Happy new year everyone! 2009 was an interesting year for Hello Goat Designs. We got some new clients that we are very excited about and we lost one of our major ones. That lose has been a challenge heading into the New Year, but we are taking on new opportunities as they come. When one door closes, another one opens; funny how that works.
The other interesting thing that has happened in 2009 is my new role at my day job. Over the last 6 months I’ve been transitioning into a Social Computing Strategist role for Funjet Vacations and the other brands the The Mark Travel Corporation owns and manages. It has truly been an exciting 6 months.
The first duty I performed in this new role was traveling around the Midwest for Funjet Vacations giving Social Media overview presentations to travel agents at Funjet’s annual tradeshows. These presentations were surface level talks about Twitter and Facebook mainly. They also briefly touched on the other Social Media avenues such as blogs, social bookmarking and social multimedia to name a few.
These presentations were such a big hit that shortly after the tradeshows; I started giving bi-monthly webinars for Funjet that covered more detailed information about using these social media tools for business and marketing purposes and the benefits of doing so.
In conjunction with these webinars, Funjet sent me to Cancun (I know, I know… poor me) to give one on one social media training sessions to their top travel agents and agencies. These “pool side” sessions (ok, I’ll stop rubbing it in) went into specific examples and covered everything from practical first steps into social media to more advanced marketing campaigns useful to agencies with established social media presences.
One of the main topics I covered with agents who had a firm grasp on things like Twitter and Facebook was the power of blogging. I talked about being experts in the travel space and using that expertise to build a loyal following and recruiting brand advocates. I gave them advice on using blogs to show the niche expertise to the general public to build credibility and trust. For example, one agency I talked to specialized in destination wedding travel. I showed them how having a good blog with great content could build a following, improve word of mouth and build credibility in their brand. I also showed them how powerful it is to write a blog about a niche product and how marketing that blog via other social channels can reach an audience that is looking for that exact product.
The whole time I was giving this training – especially the blogging parts, I was using the “do as I say not as I do” method of teaching. That really got me thinking… If I am truly going into the Social Computing Strategy field I need to make some adjustments to my online and social media life. I need to start blogging; I need to start communicating on a larger level with my network of friends and fans. I need to, just as I told the travel agents, share my expertise to gain credibility and to build trust in my personal brand.
So, here I am… far from an expert, but trying to build some credibility (sometimes I do know what I’m talking about… sometimes). I have made the choice to start blogging on a regular basis. I have even talked Angela (@hellogoat) into contributing a blog entry once a week. Moving forward, we will be sharing some topics with a little more meat. We want to share our experiences in design, web development and running a small business. Hopefully you will learn some things about Hello Goat Designs, share a few laughs, and relate to some of our experiences.
Thanks for the support and stay tuned…
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