Design Hotels’ Jeremy Silverman shares tips on lifestyle blogging for hotels

Today I had the opportunity to talk with Jeremy Silverman, one of the web’s top hotel lifestyle bloggers, and publisher of Future Blog for Design Hotels. Below is an excerpt from our conversation…

Josiah: Can you tell us a bit about Design Hotels and your role there as Head of Brand Experience?

Jeremy: Design Hotels, a Berlin based company, was founded 16 years ago with the goal of uniting independent hotels from around the world in one location. Our CEO and founder of the company, Claus Sendlinger, began compiling a portfolio of hoteliers in his professional and personal network who together formed the earliest incarnation of Design Hotels. From there, it’s evolved into a full service strategic partner for hotels; we do everything from e-marketing to sales representation around the world. We do in-house PR and creative services, as well as hotel development, and we provide the technology connectivity that allows independent hotels to be bookable to tour operators and travel agents and online travel agents. Basically, if you’re an independent hotel and you have a distinctive design concept and brand experience vision, then we’re kind of a one-stop-shop for you.

Walk us through a typical day in your life: what does your schedule look like?

What I’m responsible for, essentially, is everything that touches individuals. My goal is to standardize the way our brand is communicated, so that customers have the same experience with the whether they’re online, on social media or calling our reservation center. On a daily basis, I usually start off by reading the 50 to 75 sites that I check everyday — blogs, news portals or other random places on the internet. I get a daily brief of what’s going on in the hotel industry, but also in the related industries, like fashion, design, architecture, popular culture, celebrity, and technology. They’re all intertwined in what we do on a daily basis. I’m usually doing this for about an hour, and from there, I’ll pick content for our blog, then the day usually progresses very randomly; I could be involved in projects that are offline-focused, things that deal with our loyalty club, for example, and because the website falls within the department, I’m involved in alot of the technical development, and the ongoing improvement and optimization of our website. We’re also brainstorming alot of promotions, alot of hooks to get people interested in our hotels and our brands.

Why did you start the blog? Did you have specific goals?

When we started the blog two and a half years ago, it was really a promotional tool for an event that we have, the “Future Forum”, which is where the name “Future Blog” comes from. The Future Forum, which actually just took place two weeks ago in Berlin, is our semi-annual symposium. We bring together people from the hotel industry, and mix them with designers, interior designers, architects, and trend forecasters — this interesting mix of people — and listen to lectures, attend networking events, and see what comes out of it. So, to go back, the blog was created to highlight some of the key areas that we’re going to be discussing in the event and, naturally, it developed a following in the months leading up to the event. From there, we just let it grow organically.

What is a “lifestyle blog” and why is it important?

The term “lifestyle” is really ambiguous because people are always using it, but can’t necessarily pinpoint what it means. For me, when I say that we strive to be a lifestyle brand, the ultimate goal is that people will be able to experience the brand even when they’re not experiencing our product, per se. In that same vein, just because they’re looking at the Future Blog, doesn’t mean that they need to be looking specifically at a hotel product, but by virtue of being there, they should get an idea of what our brand stands for and represents. For us it’s pretty natural; the interests that overlap are reflective of what you’d call the cultural movement, the way that it’s headed. We’re saying, “You know what? This is all so interesting for us; this is interesting for our hotel owners, and by reading this, you can get an idea of what kind of company we are, who we work with, what we do, what we dress like, you know? What we like to do in our free time, and hopefully, the general mood gets across.

Do you know who your readers are? How do you know what they want to read on your blog?

Of course, we do analysis online using Google Analytics and other free social media tools to see which subject matter gets the most traction, but besides that, it has to do with response, really. Sometimes people will send me an email saying they particularly enjoyed something, and they want more information. Sometimes, this will spark conversation with a potential partner that said “thanks for linking to us”, or “Thanks for posting something about us, why don’t we have a conversation and see what we might be able to do together”, so it’s really dynamic, but it’s also a combination of pinpointing and seeing who’s responding, what are they saying, and having an open ear to feedback.

What does your blogging process look like?

I don’t have an editorial calendar, per se. I hadn’t identified any specific items that I wanted to cover with the World Cup for example, but daily you’re inundated with interesting factoids and news that, naturally, you’re gonna want to post online. I go through them for maybe an hour, hour and a half, and I’m just bookmarking the ones that I think are interesting or worthy, then I’ll do another run through, and see, okay, what’s the angle? Is this just interesting to me? Or is it something that’s going to be interesting to our readers as well? And the third element, which is very important, but not always present, is … is there a link to Design Hotels? I guess you would say I’m a “corporate blogger”; I don’t know if that’s the correct term, but I’m sort of representing a brand. It’s not necessary that every single thing is linked back to a profit goal, but when you can, it certainly helps. So that’s kind of the ultimate criteria.

Where do you get inspiration: which sources do you monitor? How do you keep track of what’s happening?

I know that most people use a reader, but I prefer to go to the sites individually; I have them all bookmarked. The reason is, because, that’s how I’ve found most of the other ones, by reading comments, and looking at other blogs, blogrolls, which you wouldn’t be exposed to by just using a Reader, necessarily. And I like to see the environment, where they’re posting, and try to build, if I can, a little bit better relationship with the other blogs, which has been pretty successful with quite a few of them. It’s a little bit more time consuming, but around 50-75 is manageable. If you get more than that, there’s probably a critical point where you would need to use a reader.

What were the big challenges you faced along the way?

Well, I think when I was starting, I was really relying on organic growth, just directly to the site, in order to expand the audience, but since then, the development of tools to increase traffic — some good, some not so good — have really matured, so using these and figuring out which ones work for us, I mean, there was a time when we were very reliant on Stumble Upon to get to the next level, and on the one hand it’s great that people are assembling your sites, but in the end, you get alot of really unqualified traffic, and, as we’re not trying to sell ads, and we’re not trying to monetize the space necessarily, I mean, it doesn’t take long to say “I like it”; after a while we stopped using Stumble Upon.

What did you wish you knew starting out?

I think really staying on top of the content distribution technology is important, but also, really trying to get into a rhythm, I mean, in the blogs that are not affiliated with Design Hotels, I had the same problems where I would be very active, then not feel like I’d found anything blog-worthy, so it would go, maybe, a week… and then, traffic would be down, and… it just takes a while, and people are often frustrated after a few months because they wanna see this big, steady increase, and then you kind of plateau at a certain point, but I think it’s just a matter of being persistent, and trying to create a standard. You don’t wanna say “standardize”; I guess that has a negative connotation, but a… consistent voice, and a consistent volume of posting, and a reliability in a way that you’re gonna get something interesting every time. So, really focusing on the content, and less on the technology, even though I said you need to stay current, but just because you have a bunch of funny widgets on your site, that isn’t really going to mean anything in the long term. If you have great content, people are going to return for that reason. You can see that on the top blogs; you can see that on Drudge Report, for example, doesn’t have anything fancy, and, I don’t know how many hits they have, but tens of millions of people, so, I think the key is really the content.

How do you attract new readers to the site?

We don’t like to put pressure on having an exact volume of traffic on the blog, which I think gives us a little bit of liberty to experiment a little bit, and also use those tools how they’re designed to be used. On Facebook, we tease the blog, and force people to come back to the Future Blog in order to boot traffic, which is good in a way, but at the same time, I think that, the fact we have it posted as a note, which means that you can access the entire blog post on Facebook without actually having to leave the Facebook environment, that is the purpose of spreading the brand values and focusing on interaction, rather than looking for an easy way to boost traffic. Twitter, on the other hand, it’s not easy to post alot of content in 140 characters. It’s really more about “seeding”, seeding around and with the ultimate goal of getting more traffic. But I think as it gets more saturated, and alot of people spamming on Twitter, it’s less and less effective.

Can you explain how to build mutually beneficial relationships with other bloggers?

There’s no system, but there are three ways — two of them you mentioned — definitely making comments is good, and emailing them can be good. Of course, sometimes I’m emailing them because I want them to cover our topics, as well. It’s always a great way to reach out. The third way is to repost some of the things that they’re posting. So for example, one of my favorite sources is the New York Times blog called “The Moment”, which is the blog of T Magazine, their style magazine. They’re producing alot of really interesting content. Through reposting occasionally, they’ve come to see us not only as a fan, a supporter, and an informal friend-partner, but also a source of traffic. I think that doing that is a good way to create goodwill, and also, eventually, it’s full-cycle. You’ll get some feedback from them occasionally, and especially for up-and-coming bloggers, that might be doing it professionally, but they’re not really really really getting tons of traffic, they’re quite keen to, not just swap links, but swap content at times.

So would it be safe to say that the best way to get on a blogger’s radar is to repost some of their material with a link back to the site?

Yeah, exactly, and it’s important to be very transparent. I mean, not that you’re plagiarizing, but always giving credit where credit is due. I don’t think anyone will ever have a problem with another blog saying, “look at this great content I found from ‘xyz’”, and linking back to them.

Do you cross-promote with social media or email?

Yes, I would say that, definitely, Facebook and Twitter are reliable sources — not the bulk — but, and this is maybe not the answer you’re looking for, alot of our traffic comes from Google Image Search. So, naming and tagging these images in the right way can be very valuable for getting traffic, but also reaching out to some of the indirect or directly related industries, so, on our blogroll for example, we have informal friendships, or partnerships, with all of these blogs; some more than others. This is one of the ways that we kind of get ongoing traffic. That’s probably the best way to start.

What was your most popular post?

People really like products. Yesterday, I posted something really short about a bicycle rack by a designer in San Francisco, and got two emails from people asking where they could buy it. The blog is fed on to our Facebook page, another good way to see what people are responding to. Beyond that, I don’t want to say it’s “random”, but people respond to different things. Just looking at our Facebook group, we have a huge population of people from Portugal, so if I ever post anything about Portugal, or Brazil, they’re freaking out and commenting on it, and very proud to see their country represented in the blog.

What is the most common mistake new bloggers make?

I would say, and this is something that I also did, just not creating this rhythm; not consistently updating the blog, making new posts, and maybe posting really intensively for a week, putting alot of really great content out there, and then just sitting on it and not following up.

What’s your biggest tip for writing a successful blog?

In alot of cases, you get one opportunity for people to come to your site, and if they like it, they’re gonna come back, and if you don’t have anything new, it’s possible that they’re not gonna come back again. But, as long as you keep putting new stuff up there, I think that you’ll have a chance to build loyalty among your readers.

Thanks for your insights, Jeremy!

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