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How to Write and Run A Professional Blog
publication date: Dec 29, 2012
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author/source: Patrick Landman - Xotels
 There seems a lot of disagreement if blogging is still effective in the days of micro-blogging sites like Twitter and age of social media like FaceBook. At Xotels we have been managing hotel blogs, and are achieving good results through a well thought out strategy. And this is the key for hotel internet marketing; you need a plan to get somewhere.
We are managing various hotel blogs, for different kinds of lodging products. All of the blogs have a unique image and approach. It is important the blog connects with your guests.
We creatively target local attractions, events, shopping, dining and nightlife tips, etc to provide the hotel’s clients with an idea of what they can do in the destination. It is important to give your hotel blog a personal touch and informal style.
Among the hotel blogs we manage are;
As you can see we cover a wide range of topics in these hotel blogs. Moreover we are not only focused on text. We also include picture galleries of past events and tourist maps listing attractions using Google Maps.
It is very effective to use a blog as a kind of online concierge or tourist guide for your hotel guests. As a next step this content allows us to engage our guests as well other travelers and about what is going on in the destination via FaceBook. By promoting local events in FaceBook and participating in discussion on other pages we create more buzz around our brands. And as a result our blog pages get likes. Very subtly we are growing the sphere of influence of the brand this way.
But blogs can also go beyond social media. SEO (search engine optimization) is strong potential component of a blog strategy. Some of the blog articles we created have raised in position on the search engines and gained a primary ranking. Timing is of the essence here. You have to launch your blog article way ahead of the event to be able to compete. Think 2 or 3 months!
We avoid being over commercial, and will never send special offers to our hotel blog subscribers. However we will promote certain events, and at the bottom or on the side of the blog article we provide a link to a related special offer or to the home page. This way the content is not viewed as an intrusive interruption but as valuable and useful information on things to do.
Patrick - Xotels
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