Why I’m recommending all my Insider’s Circle partners purchase .TV domain names
21 Comments
Last evening I sent out emails to each of my Insider’s Circle partners, recommending they consider purchasing .TV domain names for their hotels.
Why .TV domains could be important
We’ve all seen how video is playing an increasingly important role in digital communications – it’s what inspired the launch of This Week in Hotels. Reading Marketing in the Moment by Michael Tasner, watching uStream broadcasts, and doing some research has opened my eyes to how powerful this channel could become.
How hotels might use their own internet TV channel
Our hotels will probably start out with creating a 4-6 hour mix of content, and then continually looping that – with occasional intervals of live programming. The topics might include:
- Professionally-produced videos of your property
- A video tour of your neighborhood (like the New York Barclay)
- Guestsourced content (with permission)
- Specials & promotions
- Live social media integration
- Live events
- etc, etc
This is really just an extension of the content marketing I’ve tried to advocate all along. The “concierge approach to marketing” doesn’t go away – it’s just evolving along with technology.
How we might integrate the TV channel
Right now, the plan is to host this on the “.TV” domain name, and then our sales & marketing staff can send people do this….and we can integrate it with our various web properties.
Seamless integration will be important for boosting popularity and views, but the separate domain name will help differentiate it as a separate communications channel.
Become a case study!
I hope to have a public case study or two ready for you by the end of the year, but if you want to be one of the early adopters on this project, now would be a good time to join the Insider’s Circle…
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This is a great idea J.
I got your email in my inbox this morning and was going to reply but now I am going to comment here instead.
I have some thoughts on the matter:
Creating written content is challenging enough. Creating a video requires far more resources. Do you think that boutique hotels such as mine with 10 rooms or less can still afford to create their own videos ?
How does a hotel go about creating video content ? Get in touch with a professional ? Or just go out there with a video camera and do it wrong quickly ?
I think a great way to do it wrong quickly with regards to video is for a hotel blogger to create and upload a vlog of an interesting event that is coming up. Or convert his next blog content into a vlog. It may not be as effective as actually going out and creating a video of the actual location but it is something all of us can do from the comfort of our own homes.
And most importantly, why create a special .tv domain ? Why not use the marketing prowess and established traffic of YouTube to host and promote the video content ? It is easier to link to Guestsourced video content from inside YouTube itself as well as link to your YouTube channel homepage from your website / blog.
What say ?
Cheers
Mihir
I’m really interested to see hoteliers’ different interpretations of video content/platforms…
Regarding the difficulty and cost of video production, I can only speak for myself; here’s what I shot at no cost for VisitCarmel.com’s YouTube channel using a Flipmini, and with some help from my endlessly patient fiancee/camera-man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jCMx63HI-E
An example of “doing it wrong quickly” if there ever was one…
How come your YouTube videos get so many more views than mine?
@Mihir, you have a valid point in YouTube – create a channel for your hotel videos, and host your videos on YouTube. You can then embed that video in your own .tv domain. With this plan, you won’t have to pay for the expensive bandwidth as compared to hosting videos on your own.
I guess Josiah wants the hotel to get their .tv domains so that you remain in control of it. You don’t want someone else (competitor?) squatting on your .tv hotel domain. I’d be keen to know how you’d plan video at your 10-room property. I’m at @hotelmarketing5.
We would like to do a video for our website but will only do it if we can do it well. We have been contacted by a number of companies offering to do a promo video for our place but it would appear that as equipment is so cheap thses days, any idiot thinks he can do it. As an ex-BBC employee maybe I’m a bit picky but most of the examples I have seen have been poor quality, cheesy and accompanied by 70s porn music.
An example of a classy video that I think works well (with good music) is at http://scarlethotel.co.uk/
We gave this a lot of thought about a year ago and hope you will find this valuable.
The biggest search engine is Google and we believe the second will not be Bing or Yahoo, but rather YouTube. What you ultimately want is for your website to be the heart being fed by various means of social media, bookmarking and networking websites. Will having a .tv site not double up your efforts currently allocated to your business domain, essentially competing with your own keywords at the end? I believe it will.
YouTube offers easy SEO and sharing of videos. I agree Mahir, it’s a good question and we believe it’s the right answer after having experienced the enquiries we got from our tiny-sized channel on YouTube.
Sure you can have videos produced professionally at a premium. But also consider these alternatives: To invite a local or international TV program to stay at your hotel and to use their video with permission, or to add various “steady” short amateur videos with professional photos (which all hotels will have to have) using a site like animoto.com.
All the best,
Bertus
WOW Bertus ! Some invaluable points you make here.
You actually think that Youtube will be #2 when it comes to Search ? That is really interesting because it means that we hoteliers need to take more notice of video than we have been doing the the past.
What kind of enquiries have you got from your Youtube channel ?
Do guests actually search for hotels on sites such as Flickr and Youtube ?
And using Guestsourcing to add videos to your Youtube channel is a great idea.
I need to watch this space.
Cheers
Mihir
I’m of two minds on this subject.. While I fully agree about the importance of video content on hotel websites, I have difficulties to justify breaking up the web presence into several URLs that would, as mentioned by Bertus, compete with each other. We all know that the future (and the present as a matter of fact) lies with integration. In any business and any industry. I would rather see all integrated into one hotel website (or hotel “portal”). The same would apply for Social Media. Bring all together onto one platform and where you can cross expose all of your content.
A .TV for a hotel would be relevant if you can really talk about a TV channel with proper content about the destination, interviews, food etc. I guess we are talking about a large hotel chain here. For an independent hotel with limited means and therefore only able to produce few hours of videos max, bringing everything onto one .com is my recommendation.
But having said that, I’m really looking forward to the case study because the only way to learn new things is to regularly be proven wrong !
Hahahahahaha Katie ! (I can’t reply directly to your message so I’ll do so here)
I didn’t realise it before but this is actually the first time I am seeing and hearing you “in person” !!! After all the German TV programmes, I love your American slang
What is a Flipmini ? How much does it cost ? How did you upload your video to Youtube and in what format ?
Did you ever ask any of your guests to Carmel if they could share their videos with Carmel’s Youtube Channel ?
Your video was well shot and you were lucky to have someone hold the camera for you !
A great way to do it wrong quickly, me thinks
Cheers
Mihir
Mihir – It’s actually called a FlipMino (oops), and it’s a tiny video camera.
Mine is a hand-me-down from J (I am so the little sister…
) but here’s where you can find new models/prices etc… http://www.theflip.com/en-us/Products/mino.aspx
I’ve asked guests to contribute photos and posts, but hadn’t thought of videos; that’s a great idea! The site will be fairly inactive until we find the right hotel to sponsor it, but I’ll keep that in mind… and will pass your compliments along to my camera man.
Josiah – I hadn’t checked view stats in a while…. 3,639 – goodness!
Clearly you need to change your video-titles to “Pacific Sea Otter This Week in Hotels”.
Thanks for all the well researched info, Katie !
I really need to work on Guestsourcing for my Mitaroy Goa Hotel, not only for photos and posts but for videos as well, considering Bertus believes that Youtube will overtake Bing and Yahoo in Search !
How do you go about Guestsourcing, Katie ?
Do you copy / download the posts and photos (for which you get permission from the creators) and upload them onto your channel ?
Or do you simply link to them from your channel / website ?
Cheers
Mihir
P.S. J, maybe an idea for a blog post here – Guestsourcing and How to do it wrong quickly…
Here’s how I go about guest-sourcing, but so far, my friends and family are the only contributers. Gotta start somewhere… http://www.visitcarmel.com/things-to-do/attention-locals-and-visitors-send-us-your-carmel-favorites/
I think guest-sourcing is a great way for hotels to earn credibility and trust among guests, and for HMS, our shift to interview/case-study posts is our take on the concept. Less philosophy, more actionable tips from people who are implementing these strategies in “the real world”.
Also, I agree that you need photos on your site, guest-sourced or otherwise; they’re the first thing I look for on a hotel website; show guests the goods!
Good Blog.
Will take some notes to apply in our portal Top5Hotel
Thanks for the awesome link Katie !
You somehow have the knack of sounding so human in your writing, it’s amazing ! I guess that is why we connect so well.
But my question was slightly different.
Your link shows how you ask people for and get photos and blog posts. I do that as well.
But let’s say you see a great blog post written by somebody else and you want to share it. You even get permission from the author to do so.
How do you share it ? Do you simply link to it ? Or do you copy it onto your blog and reblog it so to speak ?
I love the subtle yet important shift that HMS is making. I was always one for less theory and more examples on HMS. And I always tried to set an example myself.
Cheers
Mihir
@Mihir, it’s not in future, YouTube is the current no.2 in search! also, think only Google and Bing – Yahoo Search is history! For the blog share – copy the post (if you got permission) to your blog with the right linking – attribute it as a Guest Blog Post.
@Katie, I’d also suggest a simple tip to all Flip fans – use a tripod – it can improve the presentation by many times. You won’t need ‘endlessly patient’ fiancees too
@Bertus, I’d recommend trying ‘Windows Live Movie Maker’(latest version) too – the animations, text effects are much better than the Vista-era version. For a free product, it very cool.
Anil – Thanks for the tip!
Mihir – So far, I’ve only received one guest-post submission, which was written specifically for my site and emailed to me for reformatting/editing etc. I’m not sourcing already-published articles because I like to post original content and maintain a bit of consistency, but sometimes link to great articles within posts.
I’m sure there are a lot of “right” ways to do guest-posting, let me know which ones you try!
Katie
OK, now I am really interested.
Does anyone have any evidence to back up the belief that YouTube is currently Nr 2 in Search ?
And does this apply to hotels as well or more for music videos and the like ?
Definitely worth a blog post J !
Cheers
Mihir
ha ha, sure Mihir, that data came from comScore. Here’s the TechCrunch story on Youtube being No.2 in search, … and, IMO this is general searches (not travel specific)…
http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/comscore-youtube-now-25-percent-of-all-google-searches/
If I’m planning to stay at Mitaroy Goa – a search result showing video of Mitaroy would help me decide my stay more quickly than a 5 page brochure laden with text. Search engines understand this and give space to videos on Page 1 for relevant searches. btw, I love how Bing presents video results – the mouseover auto-play. Check it out
Hi Anil, Thanks for the link. Very interesting. Just wanted to point out that the article is from two years ago. I’m not sure in which direction numbers would have gone to but situation may have evolved.
Hi Fabrice, I found that TC link with a quick Google search.
Here’s the comScore release from Jan 2010 – YouTube is still No.2!
http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/2/comScore_Releases_January_2010_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings