In the world of content marketing, being visible is everything. For hotel managers, start creating a hotel business plan with the help of a trusted inbound marketing agency to start your online campaign today.
Create unique, excellently written or produced content for your hotel business. With the nature of news changing every day, there is a higher need to adapt to the pace of how the written word is now produced.
But if your content about the hospitality business doesn’t receive the type of traction that it should, none of that means anything. With all that it has to offer, hotel marketers need to include generating and approving their industry news to keep up with their clientele.
Self-publishing for Hotel Management Experts
With self-publishing and marketing now available, there is sometimes no need to include the middlemen of all this. The media landscape is vastly different to how it was years ago. This is particularly true with new services such as Instant Book by Airbnb.
Almost anything can be considered news, from holiday promotional activities to events that are held within your accommodations.
In that case, however, one needs to understand just what it takes to create news that not only informs people but educates them on the kind of high-quality content that one can utilise in determining one’s choice of lodging.
Industry as a Community
The hospitality management industry is particularly preoccupied with maintaining a certain image. As the main source of income is for clients to choose to stay at their accommodations, this should come with ideas that bring customers to their front door.
Inbound marketing is perfect for this industry, in the sense that outbound can be a costly investment that doesn’t always pay off.
There is so much that goes into an initial promotional campaign, and this does not guarantee success. Oftentimes it can even backfire if the message is either misconstrued or taken with offence.
This is no longer the case, as online marketing has become much more varied in the options that they can give aspiring and veteran hoteliers alike.
Would you rather invest all your start-up capital in a venture that is not guaranteed success, or would you utilise the internet and social media in a promotion that costs far less than what one would put into a traditional marketing campaign?
When stated that way, the choices sound obvious. Of course, you want to save. You want a much wider reach.
Content is always king – this hasn’t changed about marketing for online storefronts and services.
What you write about and portray and visualise is something that most people subscribe to. They flock to social media sites and profiles of their favourite personalities for it.
Whilst people are still quite hungry for information, the way they consume it has become very different.
With traditional marketing, one needed to place one’s self in the eye of their clientele in order to gain any traction. This includes advertisements, production of promotional materials, and even costly video commercials.
There is no way to measure just how effective your campaign is until it’s over, which by then will result in spending capital that could serve growth to your business plan and contribute to more developments and improvements for yourself and your hotel business.
When going inbound, you invest much more in the quality of the content and the manner in which it is presented.
True, if you are planning to focus on online marketing and campaigning, which means being more and more literate in the use of media, social media in particular.
In this manner it becomes critical to keep up to date with the developments that come with the far-reaching technology that seems to pervade society.
Keeping in solidarity with your hospitality management business, especially as one pursues a particular career path, is important. Although competition exists between individual businesses, it is still important to work together with your peers in order to uplift everyone’s business.
Know how to go about creating industry news, however, is another issue altogether.
The News Cycle
When one thinks of the word news, what pops into your head?
Do you think of the news that you read in the papers, or on the telly? Do you turn to social media or online websites?
Anything that needs to be reported to the public readily qualifies as news, as it is in the general interest of everyone to know something.
What has changed, and what is different, about the news cycle? What can we, as inbound marketing experts, do to put ourselves within the sight of those who create news?
The answer is relatively simple; why not try to create your own content?
Media literate people know to streamline and personalise the kind of information that they receive. Take, for example, a magazine subscription; if you’re into the fashion industry, you subscribe to British Vogue.
The same goes for hoteliers and hospitality management experts – you subscribe to information that relates to you. Perhaps a travel guide or a restaurant pamphlet will feature you or your hotel.
Wouldn’t it be more exciting of a media coverage for your hotel business, especially if the publication is of an international scale?
However, the waiting and hoping for being written about is long gone. We have come into an age where self-publishing is more and more being embraced as a common and oft-used internet marketing tactic.
This has made it categorically easier to make a name for one’s self as an seo expert in your industry, especially in the halls of social media and Google online search rankings. This will lead to more opportunities for you and your brand.
Apart from writing about one’s self, you can even get other freelance writers and bloggers to write about your brand. Start finding the right and trusted services of inbound marketing companies that do the writing and content management for you.
Industry News Know-How
The hospitality management sector has many facets in which to write about. As experts and veterans in the field, it becomes easy to pitch ideas and map out strategies for content marketing development.
Analyse customer feedback and ask them for their opinion.
What do they want to learn from us? What do they wish they knew about the industry?
Take all these into consideration on your hotel marketing business plan or methodology to your content, as industry news is not something to be trifled with.
Unlike videos or infographics, hotel industry news is primarily written. The trouble with writing for digital media is that there are so many other things that you must compete with.
Visuals and graphics draw the eye more, and moving objects all but guarantee that it will distract from the written piece.
How can one draw their audience into the news that they create, when there are so many more sources?
The key to written content, especially for something as serious as industry news, is to provide information that cannot be found in visual media. Perhaps one would want to inquire about rising hotel rates, or an increase in tourism that affects the hotel industry as a whole.
Whilst more and more websites have taken the task to create videos and reports about such news, writing for something so industry-specific and detailed is something that visuals cannot compete. When people want to be informed, rather than entertained, they turn to the written medium.
Marketing for hotels, in particular, is relatively straightforward.
People want to travel, and they need a place to stay whilst they visit your locality. This translates into a need for accommodation, which is dependent on the budget they have established for themselves.
Take note of peak periods in people’s traveling habits:
- Do people often visit during certain bank holidays or seasons?
- Is there any sightseeing sports or historical landmarks around you that would make it a good place to visit?
Create content based on what you know in this regard, and it should be easier to establish credible news and information that should be in line with your marketing methodology.
Pay attention to the algorithms and quality-boosting tactics that you can glean from search engines. Google is especially adept at this, as they even have the developments that rank content based on its perceived quality and word count.
There is a specific number for most information, and certain elements must be in place for it to truly rank.
Do not overdo it, do not violate the rules they set out, and it may be easier for you to market content and even increase your click-through rate in pursuing strategies such as these.
With news, there is a need to inform and update others. For example, if there is a change in management or a partnership with another local establishment, this is not to be announced in a casual blog post.
This needs to be broadcast in a more formal, direct manner. Images and videos can be included, but it should not distract from the information you wish to convey to your audience.
What Content Marketers Wish They Knew
With most written content, there is a structure that one must follow.
In creating or getting featured in industry news will tell you, the first key is to inform others of your actions or events that you have brought about.
So, when you create a content marketing plan for your hotel business, promote your unique product or service in every occasion or commemoration. You need to be able to glean information upon the first read, especially when there is such a lack of news that is tailored locally.
Be unique and different from blog posts and features as you are talking about real-time events and opportunities.
Who, what, where, when, why, and how – these are the elements of a basic news story. Barring that, they should also come in a certain order.
The easier to answer questions are those that do not need a lot of explanation. Probing questions, those that usually begin in ‘why’ or ‘how’, need more work in order to answer. This information comes in last, and should satisfy the reader in that it would be easier to do so.
Industry news is more promotional in most blog posts, where the sharing of opinions occurs and is often encouraged. There is less general discussion of your topic in regards to the validity of your information as it is more formal than others.
With this structure, you can create hotel industry news that highlights the best and brightest of what you can offer to your clientele.
Boosting your profile will help in boosting not just your business, but old-fashioned British hospitality as well.
The true purpose of industry news, in that is serves to inform and educate, has also proven to be a useful promotional tool that can uplift an industry or lead it to ruin. The more quality content that you create, the more you can ascend to a higher profile from of promotion.
Make a name for your hotel business. If you are featured among others in your industry, it should be viewed with respect and admiration – and that should be a reward in itself.
Such a powerful tool should be used in coordination with other forms of content. Multimedia, especially in images and video, can do well to enhance and reinforce the kind of information that you want to emphasise.
Create a more appealing visuals to the reader, especially when it is an especially long or informative piece of content. This can help to forge connections with other content creators, hotel marketers, tourism executives, and more.
Whilst improving one’s services and forging partnerships is important, how will people ever know if you don’t inform them?
Keep in mind that content comes first. Information must stay relevant for others to truly subscribe to your hotel management services. Follow a content marketing scheme which will match to your hotel business plan, objectives and goals.
Ensure the continued interest amongst your guests and patrons – they will surely pledge to your services and accommodations.
Keeping a steady flow of content to your clientele reinforces the brand of your hotel into their minds and to those who you are wishing to promote your services to.
Other articles worth reading:
- Going Inbound: Marketing for your Hotel Accommodation Needs
- Dominate Google’s Local Search Results With These Four Simple Tactics
- Inbound Marketing Leads for Life Science Providers
- Inbound Marketing for Life Sciences: Blogs and Content Creation
