by Heather T. | May 15, 2018 | Bed and Breakfasts, Equipment, Marketing
Some quick tips for innkeepers doing DIY photos for websites and social media channels.
- Experiment with height and creating different levels. Use a cutting board or other type of portable surface (cake stands, glasses, trays), etc. Adding some texture, like kitchen towels, napkins and kitchen utensils helps break things up and create visual differences between the focus of the photo (the food) and it’s surroundings.
- Use Negative Space, have spots in the photo where there is “nothing” makes for better photos. When taking closeup shots, add a little space for background or if it’s on china, for the plate to be a part of the picture, ie half a plate, a corner of the plate.
- Use a Tripod For the best photos. If using a smart phone, most full-size tripods or mini tripods now come with, or can be ordered with, smart phone mounts, you just clip your phone right into the mount and shoot away!
- Take a ton of photos, don’t take one or two, don’t take a dozen, take several dozen from various angles including straight down. What looks good on a smart phone may not good on a computer when you see it in large resolution. The more photos you take, the more of a chance you will get a couple of “keepers”.
- The food is the center point of the photo. Props are nice, but they should complement, not overwhelm the food. Taking photos on white plates is best. A colorful prop can be beautiful, but it can easily be the highlight of the picture and grab attention away from the food it’s supposed to be highlighting,
- Garnish is key. Any ingredient can be a garnish and a prop as well, a simple omelet can get “spruced up” by a little chopped parsley or some crumbled cheese and cracked pepper. Simple low prep garnishes are great for food photos. Chopped chives hold up well, as does chopped parsley without browning, crumbled/shredded cheese, chopped or whole nuts, sunflower seeds, ground pepper, chia or poppy seeds, coarse or colored sea salt, chocolate shavings or cocoa powder, coconut flakes, chili flakes, pink peppercorns, dried and fresh berries and fruit. Raid your spice cabinet!
- Do your photo editing on a computer, as mentioned prior, a photo may look great on a smartphone, it will look completely different on a big computer and you will be likely to see imperfections and things you won’t notice on a small screen.
- Build or buy a lightbox, there are a lot of inexpensive ones on the market and they are quite easy to make as well.
Tips for When Just Doing Food Photos (not photos to serve to guests, best when testing out a new recipe, what better way to utilize it when trying it out, use it to play with some photography shots!)
- Use the freshest ingredients, imperfections, even small ones, show up on camera. When specifically doing food “just” for food photos, a leaf of mint “must” be perfect, even small blemishes on fruit show up when in closeups, so heavily eyeball everything.
- Don’t cook it all the way, meat, vegetables and fruit all keep cooking (called carryover cooking) when removed from heat. To keep everything look plump and moist, take it out prior to it just being done to shoot it.
- Aerosol olive oil sprays, as well as spray bottles with room temperate water can liven up dishes and make them glisten in photos, a spray of fine misted water over fresh herbs and fruit gives it that “just picked” look.
Pro-Photographers Food Styling Tip: Capturing steam on camera is always difficult, placing cotton balls (tampons actually work the best) soaked in hot water behind a coffee or tea cup while snapping photos can give you some nice effects.
Free photo editors – lets you edit all your photos online, from one easy place.
Best Apps for Smartphones:
How to build an easy lightbox:
by Heather T. | Jan 30, 2018 | Bed and Breakfasts, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Last January, my how time flies! I wrote a blog about how video is hot (and it’s still getting hotter) and live streaming: Ideas for Bed and Breakfasts using Video and Live Streaming, which I would encourage B&Bs to review, because video is here to stay and will continue to advance and perhaps dominate marketing in the years to come.
I wanted to follow this up with the checklist I had made up that might help B&Bs prepare a little bit if they were going to do video to promote their B&B, or they wanted to play around with Live Streaming Video.
Checklist for doing a Live Streaming Event:
- Check Lighting. Try to avoid windows with bright sun streaming in. Turn on room lights and check for glare on camera.
- Tripods in place if needed.
- Preview movement for “in camera” objects, pre-video walkthrough or still photos.
- Sound Checks with pre-recording.
- Mute phones and cell phones if possible.
- Turn off radio and/or TV.
- Cue cards if needed for talking points.
- If doing a recipe demonstration, have your mise en place done in advance.
- If having people participate, get photo/video permissions, in writing if possible.
- Check your appearance and anyone else’s in the video in advance.
- Test your internet connection and speed.
- Video in Facebook is muted by default, so make the opening reflect your topic or reflect a brand.
- Share on as many channels as you can..
- Be cognizant that many people may be watching on smartphones, so filming with your smartphone in the vertical position is suggested.
- Time Yourself, Videos should be one to two minutes long at the most. If you are posting the videos to Youtube, keep in mind that Youtube Creator will let you edit videos as well as stitch them together.
Have you done some recent videos or live streaming events at your Bed and Breakfast that you would like to share? Please do in the comments, as I am always looking for example to show to other B&Bs!
by Heather T. | Aug 28, 2017 | Bed and Breakfasts, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Today I was supposed to teach a short instructional webinar on using Youtube Slideshow Creator. A very useful tool that I found out this morning (when I logged in to Youtube) that it’s being retired on September 20, 2017. Apparently, they had put out a notice (not very widely apparently) that is was going away permanently a few months ago. I did know that Youtube is revamping it’s Creator studio, which I have Beta access to, and am quite excited to see the full version of, but I was unaware of this. Caught a bit by surprise as I usually know about most social media changes way ahead of time, I am to say the least, extremely disappointed they are retiring this feature as it was very useful for B&Bs. The explanation is “that it was not widely used”, similar to Facebook retiring it’s lists feature earlier this year (and there is a workaround for them at least) the feature was a victim of the fact that hardly anyone used it, because most didn’t even know about it.
If you do want to explore Youtube slideshows, you have until the 20th to do so. Youtube says it won’t be doing away with any videos created with it prior, so if you have a few minutes and some good still photos, take advantage of it now. The slideshow feature can be replicated with other programs (I am looking into good suggestions for replacing) but access to the availability of royalty free music (that Youtube provides with the slideshow creator) is not as easily replaced.
I had done a blog in 2014 about using the slideshow option, so if you would like to play with it in the interim of the feature going away, please visit https://chefforfeng.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/how-innkeepers-can-leverage-youtubes-photo-slideshow-option/. You may need to use Firefox (recommended), Safari or Internet Explorer as Google Chrome is blocking the Flash plugin used to create the show.
If you have a current version of Powerpoint (within the last 4 years) there is an option of turning your slides (with effects) into a video that is uploadable to Youtube.
While there are literally 100s of options for programs to do slideshows and export to video ranging from $29.99 to $99.00, and many more in the higher price ranges with more bells and whistles, there are not many options out there for free.
Windows Movie Maker (PC only) (http://www.windows-movie-maker.org/) is one option that Windows users can download for free. Avid Media Composer (PC or Mac) is another, but maybe for the more technological inclined (http://www.avid.com/media-composer-first). I would very much recommend not downloading many of the other options that tout themselves as “free” without first checking them out heavily online. Many contain Spyware and Adware which can be even more malicious, and in many cases much harder to get rid of than regular viruses.
Kizoa (https://www.kizoa.com/) is one online option, but the free version limits what you can do. I have not trialed the paid version but it looks promising. There are several others online as well that offer “free” but with limitations as well. I’d recommend testing out the online ones available, with the caveat be careful what links you click on, especially if the program landing page has lots of ads on it, similar to the downloadable options for slideshow editors, be cognizant that some links may take you to malicious sites.
We are continuing to research other options for this and will post an additional post when (and sadly if) we find more comparable (free) equivalents to Youtube Slideshow Creator, Avid we had been aware of prior, and Kizoa we came across today and trial tested (and recommend to check out as a possible option) after looking at and testing about two dozen other options today.
by Heather T. | Aug 9, 2017 | Blog, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Did you know you can download a full backup of your Facebook business page, including all the photos, videos and posts you have posted since you started your page?
Why back up?
- Ever look for that illusive post, you KNOW you posted awhile back but couldn’t find?
- Many innkeepers upload great photos of the inn and the surrounded area to their business page, but never back it up to their computer for use in other social media, or to have a copy for their media kit or other advertising?
- Have you uploaded regular videos to your page, or Facebook live videos and want to re-purpose them? Social Media Examiner (one of my favorite sites) wrote a great post last year: How to Repurpose Your Facebook Live Videos which gives some great ideas about re-purposing and gives instructions for downloading one video at a time, but downloading the archive takes a step out.
You can also download individual albums, which I would also recommend doing frequently if you don’t want to download a full archive.
Downloading the full archive though is a piece of cake, once you select “download the archive” it will walk you through some additional steps and it will also send you an email letting you know the download is ready.
Don’t forget you can also back up your personal Facebook account photo albums, which is also worth doing occasionally, especially mobile uploads.
Facebook may also be rolling out a new feature for Facebook admins, I have only seen this option from new pages that have been created, but I hope it’s not just a test, but something they will add to all pages for the admins, it would be great to be able to invite connections and give them a more personalized invite than just “like this page”. When you receive an invite to like a page, a small text editable invite looks like it can be attached to it.
There are some new options for Facebook group admins if you want to check out the changes, click here for a brief overview.
by Heather T. | Jun 20, 2017 | Lodging, Marketing, Websites
Remember those domain name email verification emails you used to ignore?
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has made changes to the process that you must follow to update the Registrant contact info in your account, including any changes to name, organization, email address, or ADMIN email address on your domains. Plus as of January 1, 2014, you MUST verify your email address, You MUST click the validation link in the email and enter the key provided, otherwise the domain name will be suspended (i.e. this means your website goes down as well). Some instances within after 72 hours, others within 15 days.
When you update your Registrant info on a domain, this new process sends an email to BOTH the existing email address being replaced and the new email address for the Registrant contact. Both recipients are now required to approve the update.
In the new ICANN agreement, the WHOIS Accuracy Program Specification has been updated. Not only are registrars required to verify the whois data, section 1 (f) outlines the new requirements for email or phone verification:
Verify:
- the email address of the Registered Name Holder (and, if different, the Account Holder) by sending an email requiring an affirmative response through a tool-based authentication method such as providing a unique code that must be returned in a manner designated by the Registrar, or the telephone number of the Registered Name Holder (and, if different, the Account Holder) by either (A) calling or sending an SMS to the Registered Name Holder’s telephone number providing a unique code that must be returned in a manner designated by the Registrar, or (B) calling the Registered Name Holder’s telephone number and requiring the Registered Name Holder to provide a unique code that was sent to the Registered Name Holder via web, email or postal mail. In either case, if Registrar does not receive an affirmative response from the Registered Name Holder, Registrar shall either verify the applicable contact information manually or suspend the registration, until such time as Registrar has verified the applicable contact information. If Registrar does not receive an affirmative response from the Account Holder), Registrar shall verify the applicable contact information manually, but is not required to suspend any registration.
Unfortunately innkeepers are just now becoming aware of this, as some domains that were originally registered. were in many cases registered years ago. What this also means, and is very important for innkeepers to be aware of, is if they sell their inn and all the marketing attached to the sale, including a domain name, that if you make an owner change, and you forget to verify the domain name, then the domain name will be parked on other DNS (Domain Name System). This means that if you use it for a website, then the website will go down until reactivated.
If you don’t verify the email address, you may end up with this on your website.
ICANN will never send you domain renewals or verifications by postal mail, nor will your domain registrar.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. Originally, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities performed these services under U.S. Government contract. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes. The DNS translates the domain name you type into the corresponding IP address, and connects you to your desired website. The DNS also enables email to function properly, so the email you send will reach the intended recipient. (From: http://archive.icann.org/tr/english.html)
While there are hundreds of legal domain name registrars, whoever you choose to register or transfer a domain name to, make sure it’s on ICANN’s list of accredited registrars: https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited-list.html
Acorn Internet wrote a blog post about this a few months ago as well “IGNORE THOSE ICANN EMAILS AT YOUR PERIL“, unfortunately we are seeing more innkeeper’s websites show up weekly that are not paying attention to these emails, and don’t know or don’t recognize the importance of this, and their websites are offline and losing them business.
Here are some often used and affordable registrars for small businesses:
Some Domain Basics for Innkeepers
First and most important of all, make sure you own and have access to your domain name. Webmasters will frequently register a domain for a client, but will sometimes put it under their own name as the owner. Even if a website company registers the domain with you as the owner, if you don’t have access to the account, that doesn’t help you if the company is unresponsive, has an issue with you, forgets or neglects to renew your domain, or the company goes out of business.
Check to see where your domain is registered, and if you don’t have access to it under your own account, make it your first priority to have it moved immediately. Most domain registrars are very helpful with transferring a domain to another account. Remember if your domain goes, so does your website.
When signing up for a new domain name or transferring one to another registrar. These are some things to look for, they are sometimes buried in the fine print of the registrar’s website, but are important to be aware of, as they can cost you extra money, and in some cases a huge hassle down the road.
Contract, Duration and Transfers:
Registrars offer a variety of registration options, many offer discounts for multiple year registrations. Always check out the fine print because there can be a significant bump in price when renewing, as well as there may be fees attached to transferring to another registrar. There may also be a time stipulation regarding transfers.
Customer Service:
Make sure the registrar has a 24/7 customer service support number and has a good customer service record. Check the Better Business Bureau, as well as Google the name and look for reviews. You want to also make sure they have stated policies on compliance issues, and that you are able to get a hold of them in case of a problem or issue.
Additional Fees:
Most domain registrations come with standard pricing, but registrars differ in pricing by quite a bit on things like private registration, domain forwarding (if you have multiple domains and want to forward them to one primary one), email, email forwarding, DNS management (The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities), and domain name protection.
Additional Services:
Many registrars offer full packages and services, like hosting, email, SSL certificates (SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer, an encryption technology that was created by Netscape. SSL creates an encrypted connection between your web server and your visitors’ web browser allowing for private information to be transmitted), website builders and SEO (Search Engine Optimization Tools). Because Google is now requiring sites asking for information to be SSL encrypted, it’s also recommended to ask which types of SSL certificates are offered. For more information about the types of SSL certificates out there, check out A Comprehensive Guide To Different Types of SSL Certificates and Types of SSL Certificates. Your webmaster (if you have one) should be able to help you decide which type of SLL certificate you need on your site.
by Heather T. | Jun 13, 2017 | Lodging, Marketing
In today’s market, when innkeepers have limited time to try to concentrate on running a business, online marketing and more, the use of technology for guest management is almost a must have!
Plus booking management systems can streamline finances, track reservations, record and report on a variety of aspects of your business and keep online an updated visual availability calendar so guests and potential guests can see if you have rooms free, without having to call or email you.
As with website designers, there are hundreds of Booking Engines and Channel Managers out there in the Hospitality Industry. Some of them designed specifically for smaller properties, some for larger, and many service both. Most of the booking engines out there integrate with OTAs, but some don’t integrate with all of them. Some of them also integrate with Airbnb for those legal B&Bs that are leveraging the service to compete.
Here are a few of the better known ones for the B&B industry:
Do your homework first when selecting your reservations systems. Most of them now have demos that you can sign up for and test the features.
Call or email each company with your questions prior to taking the time to do a demo, and pick what is most important to you, ease of use, what it integrates with, price, etc.
Those specifics will help you choose when it comes time to make a decision on what systems to use for the first time, or when you consider switching to an alternative booking system.
Here are some considerations when choosing a booking company:
- Does it integrate with OTAs and if so, specifically which ones?
- How long have the companies been in business?
- How many current users do they have?
- Is the software easy to use for both yourself, and most importantly the guest making a reservation?
- Is it mobile friendly?
- How customizable is the booking engine itself in the ability to match your branding? Does it offer the ability to add large scale and multiple pictures to it?
- Can it keep track of guest preferences and options, and does it have the ability to flag past guests, or inquiries for potential or past issues?
- How often and when are the systems backed up?
- Is it web based or desktop based?
- How can you access the backend of the system? Is there an app, or is it easy to use the back-end on a mobile device?
- What is their plan in the event of a data breach (on their end for their system)? And on your own end if you have a data breach? (very important!)
Optional:
- Can you add packages and specials to the booking process?
- Can it send emails at specific dates to guests in the system?
- Does it integrate with a online gift shop, or have gift shop capabilities?
- Can you offer gift certificates or gift cards through it?
When in doubt, go with a company that offers a few more features than you need, switching reservations systems is a time consuming, and often problematic exercise.
Make sure the systems are compatible with all computer operating systems and browsers (Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer), both from the innkeepers end, and the guests end. Some reservation cloud based systems can only be used in Internet Explorer by the innkeeper for the back end, and I.E. is one of the most unsafe browsers out there.
This should be standard, but check that they are PCI compliant. And what current standard they are at. For more information about PCI compliance visit https://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pci-faqs-2/.
Attend some lodging trade shows, and talk to the reservations systems people one on one. This will give you a better idea of the type of company they are personally, as well as be able to do a little comparison shopping at the same time. Many state and regional lodging shows have multiple booking software vendor booths, including the yearly PAII conference (http://paii.com/Innkeeping-Conference) and AHLA’s yearly conference (http://www.thehotelexperience.com).
Ask fellow innkeepers what they use, including listening in and asking questions on innkeeping forums. Ask about ease of use, options and customer service as priorities. Of utmost importance is finding out how quickly and how responsive they are to fixing problems.
A suggestion when evaluating booking software, is do some trial run reservations on some websites that use the software before even calling the vendor for a demo. From a guest’s perspective, is it easy to use? Is it clear and well laid out? Is it mobile friendly?
Booking abandonment is a huge issue in the lodging industry. If it takes more than 2 minutes to make a reservation, or if options are not clear, you may be losing a lot of potential bookings. Test them out first.
