Blogs
The best analogy for a blog is an online diary. Entries in a personal blog might be very similar to what you would enter in a traditional paper diary — providing, of course, that you intended to leave that diary lying on the sidewalk for everyone in the world to read.
Blogs have come to fulfill a variety of functions ranging from personal observations and political diatribes, to commentary and information on a variety of specialized activities. For dive stores, blogs can fulfill a very important function. A good example of that function can be summarized in two words: trip report.
Every trip your store runs, every class or activity your store conducts, deserves its own written summary. What can you put in that summary? Good examples include:
- A brief description of what that event or activity was, where and when it took place, and who was involved.
- Descriptions of any unusual or unexpected events that made this activity stand out, i.e., things like “The Great Whale Shark Encounter,” or “80-Year-Old Diver Gets His Advanced Open Water Diver Cert.”
- Congratulations to participants whose achievements are worthy of recognition, such as students who became certified divers.
- A link to photos of the event you have posted to your image-hosting website.
Click on the browser tab in which you earlier opened the sample website. Right click on the Blog link near the top of the right-hand column to open it in a new tab. See what comes up.
Of course, blog entries don’t have to be limited to class, trip or activity reports. Anything you think is worthy of comment is fair game. You will want to use good judgment here, however, you will discover that you can be a bit more personal in your blog entries than you may feel comfortable posting on your website.
In theory, anything you post in your blog could also be posted on your website (and, in fact, some websites have a blog function built in). In general, though, blog entries tend to be focused at narrower audiences than websites are. Blogs typically offer some key advantages websites do not, including:
- They are easy to use. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can post to the typical blog. This means that, rather than having to wait for your webmaster to post a class or trip report, you can assign that task to your instructors and trip leaders.
- Blogs allow for user interaction. After your post a blog entry, readers can comment on it (although you will want to make certain you have the ability to screen comments before they appear to the public).
- Blog entries are automatically archived. This means that, when you are writing up your web page on next year’s Galapagos trip, you can link to the trip report from last year’s trip.
If your current website does not already have a blog function built in, there are many no-cost alternatives, such as Word Press. The one we recommend is Blogger — yet another of the many free services from Google. Blogger is easy to use, allows you to choose from multiple layouts and options, and is highly customizable.
As we mentioned earlier, you need to make sure your instructors and trip leaders understand that their responsibilities include posting images and/ or video to your image-hosting site. Having done this, they also need to post an activity report on your store’s blog, with links to the relevant photos or video.
The final step in this process is for instructors or trip leaders to send an e-mail to all participants, providing them with links to the activity or trip report on your blog, and the photos and/or video on your image-hosting site. Armed with this, your customers can begin sharing their adventures with friends and families and, in the process, driving new business to your door.
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