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

Get Greater impact from Twitter on your Website Search Ranking:

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the recently announced Google / Twitter deal is that Google can now see all those links that are tweeted.

Links have always been the secret sauce for getting your Website to rise above others to the first page – or even the top of the first page of the search results. The image above says it all.

Turn your Website into a Blog to get the most of Twitter

GET BLOGGING! No matter what business you are in. Produce real time content that your community will love. The more you do it, the more you will benefit.

Here’s Why:

• Each Tweet is a Web page on a Website with high authority granted by Google – Twitter.com
• Using Twitter, people are helping Google rank Webpages in real time by linking to them.
• If your content is good, Retweeted links will produce more incoming links to your content.
• Links in Tweets can point to Webpages of all kinds but most tweeted links go to Blog posts.
• Tweets are generally about real time, current news and content. What is more tweet-worthy (if it’s not a word it should be – get with it spell checker): a Website that is updated seasonally or a Blog that is updated daily?
• Tweeted links may have higher time-sensitive value that degrades over time.
• Your Website is not likely to generate much interest if you tweet about it constantly.
• Blogs are platforms for producing link-worthy content frequently.

Conclusions: How Twitter can improve your Website Search Ranking

Blog posts that provide value to your twitter community by featuring news, podcasts, video, photos, stories can earn you considerably more link juice and lead to increased position in the Google Search results.

Links:

• Twitter and Google Partnership
• Using Social Media is a lot like flossing
• How to get any kind of media into your Wordpress Blog
• Does your Website still look like it did in December 2008?

Wordpress vs. your Web site

The best web sites on the Internet are blogs. Wordpress has a number of advantages over other blogging platforms and traditional Web sites. In addition to being a simple way to add multimedia to your Web presence, blogs are also social in nature. A Wordpress blog is more valuable to your tourism business or travel region than your Web site.

Why Facebook Matters

Facebook.com continues to grow at an incredible rate with 600 000 new users each day. With total users approaching 150 Million it is clear that social networking on Facebook has become mainstream. Facebook is the #1 photo sharing Web site on the Internet. In addition, users connect with one another and keep up to date by sharing news, videos, Web sites and more with friends, family and business associates. Tourism businesses and regions can set up free fan pages or group pages to help their ideal guests connect with one another and stay alert of current events.

Google arrived to the social before Facebook

Last month Google made it simple to engage people more deeply and grow traffic by making it easy to add social features to your website or blog. With no programing knowledge at all, Wordpress blog authors can add Google Friend Connect to a blog in as little as five minutes. Visitors to a Google friend-connected site can use their Google account and Google Profile to share information with other readers of the blog.

Within hours of the announcement of Google Friend Connect, Facebook announced the availability of Facebook Connect. Although the implementation of Facebook Connect is not for the faint of heart, a few programmers have created plug-ins for a handful of blogging platforms. More, easy to implement ,Facebook Connect solutions are sure to follow in 2009.

Integrating Facebook with your blog allows users to “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site, connect and find their friends who also use your site, share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook. Can you see any value in extending your “word of mouse” reach to the friends of your ideal guests or Web site visitors?

Start 2009 off on the right foot by connecting Facebook and your Wordpress.org blog

You’ll be getting a head start on what is sure to be one of the most important and valuable trends for marketing travel and tourism on the Web in 2009 – the integration of social networking beyond the walls of Facebook.

2009 will be the year blog commenting will reach the masses with Facebook Connect.

When Facebook users come across Facebook Connect enabled Web sites and blogs they will be more inclined to use their existing social profile to participate with like-minded travelers who write and comment or share multimedia beyond the walls of Facebook. Foster social networking between Facebook and Wordpress as part of your Customer Relationship Management plan for 2009.

If you have a Facebook account and a Wordpress.org blog, keep reading to make the connection between these two vital tourism marketing platforms.

The Wordpress.org Solution

If you are using Wordpress.org hosted blog, you are in luck, because the folks at Sociable have created a tidy little Facebook Connect plug-in that gives you a very good start to making the Wordpress / Facebook connection. Although it’s not as simple as installing Google’s app, Sociable provides simple to follow directions to getting the Facebook Connect Widget on your blog (see it in the sidebar of the Tourism Keys Blog).

There are three steps to getting the app installed on your Wordpress.org blog:

1. download and install the Facebook Connect plug-in
2. open a Facebook Developer Account and create an app.
3. edit the api key settings on your wordpress blog

1. Install Plug-in: If you have installed any plug-ins on your Wordpress Web site, you’ll find this step pretty basic. Head on over to the Plug-ins tab and activate the Facebook Connect Plug-in. On the Widgets tab add the Facebook Connect Widget to one of your sidebars.

2. Open Facebook Developer Account: Once, you’ve got the widget installed, you’ll need a free Facebook Developer Account. To use Facebook Connect, Web site authors also need to go through the process of creating an app. The name you give it doesn’t matter.

Keep this window on your browser open, you’ll need the api key and secret for step 3. Be sure to put the address of your web site in the callback URL section of the application settings page. If you neglect to do this, your application will show errors. Update and save the application settings.

3. Add the API settings for your app in Facebook: You’ll add two important settings in the Facebook Connector settings tab in Wordpress. You’ll get your api key and and secret from your Facebook Developer Account.

It’s a bit of work, but if you take the time to connect Facebook and your Wordpress blog, you’ll be ready to take advantage of what will surely be one of the most important trends of 2009.

Oh, and before you go . . . .

Take just a sec, and click on the Facebook Connect link in the sidebar of this blog and see how easy it is to extend your social presence. If you are up to it, your comments are welcome too.

Beginner-friendly step-by-step instructions for hosting and using a wordpress.com blog at your www.mywebsite.com

• Book 1: Get your Own .com
  
• Book 2: How to Use Wordpress

I’ve met thousands of tourism operators and tourism board representatives over the past five years helping them sort out their Internet marketing strategy. For most tourism businesses, the best web site is a blog because it’s current, relevant, keyword-friendly, and easy to manage. These free pdf documents provide step-by-step instructions for using Wordpress.com to create your own website from scratch. Have your own wordpress website and change or add content any time, for just $12 / year. These concise helpful books provide screen shots that show you where to click and what to do, every step of the way.

Benefits of Hosting your own Wordpress Blog on www.yourwebsite.com

• you own your domain name (ie. www.mywebsite.com)
• easily controlled content management system with wordpress.com
• instead of the generic http://wordpress.com/mywebsite send folks directly to www.mywebsite.com.
• Start from scratch by searching for a domain name that you want, register it with wordpress.com and map it to www.mywebsite.com.
• Begin creating new permanent web pages for your site and create new posts featuring text, photos, and video within an hour!
• Do you twitter? Ask @sparklestarr or @toddlesby about how hosting a wordpress website workshop for beginners can help spur economic development in your community.

Get your own .com and How to Use Wordpress by Natalie Lucier are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.tourismkeys.ca.

Ok, before I get going on my #1 Internet Marketing tool for 2008 …. I’m up for suggestions. Leave me a comment. What’s working for you in 2008?

Criteria for choosing my favourite tool for Internet Marketing:

• simple (anyone who can send email can teach themselves the basics)
• quick (get started in 3 minutes or less)
• easy to distribute all four types of content (text, photos, video, audio)
• subscriber-friendly (rss feeds allow for subscribing by email or in a reader)
• adaptable (if you don’t like it you can change it in two minutes or less)

My #1 . . . start a Wordpress Blog.

A Wordpress blog isn’t really a blog, it’s really a Web site that you can change as often as you would like, using just one simple skill that most people already have – the ability to send and receive email. That’s right, if you want to write a Web page, just go ahead and do it, and with wordpress the new page automatically shows up in the menubar!

With a blog, you get lots more content than with a traditional Web site… this blog for instance has almost 500 pages of words, photos, video & audio from a little over three years of blogging! My Web site only has 10 pages! Each and every page that is well written will continue to get Web site visits well into the future.

This year we have taught hundreds of tourism businesses how to blog at Internet Marketing workshops and many of them we’ve gotten started with Blogger. Blogger is simple. However, the new Wordpress 2.51 is simple, adaptable, beautiful, stunning, and offers a range of benefits over Blogger ….

Why Wordpress instead of Blogger?

• Wordpress offers thousands of templates, you can radically change the look of your blog in an instant.
• It’s easy to make a customized banner with your photo and watermark your text. You can also change your template in seconds…. really, you can totally refresh your site with a brand new look in seconds.
• Wordpress allows you to publish pages as well as posts. Pages are permanent pages, just like traditional web pages. See my pages in the border at right. Every blog post features links to the things you want your guests to see in these permanent pages.
• For each page or post, you can decide if you want to allow comments. Some pages, might not warrant comments, while most posts will. Just uncheck a box in the posting field and voila, no comments on that page.
• The interface for confirming or editing comments is nice and clean.
• Widgets, hundreds of them are available to customize your web site with things like calendars, tag clouds, feeds, html text and more, without having to edit the template.
• Multimedia is easier on wordpress too. It even provides easy access to linking to audio files like those featured in my podcast posts (unfortunately, Wordpress does not currently support embedded java script like that used for Google Maps or Picasa photo slide shows).
• The interface for managing users is also simple. Add users with a variety of levels of permission from administrators, editors, writers . . .
• Pages can be viewed together in categories or tags…. see the tag cloud in the menubar? Click a tag and all the pages that include this tag will all be shown together. Excellent for Search Engine Optimization over time as the SEO of each tag will grow.
• It is easy to import your blogger blog into Wordpress in the Manage / Import tabs of the easy to use interface.
• Wordpress pages and posts can be post-dated, so your blog can automatically update itself with posts like this one at any date in the future. ( I wrote this post on the 29th of April but wanted an exciting post for today, so I post-dated it for April 30 at 8:55 am)

Once your blog is set up make sure you use my #2 Internet Marketing tool for 2008 – Feedburner. Get started at http://feedburner.com and set up a custom feed for your blog. RSS feeds allow your ideal guests to subscribe to your content without having to visit your blog. For more on Feeds – see the video lesson. Be sure to tell Feedburner where your Wordpress Feed is: (http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed) and then create an easy-to-remember feedburner feed.

Other benefits of Feedburner include:

• Statistics on viewers, page views, clicks and subscribers.
• Ability to keep your subscribers if you ever move your blog somewhere else.
• Cut and paste code that you can use to add an email subscription form in your sidebar (use the text widget to paste the html code and get an email form like mine at right).

Since subscribers can get your posts by email whenever you create new content, you might want to grow subscriptions to your blog instead of growing subscribers to an email newsletter. Be sure to offer education, entertainment and enticement . . . and your new Web site (wordpress blog) will feed your subscribers all year long.

OK, so I couldn’t stop at #1. My top two tools: Wordpress and Feedburner, like peanut butter and jelly – two great things that go great together… and best of all, they are simple, quick, easy ways to grow your online Web marketing presence.

Care to debate this one? What’s your #1 Internet Marketing tool for 2008? Have you tried Blogger and Wordpress? Which do you like better and why?