July 2011

The Archives

• Marketing, social media, Travel & Tourism

  Travel Writers vs Travel Bloggers

  07.04.11 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  

  From left to right: Gary Arndt, me, Brooks and Steve Keenan at #blogtripF1

  What’s the difference anyways?

  A travel writer writes movie scripts, a travel blogger writes TV scripts.

  That quote comes from Gary Arndt, author of the Everything Everywhere blog. Gary has been traveling around the world since 2007. He has no permanent home. His website receives more visitors than most DMO’s. He has over 100,000 Twitter followers. Gary is the real deal.

  A travel writer writes a finished piece. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. On a good travel blog one episode leads to the next and the ongoing story makes the visitor come back over and over again. People are drawn in by the ongoing story.

  Awesome.

  For more of Gary’s insights, listen to his podcasts about (travel) blogging.

• Experience Design, Marketing, Travel & Tourism

  Customer Complaints are Awesome

  07.01.11 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  This was one of the messages from John O’Nolan‘s fantastic presentation at the DMO’s and social media conference in Valancia last week.

  John rightfully pointed out that when people care enough about your product, take time out of their day and go through the effort to tell you that you need to fix a problem, it probably means they care and want you to succeed.

  This is a huge opportunity. Fix the problem, invite them back and you might have a customer for life, and an advocate for your business.

  That’s marketing.

  I can’t wait for his book ‘Designing Emotion‘ to come out.

William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog