www.douglampi.com

If you haven’t already, go and subscribe to the Tourism Keys Blog by Todd Lucier.

http://www.tourismkeys.ca/blog

I’m not associated with Todd in any way - He’s a Guru I recommend,

I also recommend Michael Campbell of http://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com

and, for those who also market with sport shows and trade shows: Barry Siskind of http://www.siskindtraining.com

OK - that’s almost the last post on DougLampi.com
- soon I’ll be redirecting this domain to Quetico Internet Marketing.

There was a day when I created a new website for each new subject area I needed to study. Most of the time I didn’t care if people found it or read it… they were like my University Notes - just in a place where I can find them.

The multiple websites helped me create a mini-net of internet real-estate that was very useful in search engine optimization tactics.

However, these days, it’s easy to create 100 useful Social Profiles and use those as your mini-net for search engine ranking strategies. In addition, I’m now finding out that much of my old content gains a steady stream of traffic - and now that I’ve become more professional in my blogging, the visitors are clicking on the content, leaving comments, subscribing to my feeds - and yes, submitting requests for Web Design and Internet Marketing Quotes.

And so, I’ll be rolling a few of my Blogs together soon, making it easy for me to update one place, making it easy for you to search through some of my earlier jibberish, AND, making my old content start to earn some alternate revenue from my audience…

Yes. Blogging Works.

Cheers! Doug.

Like the mechanic who is to busy to fix his own car, my business website is often the last one to get TLC.

However, there are many times when I’m experimenting with new technologies - and my own website is the best place to test things out.

New Client Needs

Blogging is gaining it’s foothold in Tourism Marketing. But many websites are built on legacy systems that don’t include a blog with an RSS feed.

As a temporary solution, many tourism businesses are using free blog services like wordpress.com or blogger.com.

This solution is only temporary, because the powerful and easy-to-use free blogging platforms split your visitors away from your main business website.

Recently, I’ve been implementing solutions to this problem.

The new websites I’m creating for tourism business across Northwestern Ontario, now include a traditional website structure, *and* a blog, within one content management system.

While I’m going through the process of re-creating and upgrading LittleMoose.com, WhitefishBayCamp.com and a new website for Ogoki Frontier, I’m piggy-backing many of the same technology upgrades to up own business website - QueticoInternetMarketing.com

GOT RSS?

If you don’t know what RSS is, your website doesn’t have it.
It’s almost like being without email. You need it.

They are actually rather addicting!

Watching Shoppers Shop

It’s like the manager’s view in a big department store. First they watched your shopping behaviour through a one-way mirror.  Now they have video cameras to track the patterns of where people walk, and ‘Club Cards’ to track the patterns of what people buy.

The One-Way Mirror

Google Analytics gives you a great view of your visitor stats and behaviour.  But it’s updated once each day, and only lets you watch what the visitor did.

Interactive, Real Time Visitor Stats

I’ve been spending hours today watching my website visitors in real time with Woopra

It’s very interesting to watch people click through my sites - to see the pages they read, and watch how long they remain on each page.

Geo-Targetted

My aim is to gather an audience from the Mid-West United States, and present them with information about vacation and travel opportunities within my back yard, Northwestern Ontario.

By watching the visitor behaviour in real-time with Woopra, I can really see the difference in how visitors from different areas of the world use the site:  people from Michigan go directly to pages with information about Michigan.  People from India, Russia and China leave without clicking another page.

Are we ready for interactive stats?

Woopra lets you send a real time chat request!

With Woopra, you can ’see’ in real-time, when a visitor stalls at a certain point in the buying process - and you can send your visitor a chat request!  A small window pops up in the lower left corner of their screen, and you receive a confirmation if they receive the chat request!

While it *is* just like a helpful store clerk asking if they can help, I’m not sure my website visitors are quite ready for it yet.

I consider myself pretty web-savvy, and I’ve come to grips, mostly, with the idea of how Social Media can bare your life to the world… and even though, in the back of my mind, I know stats are taken when I visit a site - I’m not sure how I’m going to react when the first ‘Real Time Web Help’ is offered to me as I browse a site…

Even if you have Google Analytics on your website already, add Woopra too!