What is Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system (CMS) is a program that lets you edit your website’s content without needing to know any programming language. It is a must-have for all tourism operators.

If you have built your website yourself, you might be familiar with Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Publisher. These programs are not content management systems but are used by (often novice) web developers to build the code of your website. In order for you to edit your content, your web developer will need to add a content management system.

Some small business owners may want to use programs like Dreamweaver to try and build their owner websites. However, they will require a solid knowledge of technical expertise in order for the result to meet the expectations of both their audience and search engines. Most times the results are disappointing and small business owners get very frustrated after having spent many hours trying to build their site. It is better to work with a professional to design and program your website and for you to focus on the content. The programmer will build a content management system into your site, which you will be able to access from any computer.

CMS are much easier to use than the likes of Dreamweaver because they are tailored to non-tech savvy users.

DO I NEED A CMS?

Yes. If you want to be competitive in today’s online space, you cannot do without updating your website content. A content management system is the easiest and safest way to do so. It also allows you to create new pages in one click, and inactivate old pages, without worrying about breaking the design.

Having a content management system will save you money as you won’t need to pay a web developer every time you want to modify the content of your website.

You will not be able to configure a CMS on your own and will need to ask your web developer to do so when they program your site.

WHICH CMS ARE THE MOST POPULAR AND RELIABLE?

There are many CMS on the market. Free open-source CMS are very popular because they allow programmer to adapt the code to suit your website requirements and benefit from the improvements other programmers have made to the system.

Open source CMS, even though they can be downloaded at no cost, will require to be installed on your website by your programmer. You will generally pay a set fee for them to install it. In many instances, it is also possible to install a CMS on an existing website.

Open source CMS that are highly recommended by the web developers and users community are:

CMS Made Simple (www.cmsmadesimple.org)
DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com) *
*DotNetNuke is a CMS that requires to be hosted on Microsoft Servers
Drupal (http://drupal.org)
e107 (http://e107.org)
Joomla! (www.joomla.org)
PHP-Fusion (http://php-fusion.co.uk)
SilverStripe (www.silverstripe.com)
WordPress (www.wordpress.org)

What is Blogs and Blogging?

A blog is a website designed in the format of an online journal. It features many posts or articles. Each article should be complemented by a title, graphics, photos, videos, and often followed by readers’ comments. Each blog article has its own web address. Blogs can be maintained by individuals, groups and businesses. Their authors are called “bloggers”.

Aim of blogging:
The main aim of a blog is to share thoughts with the rest of the world. Blogging has revolutionized the manner knowledge is shared amongst experts. Recent research revealed that 60% of people now turn to the Internet when they need to address problems and issues. Only 25% turn to traditional media and even less to libraries or other sources.

In an offline environment, one had to rely on encyclopedias and research articles published in magazines.

From a third-party perspective, blogs are perceived as an extraordinary market research tool as they provide an unlimited source of up-to-the-minute information which conveys what the world thinks, discusses, vets, encourages and bans. Blogs are the biggest resource of user-generated content. Just like websites or customer reviews on Web Designing Services, Search Engine Optimization Solutions or any other topic they are interested, they get indexed by search engines. They even have their own search engines!

Blogging is good for my business:
As a business owner, blogging will allow you to:

• Establish yourself as an authority in your niche
• Engage your customers
• Engage in dialogue with peers and increase your knowledge
• Discuss industry and business matters

Golden Rules of Email Marketing

EMAIL MARKETING GUIDELINES:

Who to email
-> Ask people who contact you on the phone if they would like to be added to your mailing list.

-> Look outside your own business and set up cluster email marketing campaigns with your region’s tourism partners.

-> You are by law only allowed to send broadcasted (as opposed to individual) emails to people who implicitly agreed to receive your newsletter or other form of email marketing. If you do not do so, people can mark your email address as spam and you risk not being able to send any future email campaigns to any recipient. This is because your email address could be blocked by Internet Service Providers (ISP) who thinks you are spamming. The Do's & Dont's below explains which email addresses are ok to use and which aren’t:

Do's

• Owner opted in from your site (newsletter subscription).
• Owner purchased from you within 2 years
• Owner handed you their business card knowing you would contact them.
• Owner completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed.

Dont's

• You obtained the email addresses from a third party (incl. purchased a list).
• You copied their address from the Internet.
• You haven’t been in contact over two years.

What to write
-> Put yourself in the shoes of your target client: only send relevant information that will teach them something new:

Do's

• Give your newsletter a personality and a unique voice.
• Let your reader feel there is a human behind the email.
• Provide educational content, testimonials, and stories. Research proved they are very successful in newsletters.
• Use colours, brand your newsletter with your logo.

Dont's

• Don’t write the newsletter like an ad for your business.
• Don’t write the newsletter just for the sake of sending something out.
• Don’t write a novel. 3 to 4 short paragraphs are a better option.

-> HTML format with photos and embedded hyperlinks is generally preferred to plain, email-like, text format. However, your target market might be more responsive to plain-text email. If you are unsure do a test over a few months and decide based on the opening and response rate (provided you are using a dedicated email marketing program).

-> Think of your newsletter as a webpage:

Title = subject line:
Favour creative subject lines (e.g. Latest Technologies in Web Designs) over dull and sedative titles (e.g. June newsletter – Affordable LOGO Designing ).

Headings:
Use headings to keep the reader focused.

Hyperlinks:
Use them to direct your readers to your website or another website where they will be able to learn something new.

Content:
Bold your keyphrases, use bullet points, and don’t forget the call-to-action and the deadline.

Images:
Use images showcasing your products, experiences and guests participating.

Keywords:
Use keyword-rich vocabulary.

-> Keep in mind that customers are bombarded with email marketing messages numerous times a day.

-> Your newsletter design should convey professionalism and be consistent.

-> Invite staff to participate and write the content of the newsletter.

-> Always include an “unsubscribe” or opt-out link.

-> Forwarding to friends is useful and encourages new subscribers.

What is E-Mail Marketing?

Email remains the most used tool of the Internet. It is therefore a very powerful medium to start or continue to develop a relationship with your target market and existing clients and to keep your brand top of mind. The illustration below explains in three steps how email marketing works:

Click this image to see larger preview

Since it is so cost efficient and accessible, it is not unusual for office workers to receive from 40 to 60 emails a day. Your newsletter will therefore need to stand out in their inboxes by being perceived as an unrivalled piece of information. Following the golden rules ensure successful email campaigns. Golden Rules of E-mail Marketing will be published in next post.

Stay away from Malicious Online Directories

When starting to build inbound links to your site, the first idea that generally springs to mind is directories. Most of the time you can submit your site to online directories there and then. Read below why you should consider this practice with caution. The purpose of directories is to group information in categories that a user can browse when searching for something specific. However, people have soon realised that having their website listed in a directory creates an inbound link to their site, thus possibly providing a positive “vote” for their website and improving their search engine rankings. This has given ideas to many web savvy entrepreneurs and directories started to flourish. There are now millions of directories on the web but the majority have a dubious intention. Their priority is not to help humans find relevant websites but to make money by selling links that may improve search engine rankings.

Google, Yahoo! and other search engines are well aware of these practices and have recently started removing malicious directories from their search engine rankings. This implies that there is absolutely no point in spending money to be listed in a directory whose purpose is to simply improve search engine rankings.

Stay away from directories that:

• Offer to increase your site’s rankings
• Offer you a premium membership with even more links
• Offer you the possibility to put hyperlinks in your keywords
• Talk to you using web jargon confirms their intention of helping search engines and not the end user

Types of Links..

There are two main categories of links: editorial links and acquired links.

a) Editorial links
Editorial links express the opinion of the editor. In this instance, it is the opinion person linking to you from their website. When checking who links to you, you might realise that there are a few businesses already linking to your site. These websites have decided to reference your content because they find it informative and trust that making it accessible to their users will enhance their online experience.

Editorial links take time to get because they are earned as a reward for providing good, citation-worthy content. They are the links that search engines will favour and therefore have the biggest link value.

b) Acquired links
In this category fall all the other links (paid or unpaid). Getting these links necessitate either:

• Making contact with another organisation to entice them to link to you. For instance, as the website owner you establish contact with other organisations to convince them that your content is worthy enough to be linked to.
  
  
• Self creation - For example, you have created links back to your website by participating in online discussion forums or by leaving comments on Blogs.
  
  
• Reciprocal links, also known as link exchange - “Link to me and I will link to you”. Reciprocal links are links to another website placed on your site in exchange for links back to your site from theirs. Search engines condemn this practice if both sites have nothing relevant in common. However, if you have identified a relevant website and that you both share informative and complementary content, reciprocal links are a good opportunity as both your readers and search engines will be pleased.

Acquired links have less search engine value than editorial links because they bypass the feeling of trust that editorial links have. For instance, not all acquired links (especially those acquired by leaving comments on blogs) will be followed by search engines; the website where the link originates from might have used special HTML commands to prevent search engines from following the links and improving your website’s search engine placements.

These HTML commands are known as “nofollow” attributes. Even though some links might not pass search engine value, they are still valuable to readers who might follow them and contact you if they find your content informative and useful.

Link Building

Search engines also use inbound links to a website to gauge its popularity and importance.

Since links are an important factor to search engines, it comes as no surprise that growing the quality and number of links to your website is critical to increase your online popularity and thus improve your search engine rankings.

This discipline is referred to as “link building” or “off-site search engine optimization” and is one of the most important tasks required to succeed in the online space.

Links are the online version of word-of-mouth. Many search engine optimisation firms offer link-building services. However, this is something you can do yourself as the key ingredient is quality content people will want to link to.

List of Link Building Techniques:

• Press releases
• Article distribution
• Social networking via sites like Digg and Slashdot
• Link campaigns, such as asking complementary businesses to provide links
• Directory listings
• Link exchanges
• Three-way linking
• Multi-way linking
• Blog Commenting
• Blogging
• Forum posting
• Internet Marketing