One of the cruise industry executives commented to us recently how much she appreciated our “media presence”. This was a sincere compliment, and I tried to accept it graciously, but I was taken off-guard by the term “media presence”.
We are literally a mom & pop shoppe. There is just Bob and me, and we have some admin support. We certainly don’t have a PR department or a media section.
For those of us who grew up in the 60s and70s, the idea of “media” was about large newspapers, periodicals and broadcast television. In the 21st Century, this is about regular blogging, posting on social media, and contributing on YouTube.
We do a reasonable job of trying to connect with our clients and readers once a week. Occasionally we get busy and miss a deadline, but we’re generally pretty consistent.
For the record, there are lots of media services out there that offer to write our stuff for us, and distribute it via multiple media channels. We don’t like this idea, so everything we post is written by Bob and me.
We post regularly on our Facebook page, and if you use Facebook and are not already connected with us, we’d love for you to join us!
We are certainly not on all the social channels, and we get regular feedback that we need to be more active on Instagram and Twitter so that we can attract more Millennials to our business. We’ll probably work on improving our presence on these channels at some point.
However our focus on the moment is on Facebook and YouTube, because we really like dealing with people who are similar to us in age and interests: 55 – 75+ year-olds who are curious about the world, and want to get out and explore it as much as they can, for as long as they can.
The one media channel we have been working on improving our presence is YouTube. We personally do many of the trips that we book our clients on, and we try to document these trips with short videos. We now have 47 videos posted, and will continue to add stuff regularly.
If you’re looking for the flashy, highly-produced videos, I would refer to you the individual cruise lines’ websites. On the other hand, if you want to know what these trips are like from the perspective of normal people (not the models on the professional videos), and taken with an iPhone, then our videos might be of interest.
Here’s a link to our YouTube homepage. There is a “subscribe” button (top right) there if you want to be notified when we post new videos. If you click on “Playlists”, you can see the series of videos from various trips we’ve taken. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeRk0RaMl2AGV-bsA-j_6eA
One video I would draw your attention to (because it just doesn’t translate as well to the written word), is the plane ride we took a couple of months ago on the Crystal Skye. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to travel on the world’s largest private plane (a Boeing 777-LR), with only 88-seats, as well as a cocktail lounge and restaurant area. It’s the only time I’ve had a buffet breakfast on a plane… or seen an ice sculpture while in the air. Here’s the link:
This plane is available for private charter, either in connection with a Crystal cruise or for any other purpose. If you need further information just let me know (serious requests only please). It would be a good choice for a large-ish group of people who all want to fly business class together, because it’s difficult or impossible to get a large number of business class seats all together on the same flights.
So, we’ll continue to blog regularly with original content written by us, and document our trips as they occur via YouTube.
I guess we do have a “media presence”.
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I look forward to hearing from you.
Sue Bradley
Sue Bradley
