As well as sharp entertaining articles Tenerife Magazine offers some wonderful competition prizes to it’s thousands of regular readers here in Tenerife and around Europe. For style and service you can’t get much better than the Hotel Jardin Tropical in Costa Adeje, a weeks half board holiday for two is the latest glittering prize from your favourite online magazine.

Costa Adeje has reputation for upmarket holidays for families and couples and the four star Hotel Jardin Tropical sums up all that is so impressive about this popular area. Maybe it’s the pools and relaxing terraces, or maybe the spacious rooms decorated with a touch of flair to compliment the classsic white design of the hotel. For many the choice of fine food gives Hotel Jardin Tropical that extra edge, the El Patio restaurant with its garden setting and the gourmet cuisine of Las Rocas are always appreciated.

All this is waiting for you if you answer a simple question at Tenerife Magazine and get lucky at the draw on 31 st May 2012. The prize is a weeks half board holiday for two to be taken, subject to availability within 12 months. The prize doesn’t include flights and is not transferable and must be claimed within 2 weeks of the draw or it will be re-drawn. Good luck.

It’s difficult to improve on such a well established brand but with 70 new dishes offering the best in gourmet Chinese and Sushi there was a buzz about all the new flavours on offer. The afternoon proved to be a bit hit from the first Mini Crispy Spring rolls to the Tenderloin of Pork and Salmon Fillet served from the sizzling Teppanyaki table.
The outside terrace was a sunny setting for families to relax and inside many were curious to see the chefs creating their works of art, Imperial Tai Pan food looks as good as it tastes. The Crispy Shanghai Balls were proving very popular but the friendly waiting staff made sure that the trays kept circulating so everyone got to try as many dishes as possible.
Imperial Tai Pan specialises in a fusion of styles and tastes, they also pride themselves on good service, all these qualities look comfortably at home under their new name. Sorted Site staff have updated the website, a mouth watering task adding new images and descriptions of the new menu. Venture Restaurants love to hear about people’s dining experience through Facebook and Twitter and the Flickr photo galleries will give new inspiration to anyone looking for a well located restaurant that values good food and service

After a busy and satisfying year the Sorted Sites team wanted somewhere stylish to enjoy a pre christmas meal so where better than Bianco Ristorante in the Safari Centre, Las Americas. Venture Restaurants became a client of ours in 2011 so it was good to pop in and experience their reputation for good service at first hand. Meeting up we grabbed a quick drink at Harry’s Bar overlooking the dancing fountains.

The commercial centre was bustling with afternoon shoppers but upstairs in Bianco the mood was light and relaxed as we took our table. Other diners were taking a break from the last big push for Christmas presents and as we enjoyed our starters several late bookers popped in to reserve tables to treat their family and friends.

Service was as always friendly and efficient and we were soon tucking into a nice range of starters and savouring the prospect of the main course. There was a flurry of hand held activity via Facebook, Twitter, and Four Square – well what do you expect from a dedicated IT crowd.

Steak and chicken were among the popular choices at our table but even the salad looked large and filling. Deserts just had to be tackled, we didn’t need much persuading. A few more drinks rounded things off nicely, just Christmas and New Year to negotiate and Sorted Sites will be raring to go for 2012.

We continue to see a lot of interest in social media from the various local authorities on Tenerife, and many are already starting to tap into this huge marketing potential. The following points and ideas will help you take your organisation beyond simply scratching the surface of what’s possible and help you make the best of this fantastic opportunity to attract more tourism and business to your area and to the island as a whole. Read through them, use them as your blueprint, and get back to us with your comments and any questions you may have.

1. Social media is everywhere and mobile devices are the key

The biggest development in Social Media Marketing is not the next big social network, but simply the fact that more and more people have a social media enabled device in their pocket. A few years ago, some people brought along laptops and netbooks on holiday. Today, it’s highly-portable smartphones and iPads and the trend is increasing at such a fast pace that soon just about everybody and his brother has one. This is absolutely game-changing, because now you can reach tourists even while they are out and about exploring the island.

Local authorities and companies alike need to understand how to engage this massive audience, launch promotions and connect with location-based marketing using websites like Facebook Places, Gowalla and Foursquare. These applications make it easy for people on the move to share their experiences with their friends and also to discover what attractions and events are happening in the area they are in at any particular moment. Think about that for a second!

2. Reach tourists through WiFi hotspots

WiFi hotspots are a not just a very attractive service you can provide to tourists at minimal cost, but also a very versatile way for you to advertise your local attractions to anyone who connects. You just need to set up a simple start page that people see when they log in and use this page to provide any information you want and lead users to the rest of your online content. It’s that easy!

Apart from making WiFi available in public places, you should also work with local companies and internet providers to provide WiFi access in other areas too. This will attract business and also lower the cost for tourists to access and use your own online services.

3. Adapt to your audience

The most obvious way to adapt to your audience and reach more people is to market in different languages. People on holiday abroad really appreciate it when they find relevant information in their own language, so focus your energies on marketing in as many as possible.
Also, while Facebook may be the most popular social network, not everyone uses it. Many Spanish youth may be more likely to use like Tuenti, for example, while you may find that professionals are more active on LinkedIn. Find out who your audience is and what social networks they use, and make sure you choose the right tools to communicate effectively.

4. Engage your audience in as many ways as possible

Social media is social. It’s not a one-way broadcast like TV or a magazine. Uploading great videos to your YouTube account is an awesome start, but you also need to go beyond that to take full advantage of the medium. Be active with the YouTube community by adding comments to other videos, subscribing to other channels, adding favourites, sharing videos on other social media accounts, and so on. Your interactions will be seen by the contacts of the people you interact with, and this will get you the highest visibility possible. The same thing applies to all the other social medial channels, so go out there and engage as many different communities as you can. We too often see YouTube, Flickr and other accounts with no contacts. Unfortunately, those users are missing out!

5. Aggressively promote all events you organise

Have a strategy in place to promote all the events you organise in the social media. Your promotion needs to start well before the event to generate interest. During the event you continue to engage participants and people at large through the social media, and you then conclude with an after-event follow up where you make the event’s success widely known, gather feedback, and also pre-advertise upcoming events to all who are interested.

6. Encourage word of mouth marketing

Nothing beats a personal recommendation and the best way to get new people to your destination is to get those that already come to promote you via their social networks in a natural and open manner. Encourage and remind your contacts and users to share their holiday experiences with their own social networks. Also make it easy for them to share your stuff by including the appropriate sharing options in your content.

7. Reach out to third parties and work with them to promote your content

Your core audience will be a great asset when it comes to getting your message out to their friends and social contacts. However, you also need to work with influential bloggers and social networkers, with your own clients and with leaders in the traditional local and international media. Reach out to anyone who wants to engage with you and build solid working relationships where you provide interesting content to those outlets that are looking for it. At the same time, work with other social media marketers to promote each other’s content to your respective audiences. Remember to always respect your audience and promote only genuinely relevant content. No spam!

8. You don’t have to create all the content yourself – get local businesses to help too

While you will surely have a lot to tell your audience, you also need to foster a social media culture in your local business community, to create a content-rich online environment for your guests to benefit from. Encourage companies to create and post well-written blogs, videos and photos and even run their own social media events such as competitions.
As the Ayuntamiento, your role would be to educate companies about the social media and to provide logistic support, networking, and possibly even financial help where necessary.

9. Build a local social media community of power users who can help get the ball rolling

Find out which local businesses are already making a solid use of social media (as well as those who are very keen to learn) and form a social media community of experts you can count on to help you lead the way and encourage other businesses to join in.

10. Run social media training workshops to lower the barrier for companies to participate

One of the biggest obstacles to being effective in Social Media is a lack of knowhow and ongoing training. Some people may feel overwhelmed by all these new technologies, while others may find it hard to keep up with the pace at which things are changing. Companies need help with learning how to physically manage social media accounts, build an audience and make the best of the medium. They will also need to be taught how to launch successful promotions and competitions and use these events to promote themselves and the local area to as wide an audience as possible. Host social media training workshops at regular intervals and use case studies to show companies that are new to the game how others have gone about their social media marketing and achieved success.

11. Let your creativity run wild

One of the secrets to success in social media marketing is to be brave enough to experiment, and your role as an Ayuntamiento is to lead the way and encourage companies to try new strategies and approaches. When it comes to marketing, being unusual and different is a good thing!
How about having a Social Media Awards each year with prizes for the companies with the most innovative strategies and the best social media performance? This would be a great opportunity to spread ideas that work and encourage other companies to redouble their social marketing efforts.

As you can see, there is a lot you can do to encourage a wider and more effective use of the social media to attract tourism to your area and boost local business. Remember that social media marketing has the potential to give you far better results than traditional methods and at a lower cost too! So use the above points and ideas to come up with a plan of action and put it into practice for the benefit of your community. Any comments or questions, just let us know!

While sceptics may rush to remind you of the flops of that were Google buzz and Google Wave, we don’t think that is relevant to Google+ and the new brand pages in particular. The reason is that Google is integrating Google+ very strongly with other Google products that already have a very strong user base, starting from its most widely used product, the Google search engine.

When people search for something while logged into their Google account, they will now see relevant Google+ brand pages that people in their Google circles have +1’d. It goes without saying that a +1 vote counts as a personal recommendation, and users are much more likely to follow a search results link to a page a friend likes. This is a huge advantage over Facebook pages, and a very big incentive for you to build your Google+ brand page and get friends and customers to +1 it. Besides, people can simply search for +yourcompanyname (adding a ‘+’ sign before your company’s name) and your branded page will show up. So far, so good!

You can already measure Google+ performance with Google Analytics and we are looking forward to seeing how Google will tie in Google+ and these brand pages with its other platforms like Gmail and Android,. If they get it right (fingers crossed!), the most exciting times for social network marketing may be just round the corner.

With that in mind, there are a few non-trivial niggles with Google+ brand pages as they are right now, as Robert Scobles points out in a rather pessimistic post. We’d like to hope that Google can iron out the issues and get on with a number of things we want to see implemented.

For example, at the moment, you can only manage your pages through one Google account and this is a problem for companies that need to put several people in charge of a brand page. Also, because Google requires accounts to be in the name of a real person, it’s not as simple as creating a dummy admin account for everyone to share (which itself has its drawbacks). Come on, Google, fix this quickly so that social media teams can easily work together!

We expect Google+ brand page management and Google Places page management to become integrated sometime soon. Also, how about a mobile app to publish photos directly to your brand page as you can do with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr? And why can’t Google+ business pages give a +1 to websites that the company likes?

We really want to see Google+ succeed because of its immense potential to be integrated with Google’s other platforms, as we already mentioned. Hopefully, someone over at Google Labs is paying attention to what people are saying and is busily cracking their whip. With a bit of luck, we’ll see something to get really excited about in a forthcoming update!

In the meantime, see how other businesses are developing their Google+ brand pages and create your own.

Also work on integrating your social media accounts with each other by using the same GMail address for your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. In Google+, build your network and organise people into different circles that represent your relationships with them. For example, you can have a circle for clients and another for prospects. Or you can have separate circles for people who use your different products or services. In this way, you can target your posts at specific groups, so that people only receive information that is relevant to them. This also gives you the flexibility to present your message in the best way for each group, or to publish open posts when you want to reach everyone at the same time.

So, while you’re waiting for those updates to Google+, there still is a lot you can take advantage of right now. Go for it!

2. Formar un equipo de medios de comunicación social compuesto por hoteles, campos, Sociedades, Ayuntamientos y de los miembros de Turismo de Tenerife.

3. Empezar talleres para ayudar a aquellos trabajan en el sector del golf. Esto incluye los touroperadores, Cursos, hoteles, medios de comunicación locales Sociedades de Golf, etc

4. El mejor forma de promover Tenerife es aunar esfuerzos con los que ya vienen de vacaciones y jugando en Tenerife. Etiquetado fotos en Facebook es una gran táctica.

5. El uso de smartphone es una necesidad. Publicidad basados ​​en la localización y el marketing es todo lo que va a ser 2012. Ofrecer promociones para el check-in a través de Foursquare y Facebook Places.

6. Entender y tomar parte en la comercialización en tiempo real. Mipuntuacion.com actualiza los resultados en directo y se publica el último día de la Golf Circuit. Apuesto que ese día tuvieron su mejor dia. El año pasado nos llevó una semana para publicar los resultados y en ese momento el interés se había terminado.

7. Establecer una estrategia de medios sociales para promover los torneos (o eventos) antes, durante y después. Por ejemplo, crear un evento en Facebook e invitar a sus fans, actualizar tus puntuaciones y fotos en directo, publicar fotos y videos del torneo que permanecerán en línea durante los próximos años.

8. Educar a la comunidad de Tenerife Golf Social Media para ‘dejar’ la isla y usar los medios de comunicación social para contribuir y participar en comunidades de otros campos de golf en todo el mundo de una manera natural y divertida.

9. Ser notable, crear un entorno que abarca algo un poco diferente … no tengas miedo de lanzar promociones que están un poco por ahí.

10. Tenemos excelentes campos de golf y hoteles fantásticos en nuestra hermosa isla. Sea honesto, real y participar …. que la Isla se vende for si solo!

Comentarios y sugerencias son bienvenidos!

2. Form a Social Media team made up of Hotels, Courses, Societies, Town Halls and members of Tourism Tenerife.

3. Start work shops to help educate those working in the golf sector. This would include Tour Operators, Courses, Hotels, Local Golf Societies Media etc.

4. The Nº1 way to promote Tenerife is to engage with those that are already coming on holiday and playing in Tenerife. Tagging them in photos on facebook is a great tactic.

5. Using smart phones is a must. Location based advertising and marketing is what 2012 is going to be all about. Offer promotions for checking in via Foursquare and Facebook Places.

6. Understand and part take in Real time marketing. Mipuntuacion.com updated the scores live on the last day of the Golf Circuit.I bet on that day they had their most hits. Last year it took us one week to post the results and by that time the buzz was over.

7. Establish a Social Media strategy to promote Tournaments (or events) before, during and after. IE Create an event on Facebook events and invite your fans, update scores and photos live, publish photos and videos of the tournament that will stay online for years to come.

8. Educate the Tenerife Golf Social Media community to ‘leave’ the Island and use Social Media to contribute and engage in other golf communities all over the world in a natural and fun way.

9. Be remarkable, create an environment that embraces something a little different …don’t be scared to launch promotions that are a little out there.

10. We have great golf courses and fantastic hotels on our beautiful Island. Be honest, real and engage…. let the Island sell itself!!

Comments and feedback are welcome!

Buenavista Golf Course in Tenerife

Some clients products simply sell themselves, all Sorted Sites have to do is provide a window on their world.Venture Restaurants is a classic case, the quality and presentation of their food says it all so we made sure that their home page showed the unique style of each of their five restaurants in their settings at major modern commercial centres in the south of Tenerife.

Teppanyaki, Bianco Safari, Bianco Bistro, Restaurant 88, and Thai Botanico have grown from a culinary vision in 2004 and all aim to make fine dining accessible to everyone. With so many eateries competing in the south of Tenerife it was important to give a taste of the dining experience that awaits at each venue, using a crisp, clear and uncluttered layout the new website shows the spacious design and informal atmosphere of each restaurant.

Key features allow the viewer to see 360 degree views, watch videos of busy nights, view the menus and see mouth watering photos of the main dishes. Online reservations make it easy to plan an evening knowing that Venture Restaurants have a great reputation for customer service. The food will always be the star but every ingredient plays its part, the new website introduces guests to the Venture Restaurant experience leaving an appetite for much more.

From its first edition in 1997 Canarian Weekly has been an invaluable friend to anyone visiting or moving to Tenerife. Island life has its own special charms and customs and Canarian Weekly previews the best of fiestas, religious holidays and political and social changes and sums them up afterwards with quality photos and local reaction. Services such as Jobs and What’s On are a great link to local communities and give a head start to those planning to pop over to Tenerife.

The new look website was a design challenge for Sorted Sites to reflect the local feel of Canarian Weekly and to make it clear and easy to access all those favourite specialist areas such as food, home, and health and beauty. The result will bring you closer to the Tenerife lifestyle and offers quick links to other favourites such as partners Oasis FM. It’s still a right good read but now anywhere you want it.

Costa Adeje Gran Hotel is luxurious and complete with rooftop pools and grand colonial style rooms, all just a short stroll from the pick of the areas beaches. The service is first class, GF Hotels have a glowing reputation for looking after their guests and with the a la carte restaurant La Laja on site the food always impresses too. Aecan love to introduce the quieter traditional hideaways of Tenerife to their guests and will match their winners with a great base to explore from.

The competition closes at 9 pm on 29 September so to make sure you are in with a chance visit the home page of Tenerife Magazine and fill in the entry form. Full terms and conditions are outlined on the entry page and while you are there you can find out more about Tenerife lifestyle in the many categories covering music, art, events, sport etc. Good luck.