The story of Peter Iroga, his extraordinarily large feet and the success of the team at Dee Why’s Foot Power in fitting him with a great set of boots continued throughout the week in the local newspaper, the Manly Daily.

Thursday’s edition featured another great front page story, with the ‘how do you measure up?’ buzz hitting local streets, and the popular Saturday edition saw Peter officially entered into the Guiness Book of World Records as having the largest recorded feet of any human on the plant.

The original one-page release really had legs! Three great stories in local and broader news within the week is big news for orthodist Karl Heinz-Schott and his team at FootPower, and for Peter Iroga who is surely heading in the right direction to fulfill his dreams of becoming an NBA star.

More on Foot Power at www.footpower.com.au

Southern Ocean Lodge is currently running a winter advertising campaign to promote its cool season packages. See current production in the Weekend Australian Travel & Indulgence and SMH/The Age Traveller Magazine. Copy by Silver Dollar Words

Tourism Australia is today recognised as a thought and best practice leader in social media marketing. With a current Facebook fan following and engagement of just over 1.5 million, Tourism Australia shows the power of a dedicated and dynamic approach to social media and the potential of word (or world!) of mouth recommendations.

With a friendly, and approachable brand such as Australia, the potential to create buzz in both overseas and domestic markets is enormous, and  benefits to the Australian economy and to individual tourism and associated operators huge.

Travellers today refer to a number of online and offline sources of information in the process of deciding what kind of experience they desire, and where exactly to spend their money. Typically, travellers refer to information sites such as regional tourism destination sites and tourism operators’ sites as well as authentic recommendations or review sites such as Google Places, Trip Advisor and IgoYouGo.

This trend of course applies also to other industries, most obviously the food and beverage sector with sites such as eatability, urban spoon and true local offering the consumer’s own verdict on the ‘real experience’ of a venue. Specialist bloggers offer more authentic reviews to a dedicated fan base.

In other words, a brand’s profile and the way the public perceives it and makes decisions about it is now very much in the hands of the purchasing consumer, as well as industry experts and the operators themselves.

What people are saying defines a brand to the degree that purchasers are listening; it’s vital to now harness and build on positive perceptions – it’s simply no longer a market where a ‘one way street’, product-oriented approach will work.

Around 70% of online users trust online recommendations of other users they don’t know; whilst 90% trust recommendations of users they do know. The old-school ‘over the backyard fence’ recommendation is still stronger, though obviously less far-reaching than its online counterpart.

Tourism Australia has introduced the concept of ‘trust rankings’, where the importance of a referred authentic, real endorsement will be relevant to the level of economic and emotional investment involved in the engagement and ultimate purchase; ie the higher the perceived investment the more trust is required.

How to gain consumers’ trust? Be transparent, open and honest. A belief in the quality of a product or service experience means being happy to share what others are saying about it.

Linking to Trip Advisor and other relevant review sites on a main brochure site shows confidence in a product, an open approach and ultimately creates  a one-stop shop: if users can get tourist and operator information as well as authentic reviews without having to leave the site to search, so much the better for everyone.

Tourism Australia’s approach to its audience has been one of advocacy, of mutual support, empathy and listening to create positive referrals and generate buzz. Facebook has grown organically, with direct engagement, a positive vibe and encouragement to share and participate in the space key to its success.

Ongoing online events such as the ‘Share a photo Friday’ on Facebook and the successful ‘There’s Nothing like… Australia’ which saw nearly 29 000 consumers send in their own favourite Australian holiday snaps and stories. This is real, trustworthy information and endorsement. A nation-wide back fence!

This was not only a listening and sharing activity but an inspired drive for content; the result is a vast online library of videos, stories and images from its friends’ submissions, providing real, authentic content about the experience of the Australia brand.

The ‘new media’ version of the former Visiting Journalists Program is the Visiting Opinion Leaders Program (VOLP), where socially connected commentators, or bloggers and others in the role of journalists are identified and encouraged to visit to experience the product. Similar is the ‘Friends of Australia’ program where celebrities and various though leaders or industry identities are sought to share their stories, videos etc. Their interests and their common interests with others – be it in fashion, food, arts etc are defined as ‘passion points’ or ‘connectors’ and present a new perspective, density and potential audience to this amazing brand, Australia.

The media release still has enormous potential to create good old fashioned column inches, or feet in this case!

Northern Beaches client FootPower, a specialist orthotics clinic sent a brief brief recently about a very large customer measuring 2.23m in height who had the largest feet they’d ever seen, or fitted!

The team successfully fitted boots for the customer, Mr Peter Iroga’s 40cm feet and decided it had the makings of a great story, perfect for the local news.

The one page press release created by Silver Dollar Words appears as a double front page story in today’s local Northern Beaches newspaper, the Manly Daily.

It’s excellent publicity for Foot Power.

The double page offers up a life-size image of Peter’s foot, and invites you to measure your feet against his. My big boys are busy standing on the paper to see how they measure up.

You can take the foot-long challenge online at www.manlydaily.com.au and view the original press release here.

A growing number of travellers (some recent statistics read 86%) now refer to Trip Advisor as well as the property and destination tourism sites when making their travelling decisions, so it’s a powerful tool, designed to offer transparency and honesty in a product or service.

Trip Advisor offers more than a two way street of communication between guests and the hotel or restaurant, it opens the doors to the concept of ‘world of mouth’, where personal, authentic recommendations carry a great deal of weight in the decision making process.

Positive reviews about an accommodation or restaurant on Trip Advisor are a great thing, and will contribute to both organic search engine rankings and Trip Advisor’s own ‘Popularity Index’ ranking which ranks properties by destination according to numbers of recent positive reviews and is a quick glance reference and recommendation for searchers.

Even negative or constructively critical reviews offer property owners or managers the chance to respond and further promote their products services.

It’s vital for a hotel or restaurant to actively manage their Trip Advisor profile in real-time so as guests and viewers can see property owners managers care about their guests’ opinions and are responsive.

Tips to managing your Trip Advisor profile, coming up next!

Google Places is emerging as one of the most important areas of a company’s online presence. Google Places drives the map listings that appear when searching for a term with local intent, for example ‘restaurants in Sydney’, or ‘cleaners in Canberra’.

There are several key advantages in spending a short amount of time on a regular basis ensuring the Google Places listing is maximized for your business, not matter what product or service is on offer.

Google Places is useful for attracting local business, but is by no means limited to this in a geographical sense.

Google Places

• Are perfect to drive organic Search Engine rankings
• Provide an opportunity to leapfrog local and broader competition in search rankings and ultimately sales
• Link to and affect many important general and industry review sites such as True Local and Trip Advisor
• Forms the foundation for location marketing, including mobile marketing, Facebook Places and FourSquare

Simple steps to set up Google Places

1. Search for Google Places and create an account
2. Add as much information about your company, its products/services, keywords and key selling points as possible
3. Add any images or videos, tagged with product/service keywords wherever possible
4. On an ongoing basis, refresh the content with updates and tweaks

A quick instructional video from Google about Google Places.

In the rollercoaster ride of setting up a communications consultancy in this constantly evolving digital age whilst still working full time (an addictive safetynet) and trying to raise three good kids, I am constantly telling potential new clients about the important of fresh web content, the importance of social media with the blog as ‘daddy’.

Last week I was interviewing a  new client about all she believed about her retail homewares business, ahead of writing her website content. She had done her homework and had already identified a few good web design models that she liked, and each of them had a blog page, if not the other social media champions, twitter and facebook. When we looked at the blog pages on her model sites though, most had written an introductory blog post or two… and then nothing. We laughed over our wineglasses and  called it the ‘Their first blog was also their last’ effect.

And then I thought of my own blog. It was at exactly that ‘welcome here’ stage, but now left idle, lolling aimlessly about in cyberspace, a do-nothing freeloader type. Neglected, forlorn and a wasted opportunity. The irony of this situation sat between us like an unappealing blob, squelchy and indeterminate in colour.

Given some exposure this guy has potential

Of course, for everyone who has a business, or works in a business and who has a blog because they kow they need one, TIME – or the lack of it is the biggest drain on a blog’s development and its ability to reach its full (or any) potential. It is tricky to fit in time for the blog amongst running day-to-day business operations, a relationship, a family, a home and a social life. ‘Busy is  good, chaos is better’ I like to think, but still. Easily overlooked, the blog is often the last in line to get any attention.

Another common staller in blog development is the blogger’s biggest concerns: WHAT to write about and WHO will read it?!

The answer to these questions will obviously depend on what kind  of  business it is, and who are the customers, suppliers, competition, maybe one day hopefully relevant media in the market. No-one but good friends and family might read it until it’s really up and running and gaining its own momentum, which is a consolation in itsself.

Blogs are important to nuture for three main reasons (and many more really)

• they add density to a product, service or business
• they build trust and identity
• they offer strong organic search engine benefits.

There are some great bloggers who post about blogging, what to do and how remain inspired. Some of the most popular bloggers also have guest bloggers contribute posts. Problogger is one; Copyblogger is my favourite, with approachable and often humourous tips on copywriting for online marketing success.  Here’s a snapshot of a great one, follow the link to read the article in full.

8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity and Stifle Your Success
by Dean Rieck
“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts the moment you get up and doesn’t stop until you get into the office.” ~ Robert Frost

It’s a myth that only highly intelligent people are creative. In fact, research shows that once you get beyond an I.Q. of about 120, which is just a little above average, intelligence and creativity are not at all related.

That means that even if you’re no smarter than most people, you still have the potential to wield amazing creative powers.

So why are so few people highly creative? Because there are bad habits people learn as they grow up which crush the creative pathways in the brain. And like all bad habits, they can be broken if you are willing to work at it.

Here are eight of the very worst bad habits that could be holding you back every day:

1. Creating and evaluating at the same time

You can’t drive a car in first gear and reverse at the same time. Likewise, you shouldn’t try to use different types of thinking simultaneously. You’ll strip your mental gears.

Creating means generating new ideas, visualizing, looking ahead, considering the possibilities. Evaluating means analyzing and judging, picking apart ideas and sorting them into piles of good and bad, useful and useless.

Most people evaluate too soon and too often, and therefore create less. In order to create more and better ideas, you must separate creation from evaluation, coming up with lots of ideas first, then judging their worth later.

2. The Expert Syndrome

This a big problem in any field where there are lots of gurus who tell you their secrets of success. It’s wise to listen, but unwise to follow without question.

Some of the most successful people in the world did what others told them would never work. They knew something about their own idea that even the gurus didn’t know. Every path to success is different.

3. Fear of failure

Most people remember baseball legend Babe Ruth as one of the great hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs. However, he was also a master of the strike out. That’s because he always swung for home runs, not singles or doubles. Ruth either succeeded big or failed spectacularly.

No one wants to make mistakes or fail. But if you try too hard to avoid failure, you’ll also avoid success.

A great look at the revolution in communications with the advent of social media.

Welcome to the Silver Dollar Words blog, a space to see some great examples and case studies of companies and brands using clever communications, media and marketing tactics to best reach target markets and drive great customer relations and increased sales. Also see Silver Dollar Words work in online and traditional communications as it happens…!

Stay tooned

• http://bit.ly/916wr5 SA food produce and chefs capture the attention of local awards and celebrated chefs – winners all round #safood #
• Doing some research: where-ever you are, name your favourite coffee bar. Which coffee do they use? Do they roast their own? #