5 Tips on Creating a Content Calendar for your boutique hotel


Content calendars are an effective way to manage your website content and ensure it is up to date with the latest hotel information, in-house events, local events & festivals and has a seasonal focus.

A hotel content calendar is important and effective in helping you in manage your website content in a timely and efficient manner.

What Is A Content Calendar?

A content calendar is a schedule that outlines the content for your blog, your marketing efforts and your social media accounts on a monthly, quarterly or even yearly basis. It should include the information needed to plan your posts such as headline titles, authors, priority levels, posting dates, special holidays, and events and marketing campaigns.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF MAKING A CONTENT CALENDAR?

• It allows you to think strategically and plan ahead rather than being reactive.
• Ensures your website content is always in date and relevant to your target market.
• Aids website conversion.
• The more regularly you update your website content, add a new special offer package or add a new blog post, the more frequently a search engine spider will visit your website. The more they visit your website, the more opportunity you have to achieve higher rankings.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A CONTENT CALENDAR?


STEP 1: CATEGORISE CONTENT PAGES BY TYPE

You want to keep your audience coming back for more. 

Providing a range of helpful information or guides can take many forms, so you should first categorise the content required for your website into the number of key components.

Hotel Service & Product Offerings

• Review to ensure that all the information presented on your website is correct and relevant for the year. We recommend a full website content audit is completed at least once a year and an ideal time is at the start of the calendar year. Pay particular attention to date and price information and also review any links to PDFs within the site’s content.
• Promote content that informs and entertains. Build profiles around your experts: A Day in the Life of a GM/Chef/Chauffeur, tips for successful meetings, events & weddings and other topics of interest, e.g recipes, new spa products.


Seasonal Related Content

Mark out busy dates and events for your hotel in the calendar year and build your content strategy around this - school breaks, Christmas, Halloween, and other major holidays. 

Customise a gift voucher for a specific seasonal occasion. 

Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are key voucher-selling times so make them special. 

Make sure the seasonal content is updated well in advance of key selling times to maximise its potential.

In-House Events

Ask yourself the question: Are there any key events in the hotel this year that needs to feed through to the content calendar?

List out the events: Wedding open days, wine tasting, summer BBQ, acoustic sessions, spa VIP nights, the hotel or restaurant celebrating a birthday, new restaurant opening, new spa products available, etc.


Local Events & Nearby Attractions

  • Check out what’s happening near your hotel and note all the events that may be of interest to your target audience. 
  • Every hotel should have expert knowledge of its region and share useful information. Provide destination information about your city/location and your distance from the main attractions. Customers want to know where they are staying in relation to the city centre. Provide information on the nearest public transport options.


STEP 2: SOURCE GREAT IMAGERY

For all type of content pages, devise a plan for requiring the relevant imagery. Imagery sells so it is a crucial element to your content plan.

Close-up images are great for selling luxury products and food. Pictures including people using hotel services have a great influence on browsers. 

If you’re sharing your content on social media platforms, it’s the image that will grab the audience’s attention first, not the text.

STEP 3: PICK THE RIGHT FORMAT

Now that you have a list of the topics to focus on, you can put your thoughts together into a monthly calendar plan. Ask yourself: what’s the most effective way to present the topic on the hotel site?
  • Content Landing page
  • Special Offer / Package
  • Blog Post
  • Gift Voucher
  • Social Media Post
  • Email Marketing Campaign
  • Or a combination of a number of items

STEP 4: DELEGATE WITH THE TEAM

Delegate responsibilities to the relevant team members with a defined timeline. 

Keep the objectives visible so everyone knows when fresh content should be on the website. 

Everyone needs to be working towards the same goal and it’s useful for everyone to see what they are working on in the grand scheme of things.

STEP 5: FOLLOW THESE TOP TIPS

  • For seasonal content publish content 2 months in advance.
  • Content needs to be unique and communiucate your messaging with your language.
  • Keep in mind your target market, always ensuring the content is engaging and of interest to them.
  • When auditing existing content, also look at your sitemap online. The page may not be within the navigational structure but should still be published to the sitemap.
  • Aim for a minimum of 250 words of content per page, but the longer the text, the more opportunity for naturally including extra keyword variations.
  • Always think “keywords” when compiling content. Use highly searched keywords in your content copy. They should be seamlessly added: don’t just overload the copy with keywords. Remember always includes a call to action.
  • Share your content pages on social media. You can boost posts on Facebook to help your brand awareness, which is particularly effective for generating interest in restaurants or in-house events.
  • Share links to your seasonal content pages and blog posts in an email campaign. It helps build a relationship with your subscriber by giving them useful or interesting content and they may be more likely to click on your next campaign that is more revenue focused.

Your team in Aró are always available to consult with you if you need any further advice in compiling content or you wish for us to work in devising a content calendar plan.