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. 

U-Drive Marketing for Car Rental Holidays

Marketing Car Rentals with U-Drive Adventure Travel Tours

In a recent campaign launched for Courtesy Rent A Car, we coined a new travel category called U-Drive Adventure Travel.

It's a bit of a novel twist on car rentals and we expect it will track well on the internet. The project is being launched as we write and we will give you an update on its success in the next month or so. 

It is using our tried and tested Social Index Engine which creates a sphere of influence that contributes to what Google is calling The Knowledge Graph.



Click Here to view video

Campaign highlights
1. Promotion on Adventure-Travel-Destinations.com with a separate landing  page, blogs, featured in the "Caribbean Pages". Video used in all.

2. Barbados.org Blog featuring U-Drive Adventures and the video. This site is a known authority information resource and highly respected by the search community. It is the Barbados Tourism encyclopedia with over 15,000 pages of information, all of it unique and original.

3. Separate Video for company website. Videos are a vital part of the marketing mix. They add to the sites reputation, and typically increase engagement which is a key factor in the knowledge graph

4. Press Release with Video. We use PRweb, the world’s #1 news release service. PRweb releases go out to all media. We can choose selected journalists, publications and newspapers etc. Our typical release on PRweb is coupled with a separate SIE marketing of the PRweb Page giving us a higher than average readership. our last release was displayed on over 70,000 pages directly. As it was also picked up by several thousand media sites and also distributed by them, the reach was far greater than what is reported. It has a massive impact on what we do because we integrate it into campaigns where all parts reinforce each other.

5. Social Network - created niche market profiles for social networking sites and posted relevant information and items of interest concerning the campaign with blogs, videos and discussions.

6. Bookmarking- we bookmarked the blogs etc. to Bookmark sites like Delicious and Reddit. For example, we made one post regarding a carnival video to StumbleUpon that resulted in around 250 direct responses within 24 hours.

7. Video published to major video sites. While YouTube is our number one site, their are other top rated sites like Dailymotion, that have a large following. We put the video on these site and have often seen them raise to the top of search results.  

8. Video Promotions - we choose video sites to highlight. Highlighting is where we build links to the site from the right sources, maybe even do a press release related to our use of that site etc. This then reinforces the authority of the site and adds credibility to the knowledge graph.

9. Backlinks, comments and ongoing analysis and adjustments as required. We don't focus on quantity but on quality. Article marketing is still a powerful force in marketing so long as the content is valuable and engages people. 

10. Adventure-Travel-Destinations has a very high retention rate. People using the site visit several pages. The bounce rate is very low compared to other similar sites. This is an authority site and a good place to get linked from.

RESULTS OF PAST CAMPAIGNS

Direct Car Rentals

Our last car rental campaign for Direct-Car-Rentals.com promoted on Party-Destinations has resulted in higher ranking on search engines, extensive viability across the internet and with off line media. Just under 500 video views and climbing. ranking on top of YouTube for the niche market of Holiday Car Rental Tips.

The video is on top of YouTube results for Holiday Car Rental Tips and related niche terms.
One of the objectives of the campaign is to build name recognition and authority for the site. 

The video on YouTube has just under 500 views. Party Destinations continues to be in top position on Google search results and has 50 to 100 daily visitors.

Part of our research indicated that their URL was not optimal for their target market. It did not have any key word resonance, and it didn't reflect the brand. We registered a new URL - direct-car-rentals.com and linked it to their existing URL. This was a simple, but important step because the URL is one the most strategic SEO options you have. As a result of this simple move and with the links and collateral created for the promo: Direct Car Rentals is now seen on the first page of many relative search results.

In addition we have created new visibility and attracted new potential clients reaching out to a new niche market through Party-Destinations.com marketing.


Tiami

We did a similar campaign for Tiami and had similar results. Our Tiami Campaign has 1000 YouTube views and climbing!



Summary

We are an innovative marketing company with a great deal of resources and knowledge on the industry. We use the tools we have created to optimize marketing for our clients. If you want to know what we can do for you - 

just give us a call at 246 429 2653 
Ask about SocialIndex marketing.

Barbados Carnival 2012

Barbados Carnival Street Party - Kadooment "Big to-do" We are releasing a series of videos, photos and promos featuring the Barbados Carnival Kadooment Parade.  The videos are being published on several sites including: Barbados.org Kadooment Carnival Page Barbados is now ranking as a hot party destination on the world stage. It has a roster of great bands and top artists. It offers a year round climate of sun, fun, live entertainment and lots to do and enjoy while on holiday. There more things to do per mile that anywhere else in the Caribbean. It has some of the most elegant hotels in the world and top gourmet restaurants. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, and was voted by times magazine as one of the top places to do business. At the same time it is totally accessible with many affordable B&B guesthouses and hidden gems. It has an old way and style with friendly people who put visitors at ease. We call it  "Distinctively Charming" More about the Barbados Carnival Promo A blog on party-destinations.com explains more about Carnival, Crop-Over, Jouve and Kadooment festival events. Check the Party Destinations blog linked above page to see the latest news and videos. Four video are published along with a Barbados.org photo-gallery. Other videos and blogs will follow these and be published across the network, all with original content. This creates the social Index, footprint and authority that get our clients found on the Internet. See our YouTube PartyHolidays Video Channel  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- a SocialIndexEngine Marketing Campaign Note: Party-destinations.com an SIE site is currently #1 on Search -  ahead of all the 423 million pages in competition Achieved with SocialIndexengine Marketing! Sign-up at SocialIndexEngine.com Barbados Carnival Video Kadooment Street Party Photogallery Links

Tiami Launches Fun Sailing Video with Party Destinations

New Tiami Video Promotes Dine, Dance and Sail with its Party Catamaran Cruises

The Campaign features Tiami on the Party Holidays site http://Party-destinations.com, and includes one year of advertising on the site, which is promoted by AXSES.

In addition, the campaign has a full SocialIndexEngine.com promotion including:

1. Press Releases
2. Web Pages and links
3. Blog Marketing
4. Social Indexing on our Social Networks
5. a RealHolidays.TV video production

The Realholidays.TV video covers the Catamaran sail to swim with the turtles in Barbados and return with a fun holiday luncheon cruise. It captures the spirit of sailing and party cruising with guests dining and dancing on the deck to the beat of Caribbean rhythms.

It is the first of a series of videos planned for Party Destinations' Tiami Cruises. These will include a video on the Green Turtles, Sushi and Champagne Sunset Cruises and gourmet dining on the luxuriously outfitted Spirit of Barbados Catamaran.

Dennis Roach, CEO of Tiami Catamaran Cruises, says the Spirit brings a new sense of luxury to coastal sailing in Barbados. “We have coupled design and luxury with the sense of adventure, sumptuous food and personal service, to create this new and exclusive class of holiday experience”.

The Press releases, blogs, videos and promotional materials introduce Tiami Catamaran Cruises as the oldest and largest catamaran holiday sailing company in the Eastern Caribbean, catering to executive travelers as well as the fun, party crowd. The promotions point out that Tiami Cruises range from private charters, family cruises, romantic sunset and moonlight cruises to day time snorkeling and turtle tours and fun, holiday sailings.

Tiami operates within the highest health and safety standards required by International tour companies. All boats pass exacting inspection on a regular basis. Crew members are all regionally certified in CPR, first aid and ocean rescue.

For more information on Holiday sailing, Party Boats and Sailing, see http://party-destinations.com/holidays/party-boats/

ABOUT AXSES

Realholidays.tv and Party-destinations.com are products of AXSES SCI. AXSES is a tourism marketing and development company, helping hotels and tourism operators build sustainable brands and direct business. The company is internationally regarded as a leader in Social Marketing for travel, being one of the first companies to develop a direct booking application for Facebook. and featured by the New York Times in an article on Social Media use in travel.

In 2012 AXSES launched  SocialIndexEngine.com; technology achieving outstanding success in building brands and increasing direct bookings for hotels and travel companies.

For more on this promotional campaign, visit http://party-destinations.com/advertise.

New SocialIndexEngine Portal Launched

Check out the new site at http://SocialIndexEngine.com
And the new video that describes what it is all about.

Video on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOp25UNaYU4

Subscribe to our channel to get the latest developments in Social Indexing and the new Brand Marketing.

Youtube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/SocialIndexEngine


What's New

Our first site still exists but in reality it is a page and it is dedicated to the travel and tourism industry. Our new site lays out the platform of SocialIndexEngine in more detail with some really important new additions.

Pillars of Success

We have simplified the general view of the architecture to half a dozen pillars. Of course, all the details still exist but it was a bit overwhelming.

Next is the Proof of Concept

We have added several case studies and will be adding more. Every single campaign has aced it. Our strategy is to build these SIE campaigns with their own websites like Party-destinations.com and partner with just a few top travel companies in each area.

Exclusive Marketing Opportunities

The marketing will be very exclusive and limited to those we invite . So don't miss an opportunity in your travel niche. See our notes re what we have and where we go (below). We have assembled a few videos that help demonstrate some of the concepts. We will add more as we move forward.

Tutorial and Newsletter
Do join these. The tutorials are being shared openly for the launch. Once we have a core of interest, the tutorial will not be distributed. We will still invite all interested parties to register as we plan to have 25 or more targets.We will invite only a few selected companies to participate in each market.

Register to Reserve your Opportunity

Register now to be included in our invitations. Just go to http://SocialIndexEngine.com

The form is on the top right hand of most pages. Just enter your name, email, and the website you might like us to market with you. Sorry, but we must have a website and you can’t register without it. We do need this and we will evaluate it in order to select our candidates.

Looking forward to your success with SocialIndexEngine. 

Current Campaigns

Travel2ExoticPlaces | Adventure-travel-destinations | Romantic-Holiday-Destinations | Bolivia | Dominica | Barbados | St. Lucia

Next

We will be rolling out a site every 2 months. The site we choose will be based on our research and will have a good ROI for partners. Our aim is to bring a new level of selectivity to weary travelers who typically have too many choices and want a source that helps organize data for the.

Please Subscribe to our youtube channel if you find this helpful and of interest. http://www.youtube.com/user/SocialIndexEngine

More >> See our Press Release

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/05-SocialIndexEngine/prweb9474894.htm
Portal - http://SocialIndexEngine.com
 

Destination Marketing for Party Tourism is Tops with SocialIndexEngine

Party-Destinations.com, AXSES latest marketing initiative is climbing to the top of Search Results. Within days of launching this campaign we are on page 2 of G-Search results for the term Party Destinations and on Page 1 for searches for Caribbean or Barbados party destinations.

The site and its marketing is slanted toward the Caribbean and Barbados, yet our intention is to build this into a Destinations marketing initiative that will attract world travelers interested in party holidays. The site and marketing is exclusively for our clients. 

We are now moving into phase two with the production of new blogs and video targeting international party travelers for the exclusive benefit of our advertisers, sponsors and partners.

Our aim is to put Party-Destinations.com (PDC) on page 1 of all generic search results for the appropriate terms.

The website and the marketing is built with our SocialIndexEngine.com. (SIE)

It is a full SIE compliant website which allows fast indexing and high search ranking, when coupled with the Social Indeing & Brand Marketing Campaign.

In this the 4th video we create a blog aimed at international travellers and have added strategic party places and links to the site. The Associated blogs and video feature international hotspots and clubs. It is one of the many strategic steps we take to get to the top of search (more on this tomorrow).

See the video on YouTube.com/partyholidays

SocialIndexEngine (SEI) is changing the way we market.
Our success with this approach is remarkable! (more tomorrow).

Let me share with you how significant our SIE marketing is!

There are 137 million pages vying for top spot in this niche. The competing pages and websites belong to huge authority companies like FirstChoice, TripAdvisor, Huffington Post and many more. These companies hire the best marketers and understand the Internet very well. They work hard to get top position and to maintain it. It is an exception for a brand new site to make it to the top against these odds. You simple cannot do that with traditional marketing!

Our success is achieved with our revolutionary strategies and the technology we have built and employ in marketing travel.  

A large part of this is based on the product we call SocialIndexEngine

Please check out some of the options at http://store.SocialIndexEngine.com. The store contains just a sampling of the campaigns we conduct. It is a very custom job that requires extensive attention to detail, timing and technique.

We use proprietary systems and have invested significantly in this new marketing. We are now offering personal marketing campaigns to a few select customers.

If you are interested in being on the TOP of your market, please contact iclayton 'at' axses.com for a personal appraisal. We cannot do this for all and are limiting this service to the top few who are ready to make a difference.

Act now to be part of this initiative - We are looking for 10 strategic clients to work with on several initiatives. Once we have our quota the invitation will be closed.

 

Party-destinations.com Special Promotional Offer

Our latest promotion is to build a World Travel Site for the fun party crowd. We call it party-destinations.com. Initially it will feature St. Lawrence Gap and the two hotels that have subscribed to SocialIndexEngine Brand Marketing.


http://youtu.be/ep3amMKmtaU

We are inviting activities, car rentals and restaurants to participate in the program. The cost is $750 US to have an advertorial, a video blast and a blog. We create the video for you and also publish it out to many sites which will help build your social index and get the attention of search engines as well as help in your brand marketing.

We also give you the video for your website. 

So you get:

1. a short advertorial on party-destinations linking to your website directly.
2. a blog with your video embedded in it and linking to your website
3. a promo that will post your video our to social media index network
4. a secondary promo that will post your blog out to the network

Deal!! ... It is probably the best value you will see anywhere if you are interested in target the party-time travelers and fun holiday crowd.

BUT hurry! We are accepting 3 restaurants for this promo only – 1 car rental, 1 dive company, one sailing company, etc.

Check out party-destinations.com and contact us immediately to reserve your spot, get a sales video, a blog and an exclusive promotional opportunity.

Note that we also offer extended promotions such as Press Releases and Facebook integration.

For more information, see our video  http://youtu.be/ep3amMKmtaU

You will notice that is an international site – We are branching out! You will also notice that our focus is on Barbados, and this promotion ranks the Caribbean and Barbados amongst the top part holiday destination in the world.

We cover the St. Lawrence Gap in this campaign, but Holetown and other areas will be featured in a future campaign, so book your spot ASAP. In order to be fair to sponsors, the offer will always be very limited. We will feature a few hotels and restaurants and a single activity of each kind.

We plan a series of videos for each campaign. Each will highlight some aspect of the destination promotion. The videos and blogs will be geared to specific keywords which are being targeted. All will be about fun-filled holidays. But there are many marketing segments and many keywords by which travelers will search, such as party holidays, fun vacation, active holidays, nightlife, clubs, dancing, activities, carnival, street festivals as well as party time places, live music, pubs, bars and restaurants of every culture and cuisine.

Each promo, video and blog will be targeted to orient with the search keywords and to specific age groups and budgets. As we move on to new locations, we will repeat the process. We aim to have the premier website for this market - one that will rank on the first page of all search engines for the relevant search.

This content marketing with videos, blogs and social media is the new form Search Engine Optimization.

Http://party-destinations.com follows on the very successful launch of Travel2ExoticPlaces.com and http://BoliviaHotelSpecials.com.

In the last campaign MBC doubled its bookings and jumped up a level in Google Page Rank. See blog...

 Call us now for full details and to reserve your place!

How to Build Your Business On Line - Book

In December my book “How to Build your Business Online” (http://HowToBuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com) was published and is for sale on Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle as an e-book. Barnes and Noble is supposed to carry it. We ran into a snag with our foreign bank account. That may change soon.

It’s a simple book that describes in layman’s terms what needs to be done to build your brand and market your business online. It covers Search Engine placement, keyword strategies, Search Engine Optimization, Video, Blogging, Content Marketing, Mobile and Social Media.



I video blog and write about media a lot these days and have more than once said that we are all publishers. With this in mind, it seemed logical to publish a book about building your business online. 

You may have seen samples of my writing on various website and in magazines (Sea Technology, Computers in Education, Hi Society etc). For example, I embarked on a world saga project years ago that got me writing about local cultures starting with the saga of Bathsheba in Barbados, Example Life in a Fishing Village.  I was asked to write an account of Barbados for the BBC TV program “By Any Means”, a Project of Great Big Earth, with Charley Boorman (reprinted on Barbados.org).  But this is my very first book and publishing it was quiet an experience. 

There are many self-publishing services and I investigated several. In the end I ended up with OpenSpace, the publishing arm of Amazon. As a new Author you don’t get tracked down by a publisher. But you can do it yourself. 

I was inspired to launch this book by a Class I took. It was a class of Main Street Marketers who were having the same problem. We had all had great systems that make a difference but we were removed from day-to-day basics.

We needed a simple plain-language authoritative book that explained in non-technical language what an anchor text was and what was involved in online marketing and just how to build your business online. We needed a simple text on how to build your Brand and how to market it using the internet and online media: Something that business managers could understand and enjoy reading even, if they had no interest in technology.  

We were a diverse group with as many options and views about what the book should be as we were people. We decided to pool resources and hire a publishing team. We would each build our own book with our own points of view and with our own content and perspective. Sharing publishing resources made it cost-effective to produce a helpful guide about online marketing for each of our respective industries. 

My intention was to write a book on travel. I was persuaded to make that the second book which is now in process. Travel is a very specialized industry; the Global Distribution Systems, Tour Operators, Online Travel Agents (OTA), airline reservation systems, holiday packaging, seasonal rates and offers, have few parallels in other industries My texts about all this bewildered the team. My editing assistant said, "Ian you can't put all that into a simple easy to read book". Hence, all of this is in Book 2.  

For book 1, we ended up with a very simple version, thanks to an editor who was ruthless with words. Several of my insights and concepts were dropped because they were too technical or too philosophical. Ideas and paragraphs were re-crafted. "Your writing for ordinary business people, not the Harvard Review" I was reminded. It amazed me how, in the hands of a good editor, whole paragraphs of complex ideas were reduced to a single sentence that everyone could relate to. Having an editor is a very good idea!

“How to Build Your Business Online” will help any business understand what technology is available and how to use the online media to build and market their brand, be it in the health field, in food services, in automotive or hairdressing.  In retrospect this is a good move - a general book on brand marketing using the internet and all online media, opens new avenue for our skills in Barbados to help small businesses on an international scale. 
 
My current involvement with the book is to create a series of business marketing tutorials for each section of the book. I will also maintain a blog and website where book patrons can share their ideas and experiences, and ask questions of the group.

I’ll share more about the publishing process, cost and option in my next blog. Keep watching.

For more on the book and how it might help you see http://HowtoBuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com


Resources

Subscribe to our newsletter and Tutorials on the latest Tourism marketing technology:  The Social Index Engine

Buy the Book: http://Amazon.BuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com

Bonus For Book Buyers: Bonus.BuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com

Video Review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3gCKUsmlsc

Interested in Publishing Your own book see BizonlineBlog 
(http://www.howtobuildyourbusinessonlinebook.com/about-publishing-a-book-case-study-buildyourbusinessonlinebook/)

Useful resources for Online Marketing 

 

Case Study: Hotel Social Marketing that Boosts Bookings

SocialIndexEngine Hotel Marketing Campaign Case Study

The Social Index Marketing campaign to promote St. Lucia’s Marigot Beach Hotel is less than 6 months old, but the results have been very encouraging. 

With our new SocialIndexEngine Travel Strategy, special offers and promotions were loaded into our travel publishing systems and blasted out to a vast network of travel sites. Content from the same systems are published to Facebook and to our own network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p17knXD0o70

The Social Marketing is combined with the blogging, article marketing, SEO Mobile Marketing, Travel Blast and Videos. 

It is a complete, done-for-you social media management and brand marketing  that drives bookings directly to your website and builds sustainable brands.

Compared to the same time last year, the hotel has had a 200% increase in bookings. The page rank for their website, MarigotBeachClub.com, has increased from PR3 to PR4.

The campaign is a kick-start package. Following a successful kick-start, we will re-evaluate the position of the Brand and devise a strategy to build on new niches with consistent blogging, video distribution, mobile and social media management services providing information to build authority and give answers to travellers.

This success was a result of the new strategies and technology built by AXSES. About a year ago, we noted that traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was not working. Getting links from other sites used to help us get top position in Google and other search results. Then the Engines like Google saw that a lot of this was paid-for links or reciprocal links (I link to you if you link to me). The result is that reciprocal links now don’t count and general links from directories etc have little or no SEO value.

>>>> More to get the full tutorial and whitepaper on the new SEO and Relationship Marketing sign up at http://SocialIndexEngine.com 

We used to comment on blogs; now Google looks to see who is commenting, what their history is and what their score is. Yes, SCORE! – Google actually rates advertisers and applies a Quality Score based on the merit of the work. This Quality Score was first used to weed out advertisers who were not contributing ads of good value; now it is one of the components of the social index that determines who you are, your authority, your influence and your value. Today it is used everywhere – But beware! Putting up a Squeeze page (a page that tries to grab an email and provides only promo material) will decrease your Quality Score. Have a slow-loading site and down goes the Quality Score.

Then there are articles. Article marketing was hot in 2010, but in 2011 a whole bunch of article sites got slapped by Google for populating duplicate content. This was Panda; many site just disappeared over night and articles with duplicates were ignored. Later in 2011, Google started assigning a negative score to website with non-original material. This hurt the e-commerce sites and particularly the affiliates who resold the product and copied the content of- like hotel room description, rates, etc. - from an OTA like Expedia.

All of this was unfortunate for bona fide distributors and travel marketers. The fact is that Google was not after the reputable marketers; it was clamping down on the absolute nonsense that affiliate marketers where putting on the net to game the system and sell their affiliate offers, like Teeth whiteners. The net had become proliferated with poorly written, low-value articles and a lot of trash. They had to do something, as search results were becoming irrelevant.

In marketing today, you cannot ignore Google. It is massive. ComScore reported in September 2011 that Google had almost 66% of all search traffic. So you absolutely must know what it is doing.

To be successful in today’s media, one has to know what Google is looking at, where it is looking, what it is looking for and what it does not want. Make a mistake and Google will slap you right out of the ring.  

To be successful in internet marketing today, you need to be where Goggle is looking

What I can tell you is that Google is looking at Social Media. It is looking at what you are doing on social media, social networking sites like Facebook, sharing sites like YouTube, bookmarking sites like Delicious, Wikipedia-type sites, and news sites like Twitter. It is very interested in mobile sites which are, in fact, the most social of all, and mobile is soon going to overtake OC as the main method of Search and Internet access!

We have noted that Google likes video and that consumers are searching for videos to evaluate a product or service and get answers to questions. Hence, we use a lot of video. They are informative videos; not too sales-oriented and definitely not glitzy. Videos that work in Social Media are local, personal stories and honest accounts, if they get too polished and too glib they loose appeal. Never put fancy effects and glitz into your videos.

Knowing all of this, our SocialIndexEngine is about building your social presence and making it work. It is not restricted to Social, but pretty soon there will be little else but Social. It really is the new way of marketing, permission-based, non-invasive and informative, supportive and engaging communications. 

Gone are the days of hype and spin. Mostly all of that has been the result of too many products in the market. It was not always like this, the cave man did not wonder around with a placard marketing his wares. In fact before commerce, man existed in agregrian communities bartering with neighbors. 

Now we have Pepsi reusing the word "Refresh" for its emotional appeal and Coke competing for emotional space with "Open Happiness". I think it is all rather ridiculous.  

The new marketing is going back to its roots in many respects. Friends, acquaintances, business partner and one's own circle or community are a growing factor in influencing what you people buy and where. The new technology is drastically changing the way we market. With so many consumers becoming vocal, publishing options, sharing views and insights: the traditional media of newspapers, radio and the broadcasters and finding themselves lost in a sea of voices and the new paradigm of participation. I talk about this in the preface to my book "How to Build your Business online by Ian R. Clayton"

>>> http://buildyourbusinessonlinebook.com

It's available in paperback on Amazon and Kindle, as easy read and full of helpful insights and how to's. Will share with you the process of publishing it in an upcoming blog - Keep Watching!

This new marketing is at the core of our approach to SEO. We have built an overall strategy that includes our e-commerce engine and our publishing machine. We even do magazines and all the usual brochures, but now always published on on-demand, available instantly, online with digital format for download to mobile devices and by regular mail. 

Everything is going online and you need to be there with the best you have in a format, message and engagement appropriate to your niche.

>>> Subscribe to SocialIndexEngine Free newsletter and tutorial to find out more

New Video blasts boost booking 200%

We have just published another video blast for Marigot Bay in St. Lucia for http://travel2exoticplaces.com/ . Unlike the previous video, which focused mainly on the Marigot Beach Hotel, this one is featuring the destination of St. Lucia.

We are publishing a separate blog that describes the success of this campaign, explains what we did and why and offers some insights as to why this technique we call SocialIndexEngine works.

It certainly did work. The hotel bookings increased by 200% over the previous year. Not only that, their Page Rank (PR) went up from 3 to 4. PR is a Google measure of the site’s relevance. The higher, the better. Barbados.org has a rank of 6. Expedia is 8 by comparison. Small hotel websites rarely get higher than 3 and to increase rank is very difficult.

More about the tecnology and marketing strategy see video below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5MZWrz3OYY

The system we use is a new set of integrated technology and strategies that we have perfected in late 2011 and are launching now in 2012. It involves using our own e-commerce systems to blast out travel content and promos to social media and 100s of travel sites. We are building an elaborate array of our own sites such as Travel2ExoticPlaces.com and working with established travel portals, shopping sites and social media (posting offers and bookings to Facebook).

A large part of our success is now based on strategic use of social media, using it as a platform for marketing and also building sales funnels into services like Facebook. 

For more on this, please make sure that you subscribe to our blog at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/kXYq

 – That way, you will be advised when the next blog is published.

The next blog is going to be very helpful. Not only will we tell you why this campaign succeeded, but we will also tell you why traditional SEO is dead. That’s right: SEO is DEAD. The old techniques do not work and we will document why.

Just subscribe to our blog at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/kXYq to be sure you get this.

The video is being blasted out to video sites and it is featured on the video channel http://www.youtube.com/user/traveltheexotic . It is also being blasted out to the social networks and made available for the Marigot Beach Hotel to post on their own website.

The video promotes Marigot Bay as one of the most picturesque bays in the Caribbean and one of the most exotic coves in the world. It is nestled in the west, in a secluded section of St. Lucia that is surrounded on three sides by steep hills covered in tropical rainforest. This historic Bay has been a refuge to ships, pirates and adventurers for centuries.

To get to the Marigot Beach Club Hotel, you take a short ferry ride in local pirogue-style boat. It is a wonderful way to start a holiday: your first dip into the Caribbean Sea in a local boat as you drift across the bay to the soft white sand beach where you step off and into the Marigot Beach Club Hotel.

Guests staying in the Marigot Bay area will be delighted by the beautiful landscape, made complete by the variety of flora and fauna on the island. Travellers can book a tour with the hotel to see St. Lucia’s natural attractions. These include native animals - birds, reptiles and other creature that have made this exotic island their home.

Guests can also visit the many scenic places for on activity-based tours, such as hiking on rainforest trails, taking an off-road jeep ride, or sailing in the bay.

Sailing in the Marigot Bay is quite popular, as it is an exceptionally relaxing experience. It provides great photo opportunities, and you also get to rub shoulders with other international travellers who may just be in the night, or for the weekend, on their way to or from the other Caribbean islands.

Organized scuba diving trips, as well as scuba classes by certified professionals, also enhance the trip for those more active travellers.

For the full article, see our hub at http://irclay.hubpages.com/hub/Travel2Exotic-Marigit-Bay-Stlucia
 
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