Marketing Safari

Keynote Speaker on Social Media and Marketing for the Travel Industry

Talks and courses on social media and marketing are becoming a bigger and bigger part of my schedule. I am now booking 2011 and it looks like it's going to be an exciting year. This year and the last I've been running courses, live-blogging and giving talks at conferences in as different places as New York, Faroe Islands, Berlin and Latvia. My main focus has been on the travel industry though that is not always the case. Most popular are my two day courses on social media and Internet marketing for the travel industry.

I'm now booking 2011 and it looks like I'll be in Latvia, Belgium, Greenland, Denmark and Norway, as well as Iceland of course. Some other exciting events are being explored as well. Exact dates and location can be found on my "Keynote Speaker Schedule"

If you're interested in getting a talk at your event or a practical and effective course in your home town on how to use social media and the Internet, send me a line. 

Hjörtur Smárason
Keynote speaker on social media and marketing 
hjortur (at) scope.is 

Radisson Blu Starts a Clever Social Media Campaign

When using social media for marketing it is not about broadcasting - it's about engaging. The most successful campaign is the one that engages and activates the most people to become the brand's ambassador.

The Radisson Blu hotel brand with hotels in over 200 locations world-wide has started such a campaign. It seems to have started mid-May but is reaching it's tipping point these days and is spreading fast.

It's actually a very simple competition. They are giving away "the greatest holiday in the world", probably inspired by the best job in the word. And the greatest holiday on Earth is 365 free nights at any Radisson Blu hotel in the world that the winner can use over the next five years. All you have to do to participate is signing up and telling the world why you should win.

It's then up to the users to get as many people as possible to vote for them but each person can vote once every day. The one with the most votes at the end of the competition on July 24th will be the winner of the 365 free night at any Radisson Blu. Simple and effective. Last Sunday night about 1500 people had signed up and now, on Wednesday, there are about 3000 people competing. And those 3.000 people are now all actively promoting their spot in the competition and the hotel brand at the same time. Not bad! 

To encourage people further Radisson has enabled sharing options for twitter, facebook and a number of other social networks and lists ideas on how people can promote themselves offline. One important thing is lacking though, which is a badge to put on a blog that automatically updates the ranking and encourages people to vote.

My wife signed up for the competition and is trying to win us and our 5 kids a few (ok, not a few, a bunch) of nights at the Radisson Blu hotels to use for the next five years. You see, since the kids are five, we actually need 3 rooms for each night! That has made impossible for us to travel the whole family together in Europe - or beyond, unless we rent a house or an apartment and stay there. So this is our opportunity to get more mobile and show our kids more of the world.

I'll be pulling a few tricks from my hat in the days ahead to help my wife win this competition and the first thing I'm going to do, is sharing. I'm going to share some of those nights with other people and for a start, I've decided to pick one person who encourages his/her followers to vote for us and if we win, reward him/her with two nights at the Radisson Blu in London during the 140conf in October. Make sure you include the link: http://bit.ly/a2AbeP and the hashtag #5elves so that people can vote and I can track your tweet :) It can be something like: 

If they win, they're going to give away a hotel room for the #140conf in London, so start voting http://bit.ly/a2AbeP #5elves

or whatever else you can think of and find fitting :)

I will then list up all those who tweeted and if we win, one lucky one will get to join us for two nights (you get a separate room for two - so you can bring a friend) at the Radisson Blu in London during 140conf on October 26th! (depending on availability)

Let the games begin!
Hjörtur

The Problem with Websites These Days

(This is a guest post from Andy Hayes, managing director for Travel Online Partners.)

So, if you’re reading this then you probably have a website or “online presence” (cue buzzer noise) where you market your business.  If you don’t have a website, then you’ve totally missed the technology shift of the century, so please stop reading now and go get one.   

Websites are fantastic – they’re good for consumers and they’re good for business.  Consumers can browse your products and services, hassle free, and comparison shop in an environment that’s on their terms.  They’re good for business too: a website is a 24x7 sales workhorse, always putting your best foot forward and providing consumers easy access into your marketing channel. 

 

Or at least that is the idea.  A lot of small business websites are really bad not very good.  Some of them are downright awful.  Here are two of the many reasons why. 

Your Website is Built for Everybody 

One of the basic tenants of small business marketing is having a clear persona of your ideal customer – in my view, into such detail that you could give them a name and hair colour.  Yet, most websites are built for everybody:  Joe Bloggs, Jane Bloggs, John Doe….You use language that your customer’s don’t understand, you have images that do not resonate with them, and worst of all: you fail to convince those website visitors that  your product or solution solves the problem they have.  Wasn’t that the idea of having a website in the first place? 

Everything on your website should be written for somebody special.  Not everybody.  Everybody doesn’t care. 

Your Website is a Technology Showcase 

Did your web designer talk you into some fantastic flashing widgets?  How about that 5 minute video I have to sit through before I can get my question answered? (oh – wait, nevermind – there’s a skip button hidden here in the corner I didn’t see).  Oh, and here are those fold-down menus showing me the hundreds of pages that you have to describe what exactly it is that you can do for me.  Fabulous!  

For the techno geeks, that is.  For your special customer, the one I mentioned previously, they didn’t come to your website to experience your technical prowess.  They came here to get a question answered.  [Note:  web designers – you are excused and are allowed to be slightly show off.]  Get all of that fluff and junk out of that way that is stopping them from deciding whether or not you answer their question or take care of the problem they have.   

It should be effortless to get into your website and get around.  No auto-start videos, no mandatory full-screen flash animations, and pages of advertisements before your content.  Take a minute to declutter your menu, declutter your sidebar, and while you’re at it, have a fresh look at that sales copy.  Oh, and if I don’t understand or have technical issues, is your contact information prominently displayed on every page? 

Websites are an awesome marketing tool.  Well, they should be. Is yours? 
 

Andy Hayes is the managing director for Travel Online Partners, a travel online marketing firm.  They offer a popular website review service - and they’re also writing a new eBook, Why Your Website S***s.  Go, subscribe now.

The Forgotten Search Engines For Travel Marketing

When travellers start planning their next great trip, they usually start online and now over 25% make all their planning and booking online. First stop is on the search engines, where they will type in the destination. Search engines are therefore very important for all travel operators and they are focusing their marketing efforts increasingly on good SEO for their websites.

The question is, are you targeting all the search engines you should be? Let's take a look at some standard search engine results. Here I've typed in "Grand Canyon" in Google:

As we can see the first result is a Google Map, the second from Wikipedia. Third one is the official site for the national park and the fourth one is "Image results for Grand Canyon".

If we look further down on the first result page on Google we find more:

Here we see more special results, like news about Grand Canyon, blog posts about Grand Canyon and finally video results for Grand Canyon.

So the question that remains for you is where is your content when you search for your location?

You should not just target phrases or keywords. You need to target blog searches, image searches, video searches. Bring your content to the front on all fronts. That does not only mean targeting video and images on Google, but also optimizing your content on YouTube, Flickr, and your blog. Create content related to your destination and give it the right title, right tags and the right keyword optimized description so that you can be found when people search for images and videos from your place.

You should also make sure that the wikipedia entries for your destination are correct and filled with information and references. Don't try to promote yourself there though, that is very likely to backfire.

Good luck!

Hjörtur

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Who's Going to the 140 Character Conference?

Jeff Pulver has organized a very interesting conference in New York which he calls the 140 Character Conference. As you may have guessed, it's all about Twitter. There will be a lot of great speakers like Jeff him self, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, Howard Greenstein, myself and loads of other excellent tweeple. So if you'll come to the 140 conference, we'll have a chance to meet in person. If you haven't registered already, use this special "Marketing Safari's Readers Discount Code": FQSMJKVX.

I'll be on the road in the upcoming weeks (not that roads can take you far here in Iceland, they only go in circles, so I'll be doing some flying too), if you'd like to meet. I'll not only be in New York at the 140 conference on June 16th and 17th, I'll also be in the Faroe Islands this week (I'm actually somewhere over the North-Atlantic Ocean on my way to the Faroe Islands as I'm writing this) and might be doing some talking in Spain by the end June. I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Danish in Torshavn on the 6th and 7th of May. For my local readers, I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Icelandic on the 14th and 15th of May at my office location in Iceland.

If you're interested in some of those events, let me know. If I'm not coming to "a theater near you", that may be arranged.

See ya
Hjörtur

Is MLM The Way To Go During Recession?

The Internet is being bombarded with all sorts of offers to participate in different kinds of MLM programs. And I’m often asked about those programs, if they are a good thing or not, a good investment of time and money, or if they’re just a scheme, some sort of a pyramid scheme.

No, they’re not “some sort of a pyramid scheme”. They ARE a pyramid scheme. That’s just how it works. If you’re at the lowest level you’re going to have a hard time making any real money. You need to move up the ladder to do so, to recruit people. And the time comes when the market becomes fully saturated.

I wrote my BA-thesis in anthropology “Salesmen or Missionaries” on MLM companies, comparing them to NRM (New Religious Movements). The results were actually quite scary.

A morning "mass" - "It's a great gang that sells a Kirby". But at least they have a real product.

If you come across something where the focus is on selling you the system and all the benefits but the product seems almost irrelevant, you can be certain you will not make any money on it unless you are at the top of the chain. They’re not selling a product because there is no value in the product, they’re selling a program. That’s a pyramid scheme.

This is a classic, offering money, white beaches and fancy cars (images) but actually, no product.

The recession is a great time for MLM, because desperation drives many people to try it. It brings bunch of people into the lowest level who invests in the system and that’s what the top needs to survive. Both MLM and NRM target people that are vulnerable, people in difficulties, whether personal or financial. If the desperation is sufficient and paradise tempting enough, you can get people into anything. Just ask a suicide bomber.

My advice, after both participating in MLM and studying those systems academically, is just don't do it. Consider this: Even though you might be entering early enough and desperation be widespread meaning there’s a large market now, consider where the money comes from. Is it the value you create for the end customer, or by recruiting another level below you (read: exploiting others desperate for money). Invest your energy and money elsewhere and you are much more likely to succeed, no matter how tempting the MLM “paradise” may sound.

What's your experience?

Hjörtur

Marketing Tactics and Strategies in Times of Recession

My first ebook has just been published!

As you know if you have been reading my blog (here and here), the Icelandic economy has crashed. We are looking at more people being laid off in the last 6 weeks than have ever been out of a job before. And Iceland isn’t alone, though thankfully, things have not gone as drastically bad in other countries. Not yet, at least and let’s hope it stays that way.

I’ve been involved in marketing for more than a decade now and picked up a trick or two along the way. Low budget marketing has always fascinated me and I love beating big marketing spenders with only a fraction of their buget. The best example is probably the “If The World Could Vote .com” website where we reached just about every single country in the world within a few weeks, without spending a single penny on advertising, PR or other promotions, beating world-wide publishers and websites with much larger advertising budgets.

It sadens me to see companies make fatal reactions to the changed circumstances. Those are uncertain times and yes, people do need to change their marketing strategies. But it is important to realize that the recession does not only bring bad options to the table, it actually brings some great opportunities too. The question is, how you can spot those opportunities and make the most of them.

“The Marketer’s Magic Chest – Marketing tips, tricks and tools to unchain the locks of recession” is the title of my new ebook – a book where I reveal the secrets to success in times of recession. In the book I describe in 30 pages several different marketing perspectives and strategies that have proven themselves when the economy is tough. Methods that have helped companies leave their competitors in the dust. I’ve collected real life cases and success stories that explain how it can be done.

If there’s only one book you will be able to read this year, this one should be it.

You can get the book for $25, probably the best marketing investment you can make all year.

You can now download the book for free! And you're welcome to share it on your blog or elsewhere.

Download The Marketer's Magic Chest

Get the book and become a winner!

Hjörtur

Thank You for Voting

I want to thank everybody for voting. Both those that voted with a fully valid vote in the election and also the 868.144 that voted in "IfTheWorldCouldVote.com". It's been a fantastic experiment and we've met a lot of great people during the process, both people on the ground like Bob in Australia, reporters that have inerviewed us around the world, bloggers and voters. It's been an honour to be a part of this project.

The reach has been amazing. We've managed to get votes from almost every single country in the world. And all this reach has been by using social media only. We have not spent a single dime on advertising, PR or any other publicity. Yet we have thousands of blogs that have written about us, discussions on forums, press coverage in all sorts of traditional media and word of mouth. I will be analyzing the data we've gathered and sharing with you some of the things that we've learned about social media marketing along the way. So stay tuned.

Now that the voting for the next president of the USA is over, we will start thinking about the next voting on our site. Gay marriage? War? Death penalty? Global warming? Abortion? If you have any ideas to questions we should allow the world to vote on, please add your suggestions in the comments below and subscribe to the blog to get notifications when we release a new question or some of the data behind our success.

Thanks again for participating.
Hjörtur

ps. America, congratulations with the participation in the election and with the new president. You've brought hope for change to the whole world.

The Word is Spreading

As of now the number of voters on IfTheWorldCouldVote.com has exceeded the total population in Iceland. We have now 341.000 votes from 198 countries. We have only used social media to spread the word. No ads bought, no links or registrations bought. It's just natural spread on the Internet and traditional media in various countries picking it up.

Sometimes we see a peak in the results from a certain nation. When that happens we check where the traffic came from. Was it a blog (like those from Egypt, Jamaica, USA and here and there, yes, even from Northern Marina Islands), a bookmarking site, a newspaper or just word of mouth? When it's online publicity it's easy to track. But word of mouth off-line is very difficult to track.

Last Saturday I got a great letter all the way from Australia. It's from Bob, a seventy year old guy in Sydney who liked our idea and decided to take the matters in his own hands and really spread the word:

"A couple of days ago I decided to help you further, and in particular Australia. I sat down at the computer and typed up the web address along with a short 4 line message 14 times to fit an A 4 sheet, and then printed multiple copies to yield around 200 units, then cut them up on the guillotine. I carry them in my pocket and hand them out to people in the street or on the bus and invite them to check the web site out. So far I have handed out just over 100, I plan to produce a lot more as I will be participating in an annual bike ride on Sunday where there will be 6 to 7 thousand riders taking part. So after Sunday it is possible that you may see an appreciable increase in the number of votes coming from Australia, if that should be the case you will know the reason why, and I will also feel good about it."

Today it's Tuesday and we've got over 10.000 votes from Australia. When Bob started a few days ago, there where 4.541 votes from Australia. But Bob doesn't just have friends in Australia.

"Then earlier today (Friday) I decided to make a single handed assault on boosting the numbers in one particular country. You may well say how could I possibly do that (I am 70 and not silly) I noted one country (there are a few others) that only had one vote registered, this being Vanuatu, which is a small Pacific Island country which lies North and to the East of Australia which has a population of well under one million. I have been there (3 years ago) and have a good friend who is a local man. He and I correspond quite regularly by email, so I wrote to him and gave him all the details and instructed him to write the details up like I did. Now remember this is a Third world Pacific Paradise, and there are very few computers, and even less people who are connected to an internet service. So I have asked my friend Ben to canvass all the shops and offices in their main (small) capitol city of Port Vila and invite those who have internet access to participate if they wish. He has friends on some of the other islands, and I have asked him to pass the details on to some of them.

 

So if you see some votes starting to arrive in the next few days from Vanuatu, you will know the reason for the sudden increase of interest in the project. I would know how you managed to receive the first vote, there are quite a lot of Expat people from several countries who live in Vanuatu, and it would be safe to say that one of their friends sent them the details in an email."

I've been monitoring Vanuatu for a few days now and it just stood still in 1 vote. Today something happened though and when I checked the numbers, all of a sudden we had 30 votes from Vanuatu. My guess is, Ben read his email :) While writing this email, 9 more have come in from Vanuatu. It may not be big on global scale, but it's big for Vanuatu and all this is a great example of the importance of a single man picking up the cause and spreading the word.

If you have more stories about people going the extra mile to spread the word about our site, please share them. We love to get stories like this one.

Keep up the good work people. We have two weeks to go to the election. We won't manage to get more voters than voted in the last US election, but we are determent in getting more than a million votes. With your help, that is quite possible.

Thank you world, for participating
Hjörtur

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Obama beats McCain in Image Search Optimization

When I was looking for a picture of Obama for my last post, I found the results interesting. So I decided to compare them to the image search for McCain. And once again, it is obvious that Obama's team gets it when it comes to the use of the internet and McCain's team simply doesn't keep up.

Let's look at the results. Here are the results for Obama as they were at the time of my search:

(click the image to see it larger)

What I found interesting here is that the first image of Obama is of him in a swim suit and below there's a text saying Obama is cute, charismatic and ... Coincident? Naah, hardly.

All in all, there are 12 pictures in the first two rows, one including him with Superman, 7 of him smiling, and only 1 with negative humor and one irrelevant.

When I did the same search for McCain, this is what I found:

(again, you can click the image to see it larger)

Look at the first image here. Quite different from the one in Obama's serp. McCain looking mean. Five of the images show him smiling, two show him mean, two show him looking funny and two are negative humor and one showing him in a funny hug with president Bush.

What do you think? Is this a coincident or are some campaigners "optimizing" the results?

Hjörtur