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Be Our Guest: Blogging Tips for Hotels

The hotel industry is more than just bath towels and mints on the pillow. Those in the hotel industry know that it’s a fast-paced industry that needs to be continuously advertised and protected against any reputation hit. When people come to hotels, they treat it as their home away from home and in order to attract the attention of new guests, you have to be a proponent of your home over your competition.

Blogging is a great and easy way for hotels to advertise the features and quality of their hotel to the masses. The more content you produce for your hotel, the more often it will show up on various search result lists and the better your chances of being noticed by new customers. But in order to gain the right clients and the maximum amount, you need to focus your blogging strategy. Here is the why, what and how of blogging tips for hotels.

hotel blogging 1

Why?

Most hotels invest in paid ads on other websites as well as print and radio ads. While those means are effective for getting attention, people do everything online first. People don’t go buy a product these days without first checking online reviews, pricing and publicity surrounding that product. It’s just a way of life in today’s world. But now that you are aware of this, you can start using the internet to your advantage.

hotel blogging 2You can begin by installing Google Analytics onto your company’s website. Google Analytics can show you how many people are arriving at different areas of your site, where they are coming from, how long they are staying on the site, their bounce rate (how often they click on other pages on the site) and so much more such as demographics, location, and other factors that can help you narrow your strategy.

You can also begin utilizing Google Trends in your blogging efforts. Go to www.google.com/trends and you can begin finding out the important keywords that people are using when they search for hotel rooms. Keywords are important for your blog writing. They are the pieces of information that search engines pick up and bring to your screen for your perusal. While you shouldn’t be “keyword stuffing” every blog post full of these keywords (that will actually work against you) but you should know what you need to be discussing and mentioning if that’s what the people are looking for.

In addition, by using these types of software, you can stay ahead of the game by finding out what is being searched and when. You may not be aware that a festival/convention/concert is happening in your town if it’s not your usual demographic or in your age range. And you don’t want to miss out, do you?

What?

Now that you know why you’re blogging, it is important that you know what you should be saying in your blog. Great content is the key to getting people interested in your blog and having search engines recognize your blog as legitimate. What should you be blogging about?

  • Conventions, where they are going to be, hours, who is attending
  • Holidays, city wide events, parades, parties, or traditions
  • Festivals, musicians, days, venues, sponsors

You should also be mentioning the distance your location is from places of interest so that people can determine your proximity. You should be telling people why they should be staying in your hotel with unique attributes like pools, nightclubs, shopping, venues and entertainment guest, kids areas, Temper-Pedic mattresses and other amenities and features that separate you from others in your industry. Don’t forget to mention your prices and any discounts or promotions you are offering, a quick Google trends search show that people most often use price as a search filter when looking. Don’t forget to feature photos as well!

How?

Since you have the why and the what, you can start focusing on the how to make your strategy the most effective for your particular hotel. First and foremost, you should be blogging about certain events at least ONE MONTH in advance. This is the time that people begin looking for accommodations and plane tickets. If you are blogging the week or days before, you’re already behind your competition.

Keeping a calendar of yearly events in your city is another great way to get visitors to your blog. This way, people visiting your hotel’s website can see when they should be coming into town or if they just visited, they can see when they want to come back. Even if people aren’t looking for your hotel, the event calendar is a great way to get searchers to your site.

You should also be using social media in your efforts to bring more people to your blog and site. While you may not have much benefit from platforms like Pinterest or Quora, you can still get a lot of traction from Facebook, Twitter even Instagram. Social media is, in essence, free advertising and considering how easy it is to learn, anyone could do it. Want to take your social media monitoring to the next level? Use applications like Hootsuite to monitor across various social media sites to find out what people are talking about.

If you need help with your social media management or digital marketing, feel free to contact us at Online Optimism at 504-521-6222.