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?