March 2011
Keeping up your online listings By: Becky McCray Source: Smallbizsurvival.com Seems like every week you discover another website that lists one of your local events, usually with some key piece of information wrong! And then there's another directory listing your town, asking you to send them updated information monthly or yearly. And there's the state tourism site, and the regional site, and your neighboring town has offered to trade event calendars.... How can you possibly ever keep all these up to date?
Small towns in particular should keep updated info on ePodunk and LASR. Everyone should look into their listings on Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and UrbanSpoon at a minimum.
spreadsheet. The work to maintain this list pays off in fewer inaccuracies online about you.
Want to check the credibility of any site you find? Run them through Compete.com along with your own site. That will give you an idea of their traffic. It's a starting point.
All these sites offer links back to your local destinations, and probably to your tourism site, too. Links are the currency of the web, and they make your sites more credible in the eyes of the search engines. Not to mention that these sites actually do generate some visitors. Just this week, a local tourism person told me a potential visitor called about an event, with incorrect dates found online.
Build a simple spreadsheet or database. Include for each listing:
A Word About Keywords * Web Address / URL Before you get started, you need to know your area's keywords. Start with your town name, add in attractions, event names, and important tourism-related businesses. You'll want that set of keywords to do monitoring online and other projects, so you might as well make a decent list now.
* Type of info they are keeping on you. (You might want to make this a checklist format: events, lodging, food, etc.)
The Unexpected Upside
Two Secrets 1. You could easily delegate much of this process to volunteers, interns, etc. 2. You could also do your paper directories and publications the same way. That way, when you finish your annual calendar of events, you'll know where all to send it to get it online.
* How to do corrections and submissions. (Email? URL? Login? Be sure to record those logins.)
Find all the listings. Do a simple search at Google, and another at Bing, looking for listings of your town and events. Bookmark all those listings.
* Update schedule. (Probably annually when you do your calendar.) As you run across other listings online throughout the year, add them to the
Becky McCray Smallbizsurvival Author
INSIDE THIS ISSUE Page 1 March Calendar
Page 2 A note from the President
Page 5 Welcome New Members
Page 6 Happening in Hillsdale