So you have been blogging, have you? Great! Blogging any where, about whatever suits you, is the first step. But now that you have the hang of it, it is time to venture down the block all on your own – the training wheels need to come off!
New Vail Condos & Conference Center Site
December 21st, 2009 by katieWe were thrilled to launch a new site for the very large Antlers at Vail Condominiums and Conference Center. With over 90 condos and ample facilities for Vail Weddings or business retreats, this was an exciting site for us to work on. We made individual pages for each of their different lodging options, as well as 4 pages of custom Google maps. The different ski parks, driving directions, Lionshead village and Vail attractions maps are all outlined clearly.
The New Antlers at Vail Website
It is a very large site, and is also built completely in WordPress. This allows the owners to change almost all aspects of the site with minimal assistance from us. If they want to add pages or change photos, the WordPress interface makes it quite easy. With some training, they are underway!
Another great things about having a site in WordPress: backup copies of your pages are clearly saved, so you can always feel confident when changing pages that nothing has to be permanent if you don’t want it to be. It is easy to add items into the main navigation of the site, as well as create Menu labels for those items so that a long title can still fit into a narrow navigation structure.
We look forward to see great results from this new Vail lodging site. Maybe we can come for a vacation sometime as well!
What to Blog About – Not Yourself
December 8th, 2009 by katieWe recently got a disturbing email from one of our clients about her disdain of blogs. She expressed her frustration with the “stupid story that never ends”, and that they are often mindless bits of news that are not important for anyone’s real life.
She makes some good points. The vast majority of blogs have a readership of one, the writer. That is because their blog is filled with dribble about mundane aspects of daily life. This is not the content you want in your blog. However, I would like to highlight some real-life examples where blogging with relevant content has been beneficial for our clients.
Customer Service Initiative: Our President Answers the Phone
November 11th, 2009 by katieAs you may have noticed, there is a new voice at the end of the phone here at InsideOut. Our beloved President, Pat McCauley, has been answering general calls into the office for about a month now.
InsideOut Attends Adwords Seminar
October 26th, 2009 by katieOn Oct. 20 and 21 Katie Pate attended a two-day seminar on advanced Adwords marketing. Lead by Google-approved Adwords Seminar Leader Brad Geddes of bg Theory, the seminar focused on advanced Adword use. Some subjects covered included Setting Goals and tracking conversions, getting in-depth information on ROI and profit tracking, effective bidding strategies and account organization.
WordCamp Seattle
October 1st, 2009 by katieLast Saturday a handful of Web Dept.members went on a field trip to Fremont. A bustling community North of downtown Seattle, where Adobe has quite a large facility, WordPress held their first “WordCamp Seattle” event. It was a day of everything WordPress, blogging and social networking. Laptops were hard at work sending tweets out into cyberspace about the various topics and events covered by speakers like Chris Pirillo, Jane Wells and Ian Lurie.
Because there were five InsideOuters at the event, we had the chance to break up and attend different speakers covering subject matters that most applied to our job descriptions and interests. Katie, Gail and Laura attended Aaron Hockely’s presentation on how to successfully launch a blog, while Kailey and Corey went to hear about WordPress plugin programming.
InsideOut Staff Corey Edwards, Katie Pate, Kailey Lampert & Laura Alisanne, posing with the Fremont Troll in Seattle after WordCamp 2009
Scott Porad of icanhascheezeburger.com was also a speaker, and Mark Jaquith spoke on WordPress’ version of Facebook, BuddyPress. There were also spontaneous sessions on a variety of topics, many of which included Twitter. Gail attended one about the legal repercussions of using others content. She said she broke out in a cold sweat at how easy it is to break copyright laws on the web!
The day ended with some “ignite” sessions: tiny 5-minute presentations on a variety subjects, ranging from self-hosting to various methods for creating WordPress themes. These were fun. Lively, and a great way to cover several subjects quickly. Laura and Katie commented that they would have enjoyed some of these presentations at regular speed in another half hour session.
The last speaker was Liz Strauss. She was almost more like a motivational speaker than someone speaking about effective blogging; she echoed the theme of being yourself on your blog. After all, that is why people come to your blog, to hear what YOU have to say.
Overall, it was a great chance to make some interesting contacts in the Pacific Northwest WordPress Community, and learn some new information from other WordPress users.
Bed and Breakfast Association of Kentucky gets a New Site
September 29th, 2009 by katieWorking with the diverse state of Kentucky on their new Association web site was a pleasure. They were looking forward to utilizing some of the great tools we have developed for Bed and Breakfast Association web sites, such as an interactive map, our varied means for searching for lodging, and a special rotating “featured inns” section in the footer. They are also the first association to use our new reviews feature. This allows an association to show reviews from TripAdvisor, Bedandbreakfast.com, BnbFinder.com and Yelp.com right on a members listing.
The New Site for B&B Association of Kentucky
Our goal, like with most Association sites, was to create a tool that would benefit the members. The first week of statistics have been great, with an extremely low bounce rate of 13.37%, 10.20 pages per visit, and 8:14 minutes average time on site!
Our interactive map is colorful and engaging, allowing the user to click on the region they are interested in, as well as on the title of that region from the map key. This click brings them directly to the page with the B&B listings for that region. These listings are not organized alphabetically, but rotate randomly so that each inn has a chance to be the #1 listing for their region. However, the user does have the ability to organize them by alpha should they prefer.
The regions map is not the only way a user can search for a Kentucky Bed and Breakfast. The member’s listings are also available by city, alphabetically, search field or even specials and packages.
There is also an extensive section on interests and destinations in Kentucky for users to explore and browse in conjunction with the Kentucky Tourism web site.
We are so glad to have worked with the Bed and Breakfast Association of Kentucky, and look forward to seeing the site pay off for their members!
The Travel Promotion Act
September 18th, 2009 by katieWe here at InsideOut just got an exciting email from Jay Karen, the president of PAII, announcing he has been working as a lobbyist for our industry in DC.
He has been speaking with lawmakers about House Resolution 2935, a.k.a. the Travel Promotion Act. The goal of the bill is to create America’s first “destination marketing organization”. This group would be a non-profit organization called the “Corporation for Travel Promotion”, and would manage the tourism promotion of the United States to international travelers.
Learn about the Travel Promotion Act
If you didn’t know, international travel to the United States is down significantly in the last 8 years. We have fewer tourists today than in 2001. As far as keeping up with the competition, we are the only nation in our “competitive set” that does not have a budget for promoting our nation as a travel destination. It seems, with all of our breathtaking National parks and natural beauty, we would encourage an income that allowed us to keep these spaces open and wild. Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are just some of the wonders of our continent that have drawn visitors for years, and can continue to do so. The average international tourist spends $4500 during a visit to the US. These are important numbers to a struggling economy.
The bill is also set-up to allow the Corporation to pay for itself. It includes a $10 entry fee for visitors that would fund the Corporations’ efforts.
There are things you can do to support this bill, and help to bolster travel from our neighbors and friends abroad. Contact your House of Representatives Official via the US Travel Association. Let them know that this bill effects you. After all, we know how much international visitors enjoy the bed and breakfast experience!
Quick Tips for Marketing your Bed and Breakfast Web Site
September 2nd, 2009 by katieSomething easy you can do to increase your market share is explore other top sites on Google for your search terms.
For example, say you own a bed and breakfast in Tennessee. The first thing that you want to do is explore what kind of sites are showing up in the top 10 on Google for your state and city name. For example, if your state association web site and a B&B directory web site are some of the top listings when you search for “Tennessee Bed and Breakfast”, you may want to consider joining these web sites. Not only will this enable you to get visitors to your site via these memberships, but it is also good for your web site’s Search Engine Placement.
You don’t have to limit your exploration into “link-building” with lodging and location terms. If you also hold weddings at your B&B, you will want to explore the terms that potential brides are using to plan their wedding in your area. Often times you can join a wedding web site not only as a ceremony location but as a lodging option for a honeymoon or for the bride & grooms’ family.
Not all links are the same
Other sites to explore for a listing or a link might include theme parks or seasonal attractions, like ski parks or water sports companies like rafting outfitters or other outdoor activity outfitters that attract people for overnight stays, such as hunting trips.
Remember when you are trying to build links to not get involved with “link circles” or paying a base price for a group of links. Google frown on this and can penalize your site for these activities. After all, building links with other businesses in your area or in your industry is just like networking face to face or business to business. You wouldn’t buy paper plates to serve your breakfast on just because it is cheap and fast. It doesn’t give you the reputation you want, nor does it last. The same can be said for link circles.
Building reputable links for your web site is something that we preform here at InsideOut for our promotion clients. Feel free to contact us about marketing your bed and breakfast web site.
Texas Bed and Breakfast Convention a Success
August 28th, 2009 by katieWe had a wonderful time in Granbury Texas for the Texas Bed and Breakfast Association Convention. Steven Dunston gave a “kick-off” keynote session to a packed, standing-room only audience, covering the success we had seen with the last year on the new TBBA web site. He also covered some important metrics for innkeepers to be able to evaluate where they actually need to focus their marketing efforts, like shoulder versus primary seasons. “15-minute Marketing Boot Camp” gave innkeepers effective tools to capture more of the travel market in their area.
On Monday, Katie Pate presented on “Internet Marketing with Facebook”. It was wonderful to see such interest in this new marketing platform, and we had another full audience. There were lots of good questions, like from our client Grover McMains, who owns a North Texas Bed and Breakfast in Fort Worth. He asked us about the important steps to having a modern web site before starting to focus time and energy into Facebook Marketing.
