Website
Free Subscription!
Click here to
learn more!
Free Subscription!
Click here to
learn more!
|
| Social networking and online marketing |
| Part 1 |
| |
by Brian Welch
askMANDO.com
|
| |
Dictionary.com defines Social Networking as “the use of a website to connect with people who share personal or professional interests, place of origin, education at a particular school, etc.” Millions of people call it a way of life.
The online version of Resort Trades Management and Operations magazine is askMANDO.com. On this website, you will find current news, articles, blogs, videos and other useful information about your industry. You’ll also find sections that allow you to “socialize” and share information with your peers. Social Networking in its truest form.
In January of 2008, askMANDO.com was launched to help our readers and advertisers communicate in the age of the online social network. Barry Brown, a long-time resort industry professional, has spent years researching social networking, and he led the team that created askMANDO.com.
“Geared primarily for our Management and Operations marketplace, askMANDO.com is a different approach to web publishing in that it combines the best features of an online magazine, web video, and a hybrid type of social network as a vehicle for you the readers and advertisers to steer in whatever direction you wish,” said Brown. “Sign up and participate or watch from the safety of the sidelines. Use the entire site or just what you need to get the job done. The only way to create value on the web is to be useful and entertaining. We have always been useful in print, and we did that by listening to both the reader and the sponsor. A simple process of getting the right advertiser in front of the right reader has given us an unrivaled value to our industry for over 25 years.”
One reason askMANDO.com is unique is the fact that it is one-of-a-kind. It is the only site specifically designed for resort managers and suppliers. “One thing for sure is, if you are buying or selling in your own community, a place where everyone knows everyone else, we all feel better about what we get for our dollar. The problem is, even if you are a whale, the internet is a big ocean. So, the online community we have built around askMANDO.com gives you the opportunity to be a big fish in a small pond where everyone knows your name. A community that enables you to build relationships with peers and partners creating added value with every transaction, large or small. Business the old fashioned way... the way we’ve always done it... with our friends,” Brown said.
Networking among your peers is certainly a beneficial activity for you as a professional and for your business. Another important aspect of Social Networking is to share information about your company with your customers and your potential customers. Never before have consumers been more in charge of their own information gathering. Gone are the days when the public was satisfied with traditional advertisements alone to provide them with all the info they need. With Social Networking, consumers have the ability to share among themselves personal experiences, good or bad. They are going to talk about you no matter what, so doesn’t it make sense to be a part of the conversation?
Obviously, the best way to communicate with your customers in the online world is with a good website. But that’s not always easy to achieve. “The problem with promoting your company on the web is the sheer size of the internet. Millions and millions of websites conspire to obscure you with massive amounts of information and both White Hat and Black Hat (bad) marketing tactics. Your website has become an expensive business card where most traffic is sent there by your sales staff, and the customer already knows you. Instead of developing leads for sales and expanding your business, it has become the problem someone has to deal with when it breaks”, Brown said.
“Search engines have offered hope, however there are still problems. First is the study (Marketing Sherpa) that indicates that 98% of people sourcing on the web start on Google and 75% of websites that searchers visit are in the first 5 or 6 organic listings (sites deemed relevant by the search engine). If you are not one of these listings, you can buy clicks to put your ad on the same page, but you are competing with a lot of websites for a small percentage of the total clicks and it can be expensive in competitive markets,” continued Brown.
So how do you get on the first page of Google’s organic search listings? It is not as easy as it sounds. Barry offers the following tips:
Fresh, regularly updated information is demanded by searchers and favored by search engines. How often is your site updated with new content?
Flash, Java script and other tricked out websites are slow loading and out of favor with searchers who want instant gratification.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not rocket science, but it takes time and attention and is a constantly moving target as search technology advances. If you hire a service to perform your SEO, the good ones can cost $1,500 per month for 2 to 6 months and they may not do the heavy lifting of establishing the “inbound links” (links from other trusted sites). These links are favored by search engines and help assure long term success.
Finally, your success in staying on top of organic search listings may require adding staff to pay attention to SEO, run blogs, produce video and webinars to create engagement with web users, build trust, and generate the leads which grow sales.
In part 2 of this series, we’ll talk about “viral marketing,” or in other words, helping your customers share your message with ot hers.
|
|
|
|
Print this page
