7 Things First Time Home Buying and Content Marketing Have In Common

My fiancée and I recently bought our first house. Having chased this dream for two years, finding the perfect starter home made me realize how similar the experience can be for hoteliers and DMOs contemplating content marketing for the first time.

So if you are looking to get into blogging or an e-newsletters series to help you increase your attraction factor to meeting and event planners, consider these tips:

1. Never rush into the first idea that comes to mind: We thought the very first house we looked at was a winner. Within 6 months of losing the opportunity to another buyer, we could not see ourselves living there. So while strategizing about creating content for your hotel blog, take a step back and ask "Is this the best content for what we want to achieve?" Perhaps you need the input of a content strategist, or a few meeting planners, to ensure your content is on the mark. 
2. Keep trying: After every house we lost, got outbid on, or just couldn't secure; we were devastated. But we persevered and found the one. The same applies to content marketing. This is a process that may take time, and you may not get it right immediately. But keep trying, and you will start to attract more readers – and eventually, more leads! 
3. Use trusted sources: When buying a first time home, you get information from all over the place. Some good, some not so good. When creating content for your destination or hotel’s blog or e-newsletter, solidify your position by citing your own organization’s experts AND the occasional outside source. Your Conference Services may be a great gal, but if you can also show that her team building ideas are based on recent research at Harvard, you’ll elevate the trustworthiness of your content. 
4. Ask for help: Never assume doing it all yourself is the best process. Upon visiting what we thought was the dream house, an inspector found major deficiencies. So it goes for content generation: make sure you have several people committed to generating ideas and contributing. And get help to proof before you post! 
5. Checklists, checklists, checklists: Finding the perfect home consisted of forming a checklist of everything we wanted, needed, and could live without. Checklists are a great way to ensure you don’t miss some of the necessary fundamentals along the way – does this content give at least one valuable tip to a meeting planner? Does it link to more resources on our website? Does it have a call-to-action? Etc. If you have a checklist of the elements that your content need to have at the start of the campaign, then you are more likely to stay on track. 
6. Filling the space: When buying a house, you need to account for the space you have, furnishings you have and what you’ll need to get. It’s the same with content marketing. Ensure your material doesn’t feel cramped. Fill it with useful information – content that a meeting planner would find valuable. Never just fill space with promotional stuff. Adapt your layout to what has worked in the past but don’t be afraid to change things around once in awhile. 
7. Get Social: When you move into your first house, you need extra hands, so you reach out to your social network. The same can be said with your content marketing. Posting your material to social media will bring in those extra visitors you need to ensure the campaign is successful. Never be afraid to use every tool in your marketing arsenal to publicize your content. Just make sure you balance your stuff with other engaging social media tactics. 

Taking simple tips like these are a great way to tighten up those offers and if I may impart one final tip, make sure your campaigns are organic. Take lessons like these, life lessons, to move forward and grow in content creation.

When Rebranding Misses the Opportunity

Recently I received an email from a trade show display company that we have done business with over the years.

The email was to tell me all about their new name, brand and logo.  I really like this company but unfortunately their communication left me thinking, "so what?"

What does their new name and logo have to do with me? Who cares if they've changed their colors and have a fancy name?  Of course one might say that it's important to inform your clients that you have changed names, but I thought this was a missed opportunity.

Why not tell me about new resources that you have also made available to your clients along with this rebranding process? Point me to your new website where I can find ideas for my next trade show.  Provide me with content that will help me have a more successful exhibitor experience.  Maybe even connect me with other like-minded clients who have used your services and are willing to share case studies or tips for live events.

With business-to-business clients being increasingly critical of what enters their email box, don't squander an opportunity to provide value to clients. Make sure that you offer information that will make your clients' life easier; because unless you save them money, time, or effort, you're not providing value.  And if you're not providing value, you're just pushing a commodity.

Is Your Content Marketing Worthy of a Royal Baby?

For the record this is NOT Queen Elizabeth II's
great grandchild.  To read more official royal news see
http://www.dukeandduchessofcambridge.org/news-and-diary

Content that is valued by your target market is an essential component of a sound inbound marketing strategy. A useful tactic for creating meaningful content is newsjacking, the process which David Merman Scott defines as "inject[ing] your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business."

This is what I have done with this post, making an allusion to the birth of the son of Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge. What does this have to do with your hotel, DMO or meetings industry business?  You should be using newsjacking to create content and attract attention of meeting and event planners to generate leads!  

Here's how:

• Use a newsworthy event to create a special package, service or theme at your hotel.  Hotel marketers sometimes will do this for leisure packages, so why not for meetings? I searched for a royalty-themed meeting package for this post and found none (now here's an opportunity!), though recently there were great examples around The Great Gatsby movie premiere (see 5 Swanky "Great Gatsby" Hotel Packages).
• If you're not ready to venture into current affairs, create your content by leveraging an industry event. Talk about the "top trends" your catering manager observed when he/she attended the ISES Conference  or what your takeaways were from the latest meetings industry event your sales team attended.  Our own Meagan Rockett does this regularly, reporting "takeaways" from the CSAE events she attends.
• To really gain the attention and respect of meeting and event planners, give them newsworthy material they can relate to in their work.  Use an event in your city that has some sort of fame or notoriety, and interview the people who make it happen.  If I were at Tourism Toronto, for example, I would want a meeting planner story about the logistics behind the Toronto International Film Festival.  It's like having a celebrity spokesperson for a weight loss program; everyone is interested because there is a famous person (in this case an event) behind it!

Creating content fit to attract the attention normally reserved for royalty might be a tall order, but a little creativity will go a long way to elevating your marketing to a greater level of differentiation from your competitors. 

Falling Off the Saddle with Content Marketing

Producing regular, quality content for your blog or website is no easy task. It's like riding on horseback; it's something you have to keep "on top of," and every once in a while life -- that fickle beast -- will make your jump over hurdles and cause you to fall out of the saddle…

This is precisely what happened to me recently. This blog did not see a post from me in the last four weeks!  It's as if the Tweetchat I had with Jenise Fryatt on April 29 jinxed me…
I was giving tips on keeping up with production for content marketing, and here I am, falling off my horse!

At least you all know I am human…

So here are my tips to get back in the saddle:

Don't beat yourself up. If you have a regular following, most people will be forgiving if you have not communicated for a few weeks. Besides, berating yourself will not help you start being productive again.

Explain yourself. Perhaps the lapse in production was as a result of your hotel being extremely busy, your DMO being host to a mega event, or something else that took you away.  In my case, it's been a combination of factors: the redesign of our website, the investigation of new technology for our calling team and the preparation for one of the largest projects we have ever handled, to-date!

If you can, use the reason(s) for your inactivity to get back in the game.  The reasons why I did not find enough time to contribute to my blog have given me LOTS of topics to write about.  More posts will follow about all of the above events, I assure you!  Hopefully you kept notes or maintained a list of topic ideas during your busy period. So when the worst is over, grab a few lines and start writing! The action itself will make you feel better and you can build up a list of articles to get you ahead.

Keep your eye on the prize.  Producing regular, value-oriented content on your blog and website is key to maintaining visibility in the eyes of search engines and Internet-focused meeting and event planners. Missing a few weeks isn't catastrophic.  But as soon as you can, get back on that horse!

Creating Content for Inbound Marketing: 10 Tips

When considering a shift to inbound marketing, meetings industry suppliers at times question me on the content creation demands that such an approach will create.  Hoteliers, DMOs and other service providers wonder if they have enough material to sustain a blog or other resources, how they will find time to generate material regularly, and who is going to write the required content.

As a small company that publishes two blogs (with at least one post each per week), two monthly e-newsletters and the odd white paper, I completely understand the concern.  Creating content for your inbound marketing program can seem like a full-time job!  When things get “crazy busy,” content creation is an easy task to put on the back-burner.

As with any business strategy, there is no silver bullet, but here are some practices that have worked for us:

Finding the Material

• Start with the easy stories: what new services, facilities or partnerships can you write a short announcement about?  Resist the temptation to sound too promotional; instead, show how these new developments will help meeting planners. 
• Put the limelight on one of your clients (with their permission of course). Demonstrate how working with your hotel or destination the group was able to achieve specific goals.
• Comment on an industry issue, event or trend. This could show your understanding of issues, or that you are "in the know" about news. 
• Use the calendar to your advantage.  Offer advice for theming events (from Valentines Day to Christmas), seasonal menu offerings, ideas for team building. 

Finding the Time

• Start by making a commitment you can live with. When I started blogging three years ago I posted once per month; now I'm up to once per week. 
• Stick with a schedule. If you commit to posting every Monday, for instance, it'll become easier to create that habit. 
• Write a few filler pieces for those busy periods when you just can't find the time. 

Finding the Writer(s)

• Just because you're the Director of Sales & Marketing, it doesn't mean YOU should be the main blogger.  Look for a person who likes to write.  Hint: Often these are people with the longest emails... 
• Ask your staff, suppliers and even outside partners or other bloggers to write an occasional post. At Greenfield we encourage team members to contribute by giving four hours of paid time off for every blog that gets published (click here for our latest post by one of our Client Care Specialists). As for outside contributors, the added exposure, especially the inbound links to their own site, often is incentive enough.
• I happen to like writing, but sometimes I have no time.  That's when I do one of two things: dictate my thoughts into my iPhone and ask someone to edit, OR I turn to my good friend and business collaborator, Mitchell Beer.  I'm at the point now where I can talk with Mitchell for thirty minutes about three different topics, and he'll produce three blogs for me!

Creating content for your inbound marketing program isn't rocket science.  But having a sound strategy will ensure that your efforts don't stall along the way.