COVID-19 Pandemic
Yes, the COVID-19 is still ongoing, and the last week was spent mostly updating copy on the company’s web page. So far Namibia appears to have dodged a bullet here, with only 16 cases in total, and six of those already recovered. Whether this is real and attributable to the early and decisive action of the government, or whether we are just not testing enough shall come out in the wash later. I hope for the former, of course
Lockdown activities for tour operators
From the beginning of the lock down there was no more touristic activities, so we spent our time getting the vehicles up to date, and doing all the small jobs that need doing. For the most part, we are taking the lock down seriously, and sticking to social distancing.
With nothing else to do, I decided to spruce up the old web site of Awesome Chapters. That’s going well, but there are still more things to do. Like building an advertising network and getting some good content on the web. This blog is part and parcel of that effort. The images here are just ones that I have used recently, and are nice to look at.
Updating the website
Having a background of oil and gas, specializing in instruments and IT, marketing was never my strong point. I gained most of the web page knowledge through sitting at a desktop on a ship in the middle of nowhere, it was never a professional interest until Awesome Chapters was started in 2018.
The lock down has been ongoing for about two weeks when I stumbled upon the wonderful world of SEO. After installing a plugin in WordPress, and fiddling a little with the tour descriptions to get a better SEO score Facebook introduced me to the related field of Copywriting.
Copy
After just a little reading about it, I realized I was out of my depth, and needed to study. Enter Udemy. It’s a lock down out there, after all. After a 6 hour course in copy writing, I decided to look at the company web site again. With the new eyes, I could see how horrible it was. Luckily, by the time you read this, those old pages will be long gone.
For the last two weeks, I have been updating tour descriptions once again. Funny thing is, once you get the copy right, the tours read easier. Of course, with all the churn, I was destroying all the links that the search engines have built up over time. Instantly my SERP fell quite drastically, and only after a week or so started to show signs of recovery.
So, get your copy right from the start, or get someone to do it for you. Unfortunately there are no elegant ways around fixing the links in a web site, so you will have to deal with the fallout sooner or later. Since we are not having any business anyways, I decided that sooner was better than later to pull the trigger on the copy.
Advertising
I always thought that if you make something good, people will buy it. Make no mistake, the tours of Awesome Chapters is, for lack of a better word, awesome. They get rave reviews, but in this world, and especially with clients that book a tour long before they arrive in Namibia, image becomes quite important.
So, advertising goes hand in hand with copy. I feel like a marketing weasel these days, but I would really like this business to have clients. The best way to do that is to advertise, after getting the copy correct. Right now I am dipping my toe in the advertising world, so not betting big on any campaign. I feel the need of another course coming on. N$10 per day is not much, but where there is absolutely no money coming in even that little bit deserves consideration.
While dreaming about getting out into the desert again, I started to put one nice picture on Facebook a day, you know, to see if I can get some natural traffic going to the site. So far the organic traffic is still lacking, I need some sort of viral kick. The irony is not wasted on my at this point.
This should be the end of this blog for today. I endeavor to write a good blog every week, even if it is for events that happened a long time ago. Adios!
