During the past three months, I have jumped feet first into the world of social media. Twitter, Facebook and blogging have been my preferred methods.
Once you start writing, the key is that you have to feed the monster. Some can do it every day, a couple of times a week, or just once a week. From some simple observations of stats for my blog, I have noticed a pattern developing. I happen to get the most visits on Tuesdays. I have read that other travel related bloggers have reported Tuesday as their high visit day as well. I have no idea why this is so; but it is something to consider when you may want to blog a promotion.
With that in mind, I want to encourage everyone to take a laptop, netbook or a smart phone with you on your next trip. You could be taking a FAM, a personal trip or leading a group—it doesn’t matter. Make yourself write about your experiences as they are happening—that way the content will be as fresh as it is ever going to be. Also take a digital camera and a method of transferring those pictures to your laptop or netbook.
Mental images are nice for radio, but blogging is a visual medium. People love to see travel experiences. What do you think clients are going to respond more to; another sales email or an invitation from someone to share an experience? Invite your prospects to vacation with you in spirit if not in person. Make them feel like they are truly missing out. With blogging, you are not just telling them the story, you are painting the canvas as well.
Before a recent cruise with my daughter, I sent out a link to my blog as part of my newsletter. A few days before we left, I sent out a reminder invitation to have people “virtually” cruise along with us. I stepped onto the ship, purchased internet minutes and began to take pictures and write about our daily experiences. I would log on a few times each day during the cruise and upload what I had written and as well as several images to accompany the narrative.
Honestly, the grammar likely would have made a teacher blush; but to a degree, it added to the experience of “now”. Once uploaded, I would also post the link to both Facebook and Twitter. I also use Twitterfeed, an application that will Tweet my blog entries 12 hours after they appear, in order to capture a larger audience—one that may not be in the same time zone.
When I checked the statistics of visits to my blog during the week I traveled, I had over a 500% increase in unique visitors per day. My highest hit day was on Tuesday with Saturday coming in second. The Tuesday before I started my trip I had nine unique visitors, the Tuesday during my trip, I had ninety-four. Comments were made to the blog, but more showed up on Facebook under the posts which linked to a particular entry.
As I write this, the phone has not been ringing with people begging to do the cruise I just finished. However, I know the interest is there; and now I need to harness that interest. Studying these statistics was definitely an eye opener for me and made me realize that I need to keep this social media on the top of my mind daily. This was a trial for me this time, but in the future, it will be mandatory. I may not be blogging, Tweeting and Facebooking every day, but certainly I will be updating where in the world I am on Tuesday!
Chuck Flagg is an independent owner/operator with Cruise Holidays in Canton, GA. For information contact Chuck at cflagg@cruiseholidays.com or by phone at 770-355-9569.
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2 thoughts on “Clients living vicariously through your travels”
I followed along with your cruise Chuck, and it was great to see you having such a good time. I am sure it gave your clients a lot to think about as well.
I just cam eback from a University at Seas with Cruise and Travel University and they talked about the very thing this article is about. I will be looking into doing this myself, as I see the interest is truly there. Thanks for sharing this info. with us.