gold in a vault, it should be distributed and thrown around to friends and contacts.  Don’t demand traffic in return, just be generous and link to any interesting stories you see.  No one likes a Scrooge off line, so why would online be any different?

The power of blogging

I just thought I’d demonstrate how all areas of media need to be encompassed for a true web marketing strategy to work. Awareness can come from the most unlikely sources, so it’s worth the extra effort to cover all bases, and blogging is a key area to work on.

A brief example can be taken from another one of my blogs, www.visser49erracing.wordpress.com.  As part of my sailing campaign I’ve been promoting the team via the blog for over a year.  Within 4 months we had been awarded a Google Page Rank of 4, which is one of the highest in the UK for a sailing website.  Anyway, through the blog we have received sponsorship deals, sold numerous boats and built strong awareness for our “brand” within the UK sailing community.  We’ve not tried anything fancy or new, just updated regularly, provided interesting content, a range of media (images, videos, type) and have worked to integrate ourselves within the community.  We have gone from being fairly unknown online, to being the first stop for a large number of enthusiasts.  We’ve even gotten ourselves onto a Musto poster campaign:

My brother Justin poses in front of Musto poster campaign featuring an image of us racing

The moral of the story?  You need to realise how powerful blogging can be and fully embrace the impact it can have on your brand.  Although this is an example from a small sports team I feel it is still a useful measure of success.  Without any previous brand awareness, we have become extremely well known within the British sailing community.  There’s no reason your business can’t benefit from blogging.

Reliability is key to your relationships

Building relationships is key to success online.  However, it’s not about a relationship with your target market, it’s about relationships with the individuals who take an active interest in you.  It’s not just about writing blog posts, it’s about conversing with individuals, giving them the time of day and just generally making them realise that you listen and are interested in them.  With your offline relationships, with friends, partners and family, you need to be trustworthy and reliable.  If a friend calls you in need, you need to be able to be there for them and the same goes online, but with different needs.

Your audience has needs just like everybody else.  I’ve had a few ideas, but let me know if you can think of any more:

- Information:  The need to be kept in the loop.  Tell them about future posts, changes to the blog, what you are doing this week, your favourite team.

- Entertainment: The need to have a new post to read when they log on.  It’s all about content.

- Communication: The need to transfer information and opinions between them and you.  Talk to them, email them back, add them to your Twitter feed, ask them questions.

- Self gratification:  The need to feel important.  Reference individual readers in your posts, talk about how great they are, or what they have done for you.  make them feel special.

To be reliable online, you need to be there for your readers.  If you can become someone’s “go-to” blog, the first site they check each day, you are on the road to success.  But for this to happen you need to always fulfill at least one of their needs.  The easiest need to fulfill is Entertainment, by publishing plenty of content.  However, the way forward is through experimentation to find what your audience need.  Have a go, it really is worth it.

The top mistakes for business blogs

How many times have you seen it.  Some business somewhere decides it’s a good idea to write a blog (probably about their steelworks, or maybe they have a new lint remover to sell…) to generate traffic to their landing page and generally make them a squillion dollars in profit.  However, we always see the same mistakes over and over again.  They are as follows:

- Assuming we are interested in posts JUST about their products and services:  Without interesting content to draw in your audience, people will stay away.

- Spamming hundreds of links all over the blog and Twitter profile:  Viewers will jump site the second they see several links in one post.  The same goes for Twitter, but on a larger scale.  Links on Twitter must be limited, but most importantly, of interest to your readers.  If they want to see your site, they’ll look on your profile.

- Weekly updates:  If you want traffic, employ an enthusiastic English graduate to write as many interesting and thought provoking blog posts each day.  Weekly updates just don’t cut it.

- One way information stream:  You’re not providing TV adverts anymore.  Your audience needs to be engaged, conversed with, treated well, have their opinions asked and just generally made to feel like they matter.  You need to have a flow of information to and from your audience, so use Twitter, Friend Feed, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, and any other tool to keep in touch with your readers and encourage a two way information stream.

- Formal and rigid:  Finally, it’s important that you don’t sit at your computer writing blog posts with your business hat on.  Take it off, throw it away, chill out and and have fun.  Sure, you may be representing your business, but the medium of blogging allows (nay, requires) you to take more of an informal role.  People want to be chatted with, not presented to.

A good way to annoy your audience

If you’re writing blog posts, uploading videos on video sharing sites, photos on Flickr (et al) or providing any other content within social media, you need to know the one way to drive away your audience.  It all comes down to tagging.

I was just browsing through a gallery on a popular sailing site, looking for photos of the boat I’ve just bought (it’s a racing dinghy, nothing fancy or expensive!).  So I start with a search, and tap in the class of boat (RS800).  For some reason, the owners of the site decided to tag all photos of boats built by RS (200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, and 800) with the same tags.  So rather than getting 20 photos returned of the subject I’m looking for, I now have 500 photos of several different boats to wade through.  Why do people do this?

Why do people do this I hear you ask (or was it me who asked)?  It’s because they think that filling the tag column with several hundred random tags will pull a large amount traffic back.  It’s the blunderbuss approach, and it doesn’t work.

The blunderbuss aproach involves filling your wide barrelled shotgun with bird shot and blasting a wide area hoping to kill a duck.  The problem is, it’s so unspecific it drives off new audience members quicker than Ronald McDonald at a Vegan festival.  You’ll annoy your users, new members will run away, your site will choke with so many search results being returned, your wife will leave you (probably) and you will regret ever trying the blunderbuss approach.

Only ever tag your content with the correct tags.  If you want to reach more readers, then write more blog posts, upload more photos of a wider range of subjects, vary your videos, and just generally supply a wide but interesting (and by that I mean in depth) range of content, correctly tagged.  Don’t be tempted with over tagging, it is a quick fix solution that fixes nothing.

Heat mapping, and knowing where people look

Knowing what people do on your site is paramount.  Very often your mental image of your audience (intelligent and wealthy 20 somethings, eager to spend money on your must have electronic lint remover..) can be a little innaccurate (no-one is interested in an elecronic lint remover), so knowing what these people ACTUALLY look at when browsing your site is nearly impossible.  Do you have adverts and banners, or maybe an RSS feed that you want your audience to look at?  Well how do you know if it is well positioned?  Sure, we can see the links people click, but having this visualised over a period of time provides a huge amount of useful information that simple tools such as google analytics can’t provide.

Have a look at www.crazyegg.com.  Crazy Egg is a service that provides tools such as “Confetti” click tracker and heatmaps that show the “hottest” parts of your site.  It lets you know the areas that are most effective, and the cold areas that people just don’t seem to care about.

What I really like about Crazy egg is that it’s so much more advanced than Google analytics.  I’ve worked for clients before who have just used analytics, and whilst you get to see a fair bit of information regarding traffic, you only realise how in-the-dark you are when you eventually use tools such as Crazy Egg.

With the information provided by Crazy Egg and a bit of brainstorming you can invent some fairly interesting strategies to increase your site profitabilty.  Here are a few I’ve thought of:

- Find the “hot” areas of your site and situate value adding sectors there

- Compare various site layouts over a period of time to find the most successful strategy

- Online ROI can be difficult to prove, so use heatmapping to demonstrate to your clients the interest your promotions receive

- Use heatmapping to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of banners and to promote social media marketing

- Return the favor to your audience.  Provide information on their own heatmapping, and direct them to areas they may be interested in.

I’m sure there are many more ideas out there, but the moral of the story is that Crazy Egg is a tool that could prove very, very useful.