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Now You Can Watch A Full-Day Marketing Seminar from Your Desk

October 20, 2011 by

On Sunday October 9th, Trent Blizzard presented a full day online marketing seminar.  It was chock-full of timely and important marketing tips for travel marketers.

We are making the full video available on Monday October 31st.  You can order it for the small investment of $50.  It will be available “on-demand” so you can watch it at your desk and at your leisure.

Topics Included:

  • Google +1 is a promising new feature from Google that is still being developed.  Learn what it can do for you now and what strategies to implement in 2012 to achieve maximum benefit.
  • Custom Facebook Apps and Tabs: A review of the nifty, convenient and seductive world of Facebook custom tabs.  The real pros are using these to turn their Facebook page into a second website that can turn lookers into bookers.  Bonus: Blizzard will give each attendee a free Facebook App. ($250 value)*
  • Facebook Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Learn how to take advantage of Facebook’s PPC program to increase your ‘Likes’ and steal mind-share from your competitors.
  • Top Facebook Tips: The top 10 tips for getting new fans and engaging with your current ones.
  • Link Building is still going strong.  Learn about recent changes and how Google uses links in its algorithm. Bonus: Blizzard will give you 10 great links that will drive qualified traffic ($250 value)*
  • Website Load Time: Learn how your website’s speed… or slowness… is being factored into Google’s algorithm.  Find out how to measure your speed, track it in Google Analytics, and what simple steps can improve it.
  • Schema: Learn about the new coding directives that Google, Bing and Yahoo! rolled out in June, 2011 and how you can take advantage to help Google index your website.
  • The Changing World of Online Reviews: Google has changed how they index your reviews and your strategies should change accordingly. Learn the best way to get more out of your current reviews and where to drive new reviews.
  • Google Analytics: Learn about all of the changes and new features that have happened to Google Analytics in the last year that will help you to measure your growth and success.
  • Email Marketing: Learn some easy tricks and discover a few powerful tools to capture more email addresses, and get more out of your existing email marketing efforts.
  • Vacation Rental Marketing Benchmarks and Stats: Learn how your website compares to industry benchmarks using BlizzardTracker.
  • Booking Engine Effectiveness: Increase your conversion rates by implementing 10 proven features.
  • New Online Tools: Discover cool new tools to track your results, monitor your competitors, increase your effectiveness or just plain have fun.
  • $50 to watch the video-on-demand at your leisure.
  • The video is free for current Blizzard clients.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Bits From Blizzard, Blizzard News, SEM, Travel Marketing

Linkbuilding with Twitter

September 2, 2011 by

Rand Fishkin is arguably one of the smartest people in the industry, if not THE smartest.  His Whiteboard Friday Videos always get my mind working overtime, although the execution sometimes doesn’t really follow.

Today’s whiteboard Friday is no different.  I LOVE all of the ideas he has for using twitter to build links; I’m just not sure it’s realistic for someone who doesn’t have a dedicated link-baiter/link-builder on staff.  I’d love to try some of these tactics out, so if you’re looking to invest in someone taking the time, give me a call :)

Twitter, to date, has been a bit disappointing on the “revenue generation” front, and it seems like interactions are a bit fleeting, while Facebook seems a more sustainable engagement platform.

Would love to hear your comments on Rand’s video below.

Wistia

Filed Under: SEM

VRMA Blizzard University – October 9th 2011 – Orlando

On Sunday, October 9th, Blizzard Internet Marketing is planning a full day Blizzard University workshop the day before the VRMA National Conference in Orlando from 9:00am to 5:00pm.

Topics will be both timely and important to every Vacation Rental Manager.

There are two ways to participate:

  1. Attend the event in person.
  2. Watch the event on video, whenever you want.

I hope you will save the day and join us for what promises to be a fun and educational day that will help you improve your overall online marketing strategy.

Topics covered at the October 9th Blizzard University in Orlando preceding VRMA National Include:

  • Google +1 is a promising new feature from Google that is still being developed.  Learn what it can do for you now and what strategies to implement in 2012 to achieve maximum benefit.
  • Custom Facebook Apps and Tabs: A review of the nifty, convenient and seductive world of Facebook custom tabs.  The real pros are using these to turn their Facebook page into a second website that can turn lookers into bookers.  Bonus: Blizzard will give each attendee a free Facebook App. ($250 value)*
  • Facebook Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Learn how to take advantage of Facebook’s PPC program to increase your ‘Likes’ and steal mind-share from your competitors.
  • Top Facebook Tips: The top 10 tips for getting new fans and engaging with your current ones.
  • Link Building is still going strong.  Learn about recent changes and how Google uses links in its algorithm. Bonus: Blizzard will give you 10 great links that will drive qualified traffic ($250 value)*
  • Website Load Time: Learn how your website’s speed… or slowness… is being factored into Google’s algorithm.  Find out how to measure your speed, track it in Google Analytics, and what simple steps can improve it.
  • Schema: Learn about the new coding directives that Google, Bing and Yahoo! rolled out in June, 2011 and how you can take advantage to help Google index your website.
  • The Changing World of Online Reviews: Google has changed how they index your reviews and your strategies should change accordingly. Learn the best way to get more out of your current reviews and where to drive new reviews.
  • Google Analytics: Learn about all of the changes and new features that have happened to Google Analytics in the last year that will help you to measure your growth and success.
  • Email Marketing: Learn some easy tricks and discover a few powerful tools to capture more email addresses, and get more out of your existing email marketing efforts.
  • Vacation Rental Marketing Benchmarks and Stats: Learn how your website compares to industry benchmarks using BlizzardTracker.
  • Booking Engine Effectiveness: Increase your conversion rates by implementing 10 proven features.
  • New Online Tools: Discover cool new tools to track your results, monitor your competitors, increase your effectiveness or just plain have fun.

*Bonuses are for paying attendees at the workshop on Oct. 9th

Cost to attend the Blizzard University:

  • $199 if registered after September 30th
  • Early Bird: $149 if registered during September 13th-30th
  • Blizzard clients attend for free, one registration per company.  Additional tickets are $99.

Can’t make it to Orlando? Watch the video:

  • $50 to watch the video-on-demand at your leisure.
  • The video is free for current Blizzard clients.

 

Thanks To Our Sponsors:

Google Plus – What’s the Big Whoop?

July 8, 2011 by

Google Plus (or Google + if you like to use  mathematical symbols to confuse others, which is what I less than 3 to do) is Google’s equivalent to Facebook.

Google Plus gives you the ability to share photos, links, chat, email and…I can’t really tell what other cool things it does yet that Facebook does not, and almost everyone I know is already on Facebook.

Anyway, when you start making connections in Google Plus, it prompts you to add people into defined “circles” including family, friends, acquaintances, and following (stalking?).

So far I’m not popular on Google Plus, but I don’t really see what the big deal is.

The stream of info pretty much looks like Facebook but not as fun.

If I wanted to chat with someone, there are 5 other ways to do that, so that’s nothing new.

I also don’t like putting people I know into categories that someone (Google) can see, or use for not evil purposes.

This is could also be a way for Google to follow us, know exactly what sites we are on, what we look like, who we hang out with, etc.  (All other paranoid people are urged to see my article, Opt Out of Facebook’s Facial Recognition).

Have you tried it Google Plus yet? What do you think?

Filed Under: Facebook

Do Facebook Likes and Plugins Really Help Websites?

June 27, 2011 by

Danny Sullivan, the foremost search engine expert and all around clever guy, got his hands on Facebook’s traffic data and recently shared a few of those stats on SearchEngineLand.com.

Here are a few of the highlights:

The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.

People who signed in with Facebook at The Huffington Post view 22% more pages.

Like buttons get 3 to 5 times more clicks if:
- Thumbnails of friends are used in the plugin.
- People are allowed to add comments.
- If the Like button appears at both the top and the bottom of the article.
- If the Like button appears near visual content.

Danny also includes tips from Buddy Media’s white paper:  How to Make Sure You’re in the News Feed.
1. Ask questions on your Facebook fan page (“Would?” gets the most engagement)
2. Post games and trivia
3. Interact with fans
4. Use wall “sapplets” — coupons, polls & other out-of-the-ordinary posts
5. Use relevant photos
6. Relate to current events
7. Incorporate videos
8. Post time-sensitive content
9. Post links
10. Be explicit in posts

What brands do you pay attention to on Facebook?

What has worked for your business?

Read Danny’s entire article on SearchEngineLand.com.

Filed Under: Facebook, SEM

The “New” SEO – SMX Advanced Seattle Takeaways

June 22, 2011 by

My recent trip to SMX Advanced provided my brain with an overflowing basket of new ideas, concepts and procedures to process and bring to our clients.

I love these conferences, not just for the sessions that are taught, but for the ability to network with my SEO-industry friends and bounce ideas off of each of them.  We collaborate on ideas and come up with some awesome thoughts for helping our clients succeed in their online markets.

This SMX Advanced in Seattle was info-packed for sure.  I certainly cannot provide all of the details in one blog post, but I wanted to share information from the best SEO session of the conference.

First, the New Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors – a daunting chart of colors and initials that made me cringe at first.  Luckily, a little known fact, here – I was a chemistry GEEK in high school.  I couldn’t do math to save my soul, but give me a chemical equation and I was in hog heaven, I LOVED them…..weird, I know.

Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors [Read more...]

Filed Under: SEM, SEO, Words of Wisdom

Best of Online Marketing from VRMA

April 26, 2011 by

This post began as a presentation given at two recent Vacation Rental Manager Association conferences.

The goal was to create a list of great online marketing examples to help other vacation rental managers plan their next great website or marketing effort.

So without further ado…

A  Showcase of our favorite Online Marketing examples by VRMA Members

Your Website matters, especially your booking engine.

We looked at 10 vacation rental websites and found that 73.4% of the guest’s website interaction happened  in the booking engine (measured by pageviews).

Certainly it is worth it for the average VR manager to pay close attention to the usability and overall effectiveness of their booking engine.

Next we used BlizzardTracker to determine that in March 2011, 68 vacation rental manager websites averaged a 36% bounce rate:

Of those websites, 29 were engaged in eCommerce with a .42% conversion rate on average.  In other words, they got 1 online booking for every 233 visitors to their website.

Anything you can do to get that bounce rate down and that conversion rate UP is good.

Here is a sample sales funnel where you can see, for this particular VRM, a .68% conversion rate, with the sales funnels starting at the property page.  (At bottom of the chart it shows a .63% funnel, but that is starting from the search results page, which was cropped from this image.) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Design, Facebook, Perfect By Design, Trophy Case
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