Content Ideas during the Coronavirus Crisis

Foreign.

The Boost Hospitality Podcast. We're in season 8, episode 13. This was recorded on Tuesday, March 31 and today's episode. I gave and shared social media content ideas during the coronavirus crisis. It is so important during this time and I will reflect on this in in the video that now more than ever you've got to be present, you've got to be on top of mind. You've got to be posting every single day. The trouble is people haven't got the urge or the need to post every single day. So my goal with this is to give you content ideas that you can be putting into practice on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

I also tell you about what I'm.

Doing to help and what Boostly is doing to help me and my team.

Are doing to help.

Go and check out boostly.co.uk bdm that is Book Direct membership. We have got over 300 members that are currently in there. They have got access to over 30 days plus of fresh content for social media which is so important on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Also book direct Membership people will also.

Get access to training videos that are not anywhere else. And also as well they get access to the Book Direct Map. They'll get a listing on there which we drive over 20,000 people to on a monthly basis. So people can find you and they can book directly with you. Please do go check that out. And also go and check out hostfully.com they are the sponsors of this podcast. Hatred O s t f U-L-L y.com It's a digital guidebook that will wow your guests. Please go and check them out. You get one free digital guidebook and.

If you want to upgrade, click on.

The premium options, put in Boostly 2M.

In the promo code and you get.

Two months free of their premium package. Without further ado, I'm going to flip straight in to the recording of this episode. Before you do leave, go and leave a review on whatever platform that you listen to these podcasts. And please tell one person that you know from the world of hospitality service. Go and grab the the show notes on booster.co.uk forward/podcast. This is episode 13 of season 8, being proactive and fighting back from the coronavirus crisis.

Obviously this is going to be turned into a Boostly podcast. We are going to get this on YouTube. We're going to get this on itunes. We're going to get this everywhere. But tonight it's just me and you. Obviously, for those of you that are watching back on the replay this was filmed and recorded on 31st of March, Tuesday, the 31st of March. Yeah, let's just get into it now. Why am I doing this? For those of you that are tuning in live, you will know that in the past 24 hours, Airbnb have come out and they've tried to do a little bit of firefighting, that the CEO of one of the founders of Airbnb has come out and apologized to how they have acted and how they are going to refund hosts. If you ask me, it's little too late. Booking.com as well have come out and they've tried to do the whole firefighting exercise. Again, it's a little too late. Expedia, HomeAway, Vrbo, you know, you name it. There are so many big OTAs and so many different third parties now that are sort of trying to get back in your good books. They call you partners, they call me and you partners. But the way they've acted, that is not how you treat a partner. The conversations that I've been having with other people in the field from all over the world, hosts and peers in the industry, I think this could be a very defining point in the whole book direct movement. So for those that know who our book direct means, it's when you book directly with the host, it's what myself has been championing for the last four years. It's what many people around the world have been talking about. We've even got a Book Direct day, which was this year. It was on the 6th or 5th of February. And, you know, it's something that we talk about every single day. And it's something that people in my world and, you know, from all over the world talk about. And Book Direct is something that, you know, if 10, 15 years ago, let's just say 60% of all guest bookings would have come from maybe more, 70, 80%. But slowly because of the sheer spending power of booking Holidays Group, the Expedia Group and Airbnb. It just means that that that ratio has got lower and lower because the general public, for whatever reason, think that the benefits are there to go and book via booking.com, airbnb, Expedia. But with all of this that has been going on and hosts, potentially guests will start to look at other and there's going to be so many people watching this live and watching this back on the replay, but will have been affected by the online travel agents over the course of the last 10 days. So what I would love for you to do in the comment section doesn't matter whether it's live or replays. Just let everybody know in the comments how you've been affected. I think the, the plus side for this again is that the book direct movement will get more and more traction. I think that more people will look to come and book direct. But now more than ever it's really important that you and I'm talking to you, do something about it. Don't just hide, don't just go dark. And I've said this time and time again. I think I said this with Simon Saw, which was the first episode that I did on this on the 17th of March. It was over two weeks ago. I said do not go dark, do not go quiet. And unfortunately there's been so many hosts that I have seen from the hospitality community, which is my Facebook group, from, from even from the boostly world that have gone quiet, have gone dark because there's been so many things that have been going on. But this is my message and this is the message that I'm going to continue to say over the course of the next weeks and months is you've got to be loud and you've got to keep talking. You've got to stay prevalent and you've got to be in front of potential guests and previous guests. I know that this works. And what I'm going to talk to you tonight is definitely going to help you work. And again, the question that I have to everybody that are watching live and on the replay are you posting just a simple yes or no. Are you posting every single day on social media at the moment on your business pages, whether it is Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn. And I'll, I'll tell you why this is important. Over the past couple of weeks there's been two different types of people in my world. There's been people that have been proactive, which is what I'm talking about during this whole series. And as well as that have been react. And proactive has basically meant that even when there is no bookings coming in right now or even guests to serve right now because of lockdown and travel restrictions, there's been people that have pivoted, diversified and they've been doing lots of little ways and means of being able to bring in income right now, they've been either offering out their breakfast that they do for takeaways and deliveries. There have been people that have started up farm shops or online fruit and veg delivery. There have been people that have been doing online sessions, one on one sessions for other talents that they have. And these are the people that have been totally proactive. And then there's been those that have been reactive. There've been those that have been going into Facebook groups. They've been ones that are just scrolling through the comments, wasting hours, just sort of trying to find information on grants and government grants and government bailouts, and that's reactive. The main message that I want to spread through this is that don't worry and don't stress about the things that you can't control. There's so many things out here that you can't control. How long the lockdown is going to last for, when you're going going to get money back from either Airbnb or the government or bailouts or insurance. Those things you can't control. But I tell you what you can control. You can control. You. You can control your business and you can control on how you communicate. I cannot help every single one of you. I cannot help every single one of you. Those of you that are going to be reluctant, those of you that are going to be reactive, those of you that are going to bitch and moan on social media about X, Y or Z, I can't help you. But for those of you that are going to be proactive, those of you that are going to watch, those of you gonna put it into action and implement it into your business, then I can. And what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be helping you and sharing with you content ideas at what you can be doing on your social media, those that you can be doing through email marketing, and those of you that can be doing so on your blog post. Number one, when it comes to social media right now, so important every single day that you can be posting online. When it comes to social media, there's some things that I've noticed other people doing. And whether I've seen this on Instagram or if I've seen this on Facebook or elsewhere, it's things that are just making so much sense. I've seen some really cool, inspirational type of posts on social media. So, number one, what I've noticed that people are doing bed and breakfast, they've been putting together recipes, they've been sharing their recipes that they are cooking for guests. So this could be a hotel, it could be a bed and breakfast, but they've been posting out their recipes. What I've also noticed is that now more than ever, because people are literally in lockdown. There's so many people that are trying different skills, different online courses, or whether it's just a Case of getting out the old cookbook. So if you are there posting up recipes that you've used for your business, whether it's breakfast or whatever, then people are going to tune in. And again, think about this. When you're putting together your content. Now you don't have to do a recipe, but you could post out a picture of your unique selling point. So the usp, your unique selling picture. And again, for so many people, this can be so many different things. When we would come to post our content up online, it would be remembering people about the feeling that they get when coming to stay at a place like ours. So we wouldn't, for example, just post a picture of our beds. You know, we've got cool beds. But it's, it's really more the view. It's the interaction with the animals. It's that feeling of, of just being able to explore and being out in the open, in the peace, in the quiet. Try and think back to your ideal guest. Right now there's going to be a lot of people, particularly if you're in more rural areas, who are in lockdown and who are in maybe apartments, if they live in city centers, maybe locked down in small houses where they haven't got the view. So again, by you doing that, by posting out every single day, a variation of it, So I wouldn't just say keep putting the same post up every single day, but variations of then you're going to be top of mind. But there will be a time and a place where people will have been cooked up inside for an extended period of time and they will start having pay packets come in and they will want to have something to look forward to. And staycation is going to be one of the most overused phrases that you are going to hear in the next four to six to eight weeks. International travel as we know it, corporate travel, international flying travel that will take a lot longer to pick up because of just where the world is right now. And you know how our mindsets are. Staycation, traveling within your country of where you are, that is going to be a heavily overused phrase and I guarantee that the UK government, UK tourism, will definitely be using that. And so if you can start now and get ahead of the curve and just sort of keep reminding people whether that is posting it up on your social media, say on Facebook as an example, but then sharing it in Facebook groups that are in a two to three hour radius of where you are, I guarantee that you're going to be that top of mind. You're going to be the ones where people are going to remember when it comes to these people making the bookings. If you want to do a little bit more than pictures, then the next is videos. Videos is a super cool way of keeping more engagement on your social media. Again, you could just do a live video and just remind people about your amazing local area, about things that you're seeing and doing. And again, what the local community is doing. Again, it doesn't have to be professional. It doesn't have to have all the lights or the really expensive microphone. It could simply be just picking up the phone and just talking into the camera and just documenting your day. And as, and as crazy and as silly as that may sound to you, guess what? There will be people out there that want to, want to see this. Because again, everybody's world right now, wherever you are, is inundated with news and scaremongering and stats and all of the things every single day is just cramming on in. And to have a little bit of a relief and to have people and to have you talk about something else, then it's, it's going to be, it's going to be a nice relief to them. With social media, the cool thing about it is that it costs no money. It's free to post, you know, it's free to add a video, free to add a picture. You know, obviously Facebook and Instagram and all of these companies, they, they will pester you to boost your post to give them money. You don't have to if you don't want to. So again, please remember that and go a step further than just adding a post on Facebook. By adding a post on Instagram or wherever. Use the Stories feature. Anybody has used Facebook Stories or Instagram Stories, I want you to speak up right now in the comments section whether you're watching this live or in the replay, if you have used the Facebook Stories feature or the Instagram Stories feature, just put yes in the comments. And again, the reason why this is important and if you notice anything, when you open up your app on Facebook or Instagram, the Stories section is right at the very top. LinkedIn, which is another big social media platform, they are going to be bringing in LinkedIn stories. If you look at YouTube, when you open up YouTube, it's got YouTube stories. Every social media as we know it has got a Stories feature there or there about make sure that you are utilizing this. And again, you can put the exact same content into there and it will be in front of people. And then the cool thing about Stories is that every single person that watches your story, you can see who that is. So unlike a post on Facebook, unless they interact with it, then you don't know who's watched it. But with stories, it shows you exactly who has seen your content. So it's a really powerful tool. And again, if you're consistent with it, if you do it every single day over the course of the next weeks, it will stand you in great stead for when the upturn comes about. All right, let's move on over to email marketing. And again, email marketing is another fantastic free tool. With social media, there's so many distractions when your post is. When you put your post up, your post could get lost within a hundreds of other Facebook business pages that are trying to get your attention. Now, the beauty of an email is that when an email comes into the inbox, when they click and open up your email, then its focus is just on you. The reason why so many people don't do email marketing is because they associate it with sleazy or scummy or they just think about the emails that are in their inbox right now and probably 90% of them just look sleazy, salesy, scummy. The trick is here is to do what everybody else isn't and base your email and try and give them a story. Don't try and sell, but be communicative. It's easy for me to say, try and write your emails like you're writing to a long lost pen pal. And again, at times like these, if you can send an email to somebody, whether it's a, a past guest or somebody that has signed up to your email list and hasn't yet booked and if you can do it once a week, and this is my thing with emails is once a week, then again you're going to be top of mind for when people are ready to book. It's why these big, big, big brands that they do the radio ads, they spend so much money on TV ads, they spend so much money on Google Ads and social media ads and billboards. It's because when you walk into a shop and you've got all of these options in front of them, they are banking on all of the advertising that they've done for when you walk into the shop and they see their brand name or when you see their brand name, they're going to go, ah, so it's brand recognition. And again, we don't have to go to the levels of spending thousands on TV ads and radio ads and billboard ads and Facebook ads. All we need to really be focusing on is emails and social media. I pretty much guarantee you you'll be ahead of about 89 to 90% of the everybody else out there. And again, number one, sign up to Mailchimp or Sendfox, two totally free bits of software. If you haven't yet got started with email marketing, create your account, create your list and then you get a sign up link. And all you need to do is put a post upon social media and just say, who would like to get weekly emails from us? We'll be sending recipes, we'll be posting updates from our property or you know, X, Y and Z. Here's the link to sign up. Now you may only get one person. Don't discredit that one person. Utilize the chance that you've got such a small list that you can pretty much chat to that one person, send weekly emails, give them updates, and every time you send an email you just put in it saying if you know anybody that would like to get our emails, share our list with them. And again they can just forward the email on and then they can sign up from there. And the power of do you know anybody? It is so powerful. And again, if you keep on doing that once a week and you do it over the course of the next say 12 weeks, say, but if this goes on for another 12 weeks, another three months, then you're going to have so many more people that have got eyes on your business that weren't there before. I do want to caveat all of this and say that it's super important when you come to write your emails or when you come to do your social media posts, or when you come to write any form of content that you've got to have your customer avatar in mind. So again, we've done social media, we've done videos within social media, we've done final one, I just quickly mentioned on it, there is blogging. Blogging again is a really powerful tool and I recommend to do this at least once a month. So with a blog, again, when you post on social media it's fantastic, but that is just benefiting the channel that you are posting on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. When you do emails is again, it's fantastic, but it's just going to one person. But when you do a blog it has so many additional benefits, I. E. Your website, getting it seen more visible on the search engines. And again, there has been so many fantastic examples of people that do blogging regular. And when I say regular, at least once a month where they have started to become a lot more visible on a Google search, Bing search or whatever search engine that you use. But again, please make sure that you write and you talk around your customer avatar. So again, I would put a blog together maybe about Dalby Forest again, what there is to do there, put in some links in there from places to visit, how they can go book their tickets, the go ape and all of those sort of things. Now out of all of the free, I would say that blogging is the most time consuming. Then you've got email and then social media is the quickest. But whatever out of the free that you're going to choose, I recommend just starting off with the most simplest and the most simplest is social media. And again, if you've not posted at least once a day over the past seven days on your Facebook business page or your LinkedIn or even Instagram, then right now you are being left behind. And this is one of the big things that I have noticed from the four years of me doing boostly, the four years of being the admin of the hospitality community and sort of growing the website side of the business. When I do marketing reviews and I look back on social media and I look back at what people have been posting. The large majority of the time people are lost and confused and just stumped when it comes to the content to create. They go the easy way out or they just share a post from the local tourism or that they don't do anything because they just think, I don't know what to say, but this is the most important time. Do not go dark, make sure that you're posting every day. So what I've done is I've been working on this for six to eight weeks now. This is perfect timing more than ever because now we need to stay prevalent, we need to stay active, we need to keep on posting because more and more people are on their phones, they're on the tablets, they're on the computers, they're on their social media. So you need to make sure that you're at the forefront and what I've, what I've gone and created for the world of hospitality called social media Sorted, what it means is that I've got an in house design and copy team that is going to create every single month 30 plus pieces of content. So every single day of the month you are going to have image and copy that you can simply copy, paste and post onto Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. And what's even more cooler is that with Facebook business pages you've got the ability to schedule a whole month in just one day, which is so cool. So you can schedule tomorrow being the 1st of April, your whole months of content within one hour and that's it. You don't have to think about it. Again, there's also scheduling platforms out there for Instagram and LinkedIn, so again, you can get your whole month's worth of content done in one to two hours and then you don't even have to worry about it. All of the copy has been created by my team. So you just copy it, you paste it, you personalize it and you post it. All of the images have been done in different styles. So we've got square and we've got vertical, because obviously anybody who's used Facebook Stories or Instagram Stories knows that it's got to be in a vertical mode. So again, you can save it to your phone and then you can post it. And today I launched Social Media Sorted and it is only available exclusively to the Book Direct Membership Movement. My, my membership platform is only 9.99amonth. I launched it today to all of the existing members and they are now logging in, grabbing their images, grabbing their copy. And I've already seen it going live on Instagram, I've seen it go on Facebook, I've seen it go on LinkedIn and it looked amazing. And the beauty of all of this is that you can join as well. If you are struggling at content, if you are struggling with what to put out, if you haven't posted every day for the last seven days and you just want in a platform that will help, this is what I recommend everybody check out. And what I want to do is I want to give you just one minute to give you a little sneak peek of what it looks like. So I'm just going to share my screen very quickly. And again, this is only 9.99amonth, or if I like to call it one bottle of wine a month, as you can see, we're ready to go tomorrow. This is what you will see when you come into Social Media sorted. Please exclude that screen grab of my face. But all of the members now of the Book Direct Membership, they have got access to this. You copy the text, you download the image and you can then post it out on LinkedIn, on Facebook and on Instagram. And you've got 30 plus pieces of content, fresh pieces of content every single month. The copy is designed by our in house copywriters. We've obviously got posts about COVID 19 and but most importantly, we've got engaging content and finger stopping form stopping images that you can use. You also get access to online training videos. So we've got hours and hours of content on how to get on all of the social media websites. You also get a listing on my Book Direct Map bookdirectmap.com We've got over 300 listings, 300 users, 300 hosts from all over the world that are currently on there. You get listed on the book Direct Map as part of that. Now again, if you want to go check out more, go to boostly.co.uk bd you'll get all of the information, you'll get testimonials, full faq and you can literally get started by coming through here, clicking on through to the website and you can sign up. I'll be back tomorrow night with another guest and if you have enjoyed this video, please do share it into a group, Please do tell your friends about it and I'll be back tomorrow for another video. Thank you so much for watching and I will catch you all very soon.