Hotel Blogging Best Practices, Part 5: Building Popularity

This is part 5 of my hotel blogging best practices series.  You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here.

A blog with no readers is a waste of time.

If you’re going to pursue blogging as a part of your internet marketing plan, then building popularity for it needs to be a top priority.

The first step to building a popular hotel blog – whether it’s an executive or destination blog – is to view the project as a major part in your marketing mix.  Chris Brogan recently discussed the concept of making your blog a media property.  The summary: effective bloggers understand what they’re doing is serious business – so they treat it that way.

Next, understand that your writing – the blog posts themselves – is the marketing.  The quality of your entries will have a direct effect on the success of your blog. There are many reasons for this:

1. Search engines will bring the most traffic to your site.  If you’re not publishing relevant content regularly, you won’t be found.
2. When visitors do find your blog through search engines, they’ll leave in 2 seconds if it’s not relevant to what they need.
3. If your blog content is interesting, it will be linked to and shared on other websites, bringing you more traffic from those sites and through search engines.

As you can see, it’s a virtuous cycle once you begin posting good content.  What what exactly is good content for a hotel blog?

• List content
• How-to content
• Review content
• Controversial content
• News breaking content
• (Any of the ideas mentioned in part 4 of this series)

Now, publishing great content is the first step.  But there are other things you can do to increase your blog’s reader base.  If you build a better mousetrap, the world will not always beat a path to your door.  As a marketing professional, you know this.  That’s where an understanding of blog popularity building techniques is helpful.

Link liberally to other bloggers, and request they link to you (where appropriate).  Links are the currency of blogging.  Don’t be stingy here – share the love.

Comment on other blogs, especially in your industry.  The blogosphere is built on community participation.  If you want comments on your blog, take part in the discussion on other blogs.  (Just a note: there’s not need for comment spam – post intelligent responses and you’ll be rewarded.)

Integrate and encourage social media sharing. This is easy to do, and a well-written post can receive thousands of new visitors if Dugg or otherwise shared in social media.

Promote your blog on your hotel website and other advertising material.  Not doing this could cause you to miss out on valuable traffic.

Nobody likes wasting time.  Make sure people are reading what you write.  Make your blog a powerhouse in your overall web presence.

Let me ask you this: What are you doing to build your blog’s reader base?