Travel Copywriting & Tourism Marketing Roundup (July 11)

I should have titled this post, “10 Things the Tourism Industry Wants You to Know About Building Relationships and Getting Bookings.” For the sake of consistency, I’ll stick with my regular format. But you should know that headlines are important – 90% increased response important! Other great tidbits from industry leaders this week include tips on creating un-shitty blog content, taking advantage of Google’s travel-friendly marketing options, thriving after Google Panda, and evolving trends in hospitality technologies.

Top 5: Travel Copywriting

1. Mike Davis over at the YouMoz blog has a great post on content creation for small businesses. It’s a long one, but full of solid information: outsourcing writing, social istanbul escort marketing, and quality vs. quantity. Fun excerpt: “One piece of well written/insightful content is worth more than 50 piece-of-shit blog posts.”
2. Sometimes it’s the little things – things as tiny as one word. Smriti Chawla over at Visual Website Optimizer offers up an excellent lesson on the importance of headlines, with an example of how one word increased sales by nearly 90%. Now quick, go check out all the headlines on your website!
3. And speaking of headlines, Sean D’Souza has the deets on how to write great ones: three core principles of writing headlines that trigger curiosity. (Piqued your interest, right?) Sean gets bonus points for calling headlines “time bombs.” Yes, indeed!
4. Have you ever wished you could get the inside scoop on potential clients – what they like, what makes them click the “BUY” button? Copywriter Karon Thackston says you need to do some detective work. I love – and cannot agree more – with her advice to write less about you and write more for your visitors.
5. Panda and Penguin slaughtered the status quo of search engine positioning, sex hikayeleri but now that we’re on the other side we can see that the end result is worth it: better quality, more relevant search results. So how do you get onto Google Page 1? Eric Enge at Search Engine Watch says that after Google Panda, exceptional content is essential. It’s not just about producing original content; you have to eliminate “sameness” – differentiate your website from all others.

Top 5: Tourism Marketing

1. The Wall Street Journal recently hosted a webinar on the latest trends in hospitality technology. Hotel News Now has a nice summary of the findings, but be sure to also snag a copy of the webinar white paper.
2. Wondering how Google Business Photos can send you a landslide of new bookings? Jaqueline Binion over at Blizzard Marketing has a short and sweet how-to on grabbing bookings with Google Business Photos. You can see a good example of the practice in action with the Regency Suites Hotel. Snazzy!
3. Facebook Graph Search rolled out to all U.S. users this week, which means you probably should have been preparing for it yesterday. But no worries, Tnooz has a review of the new features and explains why hotels will be one of the first to benefit from Graph Search optimization.
4. Over on eCornell’s Hospitality Blog, Greg Bodenlos proffers an excellent post on Pinterest best practices for hotels. Love his advice to “spread the wealth;” after all, Pinterest is a social medium and that means it’s not all about you.
5. Restaurants often get overlooked in the tourism marketing sphere, but this week Social Hospitality has the sitch on how restaurants can use Google+ to get more business.