Destinations Expo Branding

A little search on Google returns the following for Destinations Expo and related search terms:

Destinations Expo

The generic term, Destinations Expo returns roughly 1.6 million results; here are the Google Top 10:

Destinations Expo

Destinations Expo on Google

The South African Media site comes first under this generic terms. Note that even under this term, 2 sites of the YORGOO Publishing Network show up on Top 10.

Destinations Expo 2010 Cape Town

This seems to be the correct full name of the event we are looking at.

Destinations Expo 2010 Cape Town

Destinations Expo 2010 Cape Town on Google

Note the total absence of the Official site hosted by the South African Media Company, owners of the Expo. This site here takes ranks 1 and 2, while the YORGOO Blog and Garden Route Publishing  sit on number 7 and 8. Interestingly all tourism authority sites are beaten.

Destinations Expo 2010

This short phrase returns an interesting result as well:

Destinations Expo 2010

Destinations Expo 2010 on Google

Two of our sites make it while the key phrase is dominated by tourism oriented authority sites. The official site is completely absent again.

Destinations Expo Cape Town

Google Top 10 for Destinations Expo Cape Town shows the following:

Destinations Expo Cape Town

Destinations Expo Cape Town on Google Top 10

The official site makes it to the top while we get ranks 2 and 6. The tourism authority sites are all beaten again.

Conclusion

The Destinations Expo is not solidly branded online. I would expect to see the official site on top under all the above keywords. The local authority sites do a good job, however their SEO does not live up to the SEO standards of Semiomantics Frameworks used on all featured sites of our publishing network.

I am wondering now what a Semiomantics XO on a keyword related domain will do :-). Look forward to Destinations Expo our site under construction.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Destinations Expo 2010 Cape Town

Subsequent to my previous post about the Destination Expo 2010 in Cape Town, I received some comments pointing to a video clip on YouTube about the event.

The Destination Expo 2010 Cape Town -- a School Case

I have used the example of the Destination Expo as a study case for Ycademy, our online business coaching center. The idea is to analyze the way the Expo Organizers use the internet to promote their event, considering namely, that tourism related low tech events are of interest to a global audience reachable through the internet.

YorgoMan at the Tavern

YorgoMan at the Tavern

My first observation was, that searching Google, I could barely find more than an invitation text release and the opening hours. I concluded that the organizers were not really interested in promoting the event using the Internet and I also concluded that the way the Expo is promoted is to no benefit of the Expo participants in as much as the Internet is concerned.

Destinations Expo Website

After some research I found a domain destinationsexpo.co.za. How surprised was I to find that the domain is redirected to a domain called cadek.co.za/des. There we find a  website with informative content pertaining to the Destinations Expo 2010 in Cape Town. We learn on the site that:

“The Destinations Expo is owned and organised by:

CADEK Media
P.O. Box 5111
Helderberg
7135
South Africa”

There you go: the destinations expo website serves the purpose of promoting CADEK Media rather than the expo or its participants. The site does not have a very professional touch in spite the brochure gimmick. In any case the Internet as promotional medium is not exploited for the benefit of participants. From the tariffs we see that there is no online promotion available to participants …

Destinations Expo Cape Town Experiment

It’s easy to criticize sitting at the beach here in Greece. As said above, the purpose is to look at the Destinations Expo as a study case for the purpose of Ycademy. I therefore will also try to experiment with some ideas.

My research shows, that the Top Level Domains of “destinationsexpo” are all available! How surprising. Local domains (co.za may be fine, but when you have international or global ambitions, you want to grab the .com and maybe some other TLDs). In fact the local domains have lost their significance to a large extent during the past few years as developers notice that people have just a .com-reflex. Also, one always loses visitors to the .com … Brand protection starts with grabbing the main TLDs, which is a rather cheap affair as you get the domains for just a few bucks.

For the purpose of this experiment I have registered destinationsexpo.com with YorgoDom and then I set up a hosting account at Hosting South Africa at 1 Rand per Day. I will load a Semiomantics XO 3.x Publishing Framework and shoot at some related keywords, respectively I will show how participants could easily profit from an online promotion reaching far beyond the duration of the low tech Expo in Cape Town.

For the purpose of the exercise I will find my inspiration at the excellent Garden Route Directory as well as on other brilliant Projects, such as the Monkey Valley Resort Project by Bianca Gubalke from Noordhoek.

More about this experiment later. Let me install a site first :-).

Thinking about a website project:

Destination Expos take place all over the globe and one could even create a Destinations Expo Global Directory, inviting all such Expo organizers to join forces for marketing purposes and later may be for networking  (just an idea :-)).

Destinations Expo 2010 Cape Town on YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUJhcUQrP0

The Destination Expo Cape Town YouTube Clip has some great content and footage. Too bad the stitching of the pieces, namely of the first clip from Cape Town Tourism leads to distortions. (Would need to be post-edited again).

Shooting some sequences at this years event could lead to a more lively, less sterile video, whereas the production could be financed by the participants who are featured in the clip or who provide mini clips to be inserted. Lalakoi Publishing from the Garden Route is working with Customer Clips to provide high visibility to advertisers or site owners.

I could imagine that a Semiomantics Evolution site could be a great support for promotional clips linked to a dynamic content CMS.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Today’s launch of the first travel and tourism exhibition, called “Destinations Expo 2010″ in Cape Town may well be the beginning of a future oriented development.

Local Expo – International Audience

The 2010 Expo is first of all a showcase of destinations,accommodation,traveling and holidays in South Africa and other nearby destinations.
Besides all the visitors attending the event, there are millions of people out there who are potentially interested in the topic and who are seeking to satisfy their desires via the Internet.

It is therefore surprising, that the Expo itself did not come up with a decent and well positioned website for and about the event.
Or are the organizers just the play-ball of some large tourism businesses privileging their best paying acolytes?
I don’t have the answer to this question; however, from what I can see, individual hotels, B&Bs, restaurants and lodges cannot individually count on the Expo 2010 to fetch new contacts through the Internet.
While the local crowd may enjoy the event, the remaining 6.5 billion potential customers are left out. This is not really a customer oriented policy, considering that nowadays most bookings are
made online.

Destinations 2010 Cape Town and the Internet

What do you need an Expo for if you cannot reach out for new customers or if the main markets cannot be reached?
If Destination 2010 is a low tech marketing idea, then it is the more important for businesses to brand themselves in a meaningful way online.
Smart examples can be seen at LalakoiPublishing.com and http://gardenroutedirectory.com.
Also some resorts are working on projects distributing highly visible media content, such as the Monkey Valley Resort near Cape Town.

Tourism and the Internet cannot be dissociated.

May be for next years Destinations Expo 2010 the organizers will invite some website developers who in the past have provided excellent services to South African Tourism, Lalakoi Publishing from the Garden Route or Bianca Gubalke Website Developments from Noordhoek, to name just two.

Microsoft Office 2010 PowerPoint

Yesterday’s Ycademy online workshop focused on Microsoft Office 2010 – PowerPoint. The Goal was to create a small slide show and to convert it into multiple formats, such as images or movies.

Here below a sample.

PowerPoint 2010 Slides

Slide1

Slide 1

Slide2

Slide

Slide3

Slide 3

Slide4

Slide 4

Slide5

Slide 5

Slide6

Slide 6

Slide7

Slide 7

Slide8

Slide 8

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Microsoft Office 2010 PowerPoint

Yesterday’s Ycademy online workshop focused on Microsoft Office 2010 – PowerPoint. The Goal was to create a small slide show and to convert it into multiple formats, such as images or movies.

Here below a sample.

PowerPoint 2010 Slides

Slide1

Slide 1

Slide2

Slide

Slide3

Slide 3

Slide4

Slide 4

Slide5

Slide 5

Slide6

Slide 6

Slide7

Slide 7

Slide8

Slide 8

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Business Card and Newsletter Design with Office 2010

Subsequent to the February Ycademy Seminar and our Tuesday session, we have continued to work on branding printed matters yesterday. After the business card we have been using templates for newsletters from Microsoft Office Publisher 2010 Beta.

Branded News Letter and Business Cards

ycacardnews

Business Card and Newsletter by Ycademy

utecardnews

Business Card and Newsletter by Ute Schaedler

zocardnews

Business Card and Newsletter by Zo Nicholas

Above three examples from last night’s session with the output from Zo Nicholas and Ute Schaedler besides the session sample.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Branding your Printed Matters

Using Microsoft Office, it is a relatively easy task to brand your printed matters. The most recent Ycademy Seminar dealt with the various features provided by Office 2010 and this weeks calls will apply the branding concepts further.

Business Card Design

Starting from a template in Microsoft Publisher 2010, we can adapt the templates to the style and design of our websites.

Here some examples from last night’s workshop:

ycademy-business-card

Business Card Design

businesscardu

Business Card Design by Ute Schaedler

businesscardfelisa

Business Card Design by Felisa Ryan

businesscardh

Business Card Design by Hanno Coetzee

businesscardzo

Business Card Design by Zo Nicholas

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Microsoft Office 2010 Seminar by Ycademy

The announced February Seminar by Ycademy, which will deal with Microsoft Office 2007 will be extended to the brand new Microsoft Office 2010 Beta.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta

Seminar participants should download and install the new Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta before joining the sessions. Please download the English 32-bit version from here. Follow the link at the bottom of the page and create an account using your Live Credentials (they should be the same as you use on MSN and for other Live Logins).

In spite the note by Microsoft, just add the new 2010 Beta to your existing installation. Your Start Menu will look about like this:

startmenu

Start Menu

At the Seminar we will particularly focus on some of the Main Applications such as Word 2010, Power Point 2010, Publisher 2010 and Excel 2010 as well as on the collaborative tools and the new online potential of Office 2010.

More about the extended Ycademy Seminar Program during this weeks daily YORGOO calls.

Seminar Tickets are available at the YORGOO Shop.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.