Making the Most Out Of Facebook for VRMs Webinar

October 12, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

Unless you have been living in a cave without access to the outside world, you have heard of Facebook, the most powerful social media outlet in the world. There are more people on Facebook each day than the population of some countries; millions of people are sharing thoughts, links, opinions, photos, and making connections at this very moment.

As a vacation rental manager, how can you leverage this powerful tool to connect to your potential guests and clients searching for your product? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blizzard News, Facebook, Web 2.0

Tips for Creating a Website Design RFP

October 12, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

A Request for Proposal (RFP) kicks off the selection process for a new website design. A good RFP helps find the best company for the job. A good RFP guides the design of a successful site… and a good RFP reflects positively on the company that builds it!

Blizzard Internet receives RFPs from hotels, resorts, CVBs and others pretty regularly. They vary in quality but are generally pretty useful. We would like to share some tips to help you get more out of your RFP:

Questions to Ask to Protect Yourself:

Ask permission to do a D&B Credit Check. (You do check the credit of your major vendors, don’t you?)
Ask for professional liability insurance. A hotel has a lot to lose if something goes haywire with their website.
Does Vendor work with any competitors? Is Vendor willing to forego working with direct competitors? Most resorts don’t want their vendor working with the hotel next door.
Do you have an office? What percentage of your employees work there? Do you want to do business with a virtual company… or someone with a brick and mortar presence?

Feature Requirements to Consider: [Read more...]

Filed Under: SEM

Movin’ On Up, To the Westside

October 9, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

Blizzard Internet Marketing is excited to announce that we have officially moved our headquarters from the downtown area of Glenwood Springs to west Glenwood!

We shopped for the perfect place for a few years knowing that we wanted to stay in Glenwood Springs because it’s a central locale, our strong connections to the community, and the beautiful views.

Blizzard Internet purchased the office building previously occupied by the Bureau of Land Management who is now in a new building west of Glenwood. After a few touch ups, new carpet, and fresh paint, it is really starting to feel like home!

We had a huge garage sale in June to get rid of the extra stuff, including over 50 staplers (somehow they multiplied, we gave up trying to solve that mystery), and other things that a growing company accumulates after being in a location for almost a decade.

Like any move, this was not an easy process and it would not have been possible without a great leader to make it happen. Dolly Weber, our receptionist extraordinaire, headed up the gigantic project and made it as seamless as possible; she organized everything from the movers to the employees and the contractors, all with a smile on her face.

Blizzard Internet’s IT and Hosting Department also went above and beyond to assure that there was no down time. The minute our teams arrived to the new office we had internet access and were ready to rock.

So if you are driving on I-70 in the mountains Western Colorado, make sure to stop by and say hi. We are on the north side of the highway and now have a sign, so you can’t miss us!

Check out pictures of the new digs!

Filed Under: Bits From Blizzard

Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Site Maps

October 8, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

As a follow up to Site Maps 101, we present Matt’s top best (and worst) practices for getting the most out of your site map.

10 Best Site Map Practices:

First and foremost, every web site needs a site map to tell the search engines where each of your site’s pages are located.
You must link to each page of the site with text links.
Each text link must use the keyword for the page you are linking to from the site map to create relevancy.
The keyword used needs to be a research and strategically determined keyword that is relevant to your customers and is searched. Check out our Toolbox for our favorite keyword research sites. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Perfect By Design, SEM

Keyword Research Tool II: MSN Demographic Tool

October 7, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

The Microsoft Demographic Prediction Tool predicts the age and gender of your website or of a specific keyword phrase. Its insights into your audience could help you target your website more effectively. Just enter your website (and press URL button) and press Go.

Blizzardinternet.com is mostly male and in the 25-50 range. No surprises:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Perfect By Design, Toolbox

Nine Tips for Choosing the Right Content Management System for a Hotel or Resort

October 5, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

A Content Management System (CMS) is the platform on which a modern hotel’s website is typically built. Just a few years ago, programs like Dreamweaver, Contribute, FrontPage and Adobe GoLive were more commonly used tools to update a website. Now, a whole new generation of content management systems allows multiple individuals to share in the care and feeding of a website: designers, programmers, administrators, clients, SEO specialists and bloggers.

Choosing a new CMS is a big decision – a CMS that is a good fit can put you in hotel heaven or a bad fit into hotel hell. Here are Blizzard Internet’s top 9 tips to consider when choosing a new Content Management system for a hotel or resort.

Easy management of special features ~ prioritized by use. A CMS system needs to accommodate the most frequently made changes with grace. Beyond general content updates, tourism websites may need:
1. An event calendar that is easy to manage
2. Image management and photo upload tool
3. A packages or special management tool
4. A banner ad or graphic rotator to feature specials or partners
5. A full-featured blog is always a nice addition to any website [Read more...]

Filed Under: Design, Featured Articles, Perfect By Design

ClickTale – Incredible Visitor Movies and Click Heatmaps

October 3, 2009 by 1BlizzAdmin

ClickTale is a totally unique web analytics program because it actually videos your website visitors as they interact with your website. Careful, these movies can be addictive and entertaining! ClickTale also produces usable visitor analytics data related to where people look on your webpages and what links they click on.

Use ClickTale to make post-click marketing decisions … which is when you study your user behavior and change your website to increase conversions. The “eye tracking” (or clicking and scrolling) research it provides in the form of heatmaps is very insightful.

ClickTale has a free version that will let you try it out. We recommend the $99 per month version that should do everything you want, and more!

Blizzard is an affiliate of ClickTale, we signed up after seeing just how exciting a piece of software it is. Try CrazyEgg too for nice click heatmapping.

Filed Under: Perfect By Design, Toolbox