“What do we publish?” That is one of the most frequently asked questions I hear from hotels as they begin participating in social media. Content publishing can be a challenge for anyone but with the right systems, the process gets easier. I demonstrated this process during an online class at ReviewPro last week, and wanted to share with you the highlights of how to build an effective social publishing program.

Part 1: Before you begin publishing

“Think like a publisher.

Create remarkable content.

Distribute it as far as possible.”

This has been my mantra since I began getting serious about online publishing. I wrote this out and posted it by my desk after reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, and following this approach at every step helped me build Hotel Marketing Strategies into the #1 source of original hotel marketing advice worldwide. You can also use it to establish your hotels as leaders in your market.

Content is a strategic asset

This concept of “thinking like a publisher” is so important because online content is becoming a strategic business asset.

Why?

Research has indicated upwards of 90% of travel purchases begin with a web search. When you are publishing answers to the questions people look for, the chances of someone finding you increases dramatically. For this reason, websites that publish travel planning advice often become the most popular. If you look at some of the biggest travel sites in the world, such as TripAdvisor, you can see they were built around the concept of service – providing answers and advice to travelers.

Think of all the questions that go through your head when you plan a trip to a new city: everything from airport transportation to dining and shopping options to activities to do in the area. Savvy organizations are using what I call the concierge approach to content marketing: the practice of publishing material to proactively answer questions. This can take many forms – from articles, to Twitter updates, to videos on YouTube. But hotels create this for one purpose: to help their customers and guests.

Publishing content is also a strategic asset because it builds competitive advantage. Creating great content requires a creative approach, which makes it difficult for your competitors to copy.

Content must be linked to the buying process

Understanding that people look for different things at each stage of their travel planning can help to guide the publishing process.

• Before trip – the “dreaming” phase
  • Your job: Help with planning
  • Best tools: Blogging, video, photos

• During trip
  • Your job: Service for enjoyable, memorable time
  • Best tools: Twitter, mobile

• After trip
  • Your job: Get them to share online
  • Best tools: Review sites, Flickr

Content should relate to your audience

You probably already know some basic demographic details about your clientele, but it is worth researching this a bit more. Better knowledge of the people you’re trying to reach helps you answer the right questions and identify the most appropriate resources to share.

No publisher knows exactly what their readers want until they actually start publishing and then measure the feedback. So start now, test various forms of content, and experiment until you find a mix that generates the best results for you.

“A key to engaging content is put the customer first, to solve her problems and answer his questions. This requires understanding their beliefs, feelings, wants and needs.” – Keith Wiegold, the Content Marketing Institute

Content needs a style guide

We often talk about social media policies, but let’s assume you already have one in place at your organization. A key part of running an effective social publishing program is developing a style guide that will direct the process.

As you create content, it’s very important to remember where your brand is positioned in the market. I find that the types of content that work well online don’t vary much across different hotel segments, but the “voice” and tone – the style in which you communicate – varies widely. How should your Twitter authors, for example, use humor? What might be seen as edgy for one brand might cross the line into bad taste for another. So be sure to set the expectations in your style guide. A style guide keeps all your content consistent, and allows you to engage multiple people in the publishing process.

Part 2: Identifying the right content to publish

A look at the most popular hotels on Twitter and Facebook reveals some common themes about what content types get the greatest response.

10 things to post on Twitter

1. Responses to questions, comments and mentions
2. Retweets of positive feedback
3. Retweets of other resources
4. Recommendations
5. Media mentions
6. Questions
7. Contests
8. Real-time information
9. Personal thoughts
10. HR and recruiting

10 things to post to Facebook

1. Professional photography
2. Photos from your staff
3. Photos from your guests and fans
4. Curated lifestyle content
5. New amenity announcements
6. Staff interviews or profiles
7. Polls and surveys
8. Syndicated content from other networks
9. Contests
10. Deals and special offers

Part 3: Practical tips for producing the content

How to find the content

The top challenge for publishers on the social web is finding and producing high-quality content. Overcome this by thinking about co-creation opportunities – getting your guests to help you in the publishing process. Not only does this help reduce your workload, but it provides several distinct advantages:

1. Potential to increase brand loyalty: active participation in content production can create a sense of ownership.
2. Greater depth of information – there’s a reason Wikipedia is over 25 times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica; everyone working together can create more content than one individual organization. A wide range of information is essential for reaching the long tail of niche web searches.
3. Guest’s perspective: travel planners would rather hear from other guests than from marketers like us.
4. Increased search visibility: Neislen Buzz Metrics reports 26% of all search results link to user-created content.
5. Free & candid market research: guests will be freely talking about what they like and don’t like – without interruptive surveys or focus groups.

The next time you receive positive feedback, ask the guest for some type of online contribution. Have them share that experience online with their friends.

“The minute we overstep in that community and try to push our message and not celebrate the message of the community our disconnects shoot up. You have to co-create and participate and honor the community.” – Coca-Cola Marketing SVP Wendy Clark

In order to encourage people to share content online, you need to communicate what they have to gain from the process. It allows them to share experiences with friends and family. It helps other travelers. It builds their own social profile.

A big trend in the area of content co-creation is blending journalism with professional editorial content. For example, CNN is experimenting with “Open Stories” which combines crowdsourced coverage and material from professional journalists. This process works well in news, and can also be very useful for travel companies.

Other sources of inspiration

A big thing that differentiates the best publishers is they have better inputs. High-quality sources help writers create high-quality content. Build a system that helps you identify new stories:

• RSS reader to track the newest stories from a diverse range of websites
• Twitter lists that allow you to actively follow a diverse group of people
• Delicious hot links and Tweetmeme for trends
• Local news and event websites such as Patch.com

Get organized

The best publishers are also usually the most organized. As data overwhelm becomes an increasingly dangerous threat, the need to source, store, categorize, and retrieve information becomes increasingly important. Build a toolkit to help you with the publishing process.

1. An idea collection system, such as Evernote or Delicious bookmarking
2. A story planning system, such as mindmapping
3. An editorial calendar (Building an online audience is all about consistency and quality, and a calendar is essential for this)

Depending on your needs, you may need additional supporting tools. We put together a list of 18 tools here that can help you with publishing: http://reviewp.ro/publishingtools

Promote your content

Publishing has little value unless people actually see the content. This is why it’s a good rule of thumb to spend half your time creating, and half your time promoting. You need good content and good coverage.

Often, the best way to promote your material is to re-purpose it for many different channels. Repurposing & reposting content helps you reach new audiences. This is why I encourage publishers to think like a DJ – always “remixing” their published content. This can take many forms:

• Blog posts
• Email
• Newsletters
• Articles
• PDFs for download
• Press releases
• Case studies
• Video
• Twitter updates

Make the content easy to spread and share: encourage people to include your content on their websites, and pass it along via Twitter and other channels. David Meerman Scott talks a lot about losing control of your message if you want it to spread.

Identify partners with influence scoring

The right partnerships can accelerate the spread of your content online, and influence scoring is a good way to identify potentially valuable partners. Once you have identified the influential voices in your niche, work to develop mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Think internationally

The web is not just about the English-speaking market, and this is especially true in the travel industry. For many hotel groups, significant opportunities exist in distributing content in local markets around the world. If you want your messages to receive maximum coverage, establish a plan for raising global visibility.

Begin with translation. Taking your existing content and translating it to other languages is a good first step. Start by translating core “evergreen” content – such as a city guide.

Quickly proceed to creating localized content. Different audience may have different needs. Isabelle Lozano of the Apostrophe Hotel in Paris is one of the most interesting examples I’ve seen of this. Their entire website is built as an online magazine, with a significant amount of original content. She creates unique content in French and in English, since she finds that these audiences have different questions and interests. Chances are good that your hotels would benefit from a similar approach.

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You can view the slides from my presentation about social publishing here, and watch the ReviewPro blog for exclusive interviews we did with the Roger Smith Hotel and Apex Hotels.

If you’re looking for a way to manage your hotels’ entire social media program, request a demo of ReviewPro and ask about the new publishing tools that were added recently.

Yet for too many small groups and independent properties, awareness remains very low about the importance of building visibility in international markets. How can you get started?

Begin with translation

The web is becoming increasingly multilingual, and translating website content is an important first step in attracting international visitors. In his article 3 Tips for Content Marketing in Foreign Languages, Christian Arno writes:

From 2000 to 2008, Web use among the Chinese grew by a whopping 755 percent, while Web use skyrocketed by 2,064 percent by Arabic-speaking individuals. As a comparison, web use increased by 204 percent among English-speaking people. In the near future, Chinese will supplant English as the top language of the Web. As a result of this trend, businesses realize their success on the Web will depend on creating foreign-language Internet marketing strategies.

A quick look at Google Analytics can help you decide which languages are important to publish information in. Also, consider which parts of the world you need to develop a presence in. (The reports linked above may help you with this.)

Provide localized content

Translating your existing content is an important first step, but localization takes it a step further. Travelers from regions look for (and react to) different content. People visiting from different countries will find different types of information useful.

In our interview with Isabelle Lozano, she revealed this about the website for Apostrophe Hotel:

The French part has more articles and talks more about things that are less-known than in the English part. We’ve realized that the French customers were really reading alot of our posts. After arriving at the hotel, after their booking, they would say, “I’m going to go see this exhibition that I saw on the website.” The English part follows the same idea, but talks more about the hotel itself, because that’s what English clients want to learn about, we’ve realized.

At first we were just translating, but we asked customers what they thought, and we found out that our English and French customers wanted different things. English and Americans were saying, “That’s too much information; we just want to learn more about the hotel.”

The lesson: Ask your customers what type of information they expect from your website, look for recurring trends, and then provide this localized content.

Be aware of local social networking preferences

The use and choice of social networking platforms varies from country to country. Vincos created this helpful chart showing the most popular social network in each country:

Facebook is quickly increasing in international popularity. Nick Burcher has an interesting year-over-year usage table for Facebook that shows explosive growth in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Phillipines (among others). Yet Facebook is still by no means universally used around the world: the majority of people in important markets such as Brazil, China, Russia, and Japan prefer other platforms to communicate:

Optimize content for local search

Web content is only helpful to you if people find it. This makes country-specific search optimization an important part of an international hotel marketing campaign. There are detailed tutorials on how to do this, but I like this simple infographic from Elliance via Search Engine Land:

Aside from the technical part of search optimization, selecting the right keywords is very important. Use tools like Google Trends to identify which words and phrases are most likely to be used to find what you offer.

Manage your international online reputation

The fact that guests are talking about your hotel in other languages and leaving feedback on popular websites abroad is overlooked by too many hotel managers. If you want to increase your business from international sources, focusing on building your online reputation worldwide is critical. And while you may have a good reputation on a few domestic websites, do you know what prospective guests are saying (and seeing) on review websites in other countries and in other languages?

Make sure to use a reputation management tool that collects feedback from a wide range of international sources, and multiple languages.

Actively encourage people to leave reviews on their preferred review website of choice, rather than just one specific site. As you attract a more diverse clientele, you will build your global reputation as well.

What are you doing to increase your hotels’ visibility internationally?

“How I chose them” (A customer’s decision making process)

Tell this story because: Having a happy customer explain the process she went through to purchase your product will be something your prospects can relate to.

“Why I chose them” (A customer’s testimonial)

Tell this story because: Having a happy customer tell the story of why he ended up choosing you might reveal motivators that appeal to other prospects. It could include buying criteria you didn’t think of. And the story of why to buy from you best comes from a customer, not a salesperson.

Examples:

Story Hotels uploads hand-written guest comment cards -

Software company Eloqua uses testimonials to share benefits buyers receive -

How we made it (Showcasing your teams’ talent)

Tell this story because: Having the architects of your product or experience explain the creation process they went through raises perceived value and makes your offering much more appealing to others.

Examples:

Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires -

Ask for Me campaign from theWit Chicago -

The Kilted Doorman at the Hotel Missoni -

Are you telling these three stories?

Built on partnerships

The initiative is built through a partnership with Yahoo! – but the real value to the user comes through partnerships that include:

• iTunes
• Foursquare
• Wall Street Journal
• New York Times
• Zagat
• Rodale (health publications)

Premium content for free

Through co-sponsorship, the site is able to offer premium content – such as the Wall Street Journal online – for free. The partnership with iTunes will allow Starbucks to make music recommendations and give away free samples.

This is a win/win/win deal for everyone involved. The users get free content, the companies get exposure, and Starbucks plays the role of content curator – building trust and brand value.

Becoming content curators

Starbucks feels their customers trust them as tastemakers, and want them to introduce new content. From their website:

The Starbucks Digital Network is inspired by Starbucks passion for elevating the third place experience to create a unique coffeehouse environment, its heritage of recommending music, books, films and other culturally relevant works to its customers.

That sounds a little too much like a press release, but the opportunities for other lifestyle businesses are clear. Whether that’s through creating a soundtrack like the Opposite House in Beijing or creating a community of artists like the Roger Smith Hotel in New York is doing.

Optimized first for mobile devices

Over 50% of people accessing the Starbucks wifi network do so through a mobile phone  or tablet device. From GigaOM:

Brotman explained how the site will be built in HTML5, will respond to touch and swipes, and will be optimized first for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices. This is a huge change from companies that traditionally optimize their web sites for Safari, Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer and expect users to view them on a PC or laptop.

Local focus

Having a local neighborhood focus is a key digital trend. Starbucks is doing this several ways.

Patch.com partnership. AOL’s Patch.com provides hyper-local news created by a local editor. It’s sort of like neighborhood gossip rag meets community discussion forum.

Foursquare partnership. Integration with Foursquare will provide the ability to check in on the landing page – without needing their mobile app. (Great if you only have your laptop)

MapMyRun & MapMyRide integration. These two services are incredibly useful if you’re a runner or cyclist in an unfamiliar city. Brotman said many fitness groups meet up at their local Starbucks before heading out, so this is a prime opportunity to serve this community.

Why this is cool (and why it should matter to you)

Starbucks is at the leading edge of content-as-marketing innovation here. What if you followed this model to deliver premium information to your guests and customers?

Most establishments with a wireless internet network use some type of landing page for registration. The Starbucks Digital Network presents a whole new opportunity to engage with and serve your customers.

Who do you need to partner with to create and share content like this?

Savvy organizations are building a powerful presence for themselves on the web by publishing useful information. This content can take many forms – from articles, to Twitter updates, to videos on YouTube. But it’s all created for one purpose: to help their customers and guests.

This is what I call the concierge approach to content marketing: the practice of publishing material to answer questions before they even come up. And I’ve created a special report PDF to introduce you to the process:

[Click here to download The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing PDF]

In the guide, you’ll find:

• Definition of The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing
• Who should create all the material
• How to get help with this if you don’t have any time
• How to get your guests and customers involved in the content production process
• The best types of content to publish
• The best formats for sharing this information
• Making sure your content gets read and used
• A real-world case study on content marketing
• Summary list of content marketing tips

[Click here to download The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing PDF]

It amazes me how some businesses expect their customers to spend time creating promotional material for them – without even recognizing their efforts.

Looking outside the hotel industry for a moment, Ford ran a promotion where 100 car bloggers drove a Fiesta completely free for 6 months in exchange for writing about the experience.

A tradeoff like this is fairly common, but what Ford did well here was support the bloggers with attention. Using their corporate marketing power, they raised the visibility of the people writing about them. This, of course, led to more people reading about the cars – so everyone won.

(You’ve also gotta love Ford for making – to my knowledge – the first car that tweets and checks in with Foursquare)

The big lesson: Your social media activity needs to be less about sales and more about amplifying the messages of your fans.

How do you support the people writing about you?

[Photo credit: John McNab]

Here are some of the best hotel websites I’ve seen recently:

Trapp Family Lodge

Why I like it: This site does a great job of sharing the experience through great images and solid copywriting.

Mosaic House

Why I like it: I profiled their site before – noting their excellent use of Facebook Connect to build a community. This latest version does this even better.

Hotel Terra

Why I like it: Smart and simple.

Jumeirah Group

Why I like it: It uses images to avoid complicated navigation and present a more engaging interface.

Atlantis The Palm

Why I like it: The flash intro is put to good use – splitting up traffic by visitor type. Once visitors reach the main site, they see beautiful images and a clear next step: making the reservation.

MGM Grand

Why I like it: I’m not usually a fan of flash-heavy websites, but this fits their style well. I like how they position social media as a way to receive updates on Vegas – not just their hotel. And you’ve gotta love some good house music…

Pueblo Bonito Resorts

Why I like it: This website just seems to have everything in the right place, and uses rich media well

Albert Hotel

Why I like it: The ‘meet your team’ concept is genius

Hotel Guarda

Why I like it: Links are written as benefits of staying with them.

theWit

Why I like it: I love the concept of Witisodes. And they do a good job of letting others sing their praises. (It’s meaningless if you call yourself the best hotel)

The Urban Suites

Why I like it: Cool map, separate page with guest reviews – speaks well to their core audience

Thompson Hotels

Why I like it: Instead of just shouting what they want to say, they ask what I want to hear

Hotel SO

Why I like it: It’s clean, simple, and connects with the type of design-conscious budget traveler they are trying to reach.

Haagsche Suites and Mitaroy Goa Hotel

Why I like these: I’m a little biased here, but Guido and Mihir are great examples of hoteliers that built a community of online fans through blogging. This has worked so well for them that they publish their whole hotel website now in WordPress.

Past guests

• Past guests are easier to bring back to your website
• Past guests are usually much, much more profitable

As marketers we tend to spend most of our time creating communications aimed at reaching new audiences – people who have never heard of us before. Huge amounts of time, money, and resources are used to capture new web traffic.

That can be a mistake.

Past guests are easier to bring back

If someone stayed at your hotel and had a good experience, there’s a good chance you can bring them back to your website.

The great thing about communicating with these people is that you usually have additional data you can use to personalize and customize the messages. This extra information can be used to make your offer more relevant, and more likely to convert into a sale.

Look at the first time someone comes into contact with your website or your hotel as a golden opportunity. If you provide them with what they’re looking for, they’re going to remember you. They’ll want to come back. Having people in this frame of mind makes it easier to hold their attention long enough to share what you have to say.

This is much more profitable

Various industry research studies indicate it costs somewhere between 5-8 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to sell something to an existing one.

If this is the case, shouldn’t our priorities reflect this? I advocate – and personally practice – the strategy of spending the majority of time connecting with my current audience.

Yes, reaching out to new readers and customers is important – but make sure your priorities are in the right place.

How to get people coming back to your website

Start as soon as they leave your hotel. Give information. Provide value. I know of a few hotels that prepare a “departure package” with flight details, info to make the departure go smoothly…and of course the opportunity to stay in touch.

Create a continuity system with value. Create a reason for people to come back. Make your site sticky. Something that makes people keep coming back to see what’s new. This requires a lot of hard work and creativity – but make that your goal.

Get them connected in social media. If these people are part of your social network, you have the opportunity to connect on an ongoing basis. Maybe that’s following you on Twitter. Maybe it’s subscribing to your blog. Try to get them plugged in somehow.

Reward their loyalty. Most hospitality organizations have some type of loyalty rewards program. Extend that tactic to the web. Reward your frequent website visitors with special privileges.

This goes back to thinking like a concierge

Offline, your concierge probably is one of the most important people at your hotel for cross-selling and up-selling guests to additional revenue opportunities.

Online, we need to adopt this concierge mindset to expand the profitability of each guest. Adopting a mindset of service not only encourages more people to interact with you online, but it’s also more profitable.

Failing to educate people on the various products and services you provide leads to missed revenue. A study by The Forum Corporation of North America confirmed that 88% of customers value being advised on products and services that better meet their needs. Are you doing this?

Plan your online marketing program around this

Attracting new website traffic is vital for business growth, but the real money is in reselling to your existing customer base.

We all love to celebrate a job being finished, but in online marketing, and in ALL marketing for that matter, the launch is NOT the time to celebrate.  Sure, go ahead, high-five each other for nailing the deadline, putting out good-looking work, or figuring out that complex issue, but do not get drunk in this celebration because you’ve only completed about 7% of the task.

If you really want to celebrate, save that for when the sales roll in.  I could care less about how a web site looks, reads, or acts until I start to see what it does in terms of sales.

Bob works primarily outside the hospitality industry, but the concepts apply just as well to us working with hotels.

I’ve watched organizations spend hundreds of thousands on a website…and then think their job is done.

It’s not.

The launch of a new website or campaign is just the beginning.

The real value will come from the testing you need to do in the weeks and months that follow.

• Honesty sets expectations appropriately
• Honesty prevents guest disappointment
• Honesty avoids negative word of mouth

That’s why I love Oyster’s Photo Fakeouts feature:

Use media that portrays what it’s really like to stay with you. If something needs fixing, fix it.

But never use half-truths.