When it comes to the travel industry specifically, 93% of travellers will have a read through reviews of your property before deciding where to book.

But really, even without this information, you’re already more than aware of the importance of guest reviews for driving bookings online.

The question is: how can you make the most of reviews and use them to maximise your hotel’s marketing potential? Here are 5 ways you can get started on today.

1. Add Guest Quotes To A Blog Post

Where appropriate, don’t be afraid to quote a review or include a link to a review within a relevant blog post.

Of course, doing this too often will turn off guests by appearing too self-promotional and salesy, but a well placed review or snippet of a review in a place that fits in naturally with the context of the post is a great way to add some ultra valuable social proof to your content.

2. Include Reviews On Your Homepage

What better way to add instant credibility and encourage direct bookings than by integrating guest reviews into your hotel’s homepage?

One of the most effective ways to do this is by using a plug-in that pulls reviews from third party sites like TripAdvisor, but you could also speak to your web designer about incorporating reviews into your page’s actual design, perhaps even with a photo of the guest (organised with their permission of course).

3. Display Reviews On Landing Pages

Landing pages are another important place to maximise the power of reviews and give guests added confidence to book at a critical point in the booking journey.

Test different variations and layouts of your reviews to see which combinations generate the best results for your hotel. Does including a photo of the guest with the review drive more bookings than just a plain text-only review? Only A/B testing will help you find out.

4. Create A Guest Reviews Page

In an industry that’s all about creating experiences, you can justify dedicating an entire page of your website to reviews. You can include a selection of your most complimentary feedback, and link to the page regularly throughout your other content.

5. Spark Content Ideas From Guest Reviews

You may not think it initially, but guest reviews can actually sometimes be a treasure trove of content ideas. What are the points your guests commonly touch on in their reviews of your property – your leisure facilities, your fantastic menu of local dishes or the abundance of local attractions nearby perhaps?

Whatever it is, mining reviews will give you an idea of the features and topics that really interest and matter to your guests, and this gives you a great insight into the kind of content that is likely to really resonate with them.

How are you using guest reviews in your hotel’s online marketing campaigns? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 2019’s Most Essential SEO Trends
– 5 Powerfully Effective Ways To Boost Engagement On Facebook
– How To Engage Your Guests And Drive Bookings This Holiday Season

Here are 3 shortcuts that will actually cost you money, time and marketing results in the long run.

Paid-For Links

The Hack:

Since Google considers the volume of backlinks pointing to a piece of content as part of its ranking algorithm, it’s not surprising that many marketers have fallen prey to the temptation of buying links in an attempt to game the system.

The problem is backlinks only really boost ranking if they come from reputable sources and if the content being linked to is of genuine value to its audience. Sure, you can pay any number of dubious companies to build you a library of backlinks from tonnes of spammy sites, but if Google wises up to your behaviour, you could end up with a penalty which actually pushes your hotel’s website down the SERPs.
 

The Solution:

Unfortunately, with link building you really do need to just put the work in. The best way to generate high quality backlinks is to do the job organically by creating helpful and informative content that people naturally want to link to. Reach out to relevant businesses in your city who might be happy to link to your hotel’s website, perhaps in exchange for a link on your own website.

Even if you don’t manage to build a huge backlog of links this way, you’ll still have plenty of interesting content to draw people in.

Lazy Content Repurposing

The Hack:

The value of repurposing older content is something that gets talked about a lot in marketing. While it’s true that editing and reposting a previous blog post is a great way to add fresh content to your site with minimal effort, the problem comes when you simply adopt the “copy and paste” approach to repurposing.

Your audience may not remember that old blog post from 2011, but Google does, and duplicate content is a sure-fire way to jeopardise your rankings. That’s not to mention the fact that occasionally lazy repurposing will get picked up on by your guests too, which will harm your credibility with your audience, especially if the content in question is no longer relevant.
 

The Solution:

Start by being totally honest with yourself: is the content you want to repurpose still relevant and helpful to your guests? Spend some time fine tuning it to ensure it’s super fresh. You could switch around the structure, or even change the medium entirely, by turning a blog post into a video, for example.

The bottom line is, repurposing requires less effort than creating a new piece of content from scratch, but it does still require a little work if you want to pull it off successfully.

Influencer Marketing Shortcuts

The Hack:

Working with industry influencers is a great way to add authority and value to your hotel’s content, while widening your reach and getting your brand in front of new travellers.

The simple way to use influencer marketing is to search for influencers, pay them to produce some content for your hotel’s website or social media pages, then go your separate ways. It’ll work, for a time. But then your budget will run out, or the influencer will decide they’d rather work with someone else.
 

The Solution:

If there’s no mutual excitement or at least interest in the content you’re creating with your influencer, the relationship is going to fall flat pretty quickly.

Sure, some of the figures or local businesses you work with may want financial compensation, but if money is all that’s in it for them then both of you, and worse, your audience, are going to get jaded pretty quickly.

Aim to build relationships with people who not only have a lot of followers, but genuinely have interesting and cool stuff they want to share with your hotel’s audience. With a little time and effort, you’ll have a mutually beneficial long term partnership both parties will gain from.

Have you tried any of these content marketing shortcuts? How have they cost or benefited you in the long run? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 3 Marketing Trends To Watch In 2019
– How To Get Your Hotel’s Blog Content Seen By More Travellers
– 3 Content Marketing Hacks To Cut Your Budget Without Losing Quality

In today’s post, we’ll look at three powerfully effective ways to amplify the reach of your hotel’s blog so it gets in front of even more guests ready to plan their next holiday.

Here’s how to amp up your blog amplification.

1. Don’t Be Afraid Of A Little Social Repetition

Repetition breeds results on social media, but many marketers hold back in fear of irritating or worse, boring, their audience.

While it’s true that excessive self-promotion from brands gets tiresome fast, don’t forget that your guests’ newsfeeds are crammed with content and move quickly. Very quickly. This, coupled with the fact that Facebook and the other major social platforms have taken steps to greatly curb the organic reach of business content in recent years mean it’s not only acceptable but wise to post the same content more than once to give it the best chance of getting noticed. Don’t worry about overloading your guests – chances are they didn’t even see the first time you posted.

As always, carry out some testing to work out the right balance for each channel you use and don’t forget to switch up your text slightly each time.

2. Promote Via Email

It goes without saying but it’s surprising how many marketers miss it – promoting every blog post you create via email is crucial, especially now that it’s getting more difficult to fight to get heard on social media.

Focus on collecting opt-in email list subscribers on your hotel’s website, get them invested and interested in what you have to say via regular engaging and personalised messaging, and turn them on to your blog.

3. Name-Check And Reach Out

How often do you mention restaurants, attractions, events and other noteworthy local businesses in your hotel’s blog posts? Pretty often I’m guessing. Now, how often do you reach out to these businesses to let them know you’re giving them some valuable free promotion?

If the answer is never or only sometimes you’re missing a big trick. Next time you publish a post name-checking the most indulgent local day spas or the best places to get breakfast in your city, reach out to the businesses mentioned to let them know. Not only might they help promote your content on their own channels, you could even kick start a valuable ongoing relationship with opportunities for future content-collaboration.

However much else has changed in the online landscape in recent years, your hotel’s blog remains a valuable place to engage guests and drive bookings. But simply publishing great posts isn’t enough. With a little care and planning put into promotion, one post can achieve the reach of ten un-promoted posts, nurturing your audience and guiding them through the booking funnel.

What do you think? How do you promote your hotel’s blog posts? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 5 Quick And Simple Tips For Driving More Blog Traffic
– 5 Powerful Tips To Get Your Blog Posts Seen By More Guests
– Give These Outdated Content Marketing Strategies The Slip in 2018

Since content is the king of both present and future digital marketing, it’s no surprise that marketers are spending a sizeable chunk of their budgets on blogs and posts to engage their customers. Unfortunately, it’s a long term marketing strategy which is both costly and takes a while to prove itself in terms of return on investment.

The good news? With a little care and forward thinking you can reduce your spending while still producing high quality content that informs and entertains your guests and drives traffic and bookings. Here are 3 smart tips you can get started on today.

Identify Your Target Readers Before You Start Each Piece Of Content

In the effort to supply your website with a continual stream of fresh content, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of what you’re actually trying to achieve with the content you create. Your hotel’s content has a purpose, namely to nurture your leads and turn browsing travel shoppers into guests. If you’re not totally clear about who you’re writing it for, it’s going to fall flat, no matter how much time you spend on it.

The takeaway here is: start with guest personas first. Every piece of content you create should be designed to answer and address your guests’ specific needs, wants and concerns as travellers. If it’s not, you’re simply wasting your time and resources.

Consider Evergreen Content

Make your content work harder for you by focusing on creating content you can reuse longer term. While some blogs (such as those highlighting a one-off local event) can only be used once, other pieces of content have longer term value and can even be repurposed into videos or updated slightly to create a new post.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t aim for uniqueness wherever possible, but drawing on more general “evergreen” content assets is a great way to publish content that resonates with your guests while reducing your spending from time to time.

Get To Grips With Analytics

If you’re doing it right, you’re using multiple platforms to promote your content to the widest audience possible, including landing pages, social media, paid ads, tracking tools and SEO tactics. Great.

But not all these tactics are equal in terms of ROI.

Delve into Google Analytics to identify the channels which are delivering the best results when it comes to driving traffic to your hotel website or blog. You’re then in a position to reduce expenses that aren’t delivering, or at least analyse why they might be falling short. Before investing in multiple monitoring and analytics tools, remember Google Analytics is pretty solid unless you need something super in depth. That way, your budget will remain in check.

How do you curb your spending in a time of content marketing dominance? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– What Is High Quality Content?
– How To Use Blogging To Climb The Search Rankings
– 5 Quick And Simple Tips For Driving More Blog Traffic

But that doesn’t make coming up with fresh writing topics month after month any less daunting. Compared to more niche business categories, hoteliers actually have it pretty easy. Your audience is made up of travellers from all walks of life, opening up a range of broad lifestyle topics for you to write about.

Here are just a few engaging blog ideas to attract guests to your website to find out more about your hotel and (hopefully) book.

Holiday Treats and Indulgences

There’s no better excuse for treating yourself and perhaps overindulging in a luxury or two than a getaway, so if your property boasts an impressive restaurant menu and expansive wine list, flaunt it. If it doesn’t, show off the local eateries that do have something a little special to offer, taking care to mention seasonal menus, specialist beers, locally made wines. Expand your focus to themed posts listing local “hidden gem” eateries, best breakfast spots, whatever works for your city. You can do the same thing with spas, salons and other little luxuries your area has to offer.

Share A Quirky Local Story

Does your location have any funny stories, ghost tales, quirky legends or surprising celebrity connections and film locations? Of course it does, and this is exactly the kind of stuff travellers really love to hear about!

Offer A Sneak Peek Behind The Scenes

Even new guests like to feel they’re being let in the loop and finding out some insider knowledge. Think about creating a post that gives travellers a glimpse of a new design feature or facility you have in the works, or create a “vlog” style video chronicling a typical day in the life at your hotel. You could also create interviews – either in video or written format – to show off the real people behind your property. Whether it’s a chat with your receptionist or an interview with your chef about your restaurant menu, the idea is to reveal the more human side of your business, and gain trust and authenticity in the process.

Act As Local Travel Guide

Local content is an integral component of content marketing success, and your guests are actively searching for rich and original information and tips about your city every day.

Help them out while climbing the rankings by talking about how to get the most out of local sights and attractions, tips for beating the crowds, upcoming events, finding the best bargains and discovering the off-the-beaten-track attractions the guide books don’t know about.
 

Do you have any engaging ideas for a great hotel blog post? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– What Is High Quality Content?
– How To Use Blogging To Climb The Search Rankings
– Give These Outdated Content Marketing Strategies The Slip in 2018

So, quality is subjective. But with that said it is possible to define quality content marketing in simple terms which apply to any business: Quality content demonstrates to your audience that you understand and care about their needs.

That’s the foundation of quality content. Want to make sure your content delivers on this basic level? Here’s how you can make sure the content you publish passes the test.

The Basic Requirements Of Quality Content

1. Super-Relevancy

Your content should:

• Aim to provide the “best answer” for a proven search need
• Address your guest’s key needs and questions
• Be substantial and thorough

In essence, it means that you’re putting the work into researching your audience and how they’re planning their breaks online and that you’re crafting content which aims to give them exactly what they need to make choosing and booking their holidays easier.

2. Guest Focused

It’s difficult to persuade guests you care about their needs if all you do is talk about how great your property is. The most valuable content puts self-promotion on the backburner and instead offers genuinely helpful and informative content your audience can use even if they decide not to make a booking with you. Of course, you need to include some promotional content within your marketing mix, but your primary focus should be on helping the reader.

3 Ways To Create High Quality Content

1. Tell A Story

Humans gravitate towards narratives, it’s in our wiring. Stories engage, build trust and help create a genuine, human connection with our audience. Whether it’s in the form of sharing guest anecdotes, user generated content, “behind the scenes” tales, or even simply sharing the story of your business, story telling is one of the most powerful ways to forge loyalty and demonstrate authenticity, while selling.

2. Make Your Guests’ Holiday Planning Easier

Anything that can help choosing an accommodation provider and planning a break easier is going to be of value to your guests. Keep that in mind when writing local guides, lists and how-tos on your hotel’s social media platforms and blog.

3. Know Your Guest Personas

It’s a no brainer: you can’t craft quality content if you don’t know who you’re writing for. Every piece of content you create should be informed by your guest personas – the key categories of guest that book into your hotel – and your knowledge of their particular likes, needs and pain points. Keep your personas front of mind with each new campaign and you’ll have a strong foundation on which to build super relevant, helpful “best answer” content.
 

How do you strive to create high quality content? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– How To Use Blogging To Climb The Search Rankings
– 5 Quick And Simple Tips For Driving More Blog Traffic
– Give These Outdated Content Marketing Strategies The Slip in 2018

It takes an ongoing, committed SEO strategy to secure and maintain a high ranking in the organic listings, but it can be done. And one of the simplest and most effective ways to boost your ranking is with a well written and frequently updated blog.

The Link Between Blogging And Good SEO

When your guests are researching their breaks online, Google’s algorithm serves up what it interprets as the most helpful and relevant pages as answers to their search enquiries. In simple terms, if Google considers your blog a quality source of helpful and relevant information, your hotel’s website will rank more highly in the SERPs. So what goes into a successful blogging strategy? The following tactics will help you get noticed by both the search engines and your guests.

1. Look Beyond Keywords

Some hotel marketers are still working under the misconception that a blog post only has SEO-boosting potential if it is packed with keywords. It’s true that years ago, hitting a high keyword quota was an effective way to grab the attention of Google, even if it meant frustrating, less than helpful content for readers. But times have changed.

Ever since the Panda algorithm rollout of 2011, Google has been penalizing websites with keyword overstuffed content, while rewarding those which offer unique and genuinely useful content with higher rankings.

With this in mind, every post you produce should contain something informative, interesting and if you can; original. By tackling your posts with this approach, you’ll automatically gain authority in the eyes of Google, as well as demonstrating to your audience that you genuinely care about their needs.

2. Create Evergreen Content

As the name suggests, evergreen content refers to posts with longer term value, which can be reused to boost traffic throughout the year. As always, the content that works best will be tailored to your particular audience, whether it’s a guide to budget child-friendly attractions in your city for families or a set of themed blogs on working on the road for corporate guests. Start with your guests’ needs, wants and questions and work from there.

These posts may need to be subtly tweaked and fine tuned now and again to ensure they remain relevant, but the great thing about evergreen content is it generally low maintenance.

3. Don’t Forget Links

To make life easier for your readers, and to give your SEO efforts a massive helping hand, don’t forget to include internal links within your blog posts to other pages on your hotel’s website. For example, if you’ve written a post about a specific local attraction, link to your website page which includes general information about all the things to see and do in your city. If you’ve written a feature drawing attention to a new promotion, include a link to your specials page along with a compelling call to action.

Does your hotel maintain a regular blog? Have you noticed the correlation between blogging and higher search rankings? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 5 Quick And Simple Tips For Driving More Blog Traffic
– How To Push Your Hotel’s Blog Posts Up The Search Rankings
– Give These Outdated Content Marketing Strategies The Slip in 2018

That’s when you start questioning if your content campaigns are even worth it.

There’s no doubt that blogging works. There are countless studies to prove that. But simply cranking out content on a weekly or monthly basis is not enough to attract huge traffic rates, even if you’re directing your social audience to it as part of your routine.

As more and more hotels are publishing an increasing amount of content everyday, if you want to attract more traffic, you’ll need to master the basics first. Happily, boosting traffic to your property’s blog can be done in as little as 30 minutes. Just take a look at these 5 tips below.

1. Go visual or go home

As humans we’re naturally attracted to engaging visuals. If you need proof, just take a look at the continuing wild popularity of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Timeline and Pinterest.

The internet is oversaturated in words and none of us have enough time or energy to read every blog post out there. If high quality images, videos, infographics and even memes can help you capture and retain your guests’ attention, why not include at least one in each and every post?

2. Maximise blog loading speed

As you’re probably aware, Google analyses page loading time as part of its ranking algorithm. Your guests expect your website’s pages to load in 2 seconds or less – if your load times aren’t up to scratch you can expect to slip down the rankings and see your bounce rates soar.

Don’t let lagging load times let you down. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to test your website’s speed and performance and receive personalised recommendations to improve.

3. Facilitate quick and easy social sharing

Recent data reveals that including social sharing buttons on blog posts can generate up to 7 times more mentions. Don’t forget to ensure your posts have alluring headlines that are concise and to the point (this is particularly important for platforms like Twitter so you have space for shortened URLs).

4. Come up with the optimal blogging schedule, then stick to it

What’s the optimum number of blog posts? The jury’s still out. But generally speaking, the more your hotel blogs per month, the more traffic you can expect to attract.

Of course, there’s still such a thing as too much. One of the most effective ways to figure out your posting sweet spot is to keep a close on your subscriber activity. Do you notice a surge in “unsubscribe” requests after an increase in blog activity? If so, you may be turning off guests with too much content.

5. Take time to respond to comments

It may surprise you, but there’s increasing evidence that simply responding to the comments guests leave on your blog can boost your traffic. Not only does responding to each and every comment help SEO by increasing the number of words on the page, it also helps build your online community, show your guests that you’re interested in their opinions and inspire repeat traffic.

Adding a link in the comment URL box to other important pages on your hotel’s website is a great way to control your traffic and direct guests where you want them to go.
 

As the above tips show, boosting traffic to your property’s website needn’t take a lot of work, and it’s worth every second. What are you doing to maximise traffic to your hotel’s website? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 5 Essential Hotel Blogging Tips For Beginners
– 5 Powerful Ways To Drive More Facebook Traffic To Your Blog
– Give These Outdated Content Marketing Strategies The Slip in 2018

If you’re using any of the content marketing strategies listed below, it’s time for a fresh approach.

1. Generic, Churned-Out Content

Content marketing used to be about bulk. It was a question of creating as much keyword-rich content as you could in a bid to dominate the search results page. Whether the content actually helped anyone? Not so important back then.

But search engines have come a long way, and our content needs to evolve too. These days, the pages that win high ranking in the SERPs feature content that is actually of real value to its intended audience. Overly broad, generic content generates few clicks and high bounce rates, signalling to Google that your pages are of little value to its users and pushing your hotel’s website down the rankings.

Change Your Approach: Now, more than ever, content is about quality, not quantity. High quality content that actually interests and engages your audience takes longer to create, but encourages guests to spend more time on the page, explore your website further and book. Win win!

2. Keyword Stuffing

Back when bulk content was king, marketers would stuff keywords into every title, paragraph and sentence whenever they could to climb the rankings. It worked, in terms of generating traffic, although it made for painfully dull reading for users.

Now though, spammy keyword stuffing tends to have precisely the opposite effect. It’s actively penalised by Google, which means if you’re still using this tactic on your website your content won’t be getting seen by as many people as it should be.

Change Your Approach: Don’t plan your content creation efforts around a single keyword. Begin with researching topics with proven search demand. Next brainstorm a group of keywords, similar terms and long-tail alternatives. Use this research to create the outline of your content. Since you’re aiming for interesting, relevant “best answer” content, you’ll find you naturally include the keywords without forcing them in. The result? Great content that pleases your guests and Google alike.

3. Focusing Only On The Sale

Obviously the real reason you spend time creating content is to promote your property and generate bookings. But realistically, most of your audience are going to be in the early stages of the holiday decision making process. If every piece of content you create comes across as overly salesy, it lacks sincerity and authority and gets boring pretty quickly too.

Change Your Approach: Strike the right balance. Focus the majority of your content creation efforts at guests at the top of the booking funnel. They’re still comparing locations, weighing up different properties, and want to see informative, relevant content about your local area, events and attractions. Content of this kind is valuable and doesn’t push your promotional message down your audience’s throat. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create content highlighting your great facilities, a new feature or anything else exciting going on at your hotel, but you should keep this stuff to a minimum if you want to gain your audience’s trust and lead them further down the booking funnel.

What do you think? Are you ready for a fresh approach to content marketing in 2018? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 5 'Must Haves' Of A Hotel Blog That Converts
– The Common Blogging Mistakes You Cannot Afford To Make
– How To Push Your Hotel’s Blog Posts Up The Search Rankings

Why bother? Because both Google and your guests strongly favour fresh, highly relevant content. What’s more, keeping low quality, outdated content on your website can lead directly to fewer clicks and higher bounce rates, which may impact your site’s authority with Google, and ultimately, your search rankings.

Are you clinging on to outdated content?

To decide whether you’re guilty of hoarding unnecessary content, it’s time to delve into your website analytics. Do you notice any posts which haven’t received even one organic visit in the previous three months? If you do, these posts are in urgent need of some attention.

Sometimes, if a post is really no longer relevant, the only option is to remove it from your website altogether. But in most cases, all it takes is a few tweaks to optimise older content and boost the SEO power of your blog.

How to boost older content

Once you’ve identified the posts which aren’t getting viewed, leading to bookings or ranking as highly as you’d like, you can either delete them and use 301 redirects to other posts, or optimise them so that they perform better. Here are some tips:

• See what your high ranking competitors are doing. Closely study the pages that are ranking for your competitors for the same target keywords. What are they getting right? How many words are they using per page? What about the use of images? Any strategies you can learn from?
• Ensure your blog’s SEO structure is solid. Take another look at your posts’ headers, title tags, images and other on-page elements. Are you employing SEO best practices throughout?
• Learn from your comments section. Wondering how to improve your posts? Sometimes you’ll find the answer in the posts’ comments section themselves, through the questions your guests ask and the discussions they’re having.
• Don’t forget to update the date of your blog posts. When you’ve finished your revisions, don’t forget to change the publish date of the blog post.
• Promote your updated posts through email and social media. Let your contacts and social audience know that you’ve published a new post – you might even reach out to specific commenter’s to tell them that the post now includes new information that may be of interest.

Revising older content is a great way to bring your blog up to date and generate a powerful SEO boost. That doesn’t mean you should stop posting new content, but sometimes revisiting historic posts is more worthwhile than creating something totally from scratch. Before you publish any content, ask yourself; is it the right content? What are your competitors publishing? Are you guilty of trying to publish too much for the sake of it? If you answer these questions before you start typing, you can create better content from the outset.

Is your hotel’s blog due a clean up? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:

– 5 Essential Hotel Blogging Tips For Beginners
– The Common Blogging Mistakes You Cannot Afford To Make
– How To Push Your Hotel’s Blog Posts Up The Search Rankings