http://www.matterhorntips.com Quick hitting tips and information for marketing your travel and tourism business ... Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:29:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week, I was given an opportunity to present at a West Virginia Department of Agriculture "short-course". The presentation focused on how everyone, including small agriculture-based companies, can benefit from having a website. It was a special opportunity for me to give back a tiny bit to a community that played ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/agri-tourism-presentation-files Like an old basketball coach would say...."Follow-Through!". You spend time and money to drive traffic to your website. Many of us in the travel and tourism industry rely on visitors to submit forms, requesting additional information or to check availability. Sadly, the follow-up on these requests is often lacking attention which ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/have-traffic-now-what Make it easy for people to buy from you. Simple enough isn't it? We are all in the business of selling things whether it be products or services. The more we sell, the more profitable we become, the more we can invest in our companies and subsequently the level of success trends ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/forgive-the-rant-but-there-is-a-lesson-here I have had a number of questions about this lately; "Don't people read anything?". The answer is....yes, visitors do read online, just in a different way. Keep website copy succinct. Brevity, online, is a virtue...and bullet points can provide information quickly. For example... Instead of: Our cabins include a wide variety of amenities including utensils, ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/do-people-read-on-the-web Participate! It is your product, your website - invest the time to participate to ensure you receive the type and quality of website you expect. All too often I see companies select a designer and SEO, then disappear, leaving design teams, strategists and marketers in the lurch. The end result is ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/you-have-hired-a-website-designer-and-seonow-what This is Part II in a series of posts giving a top-level overview of the components of Internet Marketing. Pay Per Click (PPC) listings augment (in some cases are the sole results) organic listings in a number of search engines. These listings appear alongside, or adjacent to the organic listings. Additionally ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/internet-marketing-overview-part-ii-pay-per-click-campaigns Part one in a series giving top-level overviews and information on the components of Internet Marketing. Search Engine Optimization - SEO Search Engine Optimization is a process with the intent to improve the volume and quality of traffic driven to your website via natural, or "organic", search. Pay Per Click, or PPC, ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/internet-marketing-overview-part-i-search-engine-optimization This is a brief recap of a poignant presentation I made at a recent conference. I crammed a tremendous amount of information into a roughly 16 minute period. Brief, quick hitting...and admittedly, cursory. Here it is in a nutshell. In developing your website you need to take a number of things into ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/5-things-to-consider-in-developing-and-marketing-your-travel-and-tourism-website Some local search information that is going to help people find you...this is going to be posted as I have time to review it. Here are two solid options to get you started. Yahoo! Local Merchant You can choose from three different levels of service, depending upon what you are trying to accomplish...and ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/local-search-i Those that use CSS for page layout, know what I mean. As I have learned more and more about CSS and ways to use it to position page elements and provide unique styling options, (beyond the typical font and link styling) I find myself saying, "why didn't I use this ... http://www.matterhorntips.com/i-you-css