Ideas & knowhow
Tools
Electric Vehicle Charging Points
Remember the days when B&Bs went from having ‘hot and cold running water in each room’ signs and then had to upgrade to full private bathrooms because the market demanded it? And then WIFI became the must-have? At some point this will happen with EV charging points…
The following is intended to provide some links and points to consider. It does not constitute direct advice*.
Considerations:
- Do you need to upgrade your electricity supply?
- Have you told your insurance company you plan to…
Using and responding to reviews
I’ve spoken to many tourism business owners who feel really demoralised when this happens. It’s so easy to focus on one bad review, even when all your oth…
Hashtags - why, which, where
When you write a social media post, are you an expert sprinkler of #hashtags or are you still mystified by the random-seeming words after the # sign?
It doesn’t help that each social media channel uses hashtags in different ways. And that some guidelines and algorithms have also recently changed. Here’s a quick overview.
First of all, what are hashtags?
They’re the short words or phrases that follow the #, that help perform the sorting process to decide which posts get seen, and when. Not all…
Pinterest predicts
Do you know what your visitors will want in a couple of years' time? What their expectations will be? Have you got some ideas for how you might be able to adapt what you do to make your business more profitable? Or maybe just how to theme a room or create an activity to stimulate more demand?
Tourism is full of trends. Over time it's possible to spot opportunities and to adapt products and services to appeal to changing markets. A little tweak to how you describe something could make a differe…
Tough love: I'm rubbish with technology
Marketing using someone else's budget
When your marketing budget is limited, there's an easy way to add power to your promotions: piggyback. Piggyback marketing essentially means using someone else's marketing budget to benefit your business.
Obviously I don't mean actually using their money, but rather harnessing the power of their activity and piggybacking on the awareness they're able to create. It's a bit like riding in the slipstream of a more powerful vehicle.
Read on for some ideas for current trends you can easily piggyb…
Small steps for a giant leap
There's a Japanese expression and approach that many Western business leaders have started to use: Kaizen*. I think it's also invaluable for small tourism business, especially those with tiny marketing budgets and no time.
The Kaizen approach is based on the idea that small continuous steps and tweaks build up to more substantial improvements over time.
Kaizen is good news for all of us for three reasons:
1. Small steps are easier, especially when you don't have a lot of time;
2. It costs practicall…
Important Instragram Updates
Instagram has recently made two changes which are likely to make a big difference to users.
Firstly, you can now log in to your account and post to Instagram directly from your computer so Instagram is no-longer mobile-only.
The second change is that now everyone can add links in Stories. This used to be something only available on verified accounts or those with a given number of followers but is now being rolled out everywhere.
To add links to your Stories, you need to use the Link sticker …
Using twitter to get free media coverage
I love twitter for the variety of topics on there and the many useful links I often find, but I rarely suggest businesses use it to promote their businesses. Whenever I look at Google Analytics for tourism business websites, twitter seems to refer very little business.
Twitter is brilliant for one thing though: generating free media coverage.
Journalists love twitter. They use it to gather stories, spot trends, find new contacts and – most importantly and useful for you – to ask for informati…
Are you wasting time on the wrong social media?
There’s a marketing saying, ‘fish where the fish are’. There’s no point promoting into a vacuum.
It used to be hard to know what marketing activities were actually working. Now it’s easier, particularly if you’re trying to work out how to get people to your website. There are essentially four ways people will come to your website:
1. By searching on Google & other search engines
2. By typing in your domain name
3. By foll…