Google One Channel Benefits Tourism

I like the Channel Trailer feature of the "ONE Channel' that Google has implemented on YouTube. Its just one of many recent changes and upgrade. In my view it is really the only "new" feature. The others are mostly improvements and tweaking, except of course that its now a sort of  'Responsive Web Design' (RWD), meaning that it will render well in all mobile, smartphones. iPods, iPads, tablets, mobile phones, games consoles (like xBox), TV and other devices.

Naturally that implies some consideration from publishers and creators: We all now have to understand the limitation and options of these channels and create our video accordingly. Don't create options to press a button or submit a form for TV. Its not there yet and you can really irritate TV viewer by suggesting they can subscribe by clicking the button.

Example Video Trailer


See TravelBarbados Youtube Channel | This Video


Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia is experimenting with the One Channel features. it has created its first trailer for BarbadosTravel on YouTube. The trailer describes the channel, promotes a sweepstake and encourage viewers to subscribe.

Things To Include in Your Trailer

1. Welcome your viewers and thank them for stopping at your channel.

2. Tell them what your channel does and engage them with images and a story line that builds empathy.

3. Make it short and fast. Hi, here we are, this is what we do, please subscribe. Get the viewer's attention and provide them with a reason to stay around. Imagine this trailer as an ad for your channel. Here are some tips to keep in mind when you're making your channel trailer:

4. Add a call to action to your own opt in page, newsletter etc. We have used it to promote a sweepstake where the winner will receive a Free holiday in Barbados.

One Channel Trailer Examples:  

Tourism Marketing:
  Australia http://www.youtube.com/Australia
  Plains of Africa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49SyEBZh91E
  Oberammergau Passion Play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc5higDB21s
  Vice uncomfortable truths http://www.youtube.com/user/vice
  BarbadosTravel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyDSKe_md8c

Films:
   http://www.youtube.com/user/movieclipsTRAILERS
   DIY Film Making http://www.youtube.com/user/indymogul (5 min)

Food:
  Jamie Oliver http://www.youtube.com/user/JamieOliver

Procucts/Brands:
  Trainroomgary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_-dYaMaW8w
  Loud http://www.youtube.com/user/LOUD

YouTube Creator tips

Here is what http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com says:

Have a clear call to action to subscribe (scripted and annotated in the video, and in the video description as well). Entertain the viewer - when in doubt show what your channel is about, don't tell

Indicate the type of videos you upload and when you upload them.

Think about the video's context; it will be seen on the channel, potentially after a viewer has already seen at least one of your videos. There's no perfect length, but shorter is better


Our Views On Trailer Etiquette

From what we  know and have seen, we think video trailers should be short (1 1/2 minutes max)

We have heard that YouTube plans to roll out special options for subscribers.


Other  One Channel Features

 As noted, the trailer is one of the new features of the "ONE CHANNEL" strategy by YouTube.

Here are its main features:

1. Consistent layout across all screens. Your brand can be the same across all devices. Mobile, iPads, iPods, smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, xBox, TVs etc.

2. Sections. More flexibility with playlists. Create lists of any type; no need to create sub-channels or pages.

3. Channel Trailer. As above, create a "welcome" video for non-subscribers.

4. Channels Connection. You can now link to your other relevant channels straight from the home page.


More on Barbados Click Here
BarbadosTravel Youtube Channel Click Here
The Trailer Click Here

Tourism Marketing Is Storytelling

All too often travel and tourism marketers miss the point: travelers love travel stories; stories about people, places, things to do, where to stay and what rooms, apartments and villas they may stay at. 

Learn from Review Sites
Travel marketers don't on the whole tell stories but create pitches and promotions, which are often just plain boring.  Largely they all sound alike.
That's why travelers use review sites; they are not pitches but a story of what someone thinks about a real experience, with real, unfiltered images, video and photos of places.

Travel is a story, but told by hotel and tourism operators, it loses much in translation. Hospitality providers can be storytellers; usually they are good raconteurs, but they are not credible when talking about their own property. It just isn't a story when we say how wonderful our own place is. That's why video is a great option. It delivers a visual of the place; its resources, dining, beaches and rooms.

Rooms Often Not Emphasized
When I look around at hotel websites, I see lovely videos, but many of them spend little time on the rooms. This is even true of villas, where you would think every owner would want to show it all off. What is seen is a rushed nod to the families and a peek inside the room. Why not show the entire bedroom, closets and all? And certainly show the view, accessibility and all facilities. (see example of a simple video below- also see the blog and story at the end)




Comments Add Proof
Now the real storytelling will include guests' comments; how they loved something about the room, flat or home they stayed in. Failing that, the owner can say why this room is great for families; not just because it has two bedrooms, but because it is on one floor, safe and away from stairs, with a large open terrace that children love to play in.

What's in a Name
All too often we do not name units attractively with compelling descriptions. "Villa number one" for example is not helpful. Call it the Nook, Den or "Roof Top Terrace Villa" as Poinsettia in St. Lucia did. Number 6 with two terraces is "The Garden Terrace Villa," number 5, "Poolside" and the unit tucked under the terrace and between the pool and gardens, is "The Nook."

As owners, we often fail to see our accommodation options as all having distinct character. But that is where the story lies. Write about it, get your guests to offer their own comments and create a page for every unit: where it is, how far from the pool, the beach and the office; what is special about it.

As hotel owners and managers, we group accommodation into a common category and that too we treat with drab generalities lacking character and distinction. We don't do videos of each unit, thinking that they are all the same. And if they are, what an opportunity we have missed not to build character into our product.

Video: Affordable and Essential Marketing 
You don't have to spend a fortune on videos to get the message across. See the example above. It is a simple video of film and still images with music and text; no voice-over. It is a visual story of a single villa-apartment at PoinsettiaApartments.com. In the page it is displayed on, a short story of the accommodation gives good information that is helpful to the traveler. Each of the units at Poinsettia Apartments is unique with its own personality. The campaign will create a video and blog story for each of seven one and two bedroom apartment-villas at the hilltop resort on Vigie Cove, Castries St. Lucia.

Authenticity
You don't need a professional actor and a glitzy movie to be authentic. In fact, for a great majority of travelers, glitz is a put off. Many want to know who the manager, owner or host is. A video of a real person who will be there to welcome them is far better than a professional voice. Don't be intimidated by your voice. It is real and no actor or smooth talker can really represent you. Speak from the heart and you will create an authentic and real connection. We suggest that our clients use a combination of text, image, voice over and music only videos.  It's good to alternate and sometimes it is important to have that professional voice carry a message. But save the sales letter and the mission statement for your own voice and remember it does not have to be perfect.

User Generated Content Sells                                                                                  
In the recent Destination Marketing Case for Canada , emotional engagement and user generated content helps drive customers to purchase. Canada is a vast and beautiful country but why go there when you could go to California or the Caribbean? Emotional engagement can make the difference.

The implications to hotel and tourism marketing is that user videos resonate. Hotels tend to create high-end videos when travelers want to see the real deal;  the manager/owner or host and not an actor!

Be Where You Need to Be - Be Everywhere
Today people move fluidly between desktop, mobile devices, tablets, television, broadcast services and print. To be present at the right time and place means we have to deliver a consistent brand experience across channels and a system to update posts and maintain a presence where your guests are.  

Example: StoryTelling Travel Marketing at Poinsettia

http://poinsettiaapartments.com/apt-villa1-rooftopterrace.cfm

Search Updates Hurt St. Lucia Apartment Owners and Local Tourism Companies

LATEST SEARCH UPDATES CUT  LOCAL TOURISM COMPANIES OUT OF LISTINGS



Google has dropped every small, local apartment complex from the first page listing. In their place are: Direct By Owner, HomeAway, TripAdvisor and major consolidators and directories. Oddly, even the Government and the St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association sites are not showing up on the first page for searches like "St. Lucia apartments for rent."

The change is dramatic. Local apartment rentals that were listed on page one have gone. Just evaporated overnight. Check it out with a search for the phrase above or variation of it.  It is a long tail term that is one of the most searched terms used by travelers looking for self-catering accommodation for their St. Lucia holidays.

THE BIG CLEANUP

It's part of the big clean up and the new effort to list only credible authority sites. Also, someone searching for apartments will often want a list of apartments. From the search engines' point of view,  listing directories is a simple solution to the problem of too much content of suspect quality.  Google is on the war path with shabby content and by playing it safe with known name directories, it is cutting out the small, local property owners who provide the product that these Saint Lucia vacationers are looking for.

MARKETING OPTIONS

So what can the small apartment owners do in the face of declining occupancy when they can't get their properties listed on the first page of search results? Not being on “page one results” leads to a drop in leads of about 80% and that is very bad for business.

Villa and apartment owners can of course advertise on Google and with these big name sites. For a lot of them, it's too expensive.  The apartment market in St. Lucia is struggling with small marketing budgets and big hurdles. They are reluctant to pay for advertising that is expensive and has a short life span. Once the ads have run their course, they disappear.  The cost of a Google ad (adwords)  can be several dollars a lead and as travelers are very fickle, shopping around at an average of 20 or so sites before they buy, the close rate is low.

On average, 95% of travel shoppers do not buy on sites like Expedia and destination sites while shopping around. On the other hand, it makes sense to build authority and create quality, lasting content. That is a sustainable marketing option; good content and authority last. Before the latest search updates, they were also what got you to the top of search results. Now it seems International Companies with massive lists are winning out over local property owners with rooms, flats, villas and apartments to rent.

BUILDING AUTHORITY


The good news is that you can still build authority that will influence ranking. It's a long process and cannot be done overnight; but done right, we are seeing a gradual increase in ranking. It's a matter of time before this turns into a page one listing, more leads and more direct bookings.

For a St. Lucia apartment owner client, we have been developing content and links which are finally beginning to show some results. The site is moving up and we expect it will be on page 1. Why? Because Google is looking for authority sites with excellent content and visibility and this is what property owners need to do.

You build authority with good content and by letting people know about it. Building authority is not about promotion. It's about content that travelers are looking for. One strategy is to find a new perspective on a major attraction and do your own story and video on it. See Ladera - stay in comfort and holiday in style.


VIDEO CONTENT



It used to be that one could influence ranking with just a couple of good videos. Now we need a campaign with not less than a dozen videos. The videos need to be strategic, released over several months, with a carefully crafted message that reinforces itself without overdoing the keywords and links.  Variety in tags, keywords and links is now the essence. So the campaign will include using a closely related set of words with links that are not over-optimized.

OVER OPTIMIZED LINKING

Not long ago “G” told us to use keywords in our links (anchor text) so they would know what we are promoting. Today they are telling marketers that it is not natural to link back with the exact keywords we are targeting. One needs to vary the link words and use the raw URL as well as words like "Click Here" and "Visit" etc.  Also vary the words using related words like vacation, holiday, travel, getaways etc. Use words like flat, room, house, suite, studio, villa, apartment interchangeably where they make sense. This is part of what is called Latent Semantic Indexing. See more at http://lsikeywords.com/
So if you find you have fallen off the search results, it could be that your back-links (sites linking back to you) are too optimized and now look unnatural. You need to change these links and add more random words so that they will now look natural.

CASE STUDY: POINSETTIA  ST. LUCIA

Our campaign for PoinsettiaApartments.com is progressing slowly. We have published several videos, written many blogs, added content to the site and issued several press releases. The site has moved to the third page results. We will be publishing and promoting 8 more videos in this campaign.

Here is some of the Video collateral.

Villa Interiors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NzTD7knt40
Stay in Comfort, Holiday in Style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSmUncZZkqY
Long Term St. Lucia Living http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF4iu9ocbFo
Overview of Poinsettia  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7xeWXmjBo

Resources: Organic Search results for "apartments for rent in St. Lucia"

Contact support (at) axses.com for more on these tourism video marketing campaigns
Tel: 246 429 2653


 

The Press Release

This post is a follow up on a question regarding the Press Release services we offer at AXSES and the services and strategies we use to get the best results.

Yes! We do all the work leading up to the PR, including the release writing and the follow up. There is a lot of blogging and publishing that has to be in place before we will send out a Press Release. After the release is published, there is more work to promote it and make it effective.

Before the Press event, we need to be sure we have a suitable video to be featured in the PR. We need blogs, website landing pages and special reports. All of these are created, published and promoted prior to the press event.
We write the PR, create the videos and articles and tweak the websites, blogs and online collateral. In many cases we build magazine style documents. 

These also get published separately to places that we know count like SlideShare, Scribd etc. We market those places by making sure they are picked up in online directories (pinged) and by creating announcements and promotions for them.

In some cases we will create online photogalleries on sites like TripNtale eg; http://bit.ly/apartmentforrentstlucia and, as you might have guessed, we promote these also. There is much to be gained by helping these sites get known, so we will do tweets and announcements for these in the same way that we promote the PR.

We work with PRWeb to distribute the release out to journalists and the media. PRWeb is, in our opinion, the best online and offline combination, and we like that it is true multimedia release. 

We always include a video, an image and a quote, as well as a PDF attachment that covers more details that will interest certain journalists.
It's a lot of work but we have been told our PR is above average in pick-up and distribution. It all adds up. 

Once the PR is out, we monitor it and write about the places and angles on the media that is featuring the release or the video.  We do more promotions on the big named sites that carry our feature and we look for angles that are unique. 

In the case of Poinsettia and Ladera, CBS picked us up in their MoneyWatch. We turned that into a secondary promotion: "Affordable Caribbean Holidays featured by CBS MoneyWatch."

The PR on the launch of the Mobile Travel Calendar application was picked up by several high profile technology sites such as Silicon Valley and The Network Journal. We promoted these separately with pings, tweets and posts to various networks across the Internet.

As you can see, we put a lot of effort into making video marketing work for our clients.

NOTE RE PRWEB

PRWeb claims that it is the world's number one news release service¹, with an unprecedented ability to reach journalists, bloggers and potential customers.  Each PRWEB release is optimized to get the best organic search results. The release also goes to premium online outlets, and is sent directly to journalists and bloggers.

The PRWeb release will go out to

Search Engines

Major Search Engines

Across the Web

Web Distribution

Associated Press Distribution

Associated Press Distribution

Media Digests

Business News Digests

Health and Medical Digests

Hospitality and Travel

Information Technology

The Press Release will be displayed on about 50,000 PRWeb user pages on the Internet. These are pages that are measured by PRWeb. In addition, many more will not be measured. A pickup will be to numerous sites that are not measured and are not part of the PR network. These sites in turn can be picked up by many more and the total displays of the release will be in the order of 5-10 times the reported number.


CASE STUDY: TAKE AWAYS
------------------------------


TAKE AWAY  Mobile Travel Calendar PR Followup.

If you do your own Press Release, it's a good idea to promote the folks who carry your story.

In order to get more traffic and create more buzz, we track who has picked up the release. Where we find a top media  pickup or an unusual one, we will post that as a story (or several stories) across the Internet.

In this case Silicon Valley, CBS MoneyWatch and The Network Journal were 3 pickups we chose to make a story on. The story was short. It might be just tweets to say "Wall Street is talking about WhatsOninBarbados." We may post that story to many, many sites with various news worthy angles relative to their own clientele and market.

The post PR reporting and follow up creates backlinks to our feature on pickup sites (eg: Silicon Valley) which makes it rank on search engines and creates additional visitors to it. That way more people learn about our featured client or release.

It all adds credibility to our news.




TAKE AWAY ON FOCUS re St. Lucia Holidays

Some were asking how we re-focus a story about a hotel or tourism event to make it newsworthy. See the take away below. Hope this helps.
When you are writing a PR, don't talk about what a wonderful service or special offer etc. Talk about a NEW service - release a NEW video and always feature how it is different from others and from what you did before.
In the Ladera campaign we originally featured the idea of saving money. Who cares? Everyone does that.  Changing it to "Publishing/Launching" a new video about new ways to save on exotic holidays worked.

x

PoinsettiaApartments Website >>>

To Your Success

St. Lucia Holiday Apartments: Marketing Case Study

Video Marketing Case Study: St. Lucia Holidays & Apartment Rentals


http://youtu.be/pK_xout8F1Y


In a recent AXSES tourism marketing campaign we were faced with the task of helping a small apartment rental company in St. Lucia to get back its position on the Internet for searches. 

Their listing for “apartments for rent in St. Lucia”, “St. Lucia Holidays” "St. Lucia Villa Apartments" and other key phrases had simply fallen off the radar in Google search results.

Google Algorithm Changes Hurting Local Travel Business.

Google had adjusted its search systems to give more credit for onsite content. The sites that were showing up were the big Online Travel Agents (OTAs), representing all the major hotels in St. Lucia, adding huge "relevant content" for the different accommodation searches. Also tour companies, major brands and sites with massive content where ranking. Very few small hotels and lodging companies made it to page one of the search results.
A small hotel, villa complex or holiday apartment rented by owners can’t compete with OTA's for content. They can’t build hundreds of pages of this sort of content.

So what are they to do to avoid becoming irrelevant in the online market? They can’t ignore it. Most travelers search online to find options and make booking decisions. In fact, 57% of all travel reservations are made on the internet(i).

What Can be Done

The answer is that they can build quality and very specific content for their very special market. This means of course being clear about the USP and creating multimedia content in articles, blogs, videos and on the site; making sure that it is available everywhere.

This used to be very expensive, but with new tools and services the cost of media has dramatically decreased. Today a quality multimedia campaign can be affordable even to a small hotel and have a significant ROI if done right.

Our Case study is for a small apartment complex in St. Lucia. It has been seeing a slide in occupancy and has noted that St. Lucia tourism has moved to more all inclusive, beach holidays, and resort lifestyle vacations. Fewer people appear to be looking for apartments and the word apartment conjures up different images and expectations that are hard to manage.

This is the first in a series we will do as we tackle this case and find the solution.

The Property


The property has several units, a pool, gardens laden with fruit trees and tropical plants and a panoramic roof top terrace with a stunning view. It is up on a hill looking down on the Caribbean Sea, the harbour, the local cove and the shallow draft marina.

The apartments are more like townhouses or modest villas. All have a front door and some have a back terrace and garden.

It’s a good location; not on the beach which is about 2 mins away by car. One needs to have a car to take full advantage of their St. Lucia Holidays, while sating here

Objective

Regain search ranking for target keywords, increase business and build clientele.

Challenge #1

St. Lucia is big in "all Inclusive" and beach resorts. The property is a distinctive villa and townhouse style apartment complex that is not on the beach.

Not many St. Lucia tourists are searching for apartments. An apartment complex has a connotation of elevators and corridors which most St. Lucia tourists do not want.

The first obstacle is to overcome the misconceptions about apartments and to clearly communicate what the complex really is. It is not an apartment building in the traditional sense.

Solution

We decided to tackle this perception of apartment living straight on as you will see in the video.

We also defined the target client carefully and spoke directly to ideal client.

We focused on the prime location and created the tag line "A Great Place to Come Home To" which we registered for the client.

In addition to the video, we built a series of blog posts, a press release and quality flyers(ii) that were all distributed strategically on the Internet. 

See the video #1 and let us know if you think this will work. We plan several more videos to build on this theme. 

All of this is collateral for the clients website(iii) and the video which in terms of Internet Marketing creates authority and tells the story.

See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7xeWXmjBo

Let us know what you think. Comments are always welcome on the YouTube video.

Keep tuned as we move forward and share the hurdles and success…

The next video takes us inside the rooms, villas and apartment townhouses

----------------

Sources:
(i) Stats from statisticbrain
(ii)  Poinsettia Apartments Flyer on Slideshare
(iii) Case Study on: http://poinsettiaapartments.com

Marketing by AXSES SocialindexEngine.com

World Heritage Tourism Opportunities for Travel

Barbados is in the process of  figuring out how it can take best advantage of its new UNESCO World Heritage Status. The Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia has moved ahead with a significant commitment to promoting Barbados holidays, with the island as a top World Heritage Tourism Destination. 


We have created several webpages and are upgrading many. We have produced several videos and have more planned.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2l3Z6l99E

We are writing blogs, articles, magazines and have published several press releases. The last release had an enormous distribution of 160,000 impressions. This attests to the fact that World Heritage Tourism is a Hot travel subject. So let me share some insights.

Observations On World Heritage Tourism

The World Heritage initiative of UNESCO is resonating across all academic, political and cultural groups. The reason why the PR was so viral is precisely because it is a HOT subject, with a lot of media interest. 

It is up to all in Barbados to make the most of the recent UNESCO designation in this regard. It is one of only four Caribbean Islands to be so honoured. Professor Henry Frazer has some simple recommendations that will help all in hospitality to gain by embracing heritage tourism.

As you will see we have a significant campaign to position Barbados Holidays, Travel and Tourism "Top of Mind" for those interested in heritage.

Heritage Tourism Can Change The World

UNESCO’s World Heritage program has as its premise the goal of creating lasting peace. Adding a tourism component opens this foundation to the world: To regions, political parties, hospitality suppliers, travelers and the general public. In tourism we all can play a part in bridging understanding and sharing heritage. Rejoice in what is good and learn from what is not. Peace through understanding and sharing.

Heritage Tourism- The Opportunity

"Senator Professor Emeritus Henry Fraser, speaking on the topic ‘Generating Business from the World Heritage Site – Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison’, at one of the sessions of Foromic XV yesterday morning, noted that World Heritage sites have dramatically enhanced the profile of every destination so inscribed, resulting in rapid expansion in terms of tourism. In fact, he said that research has shown that visitors interested in heritage spend more money than the average sun seeking tourists. Professor Fraser noted that world tourism activities generate some US$4 trillion every year and he said that the Caribbean can receive much more of that largess if we take advantage of the World Heritage statuses that have been bestowed on us". Barbados Advocate 10/2/2012

Frazer also suggested that hotel websites and the country’s marketing materials, should show our heritage and that we must not fail to take advantage of the "golden gift of World Heritage status".

What we are doing about Barbados Heritage Tourism

We have gained a top ranking in search results for the terms we targeted, no mean feat, as authority sites have been entrenched in the top position for years. There are over 60 million pages vying for this top position, but we have positioned our network and Barbados.org as authority sites and build on this with new initiatives:

Heritage Magazine

We offer all the opportunity to be part of an ongoing marketing effort with this publication. We can also produce custom publications for destinations, hotels and businesses  more click here

Heritage Tourism Videos

We will pleased to discuss your video marketing needs with you.

Publishing

Opportunities exist for hotels and activities to advertise in this collateral
Our World Heritage Social Network (WHT). We are building a powerful WHT network with a dedicated team of professionals who understand what we are doing and will help in spreading the word and creating the buzz.

Contacts

TravelersInsights Publishing and Marketing
PO BOX 16B, Baslen House, Kingston Terrace
Bridgetown, St. Michael, Barbados, BB11090
1 246 429 2653 
Talk to Kathy Lynn Ward or Ian Clayton 
worldheritage (at) travelersinsights.com

The Future of Search & The Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph

The knowledge graph is what G is calling the future of search. It's a fundamental shift in the thinking of what people are looking for. Search engines have for some time focused on delivering one unique result for every single person. To do that requires knowledge of the person searching and this is part of what we at Axses called the Social Index, and what Google is now calling the Knowledge Graph.This could perhaps best be described as a Knowledge Network, because knowledge is derived from several categories of information that are interrelated.

It ,however, far more complex that that. G has figured out that one answer is actually not enough.  In their example they show a search for Leonardo da Vinci. Now instead of a long list of sites you get a row of images across the top depicting an understanding of this subject. His paintings are, for example, displayed across the top of the page in a single row left to right. 

Beneath  that you will find another row showing what other questions people ask, like who are the Renaissance painters.

This changes the way we must market.  We now have to influence this knowledge graph, or database of understanding, by providing not just a keyword or a name but a set of knowledge in a format, and with enough authority that it will get indexed. 

That knowledge must be available in the right places. Not 5,000 backlinks in some unheard of websites. In social indexing we aim to create deep knowledge and get it into authoritative sources in quality formats like video, magazines, represented by trusted sites, and known and respected media - authors, bloggers and information resources. Marketing is going to be conducted more by knowledge engineering. People will be able to access what they want in a very tailored and easily accessible way, at their finger tips. Traditional marketing is being superseded by the presence of knowledge networks. Some of the traditional methods will be embedded in the delivery of information along with the opportunity to buy.

knowledge graph.