How to Use Blogs for Push and Pull Marketing to Increase Visibility and Revenue

We hear it everyday – everyone wants to “increase social media” or “get more traffic from Google” but everyone seems to be at a loss how to make it happen. Fortunately, the social media/search traffic phenomenon isn’t necessarily as mysterious or difficult as you may have been led to believe. Not that it’s easy! But the answers to increase your brand’s exposure from these channels can be achieved simply by focusing on two powerful principles:

• Become an influencer: an industry leader, local authority or celebrity who interacts with the audience.
• Create compelling content: whether it’s written articles, videos or images, the key is to create content that is so outstanding or compelling that the audience can’t help but share it with their friends via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and their own blogs and websites.

Unfortunately very, very few hotels adopt this strategy of content and authority development within their local market. And without developing strong content and relationships with your online audience, website traffic will never stabilize: you will perpetually struggle against competitors for rankings instead of building a stronger brand that shines in search as well as social media.

Push Marketing: Hotel Blogging Strategy for Social Media

This is said to be “Push Marketing” because the content is pushed out through social channels. The blog will become your social media headquarters by providing a repository of useful content about your local market that can be shared on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and YouTube.

* A Tip – to make content easy to share, incorporate the AddThis button on your blog or travel guide pages. You can customize the buttons, and AddThis has some really great social media reporting features.

Pull Marketing: Hotel Blogging Strategy to Increase Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is said to be “Pull Marketing” because the content pulls users onto the site from search engines. In other words, they come in through search or social media, and your blog’s content is “sticky” enough that it captures their attention and prompts action. Blog posts should be seen as assets that work like any investment: they only grow stronger over time. As each article/post remains live on the hotel’s blog, it is gaining age/authority, as well as links and social media shares. Altogether, this allows each post to grow in strength over time, ranking higher and bringing in more traffic/users to your website.

Exactly why are blogs such powerful SEO tools?

Simply stated, they:

• Allow you to easily diversify keyword phrases. Your main website will continue to rank for “your city + hotel(s)” keyword phrases, but your blog allows you to target broader keyword phrases, a greater range of them, like: “best beaches in the Caribbean” or “best place to ski in New England”. These phrases target consumers in the “discovery” phase of the shopping cycle.
• Allow you to easily add new/fresh pages to the website without having to move or edit your main sales pages (e.g., rooms page, amenities page, etc.) Search engines want to see your website growing and reward sites that add fresh content with better rankings.

So now you have a better understanding of how a blog not only fits into your social media and search engine strategy, but just how powerful an effect your blog can have! In the next couple of posts, we’ll explore how you can track your blog’s performance over time, and discuss which blogging platform may be right for you. Please subscribe to our Learning Center RSS Feed, and you’ll receive those posts automagically!

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