Internet Marketing for Tourism » blogging

Make an iPhone and Android Mobile Website with no coding and no money

Todd Lucier — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:22:16 +0000

In less than a day you can have a great mobile-ready Website that delivers all the content you need to satisfy the needs of your iPhone and other smartphone carrying guests before, during and after their visit to your region.

Why ensure your content looks good on a handheld?

60% of the world’s population have a cell phone. (3.1 Billion cell phone contracts)
Cell phone users replace their phones every 18 months; the vast majority of new phones are smartphones.
91% of cell phone users have their phone within arms reach 24/7; providing users with impulse access to Web content during the “in-between moments” in a day.
listen to podcast episode with Hilton VP on the explosive growth in handheld sales for the hotel chain.

WordPress.com blogs are automatically optimized for iPhone and Google Android phones; another reason why it’s time you started blogging with WordPress.

Make your WordPress blog a fully functioning iPhone-ready and Android phone-ready Website without worrying at all about being a code monkey.

Create an account at WordPress.com and add a blog. Treat your blogsite as a free iPhone-ready and Android-ready Web site. Both phones use the Webkit engine that powers Safari Web browsers and these phones will co-rule the handheld landscape along with Blackberry. Soon Blackberry is expected to join the Webkit/Safari browser handheld crowd too.

Get your mobile site started with the right content on a WordPress blog

Choose a Theme and Banner

It doesn’t matter what theme you choose, just pick one that has space for a banner image.

Banner Image: In the theme settings for your blog choose a banner image. Give your Blog your Business Name as it’s title and include your main phone number in the Tagline setting on the General Settings tab for your blog. Remember viewers may be looking at your site on their phone. Your phone number will automatically be a link, allowing your iPhone/Android site user to click the number to dial you with their phone!

Create Permanent Pages you think handheld device users and blog readers will appreciate:

About us: Include Contact Info.
Check Availability: Consider using a page with a Google Webform.
Link to your TripAdvisor page: Encourage guests to write a review from the road when they check out.
Map: Embed a Google Map on this page. (iPhone users can click on the map to link out of the blog to iPhone Maps app)
Seasonal Rates: iPhone or handheld specials?
FAQ’s: Include things to do en route
Media: On iPhone, Audio Podcasts can play in iTunes app, Youtube Videos open in the Youtube app and photo libraries on Flickr or Picasaweb can open in their handheld media format. Be sure to link to your favourite picture folder on Flickr.com or Picasaweb.com

Flickr Photo Page looks great on iPhone:

Turn on the Mobile Theme for your WordPress Blog

By default, the mobile version of your site is on, but check just to make sure.

On the Appearance tab click on Extras.

On the Extras page, Display a mobile theme box should be checked.

What happens now?

When viewing your WordPress.com blog on iPhone or Google Android device your new WordPress blog site automatically renders beautifully with WPtouch theme by BraveNewCode. W0rdpress.org (self-hosted blog) users can choose from a few plug-ins to render your site for iPhone (WPTouch among them). A nice feature of WPtouch is that users can choose to turn it off and access the full version of your website simply by switching the mobile on/off switch at the bottom of each page.

Publicize your iPhone Page

As with the regular WordPress view of your blog, the site home page of your site shows the most recent posts first. The permanent pages-list at http://YourURL.wordpress.com/?pages-list is a great page to link to from your existing Web site as the iPhone or mobile version of your Web site. Consider treating this pages-list page as your mobile home page.

Ask your guests to bookmark the iPhone blog version of your Website on their iPhone.

Pages list view of your blog on iPhone:

The Drop Down list in the upper right corner of the iPhone site brings up:

a search box,
home page
links to permanent pages,
post archives.

Special Pages for YOUR Ideal Guests:

No one knows the needs of your guest better than you (except your guests themselves). Create pages you know your ideal guest will appreciate. Imagine for instance that bus tours are a key market segment for you. Consider a page dedicated to the guests traveling on the bus. Give the link to travel trade and have them include it in literature to your bus-traveling mobile phone toting guest so that they can view your content en route.

Get Blogging!

There you have it: A free iPhone-ready, Android-ready version of your Website; another great reason to have a free WordPress.com blog for your tourism business.

Links

Screenshots taken from Todd Whyte’s blog at Ocean View Hotel in Rocky Harbour, NL, Canada.
Mashable’s Guide to Mobile Design
Smashing Magazines’s Mobile Design Showcase

A conversation about bloggers and their networks

Todd Lucier — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:21:04 +0000

In this delightful conversation with @SEKeener, director of Boots N All Travel Network, @Elliottng VP of Marketing for Uptake.com and @KimMance editor-in-chief of gogalavanting.com and founder of TravelBlogExchange.com discuss the importance of travel blog communities and how tourism businesses can connect with travel bloggers.

If you are a tourism business looking to connect with new media don’t miss this insight-filled conversation about bloggers and their communities.

Download the mp3 (22.2 M)

Background:

Boots N’ All Travel Network – 6-7 year old blogging community connecting people.
Uptake – 1.5 year old travel information site / search engine just launched a travel blog network that helps promote the search engine and promote richly tagged search.
TravelBlogExchange – over 400 bloggers have joined in less than three weeks forming small groups discussing all kinds of issues relevant to travel blogging

The value of networking – connecting bloggers has many benefits:

bloggers get exposure that may lead to exposure in many different locations including high profile publications
community participation leads to comments and feedback on content that a blogger can’t get without connecting via networks.
cause-related issues – Passports with a Purpose and blogging networks can move issues.
bloggers can help one another by focusing on their strengths and helping one another grow their skills and abilities.
travel blogging networks provide more visibility for individual bloggers
coming together like the mom-bloggers gives the community more power and influence
The social side of blog networks can be difficult to monetize or at least measure, but the power of stories to influence travelers decisions is huge.

How does a tourism business get their story told by a blogger?

experiment with all kinds of media, don’t try to follow others
connecting with folks in social media – connect with the people who care the most about your destination
search the Travel Blog Exchange to find bloggers to tell a story
It’s all about relationships: Why should a blogger care about your business?
foster relationships with bloggers to get exposure for your business
connect with bloggers in their medium, using the social networking tools they use
be personal and transparent- don’t hide behind your business brand
be interesting

Kim’s 3 Tips to connect with bloggers:

Email the blogger by name and reference something relevant that you have seen on their blog
Provide and link to great photos.
Develop a database of customized discount codes for the blogger to use to promote their story.

Twits you might want to know more about that were mentioned in this podcast:

Debbie Dubrow – @DeliciousBaby
Pam Mandel – @nerdseyeview
Kevin May @travolution,
Jens Traenhart
PhilCaines @philcaines,
Guido vandenElshout @happyhotelier
@Soultravelers3

Other Websites of interest noted in this podcast:

Tips from the T-list
Passports with a Purpose: Travel Bloggers raise over $7000 for Heifer Int’l.
Blogher
CNReviews.com – Elliott Ng’s blog on China

New WordPress.com 2.7 How-to Guides Available

Todd Lucier — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:51:36 +0000

Natalie has redesigned the free How to Use WordPress Series of pdf’s for WordPress.com (version 2.7).

If you want to get started with your WordPress Blogsite:

ps. the pdf’s don’t cover importing your existing blog, but rest assured you can easily bring your blog from where it resides into WordPress.com.

It’s time to look outside the tribe

Todd Lucier — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:58:24 +0000

It’s time to go beyond our tribe to establish a presence within other tribes. We need each other. I started thinking about this after reading a post about building a small powerful network by Chris Brogan. It reminded my repeated efforts to build bridges between content creators and the tourism / travel industry. Not only does the tourism industry need content, but the content providers in social media need opportunities to create content.

The Platform: A shared community Blog

The single most significant opportunity for regional tourism development lies with community blogging. The most important step your community can take to boosting your online presence is to create a place to share the travel experiences of your region.

There are many reasons why I believe that your community must create a shared blog:

Blogging is inexpensive.
With blogging it is easy to create good content when you share the work load.
It’s the stories that matter. Your Web site is just your business card, blogged stories reveal the true essence of your brand.
Enhances your regional share of voice in the travel market.
Web 2.0 content makes it easy to distribute your content far beyond your Web site.

Challenges to getting a shared blog up and running in your community:

a leader - someone with the skills and capacity to set up, design and administer the site.
one or more editors who can help develop the voice of your community and inspire story catchers to participate
a shared community vision of the kind of content you would like to share with your ideal guests.
Recruting local story catchers, people who love to write, take photos, record and edit audio and / or video.

Where to find these people:

They are bloggers, podcasters, photographers. Find them online by searching across the Web and engaging in social media conversations on Twittter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube with people who understand Web 2.0 in your community.
They are Twits, young people who live in your community and live in the social Web.

We need each other:

bloggers and podcasters, photographers, writers are looking for opportunities to earn money by sharing their talents. They are passionate, intelligent and caring people who know how to tell stories.
most community tourism web sites are poorly done and don’t reflect a sense of life and vitality that come with rich media stories that could be shared on a community blog. Community tourism sites need these stories!
Communities and tourism businesses that are significantly overpaying for Web site design, hosting and web site updates. Design matters, but content matters more!
Instead of paying for design and distribution ( a traditional way of marketing), your community needs to start paying for content development – Stories.

Next steps:

If you are reading this, you are on one side of the divide. Start engaging in conversations with those on the other side. Talk about how you can build bridges to help one another achieve your goals, share what you are passionate about with the rest of the world.

Communities that Win in travel and tourism, will be those that go beyond the industry to recruit the people who can make a real difference in your Web presence by helping your community tell inspiring travel stories.

Footnote: Working together works – I applaud Darren Cronian at Travel Rants for his invitation to bloggers to work together to establish a travel blog carnival. It’s a great start working within a community of content creators to share the best travel stories. We need to build bridges within our tribes as well.

Why blogging matters to Tourism? podcast with Chris Brogan

Todd Lucier — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:34:20 +0000

On this version of the Tourism Keys podcast @Todd Lucier chats with @Chris Brogan about blogging tourism.

Ideas Chris Brogan and I discussed:

Why blogging is good for getting your content more views.
Bloggers and other content producers have link equity and audiences that can generate views for your social media.
Blogging with two perspectives in mind: producing content from inside your community on a shared tourism blog in an ongoing focused way, and earning blog content from visiting bloggers who share an outside perspective on your travel region.
How can the tourism industry engage podcasters, bloggers, video producers and photographers to work with tourism industry?
How OMGPittsburgh got started as a way to let the city speak for itself.
What about the economic relationship between bloggers and tourism businesses? How to provide incentive for visiting bloggers to write about your region may be less expensive than you think.
Other types of economic relationships: be pay per post, gaining exposure for content, ie: creating a multimedia audio or video tour and getting thousands of views.
Why social media agencies provide valuable resource of Web 2.0 content production. Where to find them? Local agencies and larger agencies can provide different types of value.
What metrics matter?
Chris talks about fishing where the fish are. Have a gander at this post on crosswalks and designing Web pages to understand how niche content can put your content in front of people that matter.
Why niche, narrowcasting content can produce higher revenue for your tourism business or region.

Learn more about Chris Brogan at http://www.chrisbrogan.com.

Podcamp Toronto: February 23-24, 2009 http://podcamptoronto.pbwiki.com/
Podcamp Halifax: January 25, 2009 http://podcamphalifax.ca/
Try out Twitter at http://www.twitter.com to find people engaged in social media including @Todd Lucier and @Chris Brogan.

“We can do this!” Al Gore Addresses Web 2.0 Summit

Todd Lucier — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:09:47 +0000

Al Gore addresses Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco - November 7, 2008

Al Gore addressed the San Francisco audience at the Web 2.0 Summit with an urgent appeal to assign a purpose to Web 2.0 tools. His address focussed on three themes:

the democracy crisis: television has removed the democratic view of truth, and interactive Web TV – (Current tv) has the potential to restore it.
the economic crisis: how to stimulate the economy by undertaking a 10 year project to transform the economy with a national infrastructure project aimed at eliminated America’s dependance on foreign oil by focusting on 100 % renewable and “0 carbon” power sources
the climate crisis: how to as Gore said, “use Web 2.0 for organizing an imminent rescue of the earth’s climate balance which is now in great jeopardy”

Gore began by addressing Web 2 Summit Attendees, “The election of Barrack Obama would not have been possible without you, the empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with Internet.” Gore was referring to the proliferation of blogs and social commentary including the interactivity or user-generated content, social networking and new collaborative projects like Current.tv ‘s interactive projects with Digg.com and Twitter.com to “Hack the Debates” and provide interactive election night coverage on cable TV and the Web.

Web 2.0 has given us all kinds of power to do “gee-wiz” and “wiz-bang” stuff but according to Gore, Web 2.0 is largely operating without a clear purpose. His presentation was a call to the social media community to use Web 2.0 tools to restore democracy and take on global challenges. Are you willing to do your part?

Mr. Gore reminded attendees that it was the printing press that brought civilization out of the dark ages, ushering in democracy.

“1000 years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, there was a monopoly of information with the church, and the feudal system, the monarchy and all power, economic, political, spiritual was held by the kings and queens. What was sovereign was the new rule of reason. 500 years ago, the introduction of the printing press revolutionized the public sphere.”
The printing press brought about a significant change in the way people came to accept the truth of the information that was being passed on.

“People could connect with one another and search out the best available evidence and crowdsource their version of truth and make a decision about it. And then that matured into the American Constitution which was a miracle and a breakthrough. It’s belated redemption of one of the central pieces of what was celebrated this week (the election of Barrack Obama).”

According to Gore, television has taken away some of the freedom and access to the truth that the printing press first brought about.

“Television, refeudalized the dominant source of information in society, reconcentrated it.“
By putting the distribution of information by the televised media in the hands of a few, television viewers only have access to partial versions of the truth.

The tools for production and distribution of video, until now, has remained in the hands of a relatively small number of people who control which stories need to be told, which information needs to be shared, and this small group of people propose courses of action that we as a people should take.

Web 2.0 has brought about the wide distribution of the tools required for video production, knowledge of how to produce video content and free distribution of video by anyone on the Internet. The Internet is bringing back a broader sense of democracy.

“The Internet comes along and democratizes information. It’s so exciting, All the vibrancy and rules for change are living on the Internet. but television has been dampening it,” said Gore.

“Joel (Hyatt) and I said hey wait a minute, how can we connect tv to the internet and couple it with the new exciting low cost, high quality video production and allow people to make choices about what they see on television. So that’s what Current TV is all about. How do we seed the incredible explosion of new ways of collaborating and securing new information and new wells of creativity?”

The challenge posed by Gore is to move past the Gee-Wiz mentality and find a deeper purpose for the use of these Web 2.0 innovations.

According to Gore, it is vital that climate-related information be kept alive in the cloud so that people can continually be called to respond to the climate crisis. “We’ve got to have a shared set of values that can serves as the basis of decision making on the fly. If everyone is pursing the same vision and using the same values, we’ll have intelligent organizations. The most important goals need to be ranked in terms of importance and urgency to maintain the health of that information ecosystem.”

The polar ice cap is one of those things that has always been there, for millions of years. Gore reminded Web 2 Summit attendees that scientists say there is a “75% chance that the polar ice cap will be totally gone in summer in 5 years”. Our relationship as a species with the planet is risking a wild disruption in planetary weather patterns that have (until now) remained constant for thousands of years. Weather has dictated settlement patterns of people all over the world and within the United States.

“We are completely disrupting things.”

“The purpose I would urge you to take up is to bring about a higher level of consciousness of our relationship with the planet. We have everything we need to save it, create thousands of new jobs, remove our dependance on foreign oil and create economic abundance. The only way to address it is to address the democracy crisis.”

Is Al Gore worried about the movement losing steam?
“It’s interesting… No I’m not at all worried. It is very much in its infancy, barely beginning. I think that we are a couple of years away. The civil activism that is possible right now is just coming into it’s own.

“I feel as if I’ve failed. Even though there is a greater sense of awareness, there is not yet an appropriate response to solve the climate crisis.”

We can create 10 million new jobs

In response to the idea that the economic crisis precludes us doing anything about the climate crisis, Gore steadfastly proposes that the climate crisis offers us away out of the economic crisis. In fact, he posits that the economic crisis gives us a perfect opportunity to create wealth by setting an audacious goal: “Generate 100 % of Americas power from renewable and non-carbon sources.”

“The ideal way to stimulate the economy is with a large infrastructure program. We need to build a Unified National Smart Grid”

Gore’s proposed smart grid has 2 characteristics – power generation and power distribution. By undertaking climate-friendly “0 Carbon” energy harvesting projects: wind from Texas and Southwest, Solar power from the desert and geothermal energy in areas where the earth’s abundant natural heat is easily accessible and then distributing that power to our cities in low voltage, efficient underground electricity network, we can move toward energy independence in a climate-friendly way.

According to Gore, the construction of the National Unified Smart Grid will cost $400 million over four years, compared to $120 million ongoing cost of power generation just to maintain the current system, which is falling well short of meeting our current needs.

“The National Smart Grid will pay for itself in 3.5 years.”

The annual cost of oil to the US economy is $328 billion. $700 billion is the cost of Iraq war until now; a war which in a significant way is designed to protect the worlds largest oil reserves.

“We need a one off investment to create access to fuel that is free forever.”

35 years ago today, Richard Nixon announced the Oil Independence Plan. Back then, we were only relying on 1/3 of our oil from outside of America. Now the U.S. is getting 2/3 of its oil from outside the country.

“We would be fools not to make a transition, create jobs, stimulate the economy and reduce our vulnerability on the national security crisis being brought about by our dependance on foreign oil.”

Gore also proposes, “a national retrofit program to insulate, replace light-bulbs and make homes more efficient.” According to Gore, when our government invests money on improvements, we help people be able to afford to stay in their homes. With energy costs being lowered due to greater efficiency, such a program effectively puts money into people’s savings accounts

Mr. Gore delivered the story of President Kennedy’s proposal to put a man in space within 10 years to back up his bold plan.

“Kennedy proposed that we could land a man on the moon in a decade…. 8 years and 4 months later they made that happen.” Gore reminded the audience that “the engineers in that control room at NASA when man first man walked on the moon had a mean age of 26, which means that when Kennedy made his audacious challenge those engineers were just 18 years old.”

“We can do this.”

Cue the shivers down the back.

Many in the audience would disagree with Mr. Gore in his self assessment that he has failed. In some regard, many instead came away from this closing presentation feeling it is our turn to take action.

Individually and collectively, we have at our disposal powerful tools with which we can lay the groundwork for the future we want to leave our children. I’m planning my next steps.

We need a few heroes. Won’t you join me.

Travel Blogging with Keywords

Todd Lucier — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:53:57 +0000

Getting bloggers together with Tourism businesses is a great way to grow tourism in your region with keyword-relevant story-telling. Develop new experiences and at the same time introduce specialists in audio and video production and story telling bloggers and photojournalists to tourism businesses in your region. On Manitoulin Island, we’re growing tourism experiences with a shared WordPress Blog.

You’ll get a boatload of new content for your regions blog or web site and at the same time seed new keywords to the search engines get your region into Google’s search results.

Review all the ways a traveller might use keywords to find their way to your Web site.

See also these posts for more on how travellers search for travel online and opportunities to engage bloggers:

Blogging with iPhone

Todd Lucier — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:00:49 +0000

I was quite excited when the wordpress app was launched for iPhone yesterday. I’m not sure that I’ll blog a lot with my phone because frankly I’ll likely be having too much fun with the 20 or so applications I’ve already started to feel I can’t do without.

To call the iPhone a phone is a bit like calling Disneyworld a park. There is no other phone in the world that does anything near the number of things this ‘phone’ does. Much more on how this phone will indoubtedly influence travel for those who have one over the coming weeks.

For now I just offer you this photo which along with these words is being added to the web as I sit at the park watching folks enjoy a
Summer’s evening in North Bay, Ontario.