Category

Internet

• Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism

  Canada-e-Connect

  11.10.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  We finished Canada-e-Connect yesterday. I had a great time at the conference. Jens and his team did a fantastic job putting it together. The speakers were excellent, the award show very cool (and short). It was nice to take home the Gold metal for best innovation in the public sector for our HelloBC Blogs website. The people attending diverse and from all over the country. I’ve met a whole range of new and interesting people. The Tips from the T-List book turned out great, although I probably would have run a spell check over my entries if I would have know (oops, blame it on my Dutch roots).
  The thing that I’ve taken away from the conference is that the ongoing evolution of the internet and impact on our culture, consumer behaviour and travel and tourism is something that requires consistent attention and should be an ongoing priority.

• Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism

  What’s the point of a campaign website?

  10.17.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  I don’t get it. Why do so many destinations build specific websites for specific campaigns? Are they seriously thinking that consumers are only interested in the content specific to the campaigns theme? Let me give an example. Queensland has a campaign called Outback Holidays. It has a campaign website with a unique URL; adventureoutback.com.au. It has a lot of content about the Outback. This Dinosaur Trails information is really cool, for example.
  Queensland also has it’s regular consumer website, queenslandholidays.com.au. It’s a great website with a lot of great information. But is doesn’t have the nice Dinosaur page I found on the campaign site. But it DOES lists all kinds of tourism operators including Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways, also very cool. This information didn’t make it on the campaign website though.
  There is a link buried somewhere on the campaign website to the main website, but good luck finding it. I’m picking on Queensland because I happen to know their website well, but it happens everywhere and I-don’t-get-it. My assumption is that there is some co-op marketing deal where partners who buy in are featured exclusively on the campaign site. There’s probably also an agency involved who produces content exclusively for the campaign site.
  Imagine Amazon building a campaign website to promote the new Harry Potter book without any references to its main website or other products. And you can only buy the book on the campaign site, and the campaign site is completely disconnected from the main Amazon website. It would never happen because it doesn’t make any sense.
  I’m sure there are a lot of things we can do better on our website (and I’d love to hear it), but when it comes to campaigns, I think we’ve figured it out. Campaigns motivate a consumer to start learning about or planning a trip to British Columbia. There might be a campaign landing page to follow through on a specific call to action, but after that, we put the consumer at the best place of the website to start planning their trip. And what do we see? Somebody that responded to a golf message could be looking at our ski pages next, or at a spa operator, or whatever else is relevant and of interest to that consumer. Just because the consumer responded to a golf message, doesn’t mean she’s not interested in anything else. Limiting information based what motivated the consumer to visit is a missed opportunity.

• Internet, tourism bc

  Monitor Blogs for your brand or product

  10.02.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  It’s simple. Just set-up an RSS feed in Technorati for the search results of your product or brand and join the conversation where appropriate. I’ve seen plenty of examples where even CEO’s are monitoring blogs and posting comments.

  Examples:

  • A blog entry about Kayak. Mobissimo’s CEO leaves a comment, and Kayak’s CEO comments back.
  • From my own blog. I mention VibeAgent in a post, and an hour later the CEO leave a comment.
  • also from my blog: I post about Wikitravel, and a co-founder comments.
  • A blog posting from the LA times about our electronic NXTbook BC Escapes guide. Somebody from NXTbook leaves a comment (although I still think PDF is a better way to go, feel free to comment Marcus).

  My prediction is that all big travel brands will have a dedicated Social Network PR person on staff soon. But when you join the conversation, do in a transparent way, or you’ll end up being called on it just like Beatrice from Mobissimo.

• Internet, Marketing

  Evidence-based website management

  09.30.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I’ve read Gerry McGovern’s new thinking for a while. They are great insights and reminders of what managing content is all about, and how it’s not a stand-alone thing. His postings from September 17 and 24 are good examples.

  From his Evidence-based website management posting:

  The Web is the perfect environment in which to make management decisions based on evidence and facts, rather than emotion and opinion.

  Absolutely. Websites are measurable. Content is measurable. Measure the effect of a page, change the page, and measure the result. It’s simple, it’s organic, it follows the rules of evolution. The better genes win. This applies to content, navigation, design, everything. There is no place for opinion if it’s not based on data. But you’d be surprised how many opinions are out there without any data to back things up.

  From his Time for content to become more scientific posting:

  Senior managers don’t take content seriously because people who write content don’t come across as being serious. If content professionals want more respect, they need to present content as a science, not an art.

  This is true. It applies to visual design as well. The challenge is that creative people consider their delivered product perfect. But in an online environment, it’s only the perfect starting point. Evolution is key. The copy or design that produces the best results is what creates perfection.

  Instead of arguing and resisting the fact that evolution is key, they should embrace it. After all, you’re working in a business environment. As a manager, you should make sure you leave plenty of budget and resources available to evolve things after something is completed.

• Internet, personal, tourism bc

  Interview on the Canada-e-Connect blog

  09.20.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  Chris Clarke interviewed me on the Canada-e-Connect blog. If you’re visiting from this blog and are interested in more information, check out these posts:

  • Results of HelloBC.com’s User Generated Content strategy
  • User Generated Content and HelloBC
  • Mapping Tourism Businesses on HelloBC
  • My presentation at the Tourism Industry Conference

  Karin Schmollgruber from the Fastenyourseatbelts blog also interviewed me a while ago.

• Internet, Marketing, tourism bc

  Results of HelloBC.com’s User Generated Content strategy

  08.02.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  It’s been a few months since we implemented the first phase of our User Generated Content strategy. I thought this would be a good time to share some results.

  
  Since we integrated HelloBCBlogs.com into our HelloBC.com website in March, we’ve seen a rapid increase in traffic to our blog entries. In July, we received almost 200,000 blog pageviews. The blog entries help us in our SEO efforts; 5% of our organic Search Engine traffic lands on a blog entry. We also have over 1,000 subscribers to our RSS feed.

  
  The entries from travelers is showing a steady climb and we’re approaching the 300 mark. We were aiming for quality first; tips and information people can do something with. All entries are tagged with a community and an activity. This allows us to present relevant blog content alongside our official information. Between our staff, visitor centres and traveler entries, we cover almost 100 communities in BC and over 80 activities so far, for a total of 350 community/destination combinations. That makes for a great diversity of content, so it’s working out very well.

  From a User Experience perspective, the blogs are fantastic. The average pageviews for a blog visitor is 4 times that of an average visitor. Qualitative research conducted in some key markets proved that our unique strategy to position blog entries alongside our official information on the same page is working beautifully. It adds a layer of credibility and insider information consumers really appreciate. Our traffic patterns confirm this as well, many visitors will move back and forth between official information and blogs.

  We see room for improvement. We’d like to see more consumer interaction with our blogs for example. People don’t leave many comments, but a fair number of people rate the entries. We have some ideas to further evolve the blogs with the goal to grow it into an online community. I’ll share some more details when I can in the future.

  See also my previous post about our User Generated Content strategy.

• Internet

  Book Review: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

  07.08.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  I attended Dr. David Weinberger’s keynote presentation (22MB, PPT) at the Information Architecture summit in Vancouver last year. It was a preview of his Everything Is Miscellaneous book. The presenation was very inspiring and thought provoking so I was looking forward to the release of his book. And I wasn’t disappointed. I expected a book about Information Architecture (a passion of mine) and library science, but it provided much more.

  The theme of this book is that in the 3rd order of information (digital), the constraints for categorizing information in a single structured way has become irrelevant. In the digital order, information can be placed in many places, often without the need for any categories. Information is democratized, and conventional experts are replaced with the wisdom of crowds; no longer is information pre-filtered by editorial boards, but post-filtered by the users of the information, by their own definitions of authority.

  The book provides the reader the history of cataloging knowledge, starting with Aristotle, analyzes traditional authorities like the Dewy Decimal system, all the way to the current folksonomies. New ways of managing and retrieving information and knowledge are challenging the conventional wisdom that everything in the world can and should be neatly organized. This new way of thinking is not only applied to knowledge management but can be applied in other areas as well, such as the way organizations are structured.

  Dr. Weinberger’s blog is worth subscribing to.

• Internet

  Social Networks not very social amongst each other

  06.18.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Recently I signed up with Facebook. Not to check it out because I need to stay current for my job, but because I had too. Many of my friends use Facebook actively as a communication tool. I signed up after a couple of weeks where during every real world social gathering I attended, Facebook came up during the conversation. After signing up I quickly understood the value Facebook provides. It’s a great way to communicate and share.

  I’m part of a multitude of Social Networks now. I’m a member of Facebook, MSN Messenger, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Gusto, IgoUgo, VibeAgent and more.

  All these systems are closed for the most part. I need to sign up for each service individually. And the friends I make on each of these networks don’t transfer into the others. Me and my friends and family have to sign up for a multitude of Social Networks in order to view each others content. And the content doesn’t transfer either. Flickr does photo’s really well. But on Facebook, you can tag photo’s with people. So I have a collection of photo’s I’m in, across my network of friends (very cool functionality). So I have photo’s in two places. Flickr, because that’s where I store my photos for easy management, and in Facebook so people can tag each other. In MSN, I display my status (where I am). In Facebook, I have to do the same thing.

  So the point of my story is that these closed systems aren’t working for me. Photo’s I store in Flicker should be available in Facebook, Gusto and all other networks I’m part of. If I change my status in one place, my status should change everywhere else as well.

  Dave Winer has a great posting about this.

  Eventually, soon I think, we’ll see an explosive unbundling of the services that make up social networks. What was centralized in the form of Facebook, Linked-in, even YouTube, is going to blow up and reconstitute itself. How exactly it will happen is something the historians can argue about 25 years from now. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will, unless the rules of technology evolution have been repealed (and they haven’t, trust me).

  Well said Dave. I couldn’t agree more, and I hope the day will be here soon.

• Internet, Travel & Tourism

  CoolAustria.com – Tourism Austria’s Social Network

  05.13.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  

  Tourism Austria ventured into the Web 2.0 world by partnering with a Media company in the creation of CoolAustria.com, a full fledged Social Travel Website. Karin Schmollgruber asked me for my thoughts.

  Well, it’s a very ambitious effort. I have to guess what the objectives of the website are. I assume it’s to create a network of residents and past travelers who generate ideas and assist other travelers, primarily in a younger demographic.

  It’s impressive from a technology perspective. It has integrated some traditional community tools such as a message board with Web 2.0. hallmarks such as a tag cloud folksonomy and a Google Map Mashup. Oddly enough, RSS/Atom feeds are missing from the party, but that’s in the works apparently.

  Success for this venture will depend on the success of Metcalfe’s law (the value of a network is proportional to the square number of users of the system). There has to be a user population that’s large enough to attract and be of value to passive users and turn them into active users.

  To create a large enough user population, the website needs to be useful and usable. Successful social websites on a large scale such as MySpace have reached their population in part by creating a necessity to sign up. It’s useful because can passively read your friends information, but in order to communicate with your friends (additional usefulness), you have to sign up. MySpace doesn’t look pretty, but it’s easy enough to use (usability).

  I hope that CoolAustria.com is useful and usable enough to be successful. I hope that there is enough appetite for users to become part of a “traveling in Austria” community. I hope the entry barrier is low enough (e.g. allow for anonymous questions) and the usability of the site is high enough so users who want to, can easily participate. I hope there will be an active marketing campaign to kick-start the community.

  CoolAustria.com is a ‘big bang’ approach to create a social network. Our strategy at Tourism BC is to take it one step at a time, and fully integrate the User Generated Content into our official website. I’m going to keep a close eye on CoolAustria.com and I wish them great success.

• Internet

  Web 2.0 Shorts

  11.08.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  In between sessions, the organizers are playing some YouTube style videos. Some I’ve never seen, including this brilliant one.
  

William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog