If you wanted to take a vacation, you wouldn’t just hop in a car and go. You’d have a road map.
If you were going to bake a Boston creme pie, you wouldn’t just start mixing ingredients together. You’d have a recipe.
Seeing a trend? Most successful ventures in life generally start with a plan. Unfortunately, most who decide to use social media for marketing tourism and travel forgo necessary goal-setting and strategy. This typically leads them to wonder what they are doing wrong on sites like Facebook and Twitter when they don’t have as many followers or fans as they would desire.
Having a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter doesn’t “just happen” overnight. However, through the careful planning and interacting on these networks (and others), you can drive traffic to your destination. Here are a few steps to improve your social media presence.
First thing’s first: Set your goals.
This is probably the most valuable takeaway from your plan. If you are aimlessly wandering into the world of Facebook and Twitter just because every one else is, you will have no way to measure your success because you won’t know what “success” is. What specifically do you want out of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? Increased sales of at least 25%? More inbound traffic to your CVB’s homepage? Be specific. Also, what’s more important: 1,000 fans or more hotel bookings? Decide this early on so you can determine what true social media success is.
Secondly: Know thy tourist.
You should have at least a general idea of who your audience is. The more specific, the better. This will help determine what networks you should participate in. For example, if your target audience is older than 45 or 50, MySpace is probably not the best network to join. Also, if you deal with niche audiences such as mothers, sports lovers or business travelers, there are specific niche social networks that you can join to help attract those groups.
Facebook seems to be a catch-all social network for most demographics, but knowing your audience will help develop strategies within Facebook that best targets your future tourists. Facebook marketing strategies range from paid advertising to fan pages and groups.
Third: Give them something to talk about.
This is the part that most jump into right off the bat, but it’s only after careful planning you enter this phase. Even after you begin this step of your master plan, you still need to know how to talk and what to talk about. For example: What are you going to do if someone negatively bashes your destination or staff? Respond openly or privately? Who is going to be the person updating your status everyday and does that person have a clear understanding of your online branding efforts? How much time daily are you going to commit to each social media account?
Also, remember conversation is two-fold. Don’t just talk. Listen, then listen harder. Go beyond comments written on your wall and find out what your fans are interested in on their own profile page. Learn what they like and don’t like and apply that to what you can do better.
Finally: Measure your efforts
Each month, measure your growth. Are you meeting your goals? Can you make better use of your time on Facebook and Twitter? Use tracking software and analytics to gauge where your traffic is coming from and learn from these reports.
Keep comparing your goals month after month and continue to improve on your efforts. Social media isn’t easy just because everyone does it these days. Creating a successful social media campaign means work and much time invested. However, if proper steps are taken in the set up and planning stages of your social media marketing plan, you will lay the ground work for destination marketing success.
The Internet has also opened up a lot of doors for freelance artist. Today, if you're an artist and you want to make a great income and be profitable, freelance art work is the best path to get into. Aside from freeing you from all the restrictions of full time job, freelancing will also enable you to conduct business with as many clients as you can for as long as you don’t sacrifice the quality of the service you offer and you don’t miss any deadline.
Artists are known to express specific and unique visions and visual representations through different mediums such as painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic designing or mixed media. In order to improve their inherent skills and talent, many artists take time to attend workshops, shows, seminars, and even conducting research in order to improve their profession.
In fact, some artists even use their specific set of marketable tools to become freelance commercial artists and produce work on consignment basis while some their skills in order to produce their own work.
Being a freelance artist opens up a great deal of opportunities. In fact, some of the fields where freelancing pays a lot is in the world of commerce, computers, electronics, publishing houses, online services, advertising, promotion, product design and software companies. These freelance artists are hired as consultants because of their aesthetic sense and representational skills.
BECOMING A FREELANCE ARTIST
Aside from giving you freedom to choose your projects, being a freelance artist also allows you to handpick jobs that are within the bounds of your talents and skills. Most experts agree that if you are an artist, freelancing is the best way to go because you can be your own boss.
All you need to do is to understand what your potential clients want or customize it to their liking. If you are an aspiring freelance artist or designer, there are some things you need to do in order to be successful in the freelance and online world.
1. Set your goals. Before finally jumping the bandwagon of freelancing, make sure that you already set your goals and you know what you really want to do. Try do develop a business plan and figure out where you are good at.
2. Build a good portfolio and develop a good presentation. Your portfolio will serve as your "calling card." Make sure that you build up a good portfolio because it will be the first thing that your clients will see. If you plan to conduct business online, then it is a must that you develop an online portfolio that is organized, clear, and professional looking.
3. Ensure that there are thumbnail links and that they are working and easy to use. To ensure that the thumbnails that are easy to use by writing descriptive text for each addresses. Also ensure that your site has a good representation because it will reflect your own skills.
4. Try to build good working relationships. Working online means that you only conduct business virtually. Since you don’t get to meet your clients face-to-face, it can be hard for you to establish good working relationships.
But, don’t let virtually hinder you from establishing good working relationships with your clients, try to be always available in case they need to set a meeting with you. Also make sure that you always open communication lines with them.
5. Try to educate your clients. Don’t let your clients dictate you what they want the output to be. Since you are an expert in your field, teach them about the updates in designing and try to give them feedbacks what is latest in the field you are in.
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