Check out this clear video about hashtags and how to use them in social media to grow your brand!

So, what hashtags should I use?

Use hashtags that reflect what you sell and your brand. They can include search terms / key words. If you use more than one word, they need to be attached. By having capital letters as the letter of each word, you can easily read the hashtag, e.g. #marketingtip

What social media platforms support hashtags?
Here are the most popular ones:

- Twitter (they actually 'invented' hashtags!)
- Facebook
- Flickr
- Google+
- Instagram
- Pinterest
- Tumblr

Till next week, Marijke


Coming up:
FREE 2-hour tourism marketing workshop:
Effective ways to grow your international visitor numbers! 
(4 Sept 2014 in Lumsden and 5 Sept in Invercargill)
Go to www.smartraining.co.nz for more info

A very simple (bit important!) little tip this week: plan a few minutes this week to check all the links on your website. There is nothing more annoying for a visitor to your site to click on a link and end up on an error page (a 404 error message page, check out the funny video below!)

Also, ensure that external links (links that go to another website) open in a new page, so you don't lose visitors off your site.

That's it for this week! Just plan & do it!

Till next week, Marijke

Click here to learn more about the FREE 2-hour tourism marketing workshop:
Effective ways to grow your international visitor numbers! 
(4 Sept 2014 in Lumsden and 5 Sept in Invercargill)

We all go through times in our personal and business lives where we have to rethink where we're going, what we want to achieve, what makes us happy.

By doing this, we learn to focus on the positive, count our blessings and appreciate what's important to us.

These questions will help you with the goals you set in your personal life and in your job/business. Take a piece of paper and write down your answers. Start with 1 goal at a time.

1. What do you want to achieve (either in your personal life or your business)? Make it specific, positive and have the end result in mind. Visualise the end result as a bright picture!

2. To reach this goal, what do you need to do more of and what do you need to do less of?

3. To reach your goal, what do you need to start doing and what do you need to stop doing?

These questions may seem simple, and they are! But you need to take the time to think about the answers and write them down. Then make an action plan and review it daily.

A strong focus of the Marketing for Success Programme is setting and reaching goals. It's been great seeing people achieve things that they have been trying to achieve for years!

Till next week, Marijke

Coming up:
FREE 2-hour tourism marketing workshop:
Effective ways to grow your international visitor numbers! 
(4 Sept 2014 in Lumsden and 5 Sept in Invercargill)

 This morning, we started the new Marketing for Success Programme. Another great group of people who will set goals, learn a lot along the way, achieve what they set out to do and have fun!

I am very passionate about this programme and am excited about working with this new group.

We were talking about setting goals and how important passion is when trying to achieve great things. If you don’t have passion for what you do, you may as well try something else!

On the other hand, passion is also contagious.

A few weeks ago, when the soccer world cup just started, I was in Holland. Now, I am not a soccer fan in the slightest, never have been. But when you’re amongst millions of soccer fans, everyone dressed up in orange, all the houses decorated in orange, you can’t help but get excited too!

So, I now watch the games too and am very excited that Holland is in the semi-finals tomorrow morning (NZ time). I just got caught up in the passion of it all! I am Dutch, by the way :)

If you look at it from a customer’s perspective, they like to deal with people that are passionate about what they do, passionate in dealing with you as a customer. If customers feel the enthusiasm, they tend to spend more.

Remember: you can teach someone skills, but you can’t teach them enthusiasm and passion. So, hire people with passion!

PS for the next game: GO HOLLAND!!!

Till next week, Marijke