MEDIA RELEASE

Date: 18 May 2011
Release date: Current
Contact: Simon Mustoe, +61 405 220830 | Skype simonmustoe | Email simon@wildiaries.com

Wildiaries has established a firm footing as a business specialising in the niche but highly profitable wildlife experiences and nature industry.

Director Simon Mustoe says, “Wildiaries started with the realisation that there’s’ no way to connect the thousands of people world-wide who, each day, have experiences that are valuable for conservation and business”.

Those most active and skilled in the field of wildlife-watching are often professionals, people who make a living from inspiring other people about nature. Mustoe says, “we knew that many of our friends and colleagues run nature tours but are small businesses and hardly known. Many visitors, even locals, miss out on some inspirational experiences”.

Wildiaries provides a free-to-use online diary of wildlife experiences but tour operators can also opt in to manage and list their tours here, networking with clients and reaching hundreds of thousands of people through social media outlets each month.

Mustoe explains “on the surface of it, Wildiaries is a simple way to put up trip reports but there’s magic happening in the background. It’s pretty sophisticated”.

For tour operators, it’s a simple matter of getting ahead of the game. Wildiaries gives you access to people interested in nature and a way to appeal to a ‘new audience’ to grow your business. Mustoe says, “we’re already seeing benefits for our clients in being part of a niche community. Our overall social media presence has grown by about 200% in the last quarter alone”.

Wildiaries started two years ago, has amassed thousands of experiences and has clients in Africa, the US, Australia and Europe. The team has recently won a strategic partnership with Tourism Australia and has partnered with a top wildlife film company Balangara Films and pioneering digital marketing agency Mike da Silva Associates.

Mustoe says, “what makes Wildiaries special is that everyone on our team has a life-time of knowledge and is passionate about nature. This shines through in what we do”. The experiences that other people have with nature are powerful incentives to care more for the environment … “it’s a shared ambition that we have with our clients”.

Download our brochure here (PDF, 1.5MB)

With nature and wildlife a key tourism brand, we need to be able to provide our clients with excellent quality media to accompany promotions. We’ve teamed up with Balangara Films, that include BBC Natural History Unit-trained cameraman Nick Hayward, to bring you stories about nature.

Key to wildlife documentary video production is getting stunning images of wildlife. This requires great research, a keen eye for discovering opportunities, an intimate knowledge of how animals behave and an ability to tell a simple story through visuals.

There are few who can provide this unique mix of skills. With limited time for field work, you’re always looking for that elusive moment, on which an entire sequence will pivot. See for example, the footage achieved in just one morning at Phantom Falls – this would not have even been possible without expert knowledge of how to find the birds and how they were likely to behave.

But it’s not enough just to create a video, it also needs to be marketed. We don’t just produce great quality nature-based films for you, we also run an active social media campaign. We can leave you with a legacy of material on which you can build, continuously reminding people about what you do. Wildiaries is a fully integrated solution to marketing and promoting wildlife experiences.

Story-telling

We also have a unique approach to story-telling. Our strap-line is “People, Nature, Places”. It’s about capturing the true essence of the experience through the dedication, passion and knowledge of experience providers.

YOUR STORY, YOUR CONNECTION WITH NATURE

Ultimately, the aim is to produce a ‘bluechip’ product that has broad appeal and is lasting – unlike most advertorial videos – adverts by their very nature are ephemeral. We’d hope you can enjoy and use the videos we produce about you, time and time again.

What’s on Offer?

Wildiaries and Balangara Films offer blue chip video and stills photography, combined with award winning journilism to connect wildlife and tourism businesses.

• on-line videos
• on-line articles
• blogs
• podcasts
• photo-journalism

Who Do We Service?

Any business that is involved in nature:

• travel agencies;
• tours operators;
• wildlife experience operators;
• accommodations;
• wildlife and conservation organisations;
• zoos; .. etc

Contact Us

If you would like to find out more and get a quotation for work, please contact us:

Simon Mustoe, DIRECTOR
Email: simon@wildiaries.com
Telephone +61 405 220830
Skype: simonmustoe

The Great Ocean Blues website has now been launched, giving Australians and overseas visitors the chance to experience the best the Great Ocean Road has to offer. Bookings are being taken for trips starting in the New Year.

BOOK YOUR TRIP NOW!

Wildiaries is delighted to announce a partnership with Tourism Australia, to promote nature and nature-based experiences in all 15 of our unique and amazing National Landscape Areas.

Over the next 2 years, we’ll be working with accomplished wildlife film-makers Nick Hayward and Mark Pearce (Balangara Films) to bring you a unique insight into the continent. We’ll be producing 45 short video documentaries, featuring interviews with Australia’s most passionate tour operators, guides and conservationists – you can meet the very same people as you travel around Australia. The travel section of Wildiaries (http://wildiaries.com) will be embellished with information about their services.

We’ll introduce you to some of our unique and iconic wildlife … not just the ones you’ve heard of but other bizarre and special creatures that are there to see, if you know how and where to look. We’ll be blogging about our own experiences, showing you places you can go and building a portfolio of photos, video and stories.

The National Landscapes Nature Series Wildiaries site

RSS Feed (for your feed reader, or to include content on your website)

The National Landscape program has identified 15 areas of Australia that are not only incredible landscapes but offer a rich cultural and natural history experience that makes Australia one of the best places on Earth to visit. These places are:

1. Australia’s Coastal Wilderness
2. Australian Alps
3. Flinders Ranges
4. Great Barrier Reef
5. Great Ocean Road
6. Great South West Edge
7. Greater Blue Mountains
8. Green Cauldron
9. Kakadu
10. Kangaroo Island
11. Kimberley
12. Ningaloo – Shark Bay
13. Red Centre
14. Tasmania
15. Wet Tropics

Join us on our journey and let us know what you think. To keep up to date with what we’re doing, you can subscribe to our FREE NEWSLETTER or follow us on Facebook / Twitter / Google+. Filming is due to start mid 2012.

• If you think you should be featured in the series, contact us on australian-nature@wildiaries.com
• If you’d like information about how to get Wildiaries content into your regional tourism website, contact:

Simon Mustoe, DIRECTOR
Email: simon@wildiaries.com
Telephone +61 405 220830
Skype: simonmustoe

Blue Whale seen from a helicopter, surfacing on the Great Ocean Road.

Wildiaries has teamed up with Moonlight Escape, Diverse Travel Australia and Heli-Explore to develop a package of accommodation, Blue Whale flights and wildlife viewing on the Great Ocean Road.

This package is likely to be available beginning New Year 2012.

This will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that’ll leave you in awe of the majesty of the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth. You’ll be able to stay in affordable but luxury accommodation at Moonlight Escape,a  stunning beach house designed by internationally famous and award-winning Australian architect Glenn Murcutt. You’ll be taken on a world-exclusive Great Ocean Blues Whale Safari, an experience that you cannot have anywhere else on Earth. On Saturday evening, a personal chef will create delicious, gourmet meals using local, organic produce and fine wines.

The package will include:

If you’re a wildlife experience provider, chances are, you already work with others. Establish a marketing cross-promotion structure through Wildiaries will ensure you advertise on all the content that goes out about you and your associates.

It’s really simple to set up. As long as you ‘share’ experiences with associates, everyone gets to advertise each other. The following Slideshow will show you how:

… Wildiaries is a tool to promote your business and it compliments your existing sales and marketing strategy.

Wildiaries lets you put your experiences with wildlife online. Let’s face it, you are a tour operator … if you owned a clothing label, you wouldn’t just advertise for people to buy clothes, you’d demonstrate the clothes being worn by real people.

If you want people to buy your wildlife trips, you need to show them what to expect through short, simple stories about what you did. Your clients are your catwalk models and wildlife is your brand … you can do this with Wildiaries.

All that time you spend putting information online … have you ever considered how many people read it but don’t actually find out what services you offer? If you’re using Facebook, chances are, you’re posting heaps of photos but can anyone immediately click to make a reservation request? No … unless you pay for advertising with Facebook, and then it’s going to cost a LOT more than you pay for an annual subscription to Wildiaries.

If you want people to be able to make a booking request immediately, you should advertise your products next to the information you put online … you can do this with Wildiaries.

Are you marketing to people outside your current community?  Are you reaching the friends of their friends?  Are you reaching people who’ve never before heard of you but are thinking about booking wildlife tours? Are you marketing outside the very small birdwatching or other niche community? Wouldn’t you be better off joining a broader network that’s growing all the time?

If you want to grow your market, reach new markets or replace people you’ve lost from your existing clientele, then you should join an network of wildlife enthusiasts that’s growing every day. You’ll sell to ‘new audiences’ rather than the same people over and over … you can do this with Wildiaries.

These are just some of the benefits … there are many more, such as the great SEO advantage – each trip generates dozens of linked pages (just remember to use species tagging)!

Take a look at this experience posted by National Geographic Award-winning Eye to Eye Marine Encounters for their Far Northern Expedition (click to open link)

An amazing wildlife experience and associated trip advert.

WHAT SHOULDN’T YOU EXPECT FROM WILDIARIES?

Wildiaries is not a travel agency. Sure, we can make bookings on your behalf but this isn’t the main benefit to Wildiaries for your business.

You should consider sending your Wildiaries online content to your existing travel agents. Use it wherever you already market yourself and it will help better demonstrate what you do and the amazing wildlife experiences you offer.

… Wildiaries is a tool to promote your business and it compliments your existing sales and marketing strategy.

There are 7 billion people out there and they aren’t all going to look for a wildlife experience at the same time. When they do however, they need a way to find YOU. Wildiaries is a way for you to get noticed. The more you get noticed, the more likely it is that people will remember you and the better the chance of a future booking.

We were honoured to be asked to talk at the TEEC Conference recently, on the subject of nature-based tourism. Many thanks for the opportunity. Here is a brief chatty paper, detailing the main content of the talk.

Australian nature guide Dion Hobcroft said to me the other day “these trips are like a 1000 experiences” … it’s true, no trip is the same and you could pluck any number of experiences from any one place and it’d still be exciting.

whether you’re a tour operator, researcher, photographer or just love nature and want to share it … make sure the first few sentences count and your photos tell a story

Experiences with nature are often just moments and that’s all you normally have to tell people about … tell them about a special moment. Do a special moment a day for 7 days and you’ve got a cracking trip report that everyone will love to read. Remember, more people are likely to read a short story telling us about a special moment you had, than a full blown several thousand word trip report.

But it’s up to you. Do what you have time to do but just make sure the first few sentences count and your photos tell a story. That means showing a range of photos, not just images of animals. That’s the way most people are going to understand what you do and is the best way to entice them to find out more about what you do and hopefully learn to appreciate nature that little bit more ; )

The above picture is from from SA Birding’s  Six days – Five Grasswrens – Four States

LESS IS MORE … most people aren’t going to read much anyway, to capture them in the first few sentences. What you should try to achieve is:

1. Communicate something really special, regularly (even as little as once per month).
2. Think about what potential clients of yours might want to read – don’t fall into the trap of assuming that everyone is a scientist or even knows what certain things are.

DON’T FORGET TO SHARE – maybe get your friends, clients or colleagues to add a photo or leave a comment. They will appreciate what you have done for them and share it with their friends.

One of Wild Side's customers put a photo on their trip and 5 people liked it!!

THAT’S IT!

Here’s some examples of trips reports we’ve seen that hit the mark quite nicely (some have achieved 8,000+ impressions on Facebook and Twitter):

• http://wildiaries.com/trips/10246 (promotes Cassowary House accommodation – there is even pictures of people having a meal)
• http://wildiaries.com/trips/10470 (promotes Minke Whale swims)
• http://wildiaries.com/trips/10251 (promotes Kingfisher Park accommodation)
• http://hawaii.oceans.wildiaries.com/trips/10467 (promotes Wild Side trips)

Wildiaries is designed to permit collaboration on experiences. This is really important if you’re a tour operator, as your clients have often taken photos and really want to share them with you. They’ll then show their friends and you get extra promotion … cool!

Even if you are a group of friends on a trip, if everyone uploads their images themselves and co-edits, it makes more sense.

Click this link and watch the slideshow about sharing and editing trip reports: http://home.wildiaries.com/2010/03/14/refine-your-trip-report/