Word-of-Mouth 2.0

This is part of a conversation earlier this week about socializing my work's website, www.OjaiVisitors.com. I wanted to add a Facebook 'Like' Box to the site to help drive up our Facebook content. Read and tell me if you think I made my case.

The “Like Button” is for article content, the “Like Box” is to integrate your website with your Facebook Fan Page. They are not the same thing.

If our goal is to drive traffic to the website, we need to take advantage of the tools at our disposal. If we really want to use the Facebook to

drive traffic to the website, we need to make a customized landing page, which will showcase the site immediately when new users click on our Facebook. The way we have it right now, the website isn’t even mentioned until we click the “Info” tab on the page. Consider the fan page is like a continuously streaming e-newsletter, users see the information and specials I post in real time. Most of the information I post on our Facebook directly links to our website, so why not try to get more fans so they can be continuously updated with specials and information?
This is where the symbiotic relationship between the website and social media comes in. Our mission is to drive midweek overnight stays, and by not making our website sharable or incorporated with FB or Twitter, we aren’t allowing the possibility of crowd sourcing. Social media is making e-blasts and e-newsletters obsolete, and the more out of town people we have on our Facebook, the more up to date they will be on what’s going on in Ojai. And they will tell their friends

, and so on and so forth. It’s “Word-of-Mouth 2.0!”

Shortly after this post was written, we added a beautiful landing page to our Facebook to help drive traffic to the website. Check it out:

Despite my finding that my confidence in the "like" box wasn't good for the site, I am so happy that my team listened to what I had to say. You win some and lose some.