Chapter 31, creating a successful blog for your property. You may not think it, but people care about your ideas, your generosity, and your willingness to share. The last 15 years we have seen blogging take on a life of its own. Many experts we turn to have become famous because of their blogs. A blog gives your property of voice. Through blog posts, you can freely talk with your customers about your property services you offer trends in the hospitality, property, industry and other information pertinent to the community, the reader and customer base that you serve.

Additionally, a well written blog allows you the opportunity to be viewed as an expert in your field, generates traffic to your property's website, and provides you with an opportunity to build a sense of connection and community with your customers. And so now it is more important today than ever, that the content of your blog is quality. This is especially true for businesses who are blogging to get found on the internet to be successful. A hospitality property owner needs a blogging strategy that allows them to create high quality content. So they can slowly build themselves as an expert and a leader. Here I have to emphasize slowly, you have to allow yourself to time to get things right.

So I'm going to spend a couple of minutes explaining a few things for you to get you started and share with you some of the initial mistakes bloggers make. Before you get started. You have to decide on the purpose of your blog. Take a moment to ask yourself these questions. Why is my property blog? What story supports my property?

Who would share my passion? Are my employees aligned with this passion? When you answer these questions, start thinking who are my target guests? This is a question you would have answered back in series number one, your heart fidelity property organizational structure. Now that you know who your ideal customer is, do a little research on their behavior, and then you can adapt your blog accordingly. places where you can find this type of research include q&a forums, for example, Cora, and Yahoo Answers.

Social media, for example, groups on social media sites. Tools for getting content for your potential customers buzzsumo calm and Topsy calm, blog comments on other blogs your potential customers might read. What type of content are they already engaging with on other blogs? Your goal is to build trust with your audience. If you discover the information your customers seek and become the go to blog for providing that information, they will likely start to trust you. Your competition, compile a list of five to 15 of your closest or the same type of competitors with blocks.

You can audit their content to see what's working They're ranking higher than you for crucial keywords, then write and promote better content for those keywords. If you see gaps in the content on their site, capitalize on their gaps. Targeting keywords. Create a list of five to 10 keyword groups you want to rank for and with them the associated longtail keywords you can include in your blog content. If you're new to this, go to Google support for more information about keywords and keyword planning at about Keyword Planner, you will find a link to it at Keystone hospitality development.com slash resources for you. Resources number four, why oh you keep in mind, Google's algorithm is constantly changing and becoming more and more intuitive.

So you're better off writing copy that engages humans first and search engine second. Decide on a rhythm. Decide on a realistic number of blocks. posts, you can commit to per week, per month, and then stick to them. This will become your editorial calendar. And by creating this calendar, you're creating accountability and a rhythm.

Posting to your blog is not about frequency, but instead about good content and consistency. Make sure your blog schedule is in sync with the rest of your social media strategy. Initial mistakes bloggers make, here's some of the most common mistakes beginner bloggers make, and some ways to avoid them. Considering all blogging ideas in general, when you start blogging, you're going to be thinking of ideas day and night and wanting to post them. The reason you're blogging is to help your business grow. So all your post ideas should help serve those growth goals.

You're writing too rigid. Don't write like it's a university or college thesis. They're normally not that interesting for your average customer to read. But instead, write as you talk Be conversational in your writing, be loose and tossing contractions. your reader wants to feel like they're doing business with real people, not computers. You think people care about you?

When you start to write people don't care about you? Why should they? They don't know you. All they care about is what you can teach them. Don't force yourself on your readers, but instead, share your personality. You can install the parts of your personality in your writing to make them feel more comfortable with you.

There is no right or wrong way to do this, right is if you're talking to a friend. Don't be all over the page. Quite often, when bloggers start to write they let their topics get to wide ranging. Stay very specific, especially in your first few posts. Decide on your goal, then your topic and then your title. Don't babble.

Many new bloggers write exactly what they are thinking and this stream of consciousness style Writing isn't good for blog posts. Most reader scan so your post has to be organized. Organize your flow of thought and create a logical flow outline for your post. Use the same outline for every post and stick with it. You will be basically filling in the blanks and it'll become easier over time. Don't plagiarize, copy and paste is a really cool technique, but it doesn't work when it comes to your properties blog.

If you're using other people's content, give them credit. finish writing and forget to edit. When we reread something that we have written how our brain allows us to skip over mistakes. Quite often, we put too much trust into our brain. your blog post is going to need editing. Take the time to read each sentence slowly and carefully.

Fix your run on sentences, typos, grammatical mistakes, and when it's done, give it to someone else. To read, what to write and how to write is your layout and content. Take notes. Once you've chosen the topic for your post, you need to sit down and research taking notes as you go along. drafting your posts on paper before you touch the keyboard is a sure way to develop concise, accurate and well planned content. Start off strong.

Choose a headline that will summarize the content contained in your post and grab your readers attention. Keep it simple, make it interesting. Open creatively open with a catchy, interesting sentence to begin your posts. focus on quality writing that is both attention getting and attention keeping subheadings since many blog readers or scanners with sub headlines and bullet points where applicable, call to action. Think about what you'd like your readers to do once they've read your post because your website Comments on your post. Sign up for your email list.

Always offer a call to action that can be taken as a direct result of having read your content. Make sure to proofread promoting your blog. The more readers that see your blog, the more buzz your blog makes. The more readers who are buzzing about your blog content, the more other readers will hear about your blog and wants to check it out. Ways to Increase your blog traffic, good content, it's a fact that readers will not waste their time on content that is poorly written, uninteresting, or overly wordy your branding. Use your blogs name consistently in social media posts on written documents in message board discussions anywhere you can.

The more people to see your blog's name, the easier it'll become to find when they're looking for information, your specific information. Don't be too wordy when selling. be concise in all forms of content Writing and blog promotion. overly wordy posts quickly bore readers and will cause them to stop returning to your site. Ask for comments. always send your blog posts with a question.

Get your readers talking, engage with them and watch them return repeatedly. Be witty, be interesting, amusing. no nonsense blog posts are key to gaining readership and to keeping existing readers interested. Always answer email. If a reader takes the time to email, respond, Link posts to internal posts. When a topic that you have posted about previously comes up and post your writing presently, be sure to link back to that previous post.

This will keep them on your site, offline marketing. list the blog address of your blog on printed business materials. Also consider posting advertisements for your properties blog in places such as coffee shop or grocery store bulletin boards, discussion forums Participate in form discussions. Be sure to reference a link to your blog within your post. Similarly, consider answer based websites like Yahoo Answers and Cora as a way to promote your blog. Be sure to leave your blog URL whenever you comment.

Comment on other blogs, leave your URL, Same as above. The more you put the web address of your blog out there, the more chances readers will find it. Sponsor and support a cause. Seek out local events and causes in your area and offer sponsorship or support on behalf of your property and blog. Instagram. If your property has an Instagram account, be sure to post a photo from each blog post as an Instagram image, including a link to the post in the photo description.

Pinterest, another extremely popular social media site. Pinterest allows the sharing of ideas through boards and images. Consider starting an account solely for your business. Think create a pendant link for each post that you publish analytics report terms. You can follow how your posts are doing by using analytics and most platforms are offering this service. Here are the definitions of some of the key terms, unique visitors.

Report of unique visitors shows you how often someone found your host pageviews. page view reports show the number of times your blog post has been seen over a specific period of time. The number includes both new and returning readers visits. The visit report indicates every time that every reader has been to your blog's website, bounce rate. Your blogs bounce rate refers to how many readers begin on your blog page and then click off to a different website. A low bounce rate indicates that people enjoy your content.

Time on site. This statistic shows how much time people are spending on your blog website. When they visit how analytics works, blog growth. Typically analytic programs allow you to specify a certain period of time to display a graph charting the growth of your blog. referral tracking. These types of reports enable you to see which search engines display your blog posts information, establishing popular content.

This report shows which blog posts received the highest number of views, helping you decide the types of content you would like to publish most keyword search. This report shows which keyword searches lead readers to your site and can be very informative. If you notice certain web searches are routinely leading readers to your blog, you know to incorporate these keywords into future posts. An important thing to remember about running a successful blog is that an active effective blogger is always changing the way they work. It is up to you to hear the voice of your readers hang customers and give the people what they want.