Business

Thank you for visiting Kiribu! Use Kiribu to boost your online promotion and to communicate directly with your past and future customers. Also link with partner businesses and services online. Best of all is that joining Kiribu is FREE!

Features

  • promote your services
  • promote your location
  • promote your website
  • link with past and future visitors
  • link with other businesses
  • add photos
  • add articles
  • update your status
  • create groups
  • help other members
  • message followers and businesses
  • invite anyone to join

Example Account

For a quick idea of what you can add to your account, have a look at our example business account.

Benefit From Kiribu

The following information will help you get the most out of your Kiribu online profile.

HOW TO Set Up Your Profile And Where To Get Support

When you sign up, your account will be set with the default settings. We encourage you to configure your settings to suit your business as soon as possible.

Business Details

To submit or change any of these details, click the ‘Profile’ tab from your home page, then select ‘Edit Profile’. You can update all your settings here, including:

  • Your Business Name
  • Email
  • Password
  • Business contact details
  • Business description
  • Map and directions
  • External business website address (if you have one)
  • List of services you provide

See this example for some ideas of what you can list in your profile.

For more help, visit this help entry.

Categories

To make sure your profile is easily and correctly found by the search tool, we recommend you define the categories in which your profile can be listed. It is important that you are as precise as possible with these settings, as our search algorithm gives preference to profiles which most precisely match the search request. You can access and modify this information in your profile as above.

Support

This series of ‘HOW TO…’ articles is designed to advise business members how to make the most out of Kiribu. However, there is a help database with information about each feature in Kiribu.

Personal Use

If you wish to have a personal profile on Kiribu to log your own travels and link with friends you must create a separate personal profile as well as your business profile. You will need to use a different email address for each account. You may not use your personal account to promote your business.

HOW TO Add Content

Many travellers rely on guidebooks for information on what to see. However, often the guidebooks don’t list everything there is to see and do in your area. Maybe you have guests wishing they could have stayed longer if only they knew! On Kiribu you can tell people exactly what there is to see and do in your area. Maybe you already have some articles, please do upload them to your Kiribu account. We recommend keeping articles to around 500-1000 words or less, as any longer and your reader will start to lose focus. Any content you add to Kiribu must be your own original work unless you have permission to share it. Click here for help with adding articles and click here for help adding photos.

Varied Content

By submitting content you can increase interest in visiting your part of the world, and to build the reputation of your profile on Kiribu. This will increase the popularity of your business, and bring you more customers. You can write about anything of relevance in your area. For example if you own a hostel in Goa you could write an article about the best beaches, what souvenirs to buy, how to find the legendary raves, how to travel around Goa, or anything really.

Ideas

We recommend you have a look at successful articles on the site to get some ideas. However, try to keep your articles focused on one subject. You could write about your life where you live, for example where you go shopping or what is a popular meal. An alternative is to highlight what is new for your business. For example, you may offer a trek to a new region, or you have a new chef at your restaurant. Use our site to keep your customers up to date with your business. If you already have some articles on your own website then you can easily and quickly upload them to your Kiribu account.

Language

You are welcome to add content in your own language. However, if you want to attract international visitors we suggest you write at least one article in English, as that is the most commonly spoken language by internet users and tourists. Make sure your article is grammatically correct by selecting the Spell Check iconSpell Check Icon.

Quality and Quantity!

Of course, the more content you submit, the more chance people will find out about your business. Continuing the example above, as a hostel owner in Goa, if you write articles about souvenirs, restaurants, beaches, transport, etc. You will feature in searches for those items. E.g. a search for hostels in Goa brings up your profile. A search for beaches in Goa brings up your article, which links to your profile. Clearly, the quality of your articles needs to be at a reasonable level. Remember, the popularity of your article and therefore your profile will depend on its quality. Members will rate articles constantly. The better your content the higher it will feature in the search rankings.

HOW TO Keep Your Profile Active

Your business profile will perform better in the search results and attract more Followers if you keep your profile active. There are a number of ways of doing this. The simplest is to update your status. You could comment on other member content. You can also upload or update articles and photos.

Status

You have the option of updating your status whenever you wish. This is an easy way of communicating with your customers, and to keep them up to date with any developments. You may wish to say that you are offering special deals, or you have a new service. Whatever you think is of value. We recommend that you update your status at least once per week. Instructions for how to update your status are here.

Interacting With Other Members

You may find that you receive messages from other users about advice or about your services. Responding to messages with useful information will boost your profile on Kiribu. Contribute to the group forums as well, and posting helpful comments on other articles, albums and photos will help boost your exposure on site. Note however, that if you provide annoying information, e.g. promoting your own profile aggressively or spamming, that this will damage your reputation, and your account could be shut down.

Start A Local Community

Use the groups feature to link with other businesses in your area. After you sign up, search and join relevant groups – for example a group named after your nearest town, or a group about your services, like Mountain Biking or Vegetarian Restaurants. If you can’t find a group, start one! This is a great way to connect with visitors to your area, as they may post questions about what there is to see and do near you.

Set up a group for all the businesses you connect with offline, so that you can create a community online, and customers can easily find all the services they need. You may want to create a Private group to do this, so that you can control who becomes a member.

Uploading Content

The best way to keep your profile active is to post new content. You can upload articles and photos to your account on Kiribu. It is important to ensure that you upload helpful, interesting and good quality material, as this will boost your profile and exposure on Kiribu.

HOW TO Invite New Members

The success of Kiribu depends on the contributions of the members. In turn a successful site will increase traffic and bring more customers to your business profiles. Kiribu is rapidly becoming the first place to visit to find travel services and information online. Show that you are a part of the Kiribu network, and help to boost awareness of our site. It is of benefit to all users to help increase membership of Kiribu, and there are a number of ways to do this.

Send Invites

You can invite friends, family and contacts to join Kiribu by filling in their name and email and a personal message in the invite form. They will receive an email from you inviting them to sign up with Kiribu. Instructions to do this are found here.

Invite Friends and Family

Please do invite your friends and family to join Kiribu. They may be interested in the site for their travel plans, to read about sights around the world, to contribute to the site, or any number of reasons. They may even be able to help you promote your business.

Invite Business Contacts

If you have a network of travel businesses that you work with, you can easily replicate it online with Kiribu. Invite them to sign up and work together to promote your businesses to Kiribu users. You can also invite other businesses that you think could benefit from Kiribu.

Invite Your Customers

Your Kiribu profile benefits from your customer rating. Boost this by inviting your customers to join Kiribu and access the wealth of travel information available, and to rate your business services.

Promote Kiribu Via Your Company Literature

Promote this site to your customers. We have provided business cards, flyers, logs, email signatures and blogging links for your own website to help you promote your own business and our site. Find out how to access these here.

Once you have joined Kiribu and set up your profile, it will feature in any relevant searches done on site. However, there will be other members competing for the same search queries. We rank our search results based upon a combination of factors. There are a number of ways to improve the performance of your profile and contributions in the search listings.

  • Categorise your profile and articles correctly and precisely
  • The quality of service your business provides – invite your customers to join Kiribu and rate your business
  • Submit good quality articles and photos
  • Keep your profile and content up to date. Log on regularly, and add content or updates when you can
  • Promote Kiribu when you promote your business.
  • If you have uploaded content and it isn’t getting good ratings, either improve it or remove it

Useful Articles

You can also increase your exposure by writing articles about things that aren’t directly related to your business. For example, you may own a car hire shop in Barcelona. Why not write an article about the beaches at Sitges. People will read the article when they search for beaches near Barcelona, and some will want to rent a car. They will be more likely to use your car hire shop.

Categorisation

Items perform better in the search if the categorisation is precise. Your business may offer a wide range of adventure sports, so your profile categorisation will have many sports selected. However a search result with only one adventure sport selected will do better in the results, all other things equal. For this example, we recommend you write an article for each sport. For help on categorising your article, click here.

Rating

The most important factor contributing to the success of your profile is your rating. Read more about ratings here.

If you already have a website for your business, a great feature of Kiribu is that it can help you make it more dynamic. Unlike most other travel sites we encourage members to place a link to their own website. We would appreciate a link back to Kiribu, however this is not compulsory. We provide a widget that you can easily attach to your website. It places our Logo on your website, with links to your profile, status and latest articles. This has the added benefit of making your home website more active, making it appear more alive to your visitors.

You can access this information in your profile. Further information about this can be found here.

Increasingly people are attracted to websites that look up-to-date and active, Kiribu makes this easy for you!

HOW TO Benefit From Your Kiribu Account

Your Kiribu account gives you access to a number of great features you can use to increase exposure for your business. Explore the features of our website and use them for your benefit.

Help Kiribu Help You!

By promoting Kiribu in your literature you will help increase public awareness of the site. Other businesses will do the same, attracting customers to the site who may well use it to discover your business. By promoting Kiribu you can help us build the ultimate travel resource online, and make it easy for you to promote your business directly to millions of customers world wide.

Linking With Other Businesses

Kiribu offers a great feature to enable you to link with other businesses online. You can set up a Group with any subject. For example, Hostels in Colombia, or Ecotourism in Africa. You can then invite other relevant businesses to join your group. Travellers using one service can easily find other businesses in the group, and are more likely to use their services too.

Automated Link to Booking Site

If your business involves holiday accommodation, we will try to link directly to your booking page on one of the major booking sites if you have one. We are currently setting up links to a number of the major sites. Click here to find out more.

Active Account

Remember to keep your account active. Internet users respond well to active web pages, and avoid pages that look abandoned. Update your status regularly, and add content when you can. Use Kiribu’s widgets on your own webpage to keep it looking active. All this will help increase you business exposure online.

HOW TO Advertise With Kiribu

While use of Kiribu is completely free, and there is no need to pay for any standard features, you can pay a fee to ensure your business profile appears in the top 3 search results. This could be useful to boost exposure when starting up, or to increase exposure in a new category, or just to ensure that your business is always in the top 3 search results. We have various advertising schemes. Please visit our Advertising section for further information.