Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 62. This is a recap of my interview with Hostfully where I talked about starting a blog for your business.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
02:10 What is a cticky website
02:50 Pros and cons of having a blog
04:00 Outsource blog writers
04:40 How to make your website sticky
06:45 Post daily
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Transcript from the Episode
Every website should be sticky. So what that means is that if you really want to be seen on Google, if you really want the search engines to pay attention to you, and this works, not just on Google, it works on everything. So Facebook, Airbnb, booking.com, VRBO, Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, whatever platform YouTube, the way it works is that the longer you can get a user let's say your future potential guests or a future guest to stick around on your listing or on your website for longer, then the more you will get rewarded in the long run. And the best way to do that, the simplest way to do that is to write content that your future potential guests will want to see and stick around.
Pros and cons of having a blog
A blog is a great way of doing it. Now, you've got to weigh the pros and the cons. It is very time-consuming to sit down and write a blog. A lot of people who are watching this can't even write a social media post because they go I don't have the time. I don't have the time I literally I'm spinning all the plates, I don't have the time and I get it. You know, busy hospitality owner, I had two kids, I've stopped I've now got three kids, I want one more deep, doing literally all of the things, working with my parents working with my wife. It's an awful combination. I don't recommend it, having the kids doing all of the things, loads of staff members, and all of that. But yeah, I still managed to find the time to put a blog together. I mean, it was shocking. My writing is terrible. But I did it. And I did it enough that I got over the initial annoyance of it. And it's just like anything. If you do something consistently, on a repeated basis, it doesn't become a pain. I'm trying so hard not to sweat. Really trying a pain in the bum. It doesn't become a pain in the bum. It just becomes a routine it becomes like brushing your teeth, you got to stay correct consistently. IIf you do it more consistently actually becomes a routine and you will be rewarded.
Outsource blog writers
Now, if that sounds like an absolute torture to you and you don't want to do it, the best thing to do is outsource there are amazing writers and the way the world is now it's so easy to find a content writer to do blog work for you. But as we write in every day, they can be doing it once a week or once a month. And again, you can pay dollars, not a lot, not a lot of dollars, I can pretty much pay under $20 for a pretty well put together blog.
How to make your website sticky
Now there are other ways to make your website sticky. Number one, have a virtual tour. So a virtual tour if anybody doesn't know what that is, you know when you go on Google Street Map, and you can literally follow your street down and you can spy on the neighbours and all of those sort of things. That is a virtual tour and you can get them for your properties. And I think that virtual tours are really, really, really good, especially if you have got a property that's kind of unusual. Or if your customer avatar is families. Because when they're going to spend maybe 1000, or 2000 euros or pounds or dollars on a week or two weeks day to come and stay with you, and say they've got their family, and they're bringing in another family and another family, they need to know layouts, you know, because we've got to make sure that Annie, Susan's not sleeping next today, over on eBay, she doesn't like you know, and all those sort of things. So virtual tour is really handy for that, because they can literally walk around your property on their self on the sofa while they're watching Disney plus. So and again, if you think about it, you set your virtual tour on your website. Now, when they come on to there, you can literally lose yourself in a virtual tour for 5 10 15 minutes. And that still is the equivalent of someone sticking around on your websites. If you compare that to a blog, you're never going to get someone stick around reading a blog for like more than three minutes on average, you know, you got to somewhere, maybe a minute, Max two minutes on your website before they bounce or leave or do something else.
So you just got to try and figure out what you would like to have on your site. blogging, expense wise is about here virtual tour, they can get quite expensive unless you want to go out and get the kit and do it yourself. So you just got to try and weigh it all up.
Post daily
The most important thing that I think everybody should be doing is that you should be posting something every single day online. Now, that may again, sound daunting, but it really isn't. Even if it's just a post a story, or just doing something consistently every single day, you will stay top of mind. Because every single one of you, you are an ambassador of your local area. And there are some fantastic examples out there on the land of Instagram and Facebook who are doing it really well host to do it really well. Talking about the local area, places that like to go places I'd like to see because again, at the end of the day, if you can get someone to keep coming back and checking in with you on a daily basis, you're making your account sticky. And again, you will be rewarded in the algorithms. But most importantly, you're staying top of mind.
So right now, everybody is planning. So they're planning on where they want to go, planning on where they can travel to, you know that they're sort of doing the things because even though the world is starting to open up again, there's still so many people who are waiting for maybe vaccines, and actually make that booking and go do the travelling.
And those of you that are sitting on your hands and doing nothing can just being reactive, and just waiting for the email to ping to say you got a book in, then it's going to take a lot longer for you to get those bookings compared to everybody else who is using this time to be super proactive, posting about the day to day of the business posting about things to do or what you're looking forward to do in any area. And you do that consistently every day and you'll be top of mind. And then when you get the green light and people are confident totravel, you post it you're taken availability, then your inbox and your bookings will be just so much more active than those that are being reactive.
So whether it's a blog, social media post, whatever you do, just do something consistently and daily and you will reap the rewards.
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