8 Killer Tips for Your Hotel Blog

If you’re running a hotel in a popular destination, or anywhere where a lot of people are likely to stay, chances are that you’re not running alone. This means not only taking the time to think about what your competitors are doing, but how to stand out. When it comes to the hotel industry, having an online presence is essential, and blogs are a big part of that. Choosing appropriate keywords helps your local SEO ranking, and keeping your content fresh and current gives readers added reason to visit your site, and hopefully book a room. Here are some ways to improve and refine your blog.

1. Implement SEO

Increasing SEO is probably one of the biggest reasons that a website owner would want to setup a blog. After all, this provides the opportunity to create plenty of content that will include keywords you want to rank for, increasing your potential business, right? Sort of. It’s important to find a balance between using keywords without overstuffing the website with them. These days, readers can tell if you’re throwing your name over every single topic to try and get attention, and Google can as well. This leaves you with content that’s hard to read and a low-ranking website.

2. Focus on Your Audience

It’s essential when putting together content to consider what your audience wants to read as well as what keywords you want to rank for. This will help guide every aspect of the content process, from the topics you choose to the tone you use, to how you decide to implement visuals. The good news is that if you already have a successful hotel, you know what your bread and butter are as far as customers are concerned. Be ready to pull from that when creating your content calendar.

3. Provide Specific Education/Value

These days, it’s not enough to just write some bland listicle on “4 reasons why you should use our hotel” and expect to get any meaningful traffic or conversions. People go on company blogs because they want insight from those they perceive as experts. Use that to your advantage, especially in popular travel destinations. Know a great activity or place to eat that’s off the beaten path? Share it! Know a way to beat the crowds at a popular tourist spot? Share it! Use the insider information you provide to your customers face-to-face to create great blog content.

4. Mix Evergreen and Timely Content

When it comes to your blog, you want a combination of topics that readers can use at any time as well as things that cover recent hot topics. When deciding what timely content you want to post, you need to measure if you have the time and resources to act quickly without compromising quality. When creating evergreen content, know that you do have the unique chance to revisit and revise pertinent topics after you first write about them. For example, if you wrote about great local restaurants three years ago, it may be a good idea to revisit that again with an updated list, but still using the original article as a framework.

5. Be Visual

Hospitality is a naturally visual business. Be prepared to invest in high-quality photos and maybe even video content to show readers some of the topics you may be talking about. In addition, place an emphasis on things that make your city or your hotel unique compared to other potential destinations.

6. Don’t be Afraid to Pull Back the Curtain

Occasionally, it’s good to break things up with something unique. Writing about the inner workings of your hotel is a good way to let customers know about their experience, and show off that you are a transparent business. Try interviews with staff or show some of the procedures in getting rooms ready - you can be creative when it comes to what you want to put in areas like these.

7. Learn from Others

There are a lot of other hotel blogs out there, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use this to your advantage. Do a little research on some of the most popular names in your niche. You can’t lift content directly from them, but there’s nothing wrong with a little inspiration from those who are already successful. In some cases, taking a format you see elsewhere and changing it for your area of expertise can lead to some success of your own.

8. Don’t Forget What Happens After You Post

To reap the most benefits from your hotel blog, you want to try and put your content out there. This increases your chances of getting other websites to link to it in their own content, which provides all-important backlinks for your ranking. There are a lot of ways that you can do this. Posting on social media is a start, but you may want to consider working with a local blogger for a guest post. By featuring them on your site, they suddenly have the incentive to promote your blog to their captive audience. You can also promote your posts through paid media such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads. Using paid media is especially good on high value evergreen content.

The thing about a hotel blog, or any form of similar marketing, is that it’s no longer the novel idea that it was only years ago. Just about any other hotel around has some form of content marketing, and are willing to make the investments that they need to create regular effective content. This investment not only goes into the quality of written posts but also planning and research to find the most effective content ideas, as well as outreach and initiatives to grow the audience for said posts. Those in hospitality can appreciate the value of market research, outreach, and quality, which is why you don’t want to work on a hotel blog without support. This means using the marketing expertise of Blue Beetle. We specifically focus on the leisure and hospitality industries and will help your hotel put together a concrete plan that will keep a steady stream of happy guests coming in.