Looking for a great way to drive traffic to your tourism business?

The latest monthly report on travel from Hitwise gives a clear reminder of the importance in providing accurate map listings and “driving directions” for tourism folk.

4 of Top 11 Most Visited Travel related Web sites are Maps

The important take away: Be sure your listing on these sites is correct!

Another important finding of the Hitwise report is the listing of most popular keywords used in travel.   The keyword phrase “Driving Directions” is a top search.

Take advantage of this keyword phrase by ensuring you have a Search Engine Optimized page designed for Travel Directions to the iconic place names associated with your business (ie: cities, parks, attractions).

Links:

Google has identified over 100 000 businesses in the U.S. as “Favorite Places” based on user reviews on Google Maps and they have rewarded them with QR Stickers – Window Decals like the one below.

When snapped with a smartphone camera the two dimensional bar code hyperlinks to the business Google Listing which shows the user reviews and Google Map listing for the business. (Learn more about What is a QR Code and Why you should know)

In related news, starting today on Google’s local site for handheld users, Google provides top-level search categories like restaurants, shopping, gas, lodging, etc. on the front page. Click that button and you’ll see the closest-by search results ranked by user rating.

New Business Interest for Google

Encouraging guest reviews is vital to any business success and although Google Maps reviews have been around for quite a while, the new sticker campaign is a not-so-subtle brand builder for Google Maps revealing yet another business interest – Google  business reviews.  For businesses, Google uses the sticker campaign to ask: “Want to become a Favorite Place on Google?“, reminding business folk to ensure that their listing on Google Maps (aka Google Local) is accurate in the Google Local Business Centre.  Never mind that you’ll be increasing the accuracy and value of Google Maps database in the process.

Guest Reviews Matter

If I were TripAdvisor (fresh with a new restaurant review iPhone app) or Yelp whose iPhone app which beckons reviews on all kinds of businesses, I’d be more than a bit concerned about these stickers.    Each has worked hard at building recognition for their own brands as the de facto standard in ranking businesses.  Of course Google has been in the business of ranking all kinds of businesses online for much longer (search engine rankings) and have established considerable consumer trust.  Expect the sticker campaign to raise the importance of Google Maps reviews in the eyes of many.

Brand Building by Association

Association with a well respected brand is an excellent marketing strategy.  Businesses that link to their TripAdvisor reviews, or have an app in the Apple iTunes store know this well.  For the “Favorite Business of Google” sticker recipients, just having the sticker on the window is likely to encourage even non-smartphone users to form a favorable opinion of the business.  After all, folks may know about TripAdvisor or Yelp, but most everyone has a generally favourable opinion of the Google brand.

Learn more about Google’s QR Code gift to Favourite Places.

What do you think about Google’s QR stickers.  Do you think it will catch on?

What is Google City Tours?

Google has launched a new Labs innovation called Google City Tours. The premise is that Google knows what the attractions are in each region and can provide maps with links to attractions and provide relevant multi-day itineraries that help you explore the city

Why Google is no threat to DMO’s and Visitor and Convention Bureaus

While the idea is great, this Labs innovation falls flat for a number of reasons:

• Google City Tour misses obvious attractions. In my search of Leamington, Ontario Google failed to identify Point Pelee National Park as worth seeing. Point Pelee is just a few km away and a national treasure!
• Selected locations are not diverse. Most seem to be historical / museum-type attractions. When I searched cities I know well, the routes chosen overlooked obvious and locally renowned attractions such as wineries, gardens, parks, retail destinations, etc.
• Google City Tour demonstrates absolutely no local knowledge – which is critical to giving real, helpful travel advice. Human powered advice sites like TripAdvisor provide much better and more relevant information for travelers.
• Every traveler is unique. The idea of a mapped itinerary is a good one, but wouldn’t families, foodies, adventurers, shopaholics, museum lovers, etc. each want to visit different types of attractions? Yes, they would.

Google City Tours shows DMO’s what they should already be doing

Thanks to Google Labs City Tour for reminding DMO’s, visitor centres, Visitor and Convention bureaus and regional travel associations that Google provides some great technology for helping travelers find their way to meaningful, memorable travel experiences in your region.

• Google.com/maps MyMaps feature allows DMO’s and travel regions to create their own customized map – for free. This post showed how tourism regions or businesses could do this over two years ago. DMO’s should be creating custom maps using icons, routes and local knowledge to share travel information that has real value.
• Consider designing specific maps based on the interests of diverse types of travelers.
• These maps can be embedded in Web sites like ours at Northern Edge Algonqui

Thanks to Twitter friends who pointed out Google Labs latest innovation:@anneh632 @mosherifdeen @travel2dot0 @wilhelmus – Give ‘em a follow.

There are easy and free ways to add all kinds of media to your WordPress.com blog. This post explains how to add photos, video, audio, text and mixed media documents to your blog.

Photos: WordPress.com makes it easy to upload and host images using the Upload/Insert photo button on the admin panel. These photos are hosted online at wordpress.com. I also edit and host images at Skitch.com (mac only) and Drop.io.

WordPress.com does not host media types other than photos for free.

Hosting other forms of media on a WordPress.com blog requires users to set up free accounts using other Web services prior to embedding the content on your blog. The easiest way to embed a slideshow in your blog is to use a powerpoint embedded photo slide show as shown below with Slideshare.

Video: Upload your video to a variety of Video hosting sites using Tubemogul, a ‘multi-site upload service” – to free video hosting sites like youtube.com, blip.tv, veoh.com and others. Try a few embedded viewers. Each looks a little different. Then copy and paste the WordPress embed code from blip.tv or just copy the url from any Youtube video and you are set.

Audio: The best and easiest option to get your audio into your blogsite is to upload the audio mp3 to a free hosting site Archive.org. See this (more recent) blog post for the simple and pretty way to add audio to your wordpress blog. Funny enough, embedding plain mp3 files is the one thing that is not simple to embed (at least not for free). If you do have access to uploading mp3 files by ftp, then it is simple to embed audio. Most online file hosting services require flash or java script (which wordpress.com doesn’t allow for security reasons). A less preferred option is setting up a free account at Drop.io to set up links like this – Coffee which open your audio file in a new window.

Also, for a small fee (from $20/year – that’s less than $2/month!), WordPress.com users who want to feel the freedom and excitement that goes with creating audio and setting up a podcast feed to get your audio into iTunes can pay a small annual space upgrade fee which enables simple uploading of mp3 files and playing the files on your WordPress.com page. Hey, the blog is basically free, so what’s a couple of bucks a year for audio right?

WordPress Audio Widget:

PDF’s and Word Documents: Embed these types of documents into your blog with a free service like Scribd.com or link to an online version of your documents at DocStoc. Scribd provides WordPress.com embed code that shows your document in a window within your post. Documents can also be shared via hyperlink to the URL of your document at both sites. (Note: on Scribd, embedded WordPress.com documents include small Google adwords text ads following each page.)

Embedded pdf’s look like this:
Obama Inaugural Guidebook

Multimedia: All the media you could ever wish to post to your Worpress Blog:

Some folks may want to embed powerpoint presentations or other multimedia content designed using Web 2.0 services. Here are a few free multimedia services that provide WordPress.com embed code.

Slideshare.net is a powerpoint hosting site that makes it easy to embed slide shows in your blog. Just copy and paste the embed code into the HTML tab. Slide shows can be advanced with the click of the viewers mouse. Try a powerpoint slide show with your best images.

Animoto – make a multimedia slide show with your photos and music or choose from a selection of music tracks to make a free 30 second video. Then upload to your WordPress blogsite directly from Animoto. RockYou provides a similar service. Pictures that move and have music could be a powerful treat for your blogsite fans.

Google.com/Maps – Put a google map into your blog or make your own map with Google’s My Map tool. Unfortunately, I’ve not found the embed in Website url to work with WordPress.com although the directions on adding a google map to your worpress.com blogsite seem pretty clear. The method of getting a map on your blog described below takes a bit of work. But remember, if your ideal guest doesn’t know that you are easy to get to, they are not coming. If the directions on adding a google map as shown on WordPress.com/support, you’ll need to take a screenshot of the map and upload the map as a photo (described above).
On a Mac, you can take a screenshot using shortcuts in your System Preferences / Keyboard Shortcuts settings.

On a Windows PC, design a map that meets your needs. Then with your map in your browser window press the [Alt] + [Prt Screen key] to copy the current window.

Paste the screen grab into an image editing document and crop the screenshot to the desired image.

Back on the Google Map, copy the link or embed code to the original map at Google, and put this link on your site with your screen grab image to link out to the Google Map you want your visitor to see.

The final version of your custom MyMap can include images, icons, hyperlinks and more. The finished map could look something like this:

See the map at google.

The map at the other end of this link includes a Get Directions to here link, which gives turn by turn driving directions to your location! That makes you easy to get to.

Do you use other online multimedia services that provide embed code? Tell us about them

external links:

• WordPress Support
• NEW! WordPress.tv (get the scoop from wordcamps and enjoy a visual resource for all things WordPress)
• How to create Flickr slide shows
• How to embed almost anything
• 50 WordPress.org multimedia plug-ins