The 5 Must Do Travel Marketing Investments for 2008 - No.2

Investment #2 - Sharing your expertise

So what does your expertise have to do with marketing or technology? Well, your expertise is powerful marketing content and there are many technologies that can help you share your expertise with your current and future clients. Here are my five favorite technologies for sharing:

1. Blogger: You can probably tell that I am a huge fan of blogs. As far as I am concerned, they are the best way to share your knowledge and build trust with your audience. What is great about them is that they are simple to use, extremely search engine friendly, and most platforms (like Blogger) are free. The barriers to entry for getting online have pretty much been eliminated with the advent of free blogging platforms.

2. Flickr: The old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” holds true, especially when it comes to travel marketing. Travelers doing research online are looking for experiences, adventures, and scenery. Combine your words with your photos and you tell a compelling story. Flickr is my favorite photo sharing site because of its ease of use and remarkably elegant interface. Add your photos to Flickr and then post them on your blog and you get the benefit of having search friendly content on two popular platforms.

3. Youtube: No, I’m not talking about the cute kitten videos. If you don’t already take videos of your tours or experiences, then I recommend you start. You can use simple tools like Microsoft Movie Maker or AVS Video Tools to edit videos on your PC and then upload them to Youtube. Add keywords and a detailed description of your video and then embed it in your blog. Now you’ve created two keyword rich pieces of content that will be indexed by Google.

4. Podomatic & Big Contact: I’m currently using a combination of Podomatic for hosting podcasts and BigContact.com for the podcast player. Podcasts, in case you are not familiar with the term, are audio files that can be listened to on a website. There is nothing new about the concept but rather in the way they are being utilized for marketing purposes, especially in travel. Consider using the content that you write for your blog as possible content for a weekly podcast. Not sure where to start? Sign-up for a service like Podomatic, plug in your microphone, and start talking.

5. Blog Catalog & My Blog Log: As the popularity of blogging has increased, so too has the popularity of blog communities. My two favorite communities are BlogCatalog.com and MyBlogLog.com because they have a very active user base and they are indexed extremely well by Google. By including your blogs in either of these two communities you can expect your blog posts to get listed several times and in various ways. They are definitely worth the small amount of time required to set up an account.

As with any successful marketing or technology initiative, you will need to spend some time signing up for these applications and actually using them. Your best first step is to set-up a blog and start writing. Remember that you don’t have to be elaborate or sophisticated in how you write, just be casual and honest. Your audience is looking for authenticity and experience not the usual marketing speak. Start today, right a post every other day and in three months you will have forty-five indexed, keyword rich, distributed content pieces. That’s powerful, effective, and cost efficient marketing using new technologies.

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