Michael Dorausch, Warren Whitlock, Adam Proehl, and Arienne Holland.

1. Look at every single entry point of your business and see where you have opportunity to get reviews
2. 92% of the time keyword associated with reviews is always second and third place in Google Instant. People want to know reviews before making a purchase decision.
3. 63% of B2B consumers always use reviews to make decision
4. 8 out of 10 IT decision makers said the word of month recommendation is very important before making any decision



5. Unfiltered reviews Matter a lot.
6. 9 out of 10 buyers say that they will find you when they need you. Reviews helps build longer but trusted purchase cycle
7. Comments are things.  Commenting is an action that you can take on other sites and can benefit you and your business. You need a commenting strategy
8. Things to avoid in your commenting strategies  – Avoid spending time on your site to leave reviews, commenting on your site.
9. Things to follow- You need attention from your potential customer- how? Do answer their questions and you will get attention

10. You need attention from Journalists – How? Be kind, be helpful and be smart and they will give you reviews, comments..

11.  Muckrack.com, meetup.com and also google and linkedin groups are great place to find relevant people you are interested in your product/services and you can engage in building reviews, comments about your products.

12. In the end, look for people who wants to buy rather than trying to sell and answer they basic FAQs. This helps in telling customer why they should do business with you.

13. Some tactics for pros to get more reviews  – Engage with post purchase surveys, Find your evangelist,  Don’t Fake, Don’t keep begging for reviews if you get no response

14. Review tool – Review-Script.com and www.bazaarvoice.com

15. Giving channels to people to leave reviews on your site, and other review site

UGC is very vital part of purchase cycle.  Creating ways to generate more reviews are beneficial for every business.

Session: Revenue Opportunities Utilizing Social Media

Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Time: 11:30 – 3:30 pm

Location:
Le Merigot – A JW Marriott Hotel and Spa, Santa Monica
1740 Ocean Avenue
Santa Monica CA 90401

Topics Covered:

Lunch Session

• Growth of Search and Technology
• Universal Search, Social Search and Driving Traffic
• Why Hotels Should be Engaged in Social Media
• Best Practices for the Top Social Media Sites

Afternoon Session

• Developing a Social Media Strategy
• Top Channels to Focus On
• Up and Coming Social Sites
• Social Media Management
• Incorporating Social Media Elements onto your Website
• Tracking Social Media Success

Top Reasons to Attend the Afternoon Session:

• Discover practical working tips on how to manage and get the most out of the top social media channels.
• Stay to learn how to innovate and get ahead of your competitors who have not figured social media out yet.
• Find out about new social media players – which ones are worth your time and which aren’t.
• Learn how to define goals for your property that can be measured.

Speaker:  Tammie Carlisle

Registration Info:  http://www.hsmailax.org/events.asp?Event=183

Social media has become one of the most dominant forces in marketing travel destinations—and it’s growing more important every day.  But in order to fulfill its amazing potential for increasing traveler loyalty and engagement, positive press coverage, website traffic, and sales, your social campaign must be methodically planned. Discover how to set realistic goals and how these goals will determine where to focus your precious resources and how much to spend on each of the major (and minor) social networks.  In addition, you’ll learn how to integrate social media efforts into your traditional public relations, and you’ll discover the most reliable ways to measure the effects of your social media PR.

Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Time: 10AM – 11AM PST

Topics Covered:

• What can social media accomplish . . . and what can it not accomplish
• How social media affects travel decisions and purchases and how you must tap into those trends
• How to use what’s being said in social media to pick the right tools for your social media program
• The value of a page-one Google ranking—what it does for your traffic—and how to earn a page-one ranking
• How to track mentions of your destination in social media conversations—and how to do it before you start your campaign planning
• How to determine which bloggers to target and which to ignore
• Essential elements of an integrated social media/PR/marketing plan

Panelists:

• Benu Aggarwal, President, Milestone Internet Marketing
• Amy Kemp, Communications Director, Vail Resorts
• Diana Plazas, Marketing Director, Doubletree Hotels

To Register, click here.

Session Name: Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy

Travel marketers discuss the challenges of smart search marketing in tough economic times, when leisure travelers are hard to come by and businesses slash budgets. Experts in four key areas of travel search marketing – Organic, Paid, Social and Local/Mobile – share successful strategies and creative campaign ideas to attract and increase traffic, proving that it is possible to generate positive ROI with limited resources.

Date: August 12, 2009

Time: 2:30-3:45pm

Location: SES Strategies 2009 San Jose

Moderator Elisabeth Osmeloski, Managing Editor, Search Engine Watch

Speakers

Benu Aggarwal, Founder & President, Milestone Internet Marketing
Click to Download Benu’s Presentation

Michelle Stern, Client Services Director, iProspect

Roger Wong, Product Manager, Bing Travel

Carrie Hill, Director of Search Strategies & SearchEnigineWatch Expert, Blizzard Internet Marketing

Let’s talk about keywords.  Although it is extremely important to have relevant keywords in the body copy or content on your site, you want to make sure you are not over stuffing for certain words that you wish to appear for in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) because Google, Yahoo! and MSN will lower your overall ranking and eventually penalize your site or even list your website as spam.

Concatenations & Misspellings:  Next, make sure when optimizing your site on the back-end, especially in your keyword and description tag, do not include misspellings or concatenations.  Optimizing your site for misspellings is very “unfriendly” and can cause your site to be docked if you use common misspellings in the description or keyword tag.  Also avoid concatenations like “oceanview” which should be “ocean view,” as this is automatically corrected by the search engine itself.

Title Meta Tag: Be sure to use the name of your business or organization as the first word(s) in your title, as it is typically displayed by the visitor’s browser in the border of the viewable screen. Also, avoid stop words like “and”, “of” and “the” since search engines such as Google has a character limit of 66.

Content must be viewable in a simple text browser or search engine spiders may have difficulty crawling the website. Search engines can’t follow image links or animated links like Flash – they prefer simple web navigation just like many users do.

Design your site with searchers in mind. Pulling sub-categories up a level using a mouse over menu rather than a drop down box will not only make your site more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well..

Sitemap Page, it is important to create a sitemap page to help the search engines discover every page in your site. Sitemaps list the pages in your site along with brief keyword-rich descriptions of the page. Create as many sitemaps as you need and make sure they’re linked together, but split them up into smaller pages.  Use the correct letter case in sitemap files so there is no mismatch between upper case URL titles on live page and lower case on the search engine Webmaster Tool to avoid search engine cloaking filters.

Here’s a cool tool for checking broken links called “Xenu Sleuth” and it is free and user friendly. http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

————————
Contributed by: Christy Smith, Milestone Internet Marketing

AAHOA Regional Forum
Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at the Forth Worth Convention Center in Fort Worth, TX.

For more information or to register, click here

2007 California Lodging Expo® and Conference
Tuesday & Wednesday, November 6 & 7, 2007 at the Oakland Marriott City Center in Oakland, CA.

For more information or to register, click here

Check back as we are constantly adding new seminar dates to our schedule.

For more information or to register, click here

HITEC at the Orlando Convention Center
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 – 1:30 PM in Exhibit Hall, Tutorial Room A

For more information or to register, click here.

Check back as we are constantly adding new seminar dates to our schedule.

CLIA’s Lodging Industry Regional Forums
Monday, January 29, 2007 at the Doubletree Hotel in Rosemead
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at the Marriott Suites Anaheim

For more information or to register, click here

Northwest Food Service Show at the Oregon Convention Center

Monday, April 1, 2007 – two sessions
11:30 am – 12:30 pm – “Hotels to HTMLs: Search Engine Optimization & Travel Sites”
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm – “Effective Hotel E-Marketing”

For more information or to register, click here.

Check back as we are constantly adding new seminar dates to our schedule.

Milestone — a full-service internet marketing firm, specializing in internet marketing strategies and website development for the lodging industry — is presenting an intensive seminar series of Hotels to HTMLs.

Milestone 2006 Speakings
• AAHOA Regional 2006 8th June Buana Park, CA
• CLIA – June 21 – San Luis Obispo,
June 22 – Santa Barbara, CA
• HITEC 2006 June 20th – Minneapolis, MN
• Bloomington, Illinois – June 27t

Learn practical, step-by-step techniques and strategies to create strong internet presence and drive online traffic to your website and lodging. Join Milestone on the fantastic journey of powerful internet marketing.
Learn how to create your online presence. Discover the steps you need to take to excel on the internet. Enroll today!

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If you are interested in attending the Milestone seminar or want to find out about Milestone’s upcoming speaking engagements, workshops in you’re neighborhood, please fill out the form. We will email you the latest schedule of our ongoing seminar series.

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Want to ask a question related to lodging internet marketing?
Post your question on the Milestone blog! Milestone’s expert team will respond to your questions daily.

What are attendees saying about Milestone’s internet marketing workshops?
“Without exception the most terrific seminar I’ve ever attended.” – Steve Klein – Member, Board of Directors, Oregon Restaurant Association

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