22. Optimized title Photo gallery YouTube video player Extended Description Contact info
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25. Questions? Thank you! Michelle Sears Database Marketing Assistant [email_address] T: (902) 424-0939 Cynthia Bragg Digital Community Liaison [email_address] T: (902) 722-3142 Susan Jeffries Festivals & Events [email_address] T: (902) 424-5486 Tanya Johnson Internet Marketing Officer [email_address] T: (902) 424-2682
Notes de l'éditeur
Competitive environment and visitors are looking for a deal
Here are the building blocks. We started building pages at the end of April and we’ve accomplished a lot with all of them. While we are looking to build followers, each engagement should be authentic and build the brand online. In social media there are many schemes to build followers but we are looking to build relationships. Rules-authentic, relevent, mindful of tone? Not without risk. Not without backlash.
What to do on Facebook? Create a group of interest around something unique to your operation or community?
Share pics of your property, events, your area
Tweet about events that are happening. Rt things that are happening to your community. Join conversation, keep search of things that are relevant.
Here is a screenshot of one of Wally’s blogs from this fall. Wally was actually contacted by a couple in South Carolina this fall for help in planning their trip to Nova Scotia as they were following his blog posts on where to leaf watch!
The other section under the Blogs and Forums button in the main menu is, of course, blogs. In 2009 we launched our blog platform and we currently have 5 bloggers that write frequently on novascotia.com about areas and places they visit in our province. We are always looking for more bloggers so if you are interested, please let us know!
Here is a screenshot of one of Wally’s blogs from this fall. Wally was actually contacted by a couple in South Carolina this fall for help in planning their trip to Nova Scotia as they were following his blog posts on where to leaf watch!
For those of you that have offered packages or deals on novascotia.com in the past you know that you had to pay for this opportunity. In 2010, placing Travel Packages and Deals on novascotia.com will be free. So why offer packages and deals? When travelers are researching for trips, they not only want a place to stay, they want to know what there is to do when they get to their destination. By creating a package to assist with this research you could potentially increase the room nights and time spent in your region. With Deals you could be enticing a person to come to your area and once they make contact you have the opportunity to continue conversation and help them with the trip planning Packages, along with having their own searchable section on novascotia.com will be featured in monthly and weekly lures on the website, linked to the listing of operators that are featured in packages, and will be featured in a once a month packaging email that goes out to subscribers all over the world. Packages can also be features though our social media channels and by our bloggers. We’ll discuss these a bit later. Packages offer visitors additional information on experiences, accommodations, festival & events, etc. in one stop for one price. Novascotia.com will not be taking payment, rather we will direct visitors to the package holder.
Combine a package that offers at least two items. i.e. two night’s accommodations, a 3 hour whale watching tour, breakfast each morning Package availability: Spring, Summer and into Fall Price – $249 + HST per couple Policies – $249 per couple + HST; Subject to conditions. BE SPECIFIC!
A Travel Deal offers the traveler an incentive to come stay at your accommodation, eat in your restaurant, shop in your gallery/store.
For those of you that have offered packages or deals on novascotia.com in the past you know that you had to pay for this opportunity. In 2010, placing Travel Packages and Deals on novascotia.com will be free. So why offer packages and deals? When travelers are researching for trips, they not only want a place to stay, they want to know what there is to do when they get to their destination. By creating a package to assist with this research you could potentially increase the room nights and time spent in your region. With Deals you could be enticing a person to come to your area and once they make contact you have the opportunity to continue conversation and help them with the trip planning Packages, along with having their own searchable section on novascotia.com will be featured in monthly and weekly lures on the website, linked to the listing of operators that are featured in packages, and will be featured in a once a month packaging email that goes out to subscribers all over the world. Packages can also be features though our social media channels and by our bloggers. We’ll discuss these a bit later. Packages offer visitors additional information on experiences, accommodations, festival & events, etc. in one stop for one price. Novascotia.com will not be taking payment, rather we will direct visitors to the package holder.
Titles separate Travel Packages and Travel Deals Summary is displayed Visitors click to read the full offer.
`Insert Core Experience title, show travel deal call out, blog feed, etc. Michelle – please add the following on a click: Point to the masthead When the masthead is clicked, it drops down and plays a video. The tiles on the side lure visitors to the other core experiences on the website Point to the filmstrip The area under the masthead allows us to lure to the sub pages and content related to the main core experience Point to the Travel Packages & Travel Deals lure On the right side of the page are lures to Travel Packages and Travel Deals. When a visitor clicks on the lure, they will be brought to a page which displays all the travel packages or deals which are related to the core experience (in this case culture – music, cultural, festival & events, etc would all examples) Point to the Festival & Events lure Festival & event lures are also included in the right side of the page and when clicked a visitor is taken to the festival & event page where related events will be displayed. Point to the Photo Gallery lure This lure will take visitors to a photo gallery, we are working on being able to showcase our user generated photos in our Nova Scotia Tourism flickr group here. Pont to the Video lure and also the view video link below When visitors click on either of these links a YouTube video player will slide open. The YouTube player will allow visitors to select between department, partner and user generated videos. If you have a video that showcases an experience, please contact us about getting your video placed in these areas. Videos which promote an individual business are placed within operator listings, however more generic videos which promote experiences or areas can be placed in YouTube players like this one. Arrow to point to the related links Under related links, we will link to association websites, blog entries, etc.
Why should you list your festivals and event on novascotia.com? You heard in the presentation yesterday that by the end of 2009 there will have been approximately 1.5 million visits to novascotia.com. People are coming to the website for travel research and finding out what there is to see and do is part of this research. Like Packages and Deals, we are always pulling content from festivals and events to feature on various lures throughout the website, in our email campaigns, throughout our social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, etc. and our bloggers can use this content for blogs – to either promote an event happening in an area or to talk about their experience at the event. So let’s look at how to add your events to novascotia.com!
So how will festivals & events appear on the new novascotia.com?
We are going to run through the different pieces of a listing which are available for operators, there is no charge for any of these items. All the details we are about to cover are in your handouts. The main contact for these programs and any questions you might have is Michelle Sears, and her contact information is also in the handouts. Arrow to point to the seo title of the page. The title of the page will also appear like this in the navigation. It is now optimized which allows this page to be crawled by search engines. This will dramatically help novascotia.com to be optimized for search terms within listings (for example popular words like hotel, Inns, Bed & Breakfast, whale watching, museums, art galleries, vineyards, etc.) This will also mean that operator individual listing pages will begin to rank in google for organic search. So it is very likely when you search for your property in google, not only will your website appear but your listing on novascotia.com will appear as well. Arrow to point to the blue header: Contact information is always displayed no matter what tab the visitor chooses to select Arrow to point to the itinerary and checkin buttons Add to itinerary button and Book Now! button (if you’re a check in member) are always present Arrow to point to the photo and video areas Photos and videos are always displayed when the different tabs are selected You can showcase 7 photos with short 9 word captions 1 video per listing Arrow to extended description - Extended Description can be up to 400 characters long It is an opportunity to market your business, previously we were confined by the description used in the travel guide but now we can add an additional description which allows you to promote: What is unique about your business What do visitors love about your business What are your selling points
Full listing of an operator who is taking full advantage of all the marketing programs and click to show a basic listing and basic listing. Re-emphasis the point of how important it is to participate. Which one would you most likely book?