A Grey-beard’s Adventure in On-line Marketing

Tell you a little secret? It all falls into place if you start by attending a seminar.

Regular readers of my blog at This Tourism Week will know Gerry’s name quite well. And you need to know about Gerry, too - or at least to find yourself a Gerry - because Gerry was the guy who unlocked Web 2-point-Oh for me.

Oh, for the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us! Mind you, it’s probably a good thing I don’t know what was going on in Gerry’s head at first - because he must have thought I was the Luddite from hell. Or a raving idiot (both, probably).

See, Gerry sat me down one day over lunch at my favourite seafood restaurant - 34 South, here in Knysna - and if I remember correctly he even paid for the meal. And he tried, poor man, to sell me on the idea of Web 2-point-Oh (this was maybe two years back).

But I just didn’t get it.

What he was trying to tell me was basically what I told you last week (read it here). Marketing, he said, has become a conversation, and the main conduit for that conversation is Web 2-point-Oh.

Then I started to hear about this new animal from other people, too, and I decided that I’d better try once again to understand what my pal was on about (this time, though, it was me who bought the lunch. It’s amazing how much you learn when you’re paying).

Basically Gerry does these seminars in the Southern Cape free of charge - believing his payback’ll come when you join his Web 2-point-Oh platform for South African Tourism at www.goactive.co.za (and by the way - this is typically how marketing works these days. Bloggers particularly. They’d rather try to influence others subtly than to bludgeon them with in-your-face advertising. It may take a lot longer, but the results are often a lot more solid. If you want to read what may be the seminal post on blogging as a marketing tool, check out The Corporate Weblog Manifesto).

As Gerry explained, social media uses various online technologies to get the conversation going - blogs, message boards, podcasts, Wikis, vlogs - and, and, and… (don’t understand? Go to Wikipedia.org and do a search).

So what’s this got to do with tourism?

Let’s start with blogging.

Last week I suggested you visit three sites that I thought showed something of how social media works for the travel industry: www.whl.travel; www.rhinoafrica.com and www.thistourismweek.co.za.

First: Rhino Africa. This is a content-rich site that’s firmly 2-point-Oh because it boasts a number of blogs - in both English and German - which are written by company employees who aim to convey their personal experiences of Africa. And, like all good blogs, it allows its readers to leave their comments behind for all to see (although I suspect these are moderated to make the bad ones go away. The owners of the site might like to read the Manifesto).

Still, it’s far ahead of the Web 1-point-Oh sites of yesteryear  - the old ‘static’ sites which were really just on-line brochures. And it is (as far as I can tell) a fine example of a corporate application of Web 2-point-Oh from one important point of view - it allows (some) conversation.

Second: the dot-travel domain is relatively new and search engines love it because you have to prove that you’re in the business before they’ll let you register your URL - so www.whl.travel will probably do very well.

But there’s another reason, too - their business model. Because whl.travel aims to make it just as possible for the little guy to sell his tourism product on line as it is for the big, giant, king-of-the-castle. So if you want to stay at Radebe’s B&B with Coffee Shack in Langa Township at R260.00 per person per night - or Steenberg in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs at R1,825.00 per night - this is one place where you can book for both.

Now I know that doesn’t make it a social networking site (after all, you can’t post comments and there’s no blog, message board, Wiki, podcast or vlog) but I think it’s significant because the mere fact that it makes e-commerce available to the little guy (plus the fact that it emphasises responsible tourism) puts it firmly within the ethos that defines social networking - which is to make things democratic and even slightly anarchic (and that’s right up my rebel-without-a-pause kind of street).

Then finally (3) there’s my own personal favourite - www.thistourismweek.co.za  (which is also my own personal site - and which was built on WordPress by [please take a bow] the good Mr. Laurence Tuck of Innate Advertising).

So what’s so significant about it?

Well. it’s mine. I can say what I like on it - and you can go there and say what you like, too. And the whole on-line world could, theoretically (if they found it) read it - which means it’s given me a reach that stretches beyond my puny budget ever could have done before.

Now all I have to do is find the magic words that’ll make everyone want to read me.

And, in all the noise of social networking and Web 2-point-Oh, that’s the real challenge. Which is good news for you - especially if you’re doing everything you can to be the best at what you do. Because it means that even in the chaos, excellence will always win through.

Talk To Me - Martin Hatchuel - martin@thistourismweek.co.za

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