2012 is already off to a busy start. To help you  keep up with all the news we will continue to publish our weekly roundup blog every Monday to share last week’s interesting articles and blogs on marketing, social media, hotel distribution and other hospitality topics. Below we listed a few highlights from last week’s news that we found worth sharing.

Blogs

Having a blog can help you grow your brand’s name. Two big opportunities for any organization, including hoteliers, are: make your blog’s content SEO friendly; and cross-promote through your different social media activities:
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012)

Marketing Trends

New marketing channels are arising every day, bringing a lot of new opportunities to communicate your brand to the outside world. Hoteliers should be prepared for the opportunities and challenges that these latest marketing trends bring. The trend of the rise of user-generated content is crucial in the hospitality industry, with content coming directly from guests growing the value for potential bookers:
Top 10 Marketing Trends of 2012

Social Media

We talk a lot about humanizing your brand through social media channels. What is the best way to do so?  This article gives you five missteps of organizations in social media, and how to solve these. Interesting for hoteliers to ask questions to their visitors and focus on receiving feedback from guests through these valuable channels, and to actually do something with it:
5 Ways Businesses Can Use Social Media as a Tool for Progress

Search Engine Optimization

What does a perfectly optimized website look like in 2012? A quick list of 10 tips on how to make sure your appearance in the search engines is as valuable as possible including: mentioning the keyword in the URL, using videos and other rich content on your site, and to sharing your content through multiple platforms:
10 Elements of a Perfectly Optimized Page

Contra-Competitive Timing

We found an infographic (image on the right) that highlights interesting results about sending out your messages through your social media channels. After a research conducted by Dan Zarrella, it turns out that communicating at the least popular times, make the audience hear you better than sending out during peak times:
How to Use Contra-Competitive Timing for More Retweets, Likes, Comments and Clicks