Okay, given the fact that guests tend not to read the copy youâve written for your website or OTAâs I fully agree with the idea of Tell âem, tell âem, tell âem again. What exactly do I want to tell âem? Quite often I want to tell âem a story and the notion of story and storytelling remains of paramount importance to me. This story is about YOU and YOUR experience, I go backstage but always remain willing to help you as much or as little as you want. My own long St. John story serves as a backdrop for your story and engenders a sense of trust and reliability and tends to render me as a St. John expert.
Repetition makes a lot of sense and I do it to some degree and definitely need to increase how much I do it.
In the meantime if Iâm not doing it âenoughâ repetition then why are so many people booking? My business is doing better than ever so despite the fact that I know Iâve composed some cringeworthy copy in certain places Iâm clearly doing something right. Iâm sure my increased bookings supersede the widespread trend of post pandemic escapes even though the population will never fully escape Covid.
I decided to take a deep breath and find my balance and explore my own way without any pressure to turn in my homework assignment in on time. Iâm already late with that but thereâs no need for me to panic. Repetitions are indeed calling my name and copy revisions will be a Google plus. Although donât want to delay necessary copy cleanup for long I believe giving myself a reasonable amount of time to process copy changes is a good idea. Iâm fully onboard with repetition but I see certain subtleties involved. Things are not always as obvious as they appear, at least to not to me. Iâm definitely going to pursue repetitions as in: Tell, em, tell âem again but since Iâm an outright rebel I might well diverge away from a well marked trail and search for a different path.
I want my public copy to be relatively short and succinct but ironically my sometimes lengthy responses to inquiries work very well or additional input to those who already have reservations also tend to work very well. If people hear my voice and realize that I am speaking directly to them in a personal and empathetic way they tend to listen.
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If someone expresses an interest in Tropical Blessings but also tells me theyâll be visiting St. John for the first time but the dates they want are not available Iâll ask them if their travel plans might be flexible, knowing full well that their answer might go either way. Even with that rental uncertainty in place I just donât feel right leaving that first timer facing possible perils. Of course Iâll never have time to do everything but I have an overall concern about how visitors experience our St. John community. Some specific information might save the vacation of those newcomers, I really do care. The timing wasnât right at Tropical Blessings for those first timers but I heard back from them, âThank you for your lovely reply, weâll see you next time!â
Another who has been to St. John many times before but whose timing also didnât work at Tropical Blessings this time said, âYou are the nicest and most helpful person I have ever written to about St. John.â Sure enough, she later came back to me and regrettably, once again there was âno room at the innâ for her new dates either but I think I proved my point: I am pre-selling a stay at Tropical Blessings through dialogue with a strong voice that Iâm glad to own but now itâs time to use that strong voice and pre-sell Tropical Blessings with better copy before those conversations even begin.
I have one headline that I like in terms of alliteration: âSunshine, Solace, Spectacular Views.â I wonât call that headline perfect but it suggests to me an element of what is âpersonalâ which matters and at least I got âviewâ in there. The alliteration appeals to me too and hopefully to others which is much more important.
As far as St. John key words go, front runners seem to include âview,â âpool,â and âbeach.â Pool deserves to be mentioned, not merely be included in a list of amenities. I definitely dropped the ball with âbeachâ a more important word that, oops, I donât even mention at all. A guest can walk to a beach that is only 2 minutes away on foot. A 10 minute stroll into Cruz Bay permits one to hop into a Safari bus that regularly takes visitors to well known popular beaches.
The total length of St. Johnâs landmass totals only 9 miles so if someone chooses to drive to a beach in their rental car Google can help me pinpoint the distance. Often that beach is only 1 or 2 miles away from Tropical Blessings.
Back to: âTell âem, tell âem, tell âem again.â I do understand and like the idea and the way to tell âem is with words. Words are the primary way we communicate and we all need to learn words to find our voices and speak to each other. The discovery of words results in acquiring a vocabulary and you need a vocabulary if you want to have a voice. Without voices conversations and dialogues cannot exist.
With words we develop a vocabulary which increases and expands. No matter which country one resides in, be it Germany, France or numerous other countries around the world, the the first words any individual learns are probably limited to âyesâ and âno,â followed by âmaybe.â To broaden our vocabulary we need to learn the alphabet which gives us our voices.
I discovered the magic of words and writing at an early age and thankfully I got considerable encouragement from teachers about writing.
Years later after receiving my baccalaureate and masters degrees Iâm sure no one is surprised that I chose teaching as my first professional career. Writing remained my primary interest and passion (still true) and after several years of teaching I applied for a fellowship with The National Writing Project.
All participants were teachers and were equally pleased to have been accepted into the fellowship. None of us knew what to expect from the fellowship, all or most of us anticipated a series of reasonably traditional classes but we were in for a very big surprise. We gathered each day with the same single instructor and were introduced to the practice of free writing, an activity most of us had never even heard of and those who knew about it had already classified it as a waste of time. The majority of us began with a high degree of skepticism, saying to ourselves, âWhat?!?â but weâd been awarded fellowships so we were âinâ and decided to stay.
It didnât take long for us to see that what we were doing was actually making sense and we wrote, wrote, wrote every day. When each day ended all of us departed the UVA campus and returned to the temporary residences we had found. Then we continued to write well into the evening. Writing was âit,â we ate it, breathed it and lived it.
Our first major wake-up call was for us to suddenly realize that most our students didnât have voices, they had either never discovered their voices or had lost them along the way. Wait a minute, as teachers all of had studied writing and received training about how to teach composition so what could be wrong with us? A major wake up call followed. Even though we were teachers we discovered that we were not fully connected to the power of our own voices or, similar to our students, had lost our voices along the way.
My biggest take way from that fellowship was to understand how to support a writerâs intentions. I implemented my fellowship learnings during the first semester of school as soon as students returned to campus. Free writing exercises commenced. The first assignment was probably as simple as something as simple as: âList words that that praise yourself as a writer.â
Attention to long established approaches to teaching literature and composition were hardly abandoned but for the first time ever students were given considerable leeway to simply have freedom and fun with writing in my classroom. Small subdivisions of writers support groups were created. Whatever an individual writer quickly produced, members of their support group we instructed to encourage the writer. What words did they especially like? What idea did they want to hear more about? Etc.
I can repeat key words but I really want to repeat trends and and create captivating copy. The rewards and challenges of our industry range from A-Z so I recommend having fun playing with the alphabet. Choose any letter at all and describe yourself as an owner, the place(s) you own, your guests and your hopes and business goals with positive words. You might or might later not choose to later use any given word in copy but as your basket of words words fills up itâs hard not to feel good about yourself and what youâre doing.
A free writing exercise is exactly that: free. You enter a Judgment Free Zone where only one rules exists: Self criticism is not permitted. Silence the voice that says anything like, âThat word is an incredibly stupid choice.â Shut down the censor, totally wing it, and have a good time! If youâre mining for gold you might find a few valuable nuggets and if you donât all you lost is a little time and since you probably enjoyed how you spent that time in the final analysis you lost nothing at
I decided to play with words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and my word collections associated with any given alphabetical letter are limited due to the time I allotted to myself. However, if I return to any given letter my basket of words will fill up. My word lists could become so long that I can already envision a private eye roll from
Matt Landau and an unspoken admonition, âCut what you wrote in half!â In the meantime Iâll just start gathering my bounty of words and nobody says I need to use all of it. I can pick and choose what I want to use later which so happens to include the possibility of using none of it at all.
In the meantime letâs start playing, fearlessly winging it and having FUN which, in case anyone forgot, is what most people want to to while on vacation! Letâs take a first run with A, B, C.
** Awesome, adventurous, aware, alive, authentic, amazing, attractive, alluring, appealing, adorable, appetizing.
** Believe, bold, balanced, brave, beautiful, beneficial, breathtaking, blissful, bright,
** Captivating, comfortable, champion, caring, casual, curious, confident, creative.
In the name of repetition Happy Twosday to all as in: 2/2/22!
