Original Content for Hotel Promotion Crucial for Sales

Hotels must publish the right content to survive and thrive.

By Christos Vasilopoulos, Chief Editor for AGreekAdventure.com, Content Marketing Strategist for ChannelDoubler .

People follow and share stories, not brands.

Great stories inspire people. Inspiration promotes brand influence, promotes loyalty and leads to sales.

The content you publish must stir up emotions.  Your tools to achieve this are the right words, photos and video.

Through these tools you can trigger a response in the right kind of customers. Emotions trigger actions. Those actions equate to booking requests or – better yet – direct bookings to your business.  Potential guests will fall in love with what you have to offer and you have the quality services to provide. It is a win-win situation.

Who crafts this inspiration?

You’re telling me you are ready. You want this inspiring content but how do you create it? You are in the hospitality business. You’re not a blogger, nor a writer, photographer or web expert.

In this day and age, successful travel brands, especially hotels, reach out to professional story creators who know what it takes to create the exact content you need. They also know how to get this important content in front of the audience you want and how to measure the results.

One of the most inspirational forms of content today is the travel blog. That’s exactly why getting your hotel business mentioned and written about on quality travel blogs is important.

The rewards of collaboration

As an SEO expert, web developer and award-winning travel blogger, I can speak from experience that the challenges to creating getting inspirational blog posts written and working with the right bloggers are real. The good news is that these challenges are manageable. The possibilities through blogging collaborations are endless and there are many rewards for your hotel brand.

Through travel blogging experts you can measure efficiency of the content you pay for, understand the metrics and make better digital content marketing decisions about your growing hotel brand.  Better content leads to better sales.

That is the high-level concept of getting a targeted audience to visit your hotel website.

Another added value to working with travel bloggers is that their customized and expertly written content stays on the web.  It can be enhanced by backlinks, cross sharing, diverse channels.

Most importantly, travel blog content doesn’t disappear. It works for you through search engines even if your hotel works only in summer.

But I can simply pay for AdWords and use Facebook, can’t I?

Let’s dig deeper.

AdWords is not cheap, not to mention that 30% of viewers have AdBlockers and that percentage is higher outside of Greece. The truth of the matter is the potential clients you want do not see your Adwords ads. It comes down to this: you pay AdWords, you have an AdWords presence. The moment you stop paying AdWords, you must start all over again. AdWords accomplishes a small fraction of what you think it does.

Let’s look at another popular “solution” businesses spend money on: Facebook.  I’ve seen so many businesses rely on Facebook pages to host hotel photos, make reservations and advertise the hotel itself.

Facebook doesn’t work like that. It’s an online powerhouse making lots of money. It’s much more complicated. Nothing is free.

Instagram is great if you are a fashion icon. Consider that Instagram posts can’t include links which are critical for your business. Plus, millions of images are posted every minute. That is a lot of visual noise, right? The chances of your business standing out is slim.

Twitter isn’t effective in all areas of the world. For most travel and hotel businesses, it is a challenge to be heard on this social platform.

Do you want targeted audience and traffic? Then you need to invest in focused travel related content. I’m not just talking about photos of your pool or fun tips about your island village. Yes, put these photos and great tips on your hotel website but you must do more.

You need to promote your hotel through native content. Native content stays on the Web, even if you don’t pay a cent.

What is native content?

To make sure we are talking about the same thing, let’s clarify what native content really is. Native content is any text, photo, video, audio that is published as regular content in a website and not served from media servers (like paid ads do).

Native content is not blocked from AdBlockers. That’s because AdBlockers cannot tell if native content is promoting a business.  Furthermore, native content can include links towards your website.

Are all native content types created equal?

No, they are not. The key phrase here is: influential content marketing

You need to invest in travel related articles from travel blogs that have links back to your hotel.   The alpha and omega!

Readers of those travel blog sites will be exposed to content about your hotel and what someone can experience there.  What makes this content great is that it is a first-hand experience. It is personal. It will generate emotions. Remember what I said about emotions?

Travelers outside of Greece do their homework. They trust bloggers. They do their research.

They want to know what they can do at your hotel and what they might experience before they invest.

That is why content on travel blogs are considered influential content.

Travelers send emails, write comments and ask for insights from travel bloggers when they see an article about a destination.

Furthermore, they make decisions on vacation destinations when they lots of amazing content for that destination.

Native content in travel blogs is different from “touristic” content published on touristic sites. Such sites will never offer personal experiences that can evoke true emotion. Readers know the difference.

What can you do for your hotel?

Ask Travel Bloggers Greece what they can do for you. Our combination of expertise ensures that any content campaign will be conducted in a professional manner.

Contact us today and plan ahead. The new season is just around the corner. Get the content that produces results.

 

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