365 Days of Content—FREE?! Join LIVE Now!

Just, just. Okay. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome everybody. As you are joining in, whether you're in the Zoom Room with me now, whether you are watching on YouTube or watching on Facebook, we are streaming everywhere as much as we possibly can do, because today is a very important day in the world of hospitality, in the world of Book Direct, because we are two days away from Book Direct Day. For those of you who don't know what Book Direct Day is, very simple synopsis is that once a year, normally, I think it's the first Wednesday of the month, which turns out to be the 5th of February. This case hosts all over the world get together and they talk about the benefits of booking direct. Obviously, with what we do at Boostly and what we've been trying to do for the last nine years, the Book Direct Day is a very cool day for us because we get to talk about it, we get to promote it, and we get to try and spread the word as much as possible. And unfortunately, it can't just be one person that does this. We all come together as a collective. And this is why I've been posting for the last, what, 25 days now, 24 days in the hospitality community group with daily little tips and advice that we all can do within our own businesses to start to boost in direct bookings. And the reason why I've come live on the Internet today, the reason why we're doing this is over the weekend I shared two files. So the first file was 360, 365 days worth of content, social media content. And the other one was a load of videos, videos that stop the scroll, videos that get the attention that hopefully you can download and use. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be cool if I could go live on today, two days away from BookDirect Day, and show you how you can take 365 days of content and personalize it for your business. And what I'd like to do for anybody who tunes in live with me, and if you are with me live, just put hi in the chat, just put hashtag live, hashtag hi, just so I can see you and see who is with me. What I wanted to do is I wanted to take one person who is with me live and take you as the example, you as the guinea pig, so to speak. I take all of his content and I show how you can personalize it for your business. Now, if that sounds good, if you would like me to do that for you, then all I need for you is to put your hand up in the chat. So just put me, I would like this and I'll just pick someone at random. So while that we are waiting for somebody to put their hand up as our volunteer, so to speak, let me just make sure that as many people as possible are with us. Yes, I can see this is tuning in live. Brilliant. So I can see this is live all over the Internet right now. I can see that we've got plenty of people and there's a lot of people watching, which is awesome. Everybody who's in the Zoom room, hello. You get sort of behind the scenes access, so to speak, and then everybody else is either on YouTube or elsewhere around the Internet. Now, before we do, go ahead and pick somebody that is going to be doing this with me, I've been wanting to do Somewhat Pretty Cool on, on the land of Facebook over the course of the last month. So at the start of January, I put up a little picture on, I think it was my Facebook and this picture was of a load of books that was sent over from the publisher and I said, oh, I would love to give a book away, a signed book. And people were sharing the word and all that cool stuff. I said, right, if you do it on the 3rd of February, which is today, I'll just pick somebody at random and they will win the books. And that person is Darren O'Reilly. So, Darren O'Reilly, hello. I've sent you a little message on Facebook. You've won the book, so please do get in touch. If we could all just say, well done, Darren in the chat. If anybody knows Darren O'Reilly, let me put his, his handle here in the, in the, in the Zoom chat. I think you can see it all here. Then please do tag him in. I've sent him a message on Facebook. We're not friends on Facebook, so he needs to get a little notification so he knows to reach out to me and send me his best postal address. So that is cool. Now what I would like to do before we move any further as well is for you to put in the chat. So to put in the comment section below. What have you got planned for Book Direct day? What are you going to be talking about? Because this is really important. Are you going to be talking about the social media posts that are lined up? Have you got any email threads that are ready to go? If you've got anything that you're going to put out online that is going to educate your audience about the benefits of booking direct, let me know and I'll share it on the, on the screen. With us. So before we do go down that route. Route even, let me explain why it's important. So every single one of you who is watching this, I assume you are in the hospitality world. You're either serviced accommodation, vacation rentals, whether you're a hotel, bed and breakfast owner, glamping site, you. You focus solely on leisure, or you focus solely on business, or a bit of pleasure, and a bit of both. And everybody that is watching this, you know the benefits of when a guest books direct with you. Whether it is fees, lack of control of the. Of the booking and all of the things in between, but unfortunately, there are a large majority of the public who don't. Okay? And so this is why it's really important that we have this day and we do this education. And I believe it was Amy High Note over on LinkedIn who started this whenever she started this. But since then, so many people have taken it and ran with it, which. Which is awesome to see. And so the day is important on the 5th, because as a collective, if we can get a hundred or a thousand people all talking about the benefits of booking direct, and we do it on our social media platforms, if we email people out, if we do a blog, YouTube video or whatever, then that will get seen by more and more people. And if we do it all as a collective, then word of mouth will spread. A really cool trend that happened last year. There was a little video that went viral and a couple of travel content creators did it on TikTok, which then spread to the wider world. They were talking about how a hack that they've discovered where they can find a business or find a place to stay on, let's just say Airbnb. And they showed how they could do this cool little glitch within Google to find the property direct. Now, that wasn't seen by hundreds of people or even thousands of people, that was seen by millions of people because not only did one content creator do it, and just like with the world of content creation, if one video works, then loads of people replicate it and rip it and put it into their style. And that's why millions of people saw it, which was fantastic. And again, for the book, Direct Movement, it got tons of attention. Now, unfortunately, that video has been and gone and something else caught the attention. So that's why it's really important that we keep doing this. And I know we keep talking about Book Direct Day, but for everybody in this room, for everybody who's watching live and on the chat, it's important that we continue to keep on doing it. Because the worry is if we don't, then more and more people will stop trying to find our websites, find our social media and just go straight to what they know, which unfortunately is, you know, Airbnb, booking.com and Expedia. And you know, I'm never going to say to somebody to cancel your listings, cancel your accounts, go cold turkey on the OTAs because you need them, because they spend so much money in advertising. But what we need to start doing is showing our guests, our future potential guests or even people that they're going to refer to us, that, hey, if you are going to book of us, this is how you can find it and do it directly. And this, and here are the benefits of doing so. So we've got Harrow, who's already got social media up and running, email templates done and ready to go. Gert is on it. Everybody is on it or about to get on it. So what I would love in the chat, again, this is just me giving the tools that I have at my disposal to you. But I know that you all work best when you bounce off each other. So for those of you, like Harrow, like Ger, who have already done this in the chat, please put what you have been doing. So whatever you've been doing, what, whatever the, the words behind it, whatever the reasons why you've said to a guest, hey, you should be booking by direct. List them off in the chat. Because I always see so many people, you get inspiration from it. It's not me, it's, it's mostly from like others that are doing it as well. Okay, so let me now go and show you everybody what I shared via email over the weekend and then we'll go and pick a guinea pig to do this with. So if I hit this button, share screen, and if I do Google and I do this, okay, just give me a little yes or a no in the zoom room. Do you see my screen now and does it say Dropbox? Just let me know. Yeah, okay, fantastic. So you all see Dropbox. So this is a link that I shared with everybody over the weekend. In here you have got content for 365 days. And the cool thing about this is that it's not dated as in it's not dated 2023, 2022, 2024. It is generic. So if I just go into one, what you'll find in here is long form content and short form content for May. Okay. And if you go into any of these months, that theme will, will replicate and, and duplicate. So If I go into January, you've got long form, short form for January. Now we're obviously we're running into February. So if I come into here, long form content, short form content for the month of February. So what normally happens in the month of Feb, you've obviously got Valentine's Day, you know, all those sort of things. Now, the cool thing about this content and the cool thing about this is that these images are very generic, but coupled with what I would call good captions, which is obviously the words that you put down together of this is that you can really start to make a post that will get attention. Okay, now, we're not going to create a whole year's worth of content right here, right now. But what I thought would be good to do is show you how to tap into, you know, chat, GPT and all the other calls that are available. And what we'll do with this is we'll start to create a little bit of content and we'll personalize it for somebody that's joining us live now. If you would like me to test this with you. Let me just see who. We've got the volunteers up and running here. So last chance, if you want me to do this with you now, just put hashtag live in the chat and I'll just pick somebody at random. You won't be able to come on to the live with me as in your voice or video, but you're just gonna have to message me and I'll be able to take it. Okay, so just leave a hashtag live. I've got everybody doing hashtag live. Quite a lot of people. So let's say we might be able to do a few. It's only quarter past. My next call is in 15 minutes. Let me just take somebody at random. Okay, Anne. So, Anne, Hello, Anne. Let me just know in the. In the zoom room. You're in the zoom room. I can see you here. If you just please put your first name, your last name, your business name, and where you are in the world. So, Anne, well done. Let me see if I can get a little sound effect going for you, Anne, while we're waiting for you to do that, I think I've got sound effects here somewhere. There's loads of little tabs that I've got open. That's there, that's there. Here we go. Hopefully you're able to hear that. Okay. Okay, so Anne is Anne Davies, Treetop Lodge, southwest Scotland. And. And if you could please just do me a massive favor in the Zoom Chat as well. Put any website addresses that you've got or any links. I can go and get some information from you, please. Right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to come into here, I'm going to open this up and I'm just going to type in Tree Top Lodge, southwest Scotland. Okay? So just so I'm aware, right, you're here and we've got this. So just give me a little yes or no. Anne, can you see Google search on the screen? You're looking at that and you can see Treetop Lodge, the one that's in Kirk Kubrite in Scotland. Just give me a little yes or no. Do you all see that? Fantastic. And that is your domain. Okay, so we have this lovely little hideaway up in Scotland here. We've got all the information here, which is. Which is great. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to start off our little AI. As you can see here, I've got ChatGPT, which is available right here. And I'm also going to go and download February's content. So as you can see, all that I did on the screen, come back into here and please do save this link. If you haven't got this link, just put link in the chat and I'll go back and I'll make sure that everybody gets a copy of it later on. But what I need for you to do is I'm going to download February. So this is something that you can do in batches. So you can do it February, then March, then April, then May, then June. Or you can go and download the whole content and just crack on and just create it all. You could probably spend a good hour on this. But I'm going to show you how you can speed it up. If you didn't have what I'm going to show you now. This will take days. I'm going to show you how to do this in literally a fraction of the time. So I've gone ahead and downloaded February. So the links that I'm showing you right now is chatgpt.com totally free to use. I'm obviously working with Anne. Let me write down. And here, and we've got this. So what I would like as well. And if you've got any social media links or anything like that, that would be. That would be lovely. Any social media links, please let me know for Instagram and whatnot. Just because there's nothing here I can see on the homepage of your site. So first thing, I'm going to do is I'm going to paste in all of the information that was on your website. So all I've done is copy and paste. Okay. And, and now whatever I get, I'll share it with you in a Google Doc or something later on. All, all I need for you to do is read this information, nothing else. Okay? So I've literally just asked it to do that. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach the file. So the file that I've downloaded, which is February, I just need to quickly unzip it. And again, all of these depends on how quick your Internet speed is on how quick they download. I'm pretty lucky where, where we are is that it's very quick. So I'm able to get it pretty fast. So I'm going to come and get the long form content and I'm just going to do this 10 files at a time. All right? So I'm just going to grab 10 of these images. No, I've done too many again. All right, I'm just going to grab a few. Let me just grab a few just for fun. Now, one of the things that you will have seen I also downloaded was a Google Doc. So part of the content, there was a wee Google Doc here, which I'm also going to grab. So if I come into long form content, you can see this. Now one of the cool things of this folder, it's got images, it's got videos, and it's got the text. So as you can see on here, all of the text that you need, all of the captions is stored in this Google Doc. So again, all I'm going to do, I'm going to come into my chat GPT and I'm going to open this and I'm going to take this and do this. So it's also taken all of the copy. So please read all of this document. So all I'm doing right now for everybody that's following at home is that I am feeding the robot. Excuse me, I'm feeding the robot data. That's literally all I'm doing. Let me have a quick drink. I'm just giving him the data because now what I'm going to do is I'm going to give it the prompts, I'm going to give it the instructions, so to speak. So let's just say one of the things that would be pretty cool to talk about because this, your property, does give off romance as a vibe. Okay, so I'm going to come into here and I'M going to say, please can you create for me a social media post to talk about Valentine's Day and celebrating it in our hideout in Scotland based on what I shared with you. So instead of me having to do this and having to have it as very generic and then think about how to do it for me, what the bot is now doing has, it's taken all of the information that I have shared and, and, and what it is doing is it is putting and crafting a social media post for you. So have a little read of this, let me know if this is pretty true of your lodge or if it's bizarrely wild. Okay, so let me just see if I can put this in the chat in the zoom room. Seeing that you're in our chat, I'm going to pop this in here to everyone, have a little read of that and let me know if this is quite accurate. And for everybody that's following from home, let me just read out what it says. So Valentine's Day at Treetop Lodge. Escape the ordinary and celebrate love in the most magical way. A treetop Lord Lodge. A luxurious romantic and scheduled hydrate nestled in the half blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whether you're celebrating with someone special, unwind. So, and Daniel, I know it's blurry just because you're watching this live, but no drama, no drama there. So I've put it in the chat. Is that an accurate representation, Anne, of would you say your property or would it need any tweaks? Now, I'm just going to assume just because A, we're doing this together and we're doing it for social media that it's accurate. Right. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to move on. But the cool thing is, and if you are, if you are watching this and you are doing this yourself later, you can now ask it to make tweaks and it will do it for you, which is pretty cool. So that is how you make a piece of content within minutes. But what I would like obviously for us to talk about is going to be book Direct Day. How can we use this for book Direct day? So I'm just going to paste in a little bit more information that I have found on the website. So we've got guest comments which we've got here, which is great. I'm just going to feed this in. Okay, you've got this bit on your website. I'm just going to take this and put this in. Okay. So as you can see, all I'm really doing now is I'm just feeding it information. So I've done a post for Valentine's Day, which is pretty cool. I'm just feeding all of this information in and then what I'm going to do now is we're going to take this and we are going to load it in and we are going to create something for Book Direct Day. Okay? So again, we're just going to have all of this lovely stuff here. Okay? What I would like for you to do now is create a social media post for Book Direct Day that I will Send out on the 5th of February, 2025. Please explain the benefits of booking Direct and not via an OTA such as booking. Com or Airbnb. The post needs to work on all social media channels. Okay? So as you can see now, what it is doing, it is creating that post about Book Direct. Now, one of the, one of the cool things about this is that this is creating for you right now the words. All right? What I've also given you within these content folders is the images. And again, if you wanted to take one of these images that I've got here, you're more than welcome. Or what you can do is you can pull in one of your own from your website or you could just go and find something else on the, on the Internet. It is totally up to you on what you grab and what you use. Because as we all know, the. The cool thing about chat GPT is that it creates the words, but you need the image to grab the attention. That is why that we have the videos, that's why we have the images. And this is the words that can go around it. Now it's come up with this. Today's Book Direct Day. Here's why it matters. Did you know that when you book directly with a property, instead of using Airbnb, booking.com or others, you're getting a better deal, more perks and more personal experience. Best prices, guarantee, exclusive offers and upgrades. Again, if any of this isn't relevant to you, then you can take it out. You don't have to use this verbatim. You don't just copy and paste and use it. I always say it's good to go 80% of the way there with this and then the other 20% will be your personalization, your words. Now, one of the things that many of you will spot and have noticed is that it's spelling personalized in the American English. So what you would do here is you would say, re write this, but make sure it is in UK Grammar and spelling. And again, for those of you that are tuning in from overseas, you can ask it to do it in Spanish or in France or in any language you want to put this in front of, which is really cool. You 100% have to make sure that you check it. You can't just go, oh, that's done. Copy, paste and go. Now, so far what we've done is we've created one social media post and it's got its information inspiration from the copy that we have put down here. And this is this copy that we have here. This is being put together by a group of experts that I worked with. So this is all that, what Boostly's done and it's given it to you. Okay. And it's got that inspiration from here, from this content. And all that we've done is we've gone, we've matched him. So basically all we've done is we've matched in this content here with Anne's website and we've merged it together. So as you are looking this now, thinking, okay, well, how do I do this? For me, what you need to be doing is you need to be grabbing this folder, you download that, you grab the words, okay? And then you feed it with your information. What's really important is you've got to give it your info because if you don't give it your information, it has got nothing to make it personalized with. And again, the cool thing about all of this is that it's free, it's easily accessible. Now, there's some of you that maybe be a bit more tuned in with AI and you will know that you can use other models. For example, there are tons of other ones that you can potentially use. I don't want to overwhelm anybody who hasn't used any of this so far just yet. So just stick with Chat GPT because it's free, it's easy. Okay, for those of you that are asking for access to the folder, I'll quickly pop it in the zoom room. Now, for everybody else who hasn't got access to it, you'll get a. You'll have to just check the comment section later or I'll even probably email it out again one more time for everybody. Now, the final thing that I wanted to leave you with. We've got a couple more minutes. So so far what we have done is we have created two social media posts, bearing in mind I've fed in all of the information from Anne's website. Okay. And there could be potentially loads more that Ann could feed in here. I don't know if you've got any PMS providers or digital guidebooks, other cool things that you could feed in to to here. What we're going to do now is we're going to really put it to the test, right? What I'm going to do is I'm going to ask for the robot that we are using to craft a whole month worth of content for the month of February based off the inspiration I fed it earlier, which is here. So as you can see, if you're looking at the screen you should be able to see it. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to say, right, you have now got, you have now got a document packed with social media content inspiration month of February. What I need for you to do is create for me 28 days worth of content for February based off the inspiration I have given you and also a theme in it around my property and where it is based. Do you have any questions or are you good to get started? Now this is where it's going to really blow a lot of your minds. If you thought the first bit was cool, this is the next bit. So got it. I'll create 28 days worth of social media content for February themed around Treetop Lodge, the local area, Dumfries and Galloway. Key engagement topics for your inspirational file, Alan. I'll ensure the posts are a mix of promotional, engaging and theme. So as you can see now it is off and it is doing it all in here. So listen, the screen is tiny, Marla, don't worry. This is, you are literally seeing a zoom of a screen. But I'm just giving you a little overview of what yours will look like. You don't need to see word for word. So again, the really important thing, I'm going to test you all here in the chat. What is the links that I've been using? What's the, what's the chat GPT? What who can put it in the zam. And then the other thing is, what's the other thing we've been using for inspiration? What have we been getting while this is doing it? Chatgpt.com thank you Tracy. So we've got February 1st, February 2nd, February 3rd, February 4th Book Direct Day is remembered for. Fifth is the Book Direct Day week two, Valentine's build up and Cozy Escape. So it's got the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, the 9th, the 10th. So again, don't forget, you don't just take it verbatim, copy it, put it in, personalize it a little bit which would be cool. Grab an image from your boostly content creator and then go and run it. Now the even better part of this is that with social media you now can schedule posts. So let's just say this has taken you 30 minutes to do. If you log on on the 1st of every month and you put it into your calendar right for the for 30 minutes I'm going to create the whole content for the whole of the month and all that you simply do is you load this in, get AI to create the content for you and then you just sit in your wherever, Facebook, Instagram and you will schedule out your month worth of content within 30 minutes and it's easily done. Then you can go and forget about it. It's you've got something going out every single day of the week which again your involvement is minimal to know. So as you can see here on the screen it is finished which is very, very nice of it. I've created a 28 day social media content plan tailored retreat top lodge incorporating your inspiration, seasonal themes and engagement driven posts. Let me know if you'd like to adjustments or additions. I think that's pretty cool. So what are your thoughts from a scale of 1 to 10? How amazed are you with this? Okay, cool. Harrow is a tough nut to crack. He's a nine. And as promised, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put all of this into a Google Doc so you know, at least your February is sorted. So if I hit paste here. There you go, it looks good. Let me put this link. In here. Right. Jenny's got a very good question, a very good point. Let me take that away. All right, so Anne, if you look in the Zoom chat now you have got what I've just worked on. So Jenny's question was this, will not most people have the same content and in the same area? First thing to say about this, number one, 99.9% of people in your local area are not doing this. 99.9% of people haven't got a clue about ChatGPT and AI and how to do this. So first and foremost you're going to be ahead of most of your competition. Number two, remember what I said about the 8020 rule. So 80% of the way there, use 20 to personalize it for you. And also as well the other main thing to, to to to realize about this is that there's two ways to look at it. You can look at this and you can go oh that's nice, but I'm worried that someone else is going to put something the same. I'm not going to bother. And then you won't post anything or you go, you know what, I'm going to post it. I don't care if somebody else has got something slightly similar to me, I'm just going to have it right. I would much rather sit in the latter because the worst thing that we can do as business owners is post nothing. You know, they always say that procrastination is the, is the killer of all good ideas. It's the same with this, this tip that I've just showed you now. Within 30 minutes you've posted a whole month's worth of content. And if you can show up at the first of every month and do this within 30 minutes, you've got a whole month done. Now I asked Anne what's her best social media and I think one of the first things she said was it's sporadic, it's empty, it's brassic, it's dead. Right? So with this, Anne has Now got within 30 minutes the confidence to put some out that's actually going to look good. The consistency and time is literally not an issue either. And for those of you that you know have got businesses that are growing and expanding and if you've got a team of VA's, you could just give this to one of your VA's to do. So simple to do. Focus on yourself, don't worry about anyone else. Zig whenever, zag, all the cool things. Listen, I'm glad that you've enjoyed this. I'm glad that you've enjoyed this today. I really, really hope that you take this and use it as inspiration. But what I want to see everybody doing is jumping into the hospitality community group. Let me see where it is and what I want for you all to do is to come in and share the posts when you are doing it. We're going to have a special post on Wednesday for Book Direct Day. So please come into the group, share your posts that you are doing for Book Direct Day. To spreading the word Again, it's all well and good me talking about this, but the whole group get the inspiration when they see others doing okay, all of this is free, there's no cost at all. All I ask for you to do for, for doing all of this is that you show up and do because again, it means nothing if it's just me, you know, stood on my soapbox talking about this sort of thing. Now I passed the gauntlet and the baton over to everybody here who was watching this, who's going to watch it back on the replay. So to actually do some about it on the 5th, talk about the powers of booking direct, why they should book direct and all of that good stuff. And let me leave you with one little cool bit. Let me share my screen again because I've come away from that one. Now I've obviously been speaking a lot there about social media. Now watch this. This chat GPT is very clever. This chat GPT is smarter than me, smarter than the most smartest person on the planet. And what it can do is it's crafted you here and a social media content for 30 days. Now I mentioned something earlier about email. Now email is as important as social media in my opinion. But you couldn't take this for example and just put it in an email and send it out to your list. It's a different tone of a message. So to finish with all you are going to say is now what I need for you to do is take this and put it all in one very cool email that I can send to my list. The vibe is a monthly update about what is happening in the month of February around where my property is. The goal is to entice the reader to want to contact me to book a stay. Please make sure you use the information from my website Maxwords500. Please show me a first draft. Okay, so if I come out of here, what it is now doing is it is putting it straight away into an email. So if I, if I again if I enhance this up, I'll read it out to you. The subject is your perfect February escape awaits at Treetop Lodge again and while this is doing it, quick question. Do you have any emails that you've collected since you've been running your business? Doesn't matter where it's 1, 5, 10 or 20. Brilliant. So it's put it into a lovely little email. Now again I'm going to ask for it to do this. Please rewrite but with no emojis. And the reason being is emojis and things like that, they are frowned upon with email senders. In social media it's fine but with email senders I. E. Gmail and whatnot, if there's an emoji or a lot of emojis in an email it's more likely to end up in the promotional folder or the junk folder. So let's have a little quick look. So it's as you can see here, it's like a raising it which is pretty cool, and it is rewriting it. So right here you've got a little email that you can send out to your list and see if you can get any anybody to to turn a looker into a booker, and that is that. Let me know your thoughts. Join in on the chat. Join in a discussion, whether it's live or or on the replay. Let me know what you're going to be doing for Book Direct Day. Let me know how you can take this content and move it forwards. Thank you so much for everybody that has tuned in live with me. We've even got people tuning in from Texas and further afield, which is pretty cool. So, again, thank you very much. I look forward to seeing all of your Book direct Book Direct DUS on Wednesday. And I'll see you all very soon. Tata, everybody. Thank you very much. Speak soon.