InternetMarketingClub.org Presents: Social Media for DMOs

Wednesday Webinar: Social Media for DMOs

With shrinking budgets, 21st century destination marketing organisations can no longer afford 20th century marketing. Martin Hatchuel, writer and tourism consultant at Barefoot Clients, is a specialist in travel marketing. If you're looking for a dazzling new presentation or approach to your tourism advertising, then this webinar is perfect for you. 

Click here to register:
http://bit.ly/DMOregister


About Martin Hatchuel:

Writing and marketing are only but words to describe Cape Town, South Africa native Martin Hatchuel. He's become a bit of an expert with tourism marketing, and his feature articles, newsletters, advertising copy and even fiction writings have been influenced by his travels.


Click here to register:
http://bit.ly/DMOregister

Social Media and the Summer Olympics

Social media is set to play a big role in the 2012 Summer Olympicsthis year, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube leading the charge. During the last Summer Olympics in 2008, the most popular social media sites of today were just getting their feet wet, and the number of Internet users has increased from 23% to about one-third of the world’s total population, according to Mashable.

Olympic rings on display in Cardiff, Wales

A recent Mashable article made an interesting comparison of the status of each of the three top sites in 2008 to where they currently are in terms of users, functionality and growth. Some of the other top social media networks like Google + and Pinterest were not even around during the last Olympics. And while many people will surely be sharing tweets and videos throughout the summer games, some fraudsters will also be trying to get in on the action.

Phishing and ticketing scams have already been reported and social media users are urged not to click on any links in alerts that seemingly come from these sites. Instead, go directly to the site by typing the URL into your browser, and those lucky enough to score tickets to the Olympics can visit the “Ticket Checker” on the official London2012.com website to verify their authenticity.

How do you plan to use social media during the 2012 Summer Olympics? What events are you most looking forward to watching?

Image credit: rovingsheep

Will Facebook Be A LinkedIn Contender?

Although not confirmed, it is speculated that sometime in the latter part of the summer, Facebook will launch a searchable job board. The job board would function as an aggregate of job postings from various third parties.

There are still a lot of questions about this – but the concept is already circulating through the media. Is this in an effort to get a piece of the estimated $4.3 billion global online job-recruitment industry? It just might be…

Details have not been released as to how the job postings will appear for the 900 million plus user base (i.e. within the News Feed). Regardless, this could make for an interesting battle between LinkedIn and Facebook.

Many people would probably agree that they do not prefer to have their personal and professional online presences comingled. However, many employers may prefer to see a potential employee’s “real life” – and the intersection of your Facebook presence and their job postings may be the answer to that.

What benefits do you see in Facebook’s potential job board?

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image credit: arazaphotography

InternetMarketingClub.org presents: Presentation Revolution!

Presentation Revolution: How to Build, Design and Deliver an Epic Presentation

If you think you've mastered the art of presentation, you may want to think again. Even if you're comfortable speaking to a large crowd with a lengthy timeslot, what about the design of your slides? Scott Schwertly, CEO of Nashville-based Ethos3, is here to help. Scott dives into the building, design and execution of an epic presentation. If your webinars, meetings and other presentations look like a high school introduction to PowerPoint, this webinar is perfect for you!

Click here to register (7/11/12 at 12:30PM)
http://bit.ly/designregister

About Scott Schwertly: 

Scott Schwertly is the author of How to Be a Presentation God and CEO of Ethos3, a Nashville, TN-based presentation boutique providing professional presentation design and training for national and international clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to branded individuals like Guy Kawasaki. 


If Scott is not working with his team building presentations, you will find him in the pool, on the bike, or on a long run. Scott lives in Nashville, TN with his wife and three dogs. He has a B.A. and M.B.A. from Harding University.

Click here to register (7/11/12 at 12:30PM)
http://bit.ly/designregister

Getting the Most Out of Twitter

While most businesses know that they need to create a Twitter account as part of their standard social media campaign, there are some companies that aren't getting the most they can out of their accounts. Tweeting boosts brand engagement and brand recognition, so it's important to make it a part of your daily social media activities, but you also shouldn't forget to strategize when tweeting. Tweeting during the weekend can often get you more attention than tweeting during the week, and companies should keep their tweets under 100 characters to encourage easy retweeting. Try to use no more than 2 hashtags per tweet, as too many hashtags can decrease engagement, and don't be too afraid to ask for retweets occasionally on more important tweets.

As for SEO, it's important that when linking to your twitter account that you link to the correct URL. Twitter creates duplicate content, so it's best to refer to this helpful SEOmoz blog post when deciding which twitter URL to link to.

Flexible Reach Targeting on the Google Display Network

Have you noticed the new Flexible reach targeting option in your Display Network campaign?

This new option allows you to select your settings based on the ad group level rather than campaign level. Google provides details explaining, “Flexible reach allows you to select any combination of multiple targeting selections at the ad group level, plus the control to combine different methods for targeting and bidding at the ad group level. It also provides transparency into how your targeting selections are affecting the reach and impression volume of your campaigns. The Flexible reach campaign setting will appear as an optional setting in AdWords accounts in June and will eventually replace the Broad and Specific reach options later this year.”

Although this option will at some point be the default – please be cautious before proceeding. Once you’ve decided to select the Flexible reach option, you will no longer be allowed to use Broad or Specific reach. So, be sure you are absolutely ready before making the switch.

What do I think about this change? Having the opportunity for more relevancy is a “win” for everyone (both advertisers and consumers), so I’m all for it.

Like this post? Connect with Erika Barbosa on Google+.

Image credit: stuartpilbrow

5 SEO Tips for Your Business

You can only get the most out of your site if you boost your web presence through SEO. Here are some helpful tips for getting started:

1. Research top keywords for your industry and your site and get some statistics to help you decide which ones would be best for your optimization process. This helpful free Google tool is a great place to get started.
2. Include meta tags on each page for your site. You're going to want to make sure that you have a meta description, meta title, and meta keywords in the code for each page to help the search engines better index you. Having an H1and H2 with keywords in the title is also helpful.
3. Optimize your on-page copy by using keywords you have selected for your meta tags on each page. Be sure not to put too many keywords on one page - this keyword stuffing could get you in trouble with the search engines.
4. Build links to trusted websites and blogs. If you have partners who have websites, ask them to provide a link to your site. Offer to guest post on popular blogs to gain more backlinks as well.
5. Provide blog content on your own site and add more pages when you can so that there are more pages indexed by search engines. The more new, fresh content you can provide, the better. It's also a great opportunity to ask for guest posts on your blog from others in exchange for a guest post on their blog.

If you're itching for more tips, just check out this Soshable article.