Here are my notes on a variety of tips related to blogs and blogging from the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City:

• Use a blog as a way to establish yourself as an expert on a topic.
• Blogs are useful as a natural ranking tool. They attract links to boost the power of your site.
• Blog posts tend to rank well rather quickly. But unless they gain good links, they will fade after 2-3 weeks.
• Link out from a blog and spread the link love.
• You can email photos into Flick’r directly from a camera phone.  Then, you can publish them from Flick’r directly into a blog.
• Comment on other people’s blogs as a way to gain exposure for your blog. If you’re one of the early commenters, you’ll get the most attention, since most people don’t read all the comments on a post.

People are recording video using cell phones, cameras and camcorders and there are many options for simple and complex video editing. The ultimate goal is to get your video out there, and to have people enjoy it - so we really recommend against putting raw video on YouTube or your own website, edit it up and make sure it looks polished and has good title pages, etc.

With so many video editor options on the market, how do you choose the one that’s right for you?

There are four basic video editing categories.

Free

First and most simple to use, are the free online web based video editors. You simply upload your video from your camera and use free online applications. Some of these web based video sites don’t even require that you to have a camera. You can create fun “mash-ups” or “mixables” with other people’s media (ie photos you own, etc. We do recommend against using copyrighted materials.) Editing features such as trimming, basic transitions and effects are available. My favorite site in this category is Eyespot.com. Others include Cuts, Jumpcut, Motionbox, and One True Media. Do you have a favorite?

Applications Bundled with your Laptop or PC

Another common video editing option is using free video applications that that either come bundled on computers when you purchase the computer or are free to download. Examples of this would be Microsoft Movie Maker for the PC and Apple iMovie for the MAC operating system. There are others but these are the most common of these type. These applications contain basic features such as effects, transitions, titles, audio and timeline narration. I use a mac, so i like iMovie.

Mid Level Software Applications

There are many software applications in the mid level of video editing. Prices range from $30.00 to $120.00 and can be a one-time fee or yearly. Features include a variety of higher level editing, including DVD authoring, creative templates and effects and more. Some of these include Pinnacle Studio, Roxio VideoWave, Adobe Premier Elements, Ulead Video Studio, Muvee Auto Producer. I haven’t used many in this category, so I tend to lean towards the Adobe Premier Elements as my favorite.

Advanced Amateur to Pro-Level Software

Next, the applications of Adobe Premiere for the PC and Final Cut Express for the Mac will have everything you need until you are ready to go professional with the Pro versions of either of these very powerful applications. I’m just learning Final Cut Pro for the Mac and it’s very involved, but is sure to turn out a very nice product once you’ve tackled the learning curve.

Which video editing option is suited for you will depend on your budget, what features you want, the platform of your computer and what your final output is for? For certain, there are enough options that you should not leave them archived in your camera or computer.

Edit, share, and let us enjoy them.

Online reviews are inevitable - especially in the hospitality industry. Whether you like it or not, your guests are going to review their stay - either at a review site like “Tripadvisor.com” or on their own blog. The key to harnessing the power of the online review is to bring that unique, fresh and FREE content onto your own website.

Content, and lots of it, more than any other factor, is going to help you rank well in the search engines. Well optimized content is going to help even more. But, realistically speaking, WRITING content is something you’re hoping little fairies, brownies or elves do at night while you’re getting your zzz’s. Unfortunately, the brownies, fairies, and elves are busy hiding your car keys and removing all of your matching socks from your drawer - they don’t have time to write content and the job falls on your shoulders to get it done.

Honestly, as an agency we CAN write content for your website - but truthfully - you’re better off doing it yourself. Yes, an agency can provide a quality product, don’t misunderstand my intention. But have they BEEN to the property, do they really “know” how cool your pool is? Probably not - so the best content comes from those who have experienced it.

Okay - this is where we get to consumer generated content (CGC) and reviews. If you provide your guests a place to leave a review of their stay with you, ON YOUR WEBSITE, you’re looking at thousands of words of content added every week or month. Content you didn’t have to write, content you don’t have to PAY for - great stuff, eh?

I know you’re concerned about the negative reviews - with good reason. But instead of dreading this inevitable occurrence, embrace it. Use a negative review on your website as a way to show shoppers and future guests how much you CARE about each and every experience given on your property or properties. Offer the negative reviewer a discount for coming back and trying again - give your email address so they can contact you directly to resolve the problem. The more public you are with this information and resolution, the more you CARE about your guests, the more consumers are going to trust you to give them a really great time, or make it right if things so wrong.

It’s a scary step, and implementing a review platform on your site can cost a bit - but the results can show a positive ROI in a short amount of time. A recent article in the newsletter about a case-study featured at HotelMarketing.com outlined how trusted reviews featured on your site DOUBLE your revenue. So mix your on-site reviews with a feed of your reviews from Tripadvisor.com. Lend credibility to what is read ON your site with a set of unbiased reviews from an independent site.

For the most part, people who consider consumer reviews are a picky bunch. They tend to discount a set of all 5-star reviews and they also tend to discount ONE bad review in a set of pretty good reviews. Keep this in mind when showing reviews on your site, don’t JUST show the great stuff, lend credibility with a little good and a little not so good. That being said, don’t let a set of comments turn into a public dirty laundry session. If things stay amicable and constructive, leave it online. Name-calling and rudeness are never okay, no matter what the venue is.

Keyboards image from GothCandy

Roes are red
Violets are blue
Google’s creative
on Valentines too…

 
I realized I was an “Internet junkie” when I found myself logging onto Google’s homepage this morning just to see the new Valentine’s Day logo! For those of you who use the Internet on a regular basis, you’ve probably noticed how Google changes its logo for major holidays and big events. I find this oddly amusing, and thought I’d share some fun facts I learned.
 The Google holiday logos, also known as “Google Doodles” are created by Dennis Hwang. Hwang “designed his first logo for Google in honor of Bastille Day (a national French holiday), July 14, 2000, and has been designing the specialty logos ever since.”  To view some of his previous work, check out the Google logo museum. I’ll be looking forward to the St. Patty’s Day logo!

I searched for the answer to this question at Google.  How often should I blog?, blog frequency, blogging schedule and similar queries returned amazingly relevant results from bloggers ranging from writers to affiliates to realtors to lifehackers. Here’s a very unscientific summary of their advice.

The best overall suggestion I found was if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything. Quite a few bloggers talked about nuisance blog posts clogging the web and the bad noise drowning out the good.  Frequency of blog posts should be dictated by the quality of what you have to say.  If you’ve created a blog for the right reason(s), then you are passionate about your topic and should have plenty of useful information to share.

Many bloggers also agree that blogging frequency is dictated by the type of blog you have. News blogs, of course, would be at the most frequent end of the scale. Thoughtful and thought-provoking essays are somewhere near the other end.

Most of our bloggers think that no matter what your posting schedule is, you should be consistent with it, so that your readers get into the habit of visiting regularly.

You’ve probably guessed by now that there is no one answer on posting frequency that applies to every blog or every blogger. For most of us, the right answer is from once a day to once a week, with most of our advisors recommending posting 2 to 3 times per week.

A friend turned me on to research by Nancy McCord, of McCord Web Design, that shows that website traffic increases with the addition of a blog. A blog also increases the stickiness of  a website and can improve its organic rankings in Google. In contrast, McCord also found that when blogging stops, the opposite occurs and traffic and page views drop.

Because of the small sample size, the study gives us clues and the impetus to look at our own results and see what they tell us.

Download Nancy McCord’s free white paper The Tangible Benefits of Blogging to learn more about why you need a blog.

The explosion of blogs is phenomenal. Millions of people who had no idea what a blog was 2 years ago, now have one. Is it a fad? Well, yes and no.

Good Blogs

Blogs with a clear cut purpose to which the owner is committed are proving to be incredible online business tools. They are used successfully for leads, sales, sign-ups, reputation management, media and customer relations, traffic building and strengthening the SEO of websites with which they are associated.

Bad Blogs

However, for those with short attention spans and not much to say, the thrill is quickly over. These blogs do not get posted to regularly. Therefore, the Search Engines visit them less and less often, they never attain decent rankings and they don’t attract much, if any, traffic. These blogs languish unattended and unnoticed on the web.

Abandoned Blogs and Google

These abandoned blogs give the visitor a bad search experience. Therefore, Google User Experience Researchers are working on ways to identify them.

Why do we care? So that we can make certain our blogs do not take on the characteristics of abandoned blogs. And why is that important? Because if Google is studying it, then we can expect it to enter into their algorithm at some point. When it does, I expect that those blogs identified as abandoned with be either filtered completely out of the index or be pushed so far down in the rankings as to become invisible on the web.

What are the Characteristics of Abandoned Blogs?

They never became established, so they are considered fad or spam blogs. This includes blogs that:

• Have a very short lifepan. Google thinks this is less than 9 days - a week and a weekend - of active involvement by the writer, once the blog goes up. Owner interest lasted less than 9 days and after that, no more posts were made.
• Have very little content. Google currently measures this as less than 11 total posts.

They are inactive, which Google is finding somewhat more difficult to define. At first, they seemed to have settled on 30 days of inactivity as a general metric of abandonment. However, they do not want to apply it to all bloggers, as some people who do not post often still post regularly.

The inference here is that most established blogs are posted to at least once every 30 days, but they will make exceptions for those who post on a less frequent schedule, as long as that schedule is somewhat regular.

What Should We Do About It?

Blog regularly and, if at all possible, post to your blog at least once every 30 days. This is the very least you should do, if you want your blog to remain viable from Google’s point of view.

In reality, you are not coming close to realizing your blog’s potential if you do not post to it at least once or twice a week. The more you post, the more frequently the Search Engine spiders and interested humans will return to see what you have added. So, blog on!