Blogs Can Give You an Edge Over the Competition
Thursday, April 19th, 2007In an industry like hospitality, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd? Today the Internet is fully embraced by the lodging industry. At one time Travel was only second to searches on the Internet after Sex, which makes the market one of the most competitive.
If you are in a well-traveled area with lots of lodging options, such as Vale Colorado, the Napa Valley, New Orleans or any lodging saturated market, how do you stand out from the crowd? You already have a professional site, you are getting a good amount of traffic, but you would like more of the pie. A community site or Q & A site about the area might just be the competitive edge you are looking for.
Becoming the expert in your area is easy. You live there! You have been giving guests this information for years, “Where is the best restaurant?”, “Who should I go to for a fun white-water rafting trip?”, “What can we do with the kids today now that it is raining?”
The Avenue Inn took this approach after hurricane Katrina. Lots of people had questions about the clean up, what was open, where to go to help. The Ask Dr. Know form on the site gives a place for people to ask these questions.
Working with these real questions The Avenue Inn, and the Blizzard Marketing team decided the best solution was to create a section of his website, on a blogging platform, that would integrate seamlessly into his site. The Ask Dr. KNOW area is an easy to update section of his website that he maintains and adds content to regularly. To date Joe has an additional 108 pages to his site with lots of answers for visitors to the area.
On a post in February on his New Orleans Blog, where a guest asked,”
“I’m looking to come to New Orleans in April to celebrate my birthday. I want to help with the rebuilding of New Orleans and I thought you might know of a group that is specifically helping with the reopening of schools - Robin (no home State given)”
Dr. KNOW gave a long list of places and phone numbers of groups working in the area that the person could contact.
She replied, “Wow, you totally rock! I emailed FEMA, NOLA, Habitat for Humanity and the US Freedom Corps, and who did I get a response from - that would be you. Thank you for the leg work, I will certainly be making a few phone calls.”
You would hope that she also called and stayed with Dr. KNOW.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Actually Robin did book with us and stayed a week while she helped build a house. We made reservations for her and her guest at a great restaurant and she had a wonderful birthday too!
We thank the folks at Blizzard for setting us up with this innovative blog. We were clueless then, we are cutting edge now (or so our kids say!).
April 19th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Joe, great to hear that she stayed with you, I am sure she had a great time!
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Business Career Center…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
January 10th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Blogs are a great way to bring in some business. I found articles to be a great way to do this as well. You can write an article informing your reader or various vacation spots etc. The readers that find your article interesting then click your link and get your site. I have been writing articles like these and using something called Artemis pro too create unique versions and submit them off for me. The traffic has been great.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Blogs are a great way to bring in some business. I found articles to be a great way to do this as well. You can write an article informing your reader or various vacation spots etc. The readers that find your article interesting then click your link and get your site. I have been writing articles like these and using something called Artemis pro too create unique versions and submit them off for me. The traffic has been great.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Hi.
your article is spot on. Blogs are great for developing not only business contacts, but also your brand. If you are serious about your business, you really should have a blog that you post to at least quasi regularly. I learnt this the hard way after reading tons of posts recommending it at James Braush’s blog (http://www.jamesbrausch.org).
I held off for quite a while before I got my first blog going, but after I did, what a difference. i could communicate at any time with my clients and prospects, and my regular posts got me indexed in the search engines for things I didn’t imagine.
Anyhow, thanks for the vital post.
Cheers.
Eric
February 14th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I was reading on other sites about blogging and it is recommended for almost any online venture in order to attract traffic to your site or to register your site by repeated visits. James Brausch, an online businessman who conducts an internship that is free to join, especially recommends the blog as a way to “meet” potential clients as you express some aspect of your personality and ethics in the articles and answers you deliver on your blog.