Tripadvisor has launched new Management Dashboard

Tripadvisor has launched a new Management Dashboard which provides hotels with information on how they are engaging with their customers online, tips on areas where they can improve on, the countries where the most traffic is coming from and they can even get a list of their competitors who are most viewed by the same customers who viewed their page.

The new Management Dashboard is available for free to all registered business representatives and can be accessed via the Tripadvisor management centre. A more comprehensive version of the Tripadvisor Management Dashboard will be made available in the next few weeks exclusively to accommodations that have a paid business listing with Tripadvisor. The comprehensive version offers additional metrics and information, including graphics which depicts a property's Business Listings performance over time and how they compare to their competitors in the same geographical region.

At a glance, the features of the Management Dashboard include:

Free version

• View your status at a glance: View total reviews, current popularity ranking and TripAdvisor rating
• Reviews and comments summary: View latest review activity and top comments from reviews
• Photos metrics: Total number of traveller and business-submitted photos, photos in the last 30 days and the number of visitors viewing photos
• Most viewed competitors: A list of your competitors most viewed by the same people who view your business' page
• Top visitor locations: View a breakdown of the countries generating the most number of traffic to your page

Features of the paid Business Listings Management Dashboard

• The paid version includes all of the features of the free version
• Trend Graphs: Dynamic graphs showing page-view trends over a period of time
• Performance metrics: How your property's Business Listing compares to other properties
• Top Special Offers by click-through: Special Offer recommendations based on the offers that are receiving the most clicks (this tool is shown when a property is not taking advantage of their Special Offers feature)

The free Management Dashboard is available immediately.

For more information about how you can take advantage of the new features in Tripadvisor, or if you would like to optimise your Tripadvisor listing, speak to TA Fastrack today on 07 3040 3588

How to increase engagement with your fans on Facebook

According to research, you can increase your Facebook engagement with fans just be taking the following into consideration.

• Research found that 60% of posts analysed were published between 10am and 4pm
• Brands that posted before or after business hours recorded Facebook engagement rates that were 20% higher than the average
• Research also found that the shorter the Facebook post, the more likely fans will read it
• The research also found that the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook
• The highest engagement rates on Facebook occurred on Thursday and Fridays for the travel and hospitality industries
• The lowest engagement rates occurred on weekends and Wednesdays
• To drive more 'likes' or comments on your posts, ask your fans directly to 'like', 'tell' or 'comment' and this will drive the best results
• 'Liking' a post or page requires the least amount of effort, so if you tell them to do it, they will
• Simple action words such as 'like', 'take', 'submit', 'watch', 'click', 'post', 'become a fan', 'share', or 'visit' worked best
• Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate - engage with your fans!
• Questions that start with the word 'where', 'when' or 'should' have the highest engagement rates
• Questions that start with 'why' have the lowest engagement rates
• If you're running a contest on Facebook, use words like 'event', 'winner' or 'win' for best results. Direct words like 'contest', 'coupon' or 'promotion' don't work as well. Win/winning keywords give fans something to get excited about and they don't feel like they are being sold to.

If you would like to get started with Facebook marketing, speak to one of the marketing consultants at TA Fastrack or call 1300 659 289.

How to get found online with search engines

1. Choose your keywords

• Choose keywords that your target market will use to search for your product and services. For example holiday apartments mooloolaba, serviced apartments melbourne cbd
• Choose keywords based on the search volume. Optimise your website for keywords with the larger number of searches for month. There is no point in optimising your website for keywords that no one will use. You might rank well for these, but if no one uses the keywords to find you, there is no point.
• Remember that depending on the competitiveness of the keyword, it might take longer for you to rank higher for those keywords.

2. Website on-page SEO

• Place your primary keywords in your page title, headings, within the content of your page and description tags.
• Use your keywords as part of the URL. For example, www.yourcompanyname.com.au/serviced-apartments-mooloolaba.html
• Make use of H1 and H2 headings
• Place keywords within the meta-keyword tags and alt-text on images

3. Off-page SEO

• Build inbound links to your website from other quality websites
• Build links to your website using keywords as the anchor text. For example, the text that is hyperlinked to your website should be keywords you are optimising your website for (like serviced apartments melbourne), not the words 'click here' or your company name.

4. Always measure and analyse your data

• Track the number of inbound links, keyword ranks and visits every month to ensure that it's building up.
• Track number of visits to your website through organic searches using Google Analytics. It's free to set up and you just need your web developers to insert the code in the website to track the statistics.

If you need help with your SEO, speak to one of the search engine marketing consultants at TA Fastrack today on 07 3040 3588.