Blogs are a fantastic marketing tool for hospitality businesses. By keeping a regular blog you can show your audience how much of an expert you are about your business and the area you operate in. It is also a great way to develop a personal bond with previous and potential guests. Unfortunately, coming up with regular blog ideas can be tricky. Here are some great ways to come up with new content.
Consume a wide range of content to formulate blog ideas
It’s the same tip you will hear from authors, filmmakers and songwriters – you need to consume a wide range of media to help you make your own. In terms of blog writing, this means reading other blogs not just in your industry, but from other areas. Nyima Bieber from Travel Tripper is a strong advocate for reading outside of your industry. Check out adjacent industries such as tech and food for more ideas. You might find they have interesting content related to travel equipment or best dishes from the region your property is in.
Newspapers are also a great way to generate more ideas. Jet Copywriting suggest reading local newspapers to get an idea of what is happening in your area. This can be vital information for visitors to your town – especially if you are in an area outside of the major cities. Not only does this help you come up with new blog ideas, it also ensures you become an expert in your area. Which leads on to the next point!
Write about your local area and events
More and more, tourists are looking for accommodation providers that can help them experience the area they are visiting. If you appear to be knowledgeable about your local area, it shows that you aren’t just providing a bed to sleep on but also a well informed travel service. Siteminder wrote about this in their blog. You want your guests to feel like they can trust you to enhance their travel experience. If there are any major events coming up, write about them!
On a more technical note, localised blog posts are great for SEO. On Blast Blog also talk about the importance of writing about local events in their post on coming up with blog ideas. They point out that Google’s local SEO algorithm loves blog posts about specific local areas. This might be challenging if you’re based in London. If you’re in a small town or village it will help you appear further up on local searches.
Collaborate with other businesses
A simple way of getting your blog more readers is to include links to other blogs and business websites in your post. Social Hospitality suggest regularly monitoring other blogs about similar topics regularly to pick up ideas. You can take this one step further! If you see a post you like, and it isn’t a direct competitor, include them in your post. Let’s say you’re a B&B in Snowdonia and you enjoyed a post by a hotel in the Highlands about hiking. Link their blog in your own post and let them know – they might even share it!
On a more local level, you can also collaborate with other businesses in your area that provide services you personally enjoy. Hermes Themes suggest including an interview with someone from a local business in your blog. Again, you don’t necessarily want to interview direct competitors – but there are plenty of great options. If you’re excited by the great cocktails in the bar across the road, ask to speak to the bar manager. Chances are they will share this too, as it gives their own audience a perspective into their business.
Try blog ideas that personalise your business
Adding a little bit of personality to your business will go a long way to creating a connection with your audience. This goes beyond tone and exclamation points – you need to share some stories. Little Hotelier recommend talking about the history of your property, or even a humorous account of your daily activities. Of course it’s important not to overshare (nobody wants to hear about how you clean the loos), but giving a little behind-the-scenes glimpse into your business lets your audience develop a personal connection.
E-Marketing Associates also have some great ideas to add a personal touch to your blog. You can also interview staff members or work blog ideas around guest reviews. If you have an excellent chef working in the kitchen get a simple recipe idea from them. Reviews are harder to write about without seeming boastful, but you can use this opportunity to answer queries. Say a guest has written about how much they enjoyed the local bar scene – write about your own favourite bars in the area and include a snippet of the review in the intro. As always, make sure you have permission to include names where necessary.
Remember to offer your own unique perspective
As mentioned by Benjamin Elias in Active Campaign, you want to make sure your posts are unique. If you are just writing about the same stuff as everyone else, it won’t hold anyone’s attention and probably won’t do very well in SEO terms either. You should take inspiration from trending topics, but make sure you are offering a new perspective. An easy way to do this is to highlight your particular expertise in the area. A blog about the best coffee in the area will succeed more if you used to work as a barista – or even if you can just prove your in depth knowledge of the area.
Another good way of finding a unique perspective is to take a look at your analytics. Clifford Chi has a great post on Hubspot about using data to come up with blog ideas. You need to keep an eye on what your visitors are most interested in, and what posts are performing bests. Chances are, these are the topics your audience have more trust in your expertise for. Most social media platforms allow you to see what topics most interest your audience in general, and this can be a great way to consider what perspective you can add to any given blog post.
Final thoughts
Blogs are a fantastic way to show off your expertise and build trust for your business. Coming up with new ideas on a regular basis can be hard, but there are plenty of different avenues to consider. The areas mentioned in this blog are a great place to start, but most importantly you need to get creative! You know your guests best, so try to cater to their wants and needs in your posts.
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