Blog

Yesterday was a big day in Tennessee Tourism. Governor Phil Bredesen, along with the Commissioner of Tourist Development, Susan Whitaker, announced an initiative that will take Tennessee Tourism to the next level. The “Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways” is a statewide initiative that will cover all 95 counties in Tennessee with 15 regional self guided driving trails as well as feature five of Tennessee’s National Scenic Byways.

Perhaps the notion of “living your brand” is easier than ever now that we have social media tools like Twitter.  Recently, some tourism organizations have been creating nice exposure for themselves by advertising new job opportunities to work at their destination – all in the name of branding. 

Have you ever had something done to you and thought “It’s just NOT fair.“ Well, Facebook has recently revoked my publishing rights for the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development’s Facebook Fan Page.

This phrase is said time and time again for web development and it can’t be more true. If there is not enough relevant content on a website, it pretty much defeats the purpose of even having a website.

Overview and slides from my session about Design, Development, and SEO that I presented at Barcamp Nashville this weekend. A lot of great information about building search friendly websites.

With each online media vehicle, there is a purpose. Whether it is brand awareness with display, lead generation and customer retention with co-registration and email, audience interaction with social networking or clicks with pay per click, there is always a goal with each media campaign. And, there are always conclusions to be drawn from studying these metrics. In the world of online marketing where everything is measurable, the hardest thing to measure is brand awareness from display advertising. How do we measure what the consumer does when they see an ad? Clicks don’t necessarily foreshadow consumer behavior from a branding standpoint.

Awesome session from SMX 2009 about YouTube basics, promoting videos, and going viral.

A SMX East session on link building basics from Debra Mastaler and Eric Ward.

A great session from SMX about mobile search apps and opportunities.

A great session about PageRank sculpting and the use of nofollow as a sculpting tactic.