As Hurricane Earl brushes past the Northern Caribbean, he is leaving behind him a wake of amazing cruise deals. Deal hunters in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama are fully aware that this is the season to land those dream deals. Combine a semi-recovering economy with a passing hurricane and you get the DEAL OF THE YEAR! The NCL Sky departing Miami on September 6th for a 4 night Bahamas cruise vacation is now priced at only $119 per person! The best part is that Hurricane Earl will be well past Florida and the Bahamas by Labor Day. And with the NCL Sky departing on Labor Day, you’ll only have to take off 3 days to enjoy this last-minute deal! Hurry and book it now!
If you can’t take advantage of this awesome Deal, make sure you subscribe in the top right of the blog so you so you do not miss out on the CruiseSource.us Deals, News, and Advice. Or just Follow us on Twitter!
When Donna Marie, CEO and founder of the Indie Business Network started to research her idea of having Indie Business Owners join her on a Cruise Ship for networking, education, and of course fun she contacted CruiseDeals.com, the leader in Social Media group cruises. After a few weeks of planning, we’re excited that the Indie Cruise is now open for reservations, Twitter Hashtag: #IndieCruise.
Conference events at Sea, like the #IndieCruise display the incredible value of cruise vacations. We are able to offer conference style sessions, meals, room, transportation to tropical islands, entertainment, and more for the same price that most conferences charge just for admission to the conference.
The Indie Business Cruise is for Indie & Small Business Leaders. Indie Business leaders know how to connect, collaborate and succeed. They know how important it is to remain close to their industry peers so they can stay on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the world of small, independent and artisan business owners, artisan business owners.
They know that it’s vital to take online connections offline so they can be solidified and with face-to-face interactions that always result in building stronger and more robust business networks. Indie Cruise is a once-in-a-lifetime experience where you combine travel and relaxation with learning and sharing, plus the creation of life-long personal and business friendships. #IndieCruise will allow these leaders to do what they do best over 4 days with other leaders.
Hurricane Earl has caused several ships to change itineraries in order to avoid the storm. Some of the most popular Islands in the Caribbean like St. Maarten and St. Thomas are too close to the projected path of Hurricane Earl. So in the interest of safety and not ruining vacations the cruiselines have altered some itineraries of ships currently cruising the Caribbean.
Carnival Victory, Carnival Pride, Carnival Dream, Norwegian Epic, Enchantment of the Seas, Oasis of the Seas, and possibly the Norwegian Dawn will have their itineraries modified due to the storm. You can see all the details on these changes on the CruiseSource.us Hurricane Cruise Tracker page.
So, what do you think the Cruise Lines should be asking themselves when looking across the vast Social Media landscape? I believe their #1 question should be:
How do we get more of this?
This video is getting people pumped up on Youtube about going on the NCL Epic. This is a video created by a paying passenger! People trust their friends and family! There are tens of thousands of potential online content creators cruising each week. Many of these passengers are carrying high-powered cameras and video equipment. With a little creativity and investment the cruise lines can significantly grow the amount high-quality passenger-generated content that is being created and shared online with their friends and family. 75% of the US still have not taken a cruise vacation…. Videos like this will help dispel some of the myths, like all cruisers are old, that keep some people from going on their first cruise. Thanks to the power of social media, technology, and the awesome product offered by the cruise lines we should be able to convert many more first time cruisers.
I recently attended the Social Fresh Social Media Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina geared toward marketers with a great showing from big brands and agencies. One of the best parts of attending social media conferences is that when I get home I can experiment immediately with the few things that I learn. By far, my favorite part of social media conferences is the networking at the pre/post parties and in between sessions. Those who are the most passionate about social media seem to get the most out of the relationships made during quick conversations that happen between sessions at these conferences. After the conference, they have to continue to grow these relationships online. Social Fresh Cruise was created for the social media conference speakers, panelist, and attendees who want more time to truly build meaningful relations with other social media leaders. A cruise is the most social form of vacationing and is very conducive to building life-long friendships.
What did I learn at this Social Fresh Conference? I learned that we have moved beyond is Social Media important to social media needs to be integrated with existing business practices and goal. Social Media by itself is not the answer, but when properly integrated with your other marketing and branding activities the results can be awesome.
@JRuckman & @CruiseSource at Social Fresh CLT
I find Blue Sky Factory CEO,Greg Cangialosi to typically be about 6 months ahead of most others, and this year he was talking some Social CRM. From Greg’s presentation, Social CRM will be one of the upcoming trends thanks in part to the slick new integration of Salesforce.com and Twitter. In order to track ROI, we have to be able track leads from the source all the way to purchase.
Social Media is an ever expanding. It now encompasses blogging, micro-blogging, Facebook, video creation and distribution, community management, mobile, monitoring, and much more. As keynote Amber Naslund discussed future success will require a volunteer army from inside or outside the organization. In order to achieve success it needs to be integrated with business goals and with all traditional marketing efforts.
I’ve posted many articles, pictures, and video of the NCL Villas and Suites on CruiseSource.us. The private Courtyard Villa complex found on many of Norwegian Cruise Line’s ships including the NCL Pearl, Jade, Gem, Jewel, and Epic set NCL apart from the other cruise lines. For celebrities like OutKast’s Andre 3000 who recently vacationed on the NCL Epic, being able to spend all of your time enjoying the privacy of the courtyard complex makes for a relaxing vacation that is not possible on most other cruise lines.
Thanks to a NCL drastically reducing rates on their Suites and Villas for new bookings made between August 12th & 15th, this exclusive luxury just got very affordable. This sale includes almost 100 sailings! Get the complete list of sailings and savings for Free!
For instance on the NCL Jewel 7 night Bahamas Cruise departing New York City on 11.14.2010, a Family of 4 in a 2 bedroom villa is $1999 for the 1st and 2nd passenger. The rate for the 3rd and 4th passenger in each cabin is only $199 per person. So the total price for 4 people in a two bedroom Villa is $4890. This gets you the exclusive luxury that only the NCL Courtyard Villas offer for about $1200 per person. This sale is offering savings of $1000s and includes almost 100 NCL Cruise vacations to the Bahamas, Caribbean, Greecs, Panama Canal, and the Mediterranean.
Live on Ustream we did the drawing for the Free International Flight from American Airlines for one of the 55 people who donated at least $24 to the Cruise4Haiti over the last week. It all started with the #Cruise24 24 hour Tweet-a-thon and concluded today with the drawing. Please visit http://firstgiving.org to see all the wonderful people who have donated to Airline Ambassadors via the Cruise4Haiti. We raised over $1700 thanks to the efforts & support of @kidtravel, @CruiseBuzz, TravelingMom.com, the online travel community, and the Charlotte, NC Social Media Community! Congrats to @MeetonCruise for winning the Free Int’l Flight!! We can’t wait to see the pics! Here’s the video of the drawing which also happens to be Martha’s ( @cruisedeals) and my (@cruisesource) 1st attempt at Live Streaming Video. Enjoy.
Last week, during the #Cruise24 Tweet-a-thon we were going to give away a free International flight to one person who donated at least $24 if we could get to $2400 donated. We fell a little short of the goal hitting $1438. The Great News is that Airline Ambassadors has agreed to let us give away the International flight on Tuesday August 10th if we can get to $1700 donated. All we need is 11 more people to donate the tax deductible $24 for us to give-a-way the Free International Flight to anywhere in the world that American Airlines Flies. To donate $24 and be entered to win the Free flight Please go to http://firstgiving.org/cruise4haiti
We will hold the drawing at 5 PM ET on Tuesday August 10th, as long as we get to $1700 donated. Thank you Airline Ambassadors for allowing us to lower the goal! We really want to give away this flight so please DONATE. If you win there is a $50 activation fee, you must use the ticket within the 12 months, and there are a few restrictions about Holidays.
Last week, I conducted a Social Media Experiment that I hashtagged #Cruise24. As far as I know, I was the first person to tweet for 24 straight hours. I tweeted for 24 hours from @CruiseSource, without sleeping or communicating any other way. I wanted to focus on Twitter for an extended amount of time to get a better grasp of the state of conversation on Twitter. Luckily, I work for CruiseDeals.com and they have been supportive of all my crazy social media ideas. I’ve included all the stats from the experiment at the bottom of the blog post:
Why? Due to my personal busyness, others busyness, and the increase in bot/spam accounts I’d been feeling like the conversation had drastically decreased from where it was a couple of years ago. I have Twitter up all day at work, but I only passively monitor the conversation outside of a few times each week where I may fully commit to the conversation. Due to this passive monitoring, I’ve been anxious that I am missing out some potential opportunities to book cruises via Twitter.
I also used the experiment to raise money & awareness for the Cruise4Haiti by getting donations of $24 from as many people as possible. I learned a lot from continuously searching Twitter, attempting to have cruise related conversations, and trying to raise money over a 24 hour period. Here are my 10 top observations about the current state of conversation on Twitter:
#1. The conversation is still on Twitter. There are lots of people having conversations on twitter @replying each other. I think the fact that you can’t see all of your friends @replies make it appear that there is a lot less conversation on Twitter. But there is still very little conversation about cruising outside of between travel agents and other travel industry professionals.
#2. Commit to the Conversation. If you truly want to be part of the conversation, then you need to be focused solely on Twitter for a set amount of time. You are not able to have meaningful conversations by casually monitoring Twitter throughout the day. Conversations are a two-way street and both members need to be committed the conversation
I think it’s gotten too easy for us to monitor Twitter throughout the day, looking for search terms and responding to @replies. Thanks to Hootsuite and TweetDeck apps for Iphone and Droid it is easy to monitor Twitter all day long with multiple accounts. This is a very passive approach and I think this is why I was feeling that the conversation had slacked on Twitter.
To more effectively and efficiently use Twitter, I’ll be making major changes to how use Twitter thanks to the experiment. I will share details in the next blog post!
#3 The sense of community on Twitter is still strong. We raised about $1400 for Cruise4Haiti’s non-profit partner Airline Ambassadors. Most of the $24 donations came from friends who I have met on Twitter and have spent time with face to face playing basketball, cruising the Caribbean on Social Fresh Cruise, at Tweetups, etc. By utilizing twitter as a catalyst to meet as many people as possible in person, it enabled me to raise money for a great cause. Without putting in the time to build real relationships, I wouldn’t have raised more than a couple of hundred dollars.
#4 Twitter is a social bank account. You have to make deposits by supporting your friend’s projects and businesses. By actively supporting and being involved with #TAMxc, #SilentClark, #SoFresh, #TPTpoker, #SCLThoops, #REBCCLT, and many other twitter hashtags in the past, I received support back from those friends for #Cruise24.
#5 It’s all about relationships. By primarily only getting donations from Twitter friends who I have met in person or share common passion, I learned that Twitter is still all about relationships. People are not regularly clicking on links from Twitter and making purchases, but they are making purchases from their Twitter friends. Building these relationships take time and effort. Luckily for those of us who are serious about growing our business via Twitter, most people are not willing to put in the work to build those relationships.
#6 There’s ton of junk on Twitter. When searching for people discussing cruise, I found so much spam and junk accounts. It’s tough to weed through all the junk to find real people to tweet with. I can see why some new people to Twitter get turned off. Hopefully Twitter will do a better job of weeding out spam/feed accounts that lower the value of the Twitter stream.
#7 Too many messages coming from outside apps. Facebook, Ping.fm, Posterous, and many other apps are feeding tweets. These are just more messages to weed through if you are looking to have a real 140 character conversation, because the people who sent them are not actually on Twitter and will not see the @reply. So you respond to one of these tweets, and do not get a response because the person is actually on Facebook, Posterous, FourSquare etc. Sometimes this leads to non-real time conversations which seem to be a growing percentage of the conversation on Twitter.
#8 Don’t Butt in. 2 Friends having a conversation about the potential of booking a cruise do not respond well with a cruise account like @CruiseSource butting into their conversation. So even when you find someone discussing the potential of booking a cruise, it is tough to get a reply when you butt into their conversation.
#9 If you want the word to get out, get on the radar of a key influencer. 1 Tweet from @ChrisBrogan equals about 200 tweets from @CruiseSource for generating traffic, retweets, excitement, and awareness. Social Media leaders with strong legit followings like @ChrisBrogan & others are so busy and overwhelmed it’s tough to get on their radars, but if you can, it will make a huge a difference.
#10. GO BIG. View social media and Twitter as a playground. We’re all experimenting. Use this to your advantage and don’t be scared to push the envelope of what is possible. Being different and trying things that have never been done will set you apart from the noise, even if it is only for 24 hours.
Tired after 24 hours of Tweeting
How do you feel about the current state of conversation on Twitter?
Thank you to all my friends who supported #Cruise24 and to all the new friends I made during the experiment. Stats from #Cruise24: 24hrs. of Tweeting, 658 Tweets, 37 Donors, 50 net new followers, 19 non-responses from @replies (@Redbull did not respond to 5 @replies), 55 Cruise Related Conversations with mostly non-industry Twitter accounts.
It makes sense that a lot of the time first time cruisers test out cruise vacations on the short 3 and 4 night itineraries. The typical 3 & 4 night sailings are on medium-sized ships built 10 – 15 years ago. The new highly innovative ships are doing 7 – 10 night itineraries. So when people test out cruising on a short cruise, they are not getting to see experience the ships with endless activities and amenities. That is why I wanted to let you know about 2 opportunities this fall to spoil yourself on 2 rare short voyages on one of Royal Caribbean’s youngest ships. The Liberty of the Seas, one of the newest biggest ships at sea is offering a couple of 3 and 4 night cruise vacations. These rare sailings are the only opportunities for first-time cruisers to test out the large new Liberty of the Seas on a short itinerary. The best part is that because these sailings are not typical and most people are not even aware that they exist. Due to the lack of awareness of the October 28th and November 28th departures the prices are the same as or even less than the smaller, older ships. Rates are starting as low as $249 per person.
These two sailings are my top recommendation for first time cruisers. They are amazing deals and a true taste test of the best that the cruise lines have to offer. These Liberty of the Seas sailings are also excellent options for experienced cruisers who want to go big and only have a few days to do it.
