Welcome to Tactical Thinking Regular thoughts on web marketing & winter tourism from Tactic Group

Following on from last weeks Commissioning a Pro Photographer post, we have the interview itself.

Here’s Camilla Stoddart in the witness stand, ready for questioning…

Hi Camilla, thanks for making the time for this interview. Can we start with a brief run down on your experience behind the lens?

“As far as experience goes, I did go to a swanky top London Art School (St Martins) but I didn’t study photography. I am all self taught, and really believe in getting out there, shooting as much as you can and rolling with it. Sure there are lots of technical things that I should know, but over the years I am slowly teaching myself out of trial and error and reaping the benefits, making mistakes, learning from them and experimenting. I find this has helped me grow into a more creative and free-thinking photographer.”

Nice. So a lot of people fancy themselves as a bit of a photographer. Tell me, why should someone commission your services rather than shoot it personally?

“This is where I try not to sound like a ponsy photog right? I really believe that you have an eye or you don’t. As harsh as this sounds, I think it is very true. A singer is born with a good voice, as much as an illustrator is born able to draw. You can teach yourself how to become better at these things, and learn how to get the skills, but to truly thrive in your field I think you have to have natural born talent. Having never been taught how to shoot photos, I feel that I have developed my own style, taste and way of seeing. There are many people out there who can take photos for sure, but to be able to get an image ‘that speaks a thousand words’, takes more than just point and shoot. Told you I was going to sound ponsy…!”

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With the best intentions of continuous posting we began a photography series last February. Blogging plans often seem to elude us mid-series, but never-the-less the final posts in this series are almost complete.

It’s actually a good thing we waited to write this post, as we’ve since performed a fun social media project for our friend, and the interviewee in this post, Camilla over at Whiteroom Pictures.

WRP blog project

Camilla was in the process of re-designing her web site and wanted to develop her brand within the social media world. With a strong Facebook following already, this was easily done with a Wordpress blog. We designed the blog to fit alongside her new web site with very similar aesthetics and layout, but just a few subtle differences. We also created a blogging strategy to assist her as time goes on.

For more information about the project we performed look out for the case study, coming soon on Tactic Group.

In the meantime, let’s get back to the topic at hand…

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Today I’ve got a cracking quote to share, and hopefully a little food for thought to go with it.

I’ve just started reading the copywriting guide ‘Words That Work’ by the political consultant and speechwriter, Dr. Frank Luntz. As you’d expect from a book on this topic, the main theme is masterfully condensed into the strapline “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”.

I was barely three pages in when I read a passage that really caught my attention:

“The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener’s shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives you is even more real, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself.”

Even though the words above are about speechwriting the advice is just as valid for crafting web content. Further than that, it applies well to other aspects of what we do as web designers and publishers.

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Last week I wrote our first post in a new mini-series on Social Media, discussing Twitter.

We’ve since come across some fascinating statistics detailing the top ten countries that Twitter receives traffic from. Our international audience may find this rather eye-opening. Check it out…

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With the new year comes new resolutions, new plans and new ideas – hold up, scrap that – here’s what this is without all the rambling…

A new mini-series of posts from Tactical Thinking about how Social Media is being used in the Snow Sports and general Adventure Tourism Industries.

It’s always nice to associate things with the beginnings of another calendar year, but I think I’m a few weeks late on that note.

So here it is; post number one in our new series and in it we’ll be discussing last years big social media development Twitter. Now if you don’t know what Twitter is, don’t fret…

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

… in other terms it’s a free micro-blogging platform that allows people and businesses to communicate short and simple messages quickly to their audience.

Rather than explain all the benefits and intricacies of Twitter itself, we thought it best to just show you how others are using it in the many different ways it can be applied.
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In light of the recent economic doom and gloom, and before 2008 could see it’s end, UK-based travel web site Travolution asked a cross-section of executives and commentators for their travel predictions for 2009.

For the first time senior executives and bloggers stare into their crystal balls to second-guess the events which will shape the industry over the course of the next 12 months

Now before you delve right in, be aware: this is a very long post! There’s some interesting perspectives to be read and a few clashing views (always fun!), but it’s a good insight none-the-less. To save you a bit of time we’ve picked out the six most relevant points for our specific audience…
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It’s been a while since our last Tactical Thinking post hasn’t it? One of the draw backs of being a small company, something has to go on the back-burner when you get too busy.

Well, we’re back on the business blogging buzz with some new thoughts and ideas to share with you. Our latest project, amphitheatre, has provided us with some amazing insights into the world of large-scale, multi-author blogging. First on the agenda; how to increase user interactivity through voting polls.

Some call it link-baiting. I think of it as improving a site’s user-interactivity to increase the number of return visitors.

First, let’s just clarify why one would want to increase their web site’s user-interactiveness. If a web site truly engages it’s users there is a greater chance of those users coming back to the site, improving the number of repeat visits as well as visitor loyalty. Think about some of the web sites that you visit on a regular basis. I think you’ll find that many of them encourage your involvement in one aspect or another.

Polls and surveys are a strong method to encourage this user-interactivity.
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Over the past month we’ve been working hard developing our latest Wordpress blog called amphitheatre – just launched!

This is a community web site, pulling local resources together to create a wide range of content in hope of appealing to a large cross-section of viewers. The site itself focuses 100% on a mountain in New Zealand that is home to two ski resorts run by the same company; Whakapapa and Turoa on Mt Ruapehu. The resorts are the largest in NZ, but relatively unknown overseas. A massive percentage of Ruapehu’s visitors are within 4 hours drive of the mountain and are what most would consider ‘regular customers’.

This being the case, it’s the perfect place to trial a new business model we’ve been working on. I won’t give away too much about it, but the model is aimed at adventure tourism communities with fairly captive audiences.

Take a look around and throw some feedback our way if you feel inclined to do so. It’s not quite 100% finished, but what web sites ever are?

Also, if you’re interested in what we’re doing, get in touch and we’ll tell you a little bit more about it. Maybe you know of a similar community where this model could be applied?

Catherine Holahan penned a brief, but interesting, article for Business Week on how Google plan to expand their efforts in the online travel arena. In an interview with Holahan, Rob Torres, Google’s managing director for travel said:

the goal of Google’s travel division—aside from tapping into the $90+ billion global travel ad and sales market—is to give users a destination where they can research travel plans, read user reviews, and see user uploaded videos and photos. Already, about 50% of travelers use some sort of online social media site to research their plans, says Torres. Why not give them a one-stop shop for travel information? “We are already so highly searched for travel,”

This news adds to the speculation that Google are doing a lot of work around ‘vertical search’, and the travel market could be one of the first industries to see the effects.

There are also concerns from travel operators and marketers that Google could to use their strong position and large resources to quickly dominate the online travel market. However, it is unlikely that Google would want to enter the market for online bookings or sales due to the sheer scale of that undertaking.

So for operators and tour companies this could be good news, but for the myriad of hotel booking portals and cheap-flight brokers maybe not so good. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth keeping track of this development.

A few days back I wrote a post about brand monitoring and how negative customer comments posted on social media platforms are not always a bad thing.

Yesterday, I spotted this post from Darren Rowse (producing the goods again and again) reviewing a new reputation management tool called Trackur. Here’s a snippet of what Darren has to say about it:

“Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool that has been developed for companies and individuals wanting to take a serious look at what is being said about them in the blogosphere. I can also see the possibilities for using this tool for higher end bloggers who want to track what’s being written about them and/or their niche topic.”

Whilst this may well be too heavy for many of our readers, I think you may find it interesting that such tools even exist. A much lighter alternative is Google Alerts – worth a look if you’re concerned with what’s being said about you across the all-mighty vortex of the World Wide Web.