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Links 07.11.08 & WTM

It’s here again! I’ll be at the World Travel Market next week - drop me a line if you’d like to meet up.

Will also be attending the Travel BlogCamp on Tuesday evening.

• SEO terms and rich content - can they ever be friends? http://tinyurl.com/5mf85c with a travel writing focus
• 50+ Must Read Web Design for ROI, Usability and SEO Articles http://tinyurl.com/64qvqx
• Kayak received 62% of the vote for best travel site for cheap tickets over at the recent Lifehacker poll http://tinyurl.com/6kfu2q
• Not really surprising given ROI tracking of PPC & SEM - From the IAB “SEO top priority for travel sector” http://tinyurl.com/6nay8j
• Apps for LinkedIn launched - TripIt seems to be the first travel one http://tinyurl.com/5aux88
• Community shout out for the best travel web sites on Lifehacker http://tinyurl.com/6kq3as
• Of interest to UK’ers - Google Testing Post Code Search Boxes http://tinyurl.com/6jgfen
• Just had a go with Google Earth for the iPhone, very impressive http://tinyurl.com/62×3ek
• Neville compares the communication approach of JetBlue and BA and their respective terminal openings. http://tinyurl.com/67llrr

News and Links 24.10.08

More commentary and links taken from our Twitter - excuse the lack of blog posts, we’re experiencing a large client workload at the moment. Knee deep in SEO audits and PPC campaigns. But it’s all good!

Check out Alex’s blog or browse the new Travolution site and blog for recent online travel insights.

• Good tips and advice on internal site searches http://tinyurl.com/44oxt8
• Neat categorisation of five Social Media spheres http://tinyurl.com/49j9cx
• ‘Adding social links to emails: what and where?’ http://tinyurl.com/6q5rz3
• I was aware of a significant difference in PPC vs SEO spend but didn’t realise the gulf was so great http://tinyurl.com/56udo7
• Joy! Big Google Analytics upgrade - get the lowdown at TechCrunch http://tinyurl.com/5v8vu4
• It’s time for travel content 2.0 http://tinyurl.com/6xhedr
• Great tips from Kevin ‘Travel SEO – How to Target Searchers at the Right Stage of the Buying Cycle’ http://tinyurl.com/6frzoj

Links 15.10.08

• Top 21 email marketing information sources http://tinyurl.com/39ngzw
• Ten Hot Tips for Successful Online Travel Marketing - Part 1 http://tinyurl.com/4f6vt4 Part 2 http://tinyurl.com/3hnlqv
• Travel PPC: 10 Ways to Improve Your Campaign. http://tinyurl.com/3jjo4x
• Google adds more ads http://tinyurl.com/49vcb2
• Hotel service by iPhone or iPod Touch http://tinyurl.com/3wkuqm
• Social media supremo Chris Brogan posts ‘Tourism Bureaus and Bloggers’ http://tinyurl.com/4tsofy

Links 06.10.08

• Whole Travel launches eco-friendly rating system for hotels http://tinyurl.com/3ln93e
• Online travel booking: What influences consumers? http://tinyurl.com/43abuv
• The wonderful world of multilingual SEO http://tinyurl.com/47svg3
• Just joined this Ning powered network - ‘A Tourism 2.0 Professional Networking Group’ http://tourism2point0.ning.com/
• Holidaymakers do not trust user generated content

Links 25.09.08

• Good Q&As with Skyscanner CEO http://tinyurl.com/3jequd
• Long overdue - www.thetrainline.com has been redesigned (UK train ticket retailer)
• Online PR’ers - Yotify, Google alerts replacement? http://tinyurl.com/4v6de5
• Handy forum for those involved in travel related affiliate marketing http://tinyurl.com/45f782
• Good idea - New Zealand hotel puts scans of guest book online http://tinyurl.com/4p2cs2
• How to put your website on Google News - http://tinyurl.com/4yl96x
• Great example of triggered email (welcome messages or signup confirmations) from moo.com http://tinyurl.com/4wz685
• Holiday industry’s blues from Marketing Week http://tinyurl.com/4j4qfd
• Google Maps Mobile Adds Street View, Walking Directions http://tinyurl.com/4dqztn

Mascots for web design - are they a good idea?

Designers use visual cues such as colour schemes and images to help draw attention to certain parts of a web page. The more emotive these are, the more chance for positive feeling and a greater connection with the visitor.

Ask someone for memorable mascots and they may mention the late Jeeves from Ask Jeeves, before his departure and resulting search engine rebrand.

Or the annoying paperclip from Microsoft Office.  Another is the kangaroo used in the Australia logo.

Emotional engagement or eye candy?

Far too many sites and web applications lack a personality in copy and image selection. I recommend this video presentation at Vitamin to highlight the importance of copy in building a likeable web application.

Evoking positive feelings can be particularly important in web applications where they are intended to be used regularly and often at length by their audience.

Mascots aren’t going to work in all scenarios. They usually work best as animal or human-like creatures - as cute, fun creations.

We created a mascot for a Visit Britain campaign to promote a new B2B online service. The character, Mrs Pink, helped reach the audience in a friendly, innovative way and she is now used on offline material and e-newsletters.

The cute dog is a mascot we intend to use on a new site helping daytrippers find the best visitor attractions. We’d like to give name him, please send on any suggestions!

Links 15.09.08 Google Advertisers Quick to bid on “XL Airways”, top 10 email clients + 5 others

I’m tending to post these types of links first on Twitter.

• Google Advertisers Quick to bid on “XL Airways” - with brand bidding in place, the competition are quick to the mark.
• Similar to http://woot.com but for travel deals: http://Fourtraveldeals.com - Nice idea, looks to be all Expedia (via 37s blog)
• Top 10 email clients used by business & consumer recipients - didn’t expect Hotmail to be so high on b2b
• Travel start up at Techcrunch50 (were there any others?) GoPlanit for generating itineraries
• Missed this, list of 75+ online travel resources from Mashable (2007)
• Delving into the problems with www.italia.it at http://tinyurl.com/5zngoo - dot post about the logo last year http://tinyurl.com/5p37g9
• SkyScanner site review http://tinyurl.com/6rykgr

Three online reputation monitoring services + hotel brand management

Thought I’d share a few links on some brand monitoring services.

These are tools to help monitor who is saying what about your brand.

And opportunities to monitor product/destination keywords and then provide information/feedback to those networks and online communities.

For some background, read this article for an introduction to online reputation management.

And the three tools:

• Google Alerts - free and will help you gain an idea on what level of paid tool suits you.
• Online Reputation Monitor - three pricing levels starting from £5/month. Free trial.
• trackur - One of the more feature full programs. Free trial available.

I’ve not tried these yet but here are two tools specifically aimed at hotels.

• Review Analyst
• Hotel Protect

10 Reputations All Hotels, Resorts & Inns Should Monitor Online

Any others you’d recommend?

Introducing CountryBrands.org

We’ve just launched CountryBrands.org which aims to be the definitive resource for logo identities.

It’s a little project we’ve wanted to do for a while and found the time in recent weeks.

We’ll build the database up over the coming month and each logo entry will include a downloadable file - we’ll try and find the best quality in each case.

We’re keen for feedback so please let us know what you think.

[UPDATE] Alex Bainbridge has posted a short review about CountryBrands.org on his blog

Links 21.08.08 - PR debates, dottourism on Twitter

First a bit of blog housekeeping - we’ve added our latest Tweets in the right hand column. Or you can follow us at http://twitter.com/dottourism/

There has been another round of conversation regarding the changing face of PR in recent weeks.

• Does the Thrill of the Chase Make PR Obsolete? from Steve Rubel, a high profile long time blogger and senior vice presient of Edelman Digital. He laments at the deluge of off base email pitches he receives in a changing PR landscape. He deletes 99.99% of them. I receive on average 10 a day - the vast majority are not relevant to the online area that this blog focuses on. It’s frustrating that the senders do not take the time to do a little bit more research. See also Hotel Blogs rants about PR

• Mike Arrington writes more (from a tech startup angle) on the subject at The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging and the 150+ comments provides views from all sides. He comments that the people writing about startups is much more varied now but the approach to engage them is wide of the mark.

• From a travel PR perspective Neil MacLean has written a guest post on the Travolution Blog. We work both with private and public sector organisations directly and with PR agencies. In our experience, only a very small minority market and carry out services that Neil rightly comments a modern PR agency should; online copywriting, web monitoring, search engine marketing, analytics and basic web development.

• An Econsultancy post this morning from Drama 2.0 Is PR broken?