However well you’ve done your guest persona research, it’s not always easy thinking up blog topic ideas that are highly relevant and exciting to your audience each week. Fortunately, within just a few simple steps, you can identify the kind of blog posts that your guests are interested in the most so you always know what topics to reach for during an inspiration crisis. Here’s the breakdown:
Step 1: Gather the data
The most relevant data you will need to collect includes:
1. Your property’s most popular posts
- Use Google Analytics to find your most visited blog posts, and those with the most valuable visits (visits that led to bookings). Make a list of the 5 topics that come out on top.
- Make use of a tool like SocialCrawlytics to identify which of your posts have been shared the most by your guests via social media. Again, make a list of the 5 most popular topics.
2. Your competitors' most popular posts
Although you don’t have access to your competitors’ full analytics data, you can still gather some important stats using easy to use tools such as SocialCrawlytics to find out their most shared posts, and Open Site Explorer to see which posts have been linked to the most from other sites.
Step 2: Analyse your findings
Once you’ve gathered this data, it’s time to analyse it. Are there any common characteristics that differentiate this most shared and most visited content from the rest of the pack? Considering everything from the topics covered to style and format, make a note of the patterns these popular posts follow.
Using this information as a starting point, you can now begin to make a list of potential blog ideas.
Step 3: Filter your best ideas
Now that you’ve come up with a few ideas you know are likely to resonate with your guests, run them past the following checklist to filter them even more.
- Is this the kind of content that is genuinely interesting and useful to your guests?
- Will you be able to write about the subject in a way that is easy to consume, interesting and engaging?
- Does the content resolve a common guest problem or need?
The blog post idea that gets a ‘yes’ answer to all the above questions is likely to be your winner.
Sometimes, you’ll identify a topic that you’ve already covered previously on your blog, but which scores highly on your checklist and the other criteria you’ve identified using your research. In these cases, it’s often possible to revamp an older post by reformatting it with a checklist, guide or list.
Have you researched your resort’s most popular blog posts? Do you use this information to plan future posts? Let us know in the comments below!
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