Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category
Google, Not sure why They need to Advertise on the Superbowl
You would think Google has already won. Why advertise?
But, perhaps they feel nervous with Microsoft’s Bing being advertised so much as an alternative search engine. So far, Bing has seemed pretty flat to me. What do you think?
At any rate, I liked the ad. You would have to wonder what you would say in an ad about Google. This one is really touching on function, emotion, tells a story and all the time make the product clear. It might even educate people about new features such as translation. Hard to believe, but many people may not yet know how to find things with Map Search…. is that possible.
Here’s Google’s Ad – ‘Parisian Love’
I liked it! Well done Google.
Tags: Google Maps
New Website for Bear Gully Coastal Cottages
I’ve been working with Jill Butterfield, owner of Bear Gully Coastal Cottages in Walkerville Victoria for many years. I’ve always been fascinated by her business because it looks like such a nice place to stay. Recently Jill mentioned that she was feeling the impact of the ‘economic slowdown’.
Jill went to a Travel Show in Sydney and had the devil of a time with agents because none of them knew the geography of Victoria well enough to understand where she’s located. If I wasn’t in this business, I wouldn’t know either. Bear Gully Coastal Cottages are located between Walkerville and Cape Liptrap. They are beach front on the Waratah Bay looking across the water to Wilsons Promontory. The Region is known as Gippsland.
In fact, Wilsons Promontory is an amazing National Park on a peninsula that is Australia’s Southern Most Point (not including Tasmania or other islands). It is about 2 1/2 hours by car from Melbourne. It is one of those Australian Destinations that is spectacular, amazingly beautiful, pristine nature, etc, etc. But, few people know about it.
Finding one of these great places can make for a very rewarding holiday. Figuring out how to do the marketing to get found is a nightmare. Jill has done all the right things: featured in travel shows like Getaways, spreads in newspapers and travel magazines and she’s won Victorian Tourism Awards for excellence.
So, our mission is to build a website and Internet Marketing process that will attract people to this little known destination and make them aware of Bear Gully and all that it has to offer. That will include a new website, linking and marketing strategies and a Pay-per-Click campaign with a small budget.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Google Maps, holiday houses, Victoria
Google Favourite Places and User Reviews
Google…. these guys never stop coming up with new stuff. Now, they have something new called Google Favourite Places. In fact, this could have a really big impact on business as it places easy to reach user reviews at the door step of every business.
It ties together being in a physical location, smart mobile phones and user reviews. Naturally, it loops into Google Maps and Local Business Centre as well with a liberal does on general net-connectivity in your pocket.
The video does a pretty good job of explaining. You’ll apply for a placard through Google Local Business Centre. The placard will have a barcode and manual code to make it fast and simple for the smart phone to bring up your reviews. You will (hopefully) read favourable things about the business and want to enter.
One could also assume that Coupons that can be added to your Local Business Listing would also be accessible. Therefore, someone standing on a corn with 4 restaurants would not only be able to see reviews, menus, pricing – they would also be able to access a coupon that would offer them special advantages such as discounts or extra services.
TripAdvisor and other Reviews:
At the moment, it would appear that Google likes a few review services. For Accommodation, they always include TripAdvisor reviews. ATDW has also created a document called ‘Tutorial 29 – Customer Reviews And TripAdvisor‘. So, more than ever – we need to start following what people are saying about us. It’s not always easy and it’s not always fair, but like it or not User Reviews will begin to affect your business.
How will Google Favourite Places affect Australian Accommodation?
Clearly Google is not moving as fast locally here in Australia as they are in California. Do we have the smart phones and connectivity to do all that – I would say yes. The number of Smart Phone users will only increase (dramatically).
Still, we need to get the Placards and we might find that Google does not issue them outside of select regions.
Are you safe from bad reviews if you don’t display a placard??? Of course not. Anyone can make reviews now. Anyone can find these reviews now. The placard just makes it easy and by logically assumption the confidence to display a placard must also mean the business is confident that their customers are getting good value.
Hmmm…. Good Service is important.
Tags: Google Favourite Places, Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, internet enabled mobile phones, Mobile Search, TripAdvisor
Running an Internet Business in Australia
I’m fascinated by how things are changing with the Internet. Changes that alter how we learn, politics, quality of life, entertainment and more. From a business prospective, the question is how to use change to attract more customers, transact business and share information.
Just because it is possible doesn’t mean you can do it here in Australia. Clearly, the Internet works differently from place to place. There are technical issues as well as social issues. For example, Internet Speeds are 100 times faster in some countries – did you know the average speed of broadband in South Korea is 100 megabytes?
Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft – is an example where you can see wrong information in their Live Maps, but when you try to log in to fix them – you must have an address in the USA to get started. Why give the link to manage your account and then require the address to be in the USA? Don’t you just hate that!
A recent post described the Android Phone where you can get traffic predictions to plan your route through a city. The phones even know the colour of traffic lights as you approach – will we ever see that in Australia? One must assume so, but when.
I’ve just gotten a Kindle from Amazon. It is an eBook reader. It will store 1500 books and wirelessly load and update newspapers and magazines the instant they are published. I’ve already read a couple of books and find it to be a very pleasing way to read. But, not all book titles can be purchased here in Australia even though they are delivered electronically. If I change my account details to display another country, I immediately get 30% more book titles to choose from including Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly. Why can’t I get the same books just because I live in Australia?
I heard a prediction that the average kid’s iPod will hold 85 years of video. Then, the question is how do you watch it all? But, when you have these amazing libraries of video – is the goal entertainment. Perhaps instead you have a reference library that tells you everything from CPR to how to repair a toaster. Or, will toasters come preloaded with repair videos?
Even though I feel at times a little hard done by when my Internet speeds drop to 100k even though I’ve been sold 8 megabytes (yet to be seen in reality) I do take heart in the fact that things could be worse.
Using Jing for Screen Capture Video
There are a number of good products to make screen capture for both video and still images. The advantage of doing a video screen capture is that you can make a quick and dirty instructional video. Perhaps it is something to explain something to a single customer or something to add to your help files for everyone.
In this case, I am trying out Jing, which is a free service. For a little bit more, you can have the Pro version that may have some additional benefits for simple upload to YouTube and they remove the branding. So, here’s my second attempt to use Jing – it’s also my first attempt. What happened was I recorded a video, but forgot to turn mute off – so the first video did not capture any sound. So, I made a second video where I captured the first video and talked while it played. I would guess that quality improves when you do it right the first time. 
Set Up Directory Listing for Come On Aussie (click to view original size video)
Making this video was very easy. Uploading it was also very easy. Whether I’ve been able to make something easy to watch is another question, but certainly Jing is very easy. The limit on video capture is 5 minutes. I suspect if you upgrade to Pro for $14.95 per year that limit may go away.
Oh yes, use Come on Aussie
Using Wordle to Make Keyword Word Clouds
I went to the ‘Search Engine Boot Camp‘ last week to see what I could learn and picked up a few good tips and reconfirmed a few things I already knew. One item that seems like fun and perhaps will also be useful is creating ‘Word Clouds’ using Wordle.
A Word Cloud would be a jumble of words where the more frequently repeated words are emphasized with size. Naturally, when you review the text of your web pages, you would like to see the most important keywords are the largest words in the cloud.
Using Wordle is very easy – I like that! Just copy the text from a page and paste it into the box and click create. With web pages, Search Engines see everything, so I would suggest you use the ctrl+a command to select all. Then, you’ll get the whole page. One very important thing Wordle does not see is your Meta Page Title. That’s a shame because that is very important for Keywords – perhaps add it to the words manually.
Here’s an example for Australian Holiday Guide for Motel and Hotel Accommodation.
Here’s another example for Great Ocean Road Holiday Guide for Motel and Hotel Accommodation.
With the Great Ocean Road, it is easier to target keywords as the subject is narrower, but there is still a lot of important keywords to consider. Most motel websites have fewer important keyword topics and you’ll see they can be easily covered with a few pages. Remember, you may not get the best result putting all your Keywords on one page. Instead, use a couple of pages to target specific keyword themes.
Naturally, if you have a hotel or motel website, then your most important keywords would be
- Business Name
- Location: Town, Region and State
- Product Type: Accommodation, Motel, etc.
When you see the cloud misses these major keywords, you’ll need to go back to your page and update the text. I can see that Australian Holiday Guide should have more emphasis on Product Type words.
Hope you enjoy this new toy.
Tags: keywords, SEO, websites, Wordle
Looking for a reliable Roamfree alternative?
Roamfree has been in the news lately with headlines like “Roamfree in Voluntary Receivership” and “Roamfree Offshoots Up For Sale“. What does it mean and how will it effect our industry?
My ‘guess’ from reading the news is that they’ve grown too fast and their business model didn’t cover costs. A classic dot.com bubble story – will they never learn?
Roamfree spent money like crazy to grab market share in the hope that they could ruin their competition and be the last one standing. They wanted to own Australia’s Travel Industry.
Roamfree says accommodations don’t need to fear losses on advance payments for bookings. “These funds are secure, not impacted by the administration and will be paid as normal”. Travel Agents are suppose to maintain trust accounting to protect hotels. So, no one should loose out from that prospective.
A lot of websites, Visitor Information Centres and other demand channels rely on Roamfree and their BookEasy products. I would guess they won’t let Roamfree go down too easily if they have a say in the outcome.
Our business (Web Reservation Systems) has always grown the slow way; using cash flow and providing strong customer service. We never borrowed money and gambled that we could win big. We missed out on some good deals as potential partners were drawn to the glitz of Roamfree as they splashed their cash around town.
Time will tell how the Roamfree debacle comes clean. Perhaps we will be rewarded for taking the slow and steady option. We certainly have a solid business, great products and willing attitude to help.
Google Maps and Google Real Estate
I recently came across a new development in Local Search from Google to highlight Real Estate Searches where you can see both Houses for Sale and Houses for Rent. It is a very powerful tool and it has the potential to change the way people look for Real Estate.
Google has something called Google Base where they are developing general and vertical search markets to sell products. They have a vertical called Google Base for Real Estate. Thru Google Base, you can upload listings to their maps. Many big databases like HomeHound and RealEstate.com are already uploading content to Google now; so many Real Estate agents are displayed in results today and probably don’t even realize it.
What’s this got to do with Accommodation?
Well, I would guess that there are a number of vertical markets that Google will target and Travel is very obviously of interest. Microsoft’s search engine Bing targets travel with suggestions for flights and accommodation – all linked to their travel services and others that pay for placement in results.
Access to sell through Bing will probably go through channels that many small accommodation providers won’t typically use such as Expedia. Perhaps Wotif or others will also make deals to display their content.
Will Google maintain it’s unbiased results? Are search results meant to display the most relevant content or the content that makes the search engine money? I suspect Google will not blatantly get into sales – at least I hope not.
Google Base and Google’s Local Business Center give small businesses tools add their content to results. So they won’t be excluded if they don’t use listing services, but naturally this means business owners need to stay on top of what is happening.
There are options now to add Travel Packages to Google Base. Packages are different than a general accommodation listing because they have an expiry date and must be constantly updated. There are a number of ways to maintain updates. I haven’t seen them show up in general search results, but it will happen. For now, I’m waiting to see results.
I’ll keep a look out for anything new with Google Base. It is a sleeper that may pop up with new challenges that we should watch carefully.
Tags: Google Base, Google Local Business Centre, Google Maps, Real Estate
Just Back From Holiday
Hi Everyone,
Just returned from holiday with my son Reade who is 12. We rented a Campervan from KEA and travelled for 20 days from Brisbane in Queensland down to the Great Ocean Road in Victoria and then back up through Canberra and Sydney to Brisbane.
It was really great to get out and see Australia. There are some really lovely country towns and some great nature. I found driving through central NSW was very pleasant and there was constantly changing scenery.
Camping along the Great Ocean Road between Portland and Warrnambool
I highly recommend a campervan because you can go where you want stopping anywhere along the way to make something to eat or camp for the night. We even stayed the night at the Thredbo parking lot and skied in the morning when the ski lifts opened.
Now I’ve got the task of sorting out my computer and getting back to work. One of my jobs after I get through all the e-mails will be to look at the video I took with my camera and see that needs to be done to upload to YouTube. I have a pretty simple Panasonic Lumix camera and before I left I made some test video and they seemed to work just fine.
My goal is to upload a series of videos on Skate Parks – that ended up being a strong theme of our trip. I’ll upload some links once I get started.
Mark