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Travel businesses using online social networking media to promote their businesses must avoid the hard sell, delegates to the TTA Future in Focus conference were told.

Speaking at the TTA Future in Focus one day conference in London, travel marketing company Capela Travel Training founding director Gary Grieve said tools such as blogs, social networks and user generated content are all effective ways of marketing your business.

However, he added should you succumb to the temptation to really promote your product, you will suffer.

Grieve said: "Don't ever go into the hard sell, hard selling is the worst thing you can do in the environment; it will switch people off straight away."

He also urged delegates to drive their sites further up search engine results by generating new content, which can be in the form of user-genearted content, linking your site to others, ensuring your title bar has words that people will search on and taking advantage of social networking.

For instance he said Facebook has seen rapid growth with an increase in users of more than 700% in a year to more than eight million in January 2008 and which is becoming increasingly popular with adults.