Visit London's award winning website

Congratulations to the Visit London digital and business tourism teams. The website I'm contributing editor for won Gold at last night's Meetings Industry Marketing Awards for Best website. For this and other event stories, check out the now award winning visitlondon.com/business or see below for details.

Visit London's business tourism website has scooped Gold at the 2008 Meetings Industry Marketing Awards.

Beating stiff competition from the Brewery, Henley Business School and Mango Event Management, visitlondon.com/business won the coveted MIMA at a ceremony, held last night at the five-star Landmark London hotel.

The website won the MIMA following its re-launch as the official event planner's digital portal for London in April 2008.

The site was re-designed to offer an advanced venues and services search, improved and enhanced supplier listings, a three-way proposal submitting process, a call-back request, an enhanced planning toolkit with downloadable resources, industry news and a London events calendar.

In the two months after its launch, the number of unique visits rose by 17% to 12,723 and the number of page views rose by 20% to 45,656.

Visit London Business Marketing Manager Severine Ougier said: "This is great recognition by the meetings and events industry for the hard work of the Visit London digital and business tourism teams. In re-launching the website back in April we wanted to ensure event planners had all the right information and tools to find out more about our city, and ultimately choose London.
"We surveyed hundreds of international and domestic event organisers, consulted key suppliers and industry partners, and benchmarked main competitor websites to really understand what a destination website should provide."

RecommendBox launches

I've always found it difficult to describe what my flatmate and good friend Scott Rutherford does day-to-day. He has the same problem. When people ask him, he stumbles over terms such as internet entrepreneur, code builder, ambitious web developer and CEO. Well, finally I'm proud to be able to announce what Scott does for a living.

On 31 March, he launched RecommendBox with co-founder Robert Loch.

The site allows friends to make recommendations and request recommendations in categories such as books, movies, places, clothing, music, restaurants, websites and services. The idea is that while review sites may exist, what people actually recommend to their private social network is different to what they would just review on a public site.

Scott and Rob believe recommendations and reviews are different - when you write a review you give your view on something to a wider audience. When you make a recommendation you are suggesting to an individual that they will like something. RecommendBox recommendations are presented by one party to the privacy of another user's personal home-page. This encourages honesty and makes this start-up unique.

From my experience with the site, when you receive a recommendation, it feels personal and has value. The fact that someone has hand-picked (or mouse-picked) you because they felt you'd benefit from the recommendation generates the emotion of receiving a gift. You instantly want to return the gesture - and that's what can turn this new site into a marketing and social success. Check it out and recommend it to a friend.

Today's Media - the landscape to be conquered

Wise words on current thinking within online and magazine publishing:

“If you’ve developed a site where your staff are providing more than 5% of the material then it’s not a site at all. It’s advertising. And it’s probably not sustainable.”
David Hepworth, editorial director, Development Hell.

“All this kind of market gardening activity needs to be tended seven days a week. You can’t turn off a community at five on a Friday and say hold that thought until Monday. You need staff, which are passionate and you also need to engage hard-core readers who wish to be part of the team. It’s hard, different work. It’s the diametric opposite of what publishers and advertisers are tempted to do – which is, no matter how you dress it up, spam.”
David Hepworth.

“One of the problems about the internet is that information is everywhere and editing is nowhere. So it ends up being dominated by he who shouts the loudest, which is generally Ron from Dagenham. There will always be a place for thought-through, planned and edited media and a magazine remains the best format for that.”
Richard Cook, Wallpaper Guides.

“Magazines continue to offer companionship, entertainment, escapism, and diversions both mindless and thought provoking. They furnish the home and hang around as long as the next spring clean or attic clearout. Until we do away with the material world entirely and upload our very beings on to the internet magazines will continue to have a place in our lives.”
Will Hodgkinson, Media Guardian.