November 2011 Newsletter
Good Photography = Good Bookings
With the cottages on our site, we’ve begun to notice a correlation between the quality of owners’ photos and the amount of traffic they’re getting. If your stats seem a little low, this may be why. It’s not for nothing that the main photo is endearingly termed ‘the money shot’ in marketing circles. So, to ensure your cottage listing receives the attention it deserves, the images you use must be as good as they can be. To get the best photographs on our website, ensure that: - Your main picture is in landscape, not portrait. - The file size needs to be a minimum of 1 MB to ensure quality. - The picture is bright and colourful to attract the reader’s eye.
Ongoing Publicity
My Favourites has teamed up with Essentials Magazine to increase our presence nationally. With the help of 12 cottages already picked from My Favourites, Essentials will include a place in a monthly competition for readers to win a short break throughout 2012. The magazine sells approximately 128 thousand copies monthly and has a long ‘shelf life’. It will provide great publicity for all cottages on the site as visitors are sure to explore other properties, and the link will help boost our page rankings. If you’re a reader, keep looking for the crossword competition and our teapot logo!
Winter Photo Competition Winner
We were impressed with all the entries for our competition launched last month. After a lot of discussion in the office, we’re happy to announce that the winner of our winter photo competition is Paul Read, who owns Rigsby Wold Cottage in Lincolnshire. The snowy photo makes Rigsby Wold look like an ideal cottage to spend a wonderful Christmas in. Paul has won himself two months on our front page Featured Favourites section for early 2012, which will help him with bookings in the New Year.
My Favourite Favourites Section
We’re delighted that quite a few of you have signed up to look around our ‘Featured Favourites' section. If you haven’t looked around already, please do so on the link. As always, we’re keen to hear from you about what you think of this feature and how it could be improved.
Updates to the Website
Located with the other search boxes on the left-hand side, we now have a ‘Cottage Name?’ box for people to search for a cottage they already know the name of. This ensures people who’ve already seen your property can quickly relocate it on the website. We’re also upgrading the Owner Login section to make the central hub for everything you might need to do on the first page you see. We’re still working on this and other upgrades – more about these in next month’s newsletter.
Latest Blog Updates
More details about our Winter Photo Competition Winner...
Finally...
As ever, if you would like to make any recommendations for improvements to the website, please feel free to get in touch by emailing us at info@mfhc.co.uk
Don’t forget that for every bright idea to improve the website submitted by a subscriber that we use, you’ll get a free Featured Favourite listing!