Seasonal Site Enhancements for Vacation Rental

To ensure some good 19-inch dumps, we do a snow dance to the Scandinavian snow god, Ullr. Apart from favorable conditions, you might be surprised at how few in the vacation rental and luxury lodging industry think about the importance of seasonality on their website. For would-be travelers there’s almost nothing more important. Here are a few simple tips for to prep your site for success this winter:

Theme your site for the season. Whether you’re located in Hawaii or Colorado, choose pictures that help your prospects picture themselves enjoying your resort. Change pictures of people rafting or mountain biking to nice shots of people taking face shots in untracked powder. Better yet, configure your site to have a summer theme and a winter theme that your site visitors can select, and that you can quickly update to display as the default theme as needed.

Integrate real-time weather feeds and reports. Snow reports, surf reports, and tidal forecasts will bring potential travelers back to your site again and again, especially during the lead up to their vacations. If you have activity packages such as snorkeling, flyfishing, yacht rentals, lift tickets, ski lessons, etc., be sure to advertise them on your weather page.

sources: http://www.bluetentmarketing.com/blog/

Marketing for iPhone Applications

We’ve recently received several requests for help in marketing iPhone Applications. Because we provide a lot of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services in a variety of industries, many of the companies that contacted us assumed that the strategies we traditionally employ would work for iPhone apps. Does Apple provide a way to pay to have an app listed or featured more prominently on the iTunes site, similar to Google Adwords? Should I have a website, blog, twitter about it?

It’s difficult to give a definitive answer, but here’s what we’re seeing so far. Creating a viral buzz throughout the iPhone community is tough. iPhone users find the most popular apps through iTunes, but also learn of new apps through reviews, forums and blogs through traditional online searches. A search for iPhone apps on Facebook reveals over 500 listings, and who knows what the absolute number is. What seems to be the most efficient is an organic approach that consistently and effectively approaches as many review sites, blogs and social media outlets as is possible, while tracking the activity of your downloads.