Ask The Local Eye

I have been thinking about and researching how small local business in South Africa market their businesses for the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup. I specifically looked at guest house marketing strategies for 2010 Soccer World Cup. But I could not find any unique ways.

For example; when I searched Twitter for the phrase 2010 “guest house”, at the time, there were only 6 tweets with this phrase. Only six tweets! Searching Google for 2010 “guest house” there were 944,000 web pages with info. It’s clear that South African guest houses are not using social media strategies to freely promote their business. They use blogs and websites only.

There’s a problem and an opportunity here. If you are not on Twitter.com yet then go there, and use as many of the 14 proposed 2010 marketing strategies for your guest house. (You can also adapt these online marketing ideas for any small business, like tour operators, etc).

Here’s my list 14, 2010 Marketing Strategies For Your Guest House during the FIFA Soccer World Cup. These guest house marketing strategies will work but it will take time. Start today. Do it one bite at a time.

1. Start writing relevant press releases, the things to do, the food you provide, etc. The idea is that you share relevant and interesting angles. For example, there’s a story about the German Soccer team wearing bullet proof vest when they leave their South African hotels. If you are in a safe town like Simon’s Town I would write a press release with a heading, “2010 Simon’s Town Guest House Guests Can Leave Their Bullet Proof Vest At Home: Simon’s Town Is Safe.” Many over sea’s newspapers are talking about 2010 guest houses and hotels ripping soccer guest off. Why not write a press release on how to establish if guest houses are inflating their prices. The idea is that you must be see as a trustworthy expert. Publish these articles on your blog, twitter, facebook and at free press release sites. Here’s a South African free press release site I have used in the past. Here’s another international press release site that gets results.

    

2. Publish articles about your small business or guest house. For example, I was surprised to learn that many people visit Simon’s Town guest houses because of pelagic birds off our shores. Why not write an article about pelagic birds, the how, when and where to stay, and publish it to your blog and also publish it on free article distribution sites .
   

    

3. Distribute: When you publish an article, press release or blog post, distribute your guest house updates using Social Marker. “Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting your articles or website. But going through all of those social bookmarking sites is very time-consuming. That’s where SocialMarker.com comes in, the free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.The first time around will take time but then it will be a breeze the next time.

    

4. Integrate your blog, twitter, facebook and friendfeed accounts because you want auto-post updates to these sites. The ease or not of this idea depends on the blogging platform you use and your ability to pull RSS feeds in to these accounts. 
   

    

5. Get 2010 News: Subscribe to Google Alerts and Google News (using this idea on how to get your guest house blog article ideas using RSS). These alerts will bring you all relevant news, that you can use to write blog stories, articles and press releases.

    

6. The 2010 Fifa World Cup draw will be held on December 4 in Cape Town, make note of this date. Ensure that you know where the teams will be based and where they will play. This is critical info because you want to “keyword target” (7) these teams, and their supporters. 

    

7. Finding Targeted keywords. I have mentioned keywords but want to elaborate. You can use this Google Tool to find keywords. I also use Google Suggest. I don’t think the intention with Google Suggest was to research keywords but it works. Here’s a video on how to use Google Suggest to find keywords, from my friend Bill Myers.

    

8. Using Keywords. After you have written down your keyword phrases start using them as primers for the story you will write of the tweet you want to send. It’s important that you include at least one keyword phrase in your title or tweet, use it in the first paragraph, and then sprinkle it through your article. Use the keyword phrase again in your final paragraph. Creating a link(s) using your keyword phrase is also a good idea. It’s therefore important that you write for searchers and not only for readers.
   

    

9. Be accessible: Your potential 2010 Soccer guest will be sceptical / are sceptical. You need to start a conversation with them. This conversation is not conditional. It’s free. You can read my short ebook on Cultivation for more. You should invite questions and answer them from the hart.
   

    

10. Be Sticky: Everyone who visits your blog, came to visit it because you did something correctly. Now that you have him we need to try and keep him within your sphere of influence (stick to you). Although your final objective is to get more people to your guest house or business….this takes time and you need to cultivate a relationship. Your intermediate objective is to get your visitors to subscribe to your updates. Therefore you need to give them a compelling reason to subscribe.
    

     

11. Make it easy to subscribe to your updates: Social media sites, like Twitter.com make it easy for people to follow you, but your blog may only have a RSS feed to subscribe to. I suggest you also add an email blog-update subscription box. You can use a product like Feedburner.com, a free Google product, that will convert RSS feeds to email. When you update your blog, all your subscribers gets an email with the new story. (This reminds me; You should stay in touch with my updates and subscribe here using feedburner). 

     

12. Market Narrow: When you write a story are a tweet using the keyword phrase “guest house” alone is a waste of time. But “guest house in cape town” is closer to the narrow market that I propose. “Guest house in Cape Town 2010″ is even narrower. I see people are also  searching for “2010 travel goods show”. There are many other search terms. Now, why not write a story (or a few stories) about good shows using this keyword phrase and tell them where to stay when they watch the show.

     

13. Leaving a spoor. Ensure that you leave an easily detectable spoor wherever you go online. This spoor, although it may have a narrow focus (12) must be distributed throughout all online media.  Points 1, 2 and 3 covered some of the spoor leaving tools. Others include having a signature, including your social addresses for your blog, twitter, facebook, youtube and other. Another effective idea is to join travel forums focusing on 2010 and start answering questions. Again you need to setup an effective signature.

     

14. Have Fun: If you cannot have fun doing this then you may as well leave it. If you like to market then start today, the adventure will be great and the results amazing. 

     

Posted via email from The Fisherman’s Secret