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Blogging has been around for a few years. But it’s also matured into one of the most powerful online marketing tools we have today.
The best way to view blogs is as a publishing tool. It serves as your social media foundation.Before starting a blog you have to ask yourself the following questions about your organization:
Publishing a successful blog takes a lot of work. It’s not going to solve all your problems overnight, but there are some very attractive benefits.Most buying decisions today begin with a web search. For this reason, it’s important that your rural or regional accommodation appears highly in search engine results for important phrases. When you are on top, more people will visit your website, which can lead to more sales.Your web presence is how often you show up on the web to people looking for what you offer. It’s based on the philosophy of “distributed engagement”: moving away from a website-centric publishing model, and working toward being seen many places online.
The more times you show up to the people who are interested in visiting rural and regional accommodations in a certain region the more likely you are going to make a booking for some nights. Websites with a lot of useful, interesting content are the ones that attract the most attention. Mind the web-site must appear as soon as possible or your potential customers are clicking your site away.
How does this look practically?
The advantages with blogging is that new guests find you quickly and easily. Beside of that your PR budget is reduced and your potential customers are sharing the blog content.
Blogs are the ideal platform for sharing ideas. Each post you write is automatically saved into a library of knowledge that visitors can browse through and you can re-used in future marketing material.
There are three popular ways bloggers re-package their content for further distribution:
You’ll notice the most powerful hospitality & travel marketing campaigns today use a mix of media formats to spread their message. Photos, video, and social networking services provide a nice supplement to text content.
A blog is an easy way to bring all these types of media together in one place. Having a central access point means more people see your content.
Sites such as YouTube and Flickr make it very simple to publish rich media content on your blog. Often, all you have to do is click a button to include it. This makes life a lot easier for you: no technical skills required!
With the entire buzz about social networking, blogging has continued to quietly perform. This is because it helps you develop a critical mass of quality content that people can access in one location. This content can then be pulled into social networking sites - giving you the best of both worlds.
You have to realize that publishing a good blog is going to take you a lot of time.: writing and interacting with your readers . Also promoting your articles cost time.
A blog can damage your brand’s reputation. Fortunately, you can minimize this risk by creating publishing guidelines for whoever is involved with the blog.
Successful blogs are created and maintained for a clear reasonor purpose. For example to:
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There are five general categories of blogs to work with. 1. Independent blogs - often used by one-location independent hotels and restaurants, these blogs can contain all the functions of the blogs below, including information on the business and topics of related interest for potential guests
2. Brand blogs - narrower in focus than a one-site blog, the purpose of these is to promote the hotel brand by sharing news about what’s happening within the company
3. CEO/Manager blogs - often a more personal supplement (or even replacement) to the corporate brand blog
4. Destination blogs - rather than promoting an organization directly, these blogs provide information on the surrounding area and upcoming events (in an effort to attract new visitors)
5. Internal blogs - these are written for your own staff - to share knowledge and collaborate
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The first step of building a popular blog is to view it as a major part in your marketing mix.
This means you need strategic goals, a publishing plan and a publishing calendar.
Building your subscriber base is all well and good, but will it make you money?
The short answer is yes, and here are some ways to encourage sales transactions on your blog: You can introduce special blog-only rates. Hot news on the blog builds readership as well.
Advertise your blog in your promotional material. Doing an advertising “two step” like this attracts more people than if you were to try to make a sale directly from an advertisement. Tell stories on your blog with an emotional appeal. Stories often sell better than a list of facts, and a blog is a great way to share the stories.
Finally, it’s important that you remember to include a clear call to action in your blog posts. Without an obvious next step, your readers may not take the action you want them to take after reading your posts.
If you decide to outsource your Blog Activitiesyou can decide who should develop your blog with the following questions:
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2.2.7. Digital Marketing | 2.2.9. Twitter |
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