What actually is ChatGPT?

Launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. To you and me, this basically means it’s a bot that has been fed mountains and mountains of data. It then uses this data to provide answers to… well, pretty much anything. It can answer questions, summarise information, generate copy, write code, and so much more – and will attempt to do as authentically as possible, mimicking a human conversation.

ChatGPT can be a lot of fun. But while asking it to cook up nursery rhymes about WWE fighters might be an amusing way to pass the time (probably for a minority that one!), is ChatGPT equally worth using to create highly effective, targeted content for your business? Let’s discuss.

What are the key benefits of using ChatGPT?

• It’s quick and easy to use – this can make your work much more efficient. For instance, rather than spending hours putting together a blog, ChatGPT will create you one in seconds (we did write this one though!).
• If you have an internet connection, ChatGPT is accessible to all.
• It can help with idea generation when you’re battling creator’s block.

Sounds incredible, right? Not so fast…

The danger of cutting corners

The thing is, just because you can use something, doesn’t always mean you should, or at least not all the time. Sure, you can use ChatGPT to write your new landing page copy, or to quickly whip up an email you need to send out within the next 10 minutes, but what’s the cost? Quality: that’s the cost. And if the quality drops? So could your traffic, sales, revenue, reputation… and so on…

That might sound terribly pessimistic, but let’s dig deeper into this.

You’re one the greatest assets your business has (if not the greatest asset). You understand your brand, its values, and its mission better than any bot ever could. And by getting ChatGPT to create your content, you are at risk of losing the very things that make your brand stand out. You may well start to sound just a bit more like everyone else does.

Let’s say you’re a holiday cottage based in the South West and you want to write a social media post about the best nearby beaches. ChatGPT will sort that out for you. But it will sort it out for anyone else too. And so, if we’re all using the same bot to cook up the same fun, snappy content, you’re going to lose your brand’s tone of voice.

While you can train ChatGPT to learn more and more about your brand and the writing style you’re after, this does take time and a lot of steering. And let’s be honest, regardless of the tone of voice you’re after, ChatGPT always leans towards relatively cheesy, sales-heavy copy. That might not be what you’re after.

No original content

Let’s reflect again on how ChatGPT works. In simple terms, it’s fed masses and masses of information and learns how to imitate this information as best as possible. In other words, it’s regurgitating existing content. No new ideas. No fresh opinions. Just copy and paste in a thousand different ways. So, if you’re looking to create original content with original ideas, you can’t leave it all to ChatGPT.

Will Google penalise content created by ChatGPT?

Google hasn’t stated that it’s outright against ChatGPT. In fact, their opinions concerning AI have been fairly inconsistent over the past years. On the one hand, Google’s Managing Director Sundar Pichai has described AI as the key ingredient to making people “more productive than we have ever imagined.” Google even has its own rival to ChatGPT called Bard. On the other hand, Google claims it will penalise content generated by AI.

While there are certainly ways that Google can detect whether content has been AI-generated, they haven’t officially confirmed whether they are actively tracking this.

But one thing we do know is that Google is against content that doesn’t make sense or add value. Any content that Google considers spammy will certainly be ranked lower.

In Google’s guidelines, they talk about “Spammy automatically-generated content” which they define as: “content that’s been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it’s been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.” They give examples such as text translated by an automated tool without human review, or text generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience.

The thing is that ChatGPT is notorious for producing this type of content – blogs stuffed with keywords but that don’t actually provide any substance. And so, you cannot rely solely on ChatGPT to help you climb the ranks of Google. Instead, you should be focussing on creating valuable content that your target audience will genuinely engage with.

Thinking practically

ChatGPT is good, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes it slips up and creates copy that simply doesn’t make sense, or is full of false information, or is just repeating the same sentences again and again. That means you have to go through your work with a fine-tooth comb and edit it. And that’s fine – to an extent. If you’re spending too much time cutting and snipping away at your ChatGPT-generated content, all it’s doing is giving you a false sense of efficiency.

So, is ChatGPT not worth it?

Is this to say that ChatGPT is worth ignoring? Not necessarily. Firstly, ChatGPT isn’t going to be the end of AI – not even close. And as systems evolve, they are going to offer a lot more potential. So, knowing what’s out there will only help you and your business to remain agile.

And yes, we know we said ChatGPT isn’t the best place for creating original content, but nevertheless, it’s still a useful tool for idea generation. If you can’t think of any new blog ideas, for instance, ChatGPT will happily give you some inspiration. By all means take it, but be prepared to bring your own ideas to the table too.

The key with ChatGPT is that the more specific you can be, the better. If you ask it to create an entire marketing strategy for you, it’ll be generic and relatively useless. If you ask if to recommend 5 free tools for social media content creation, however, you’ll get a much more defined answer.

The more you use ChatGPT, the more you’ll understand its strengths and weaknesses. And the better you’ll become at delegating tasks to it.

If you would like more digital marketing advice, get in touch with the MiHi team on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Should you be using ChatGPT for your business and how should you be using it? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Threads amassed 5 million users within its first 4 hours of launch. The app went live at 7pm EDT in the US and midnight in the UK. However, regulatory concerns mean it is not available in the EU at this time.

What actually is Threads?

Threads is a free text-based conversation app made by the brains behind Instagram and Facebook.

Meta describes Threads as: “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things – or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.”

In other words, it’s a place to talk about the things you love with other people. How original.

How does it work?

After downloading Threads myself and taking it for a spin, I can confirm that it’s reassuringly simple to use. It features one main news feed and the classic like, share and comment functions we’re all familiar with. Meta aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here. The app looks very clean, minimalistic and unsurprisingly, exactly like Twitter. You can publish text posts, reshare (the same as a retweet on Twitter) and quote share (like quote tweeting). You can also create a series of text posts, much like Twitter threads, which does beg the question: what will threads be called on Threads? Threads squared? A spool? Yarn? Who knows…

Despite Threads being text-centric, this isn’t to say you can’t post images and videos here too – in fact, you can post videos up to 5 minutes long. However, much like Twitter, the main focus of the app is to connect with others through snappy, insightful conversation. Having said that, Thread’s character limit for text posts is 500, which is nearly double Twitter’s.

The interesting thing about Threads is that it’s directly linked to your Instagram account. In order to set up a profile on Threads, you have to log in using your existing Instagram username. So, in a way, Threads is quite literally an extension of your Instagram presence.

This could be relevant to brands if, for example, you wanted to post visually striking content across the image-orientated Instagram, and then use Threads for starting conversations with your customers, gaining feedback and engaging further within your niche.

Another interesting thing: at the tap of a button, you can connect with all your Instagram followers on Threads. There’s no need to manually find and follow all your friends. This means most people won’t be starting from scratch on the platform and, if you’re a business, you can easily connect with any of your existing, loyal followers from Instagram.

Should Twitter be worried?

Twitter currently has around 400 million active users, whereas Instagram has an eyewatering 2.35 billion. Granted, not all of these users are going to transfer over to Threads. But there’s a lot of potential here, nonetheless.

While lots of marketers have been hyping up the release of Threads, we don’t truly know if it’s going to be a success or a flop. Not yet. With apps like Clubhouse riding fast then dying hard within just a couple of years, versus TikTok giving Google a run for their money, there is a lot of potential for Threads to take the social media world by storm. But equally, it could quickly run out of steam. It’s a waiting game for now, and that makes it hard to know whether it’s worth investing into this app, or if it’s going to be a waste of your time and energy.

However, one thing that will work in Thread’s favour is the growing number of people dumping Twitter because, to be blunt, they’re fed up of Elon Musk. From bringing back controversial banned accounts, to laying off masses of Twitter staff members, to recently limiting the number of posts accounts can read in a day, Elon has made some drastic changes to Twitter since taking over the platform last year. It’s been a bumpy ride and, in all honesty, he’s rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.

As more and more accounts are leaving Twitter, presumably, these people will be looking for somewhere more refreshing to hang out. Could Threads become their new haven? It makes sense, but we will have to wait and see…

There has also been recent talk about the relentlessness of social media – the never-ending doom-scrolling that platforms like Twitter and TikTok encourage. With this in mind, I thought it was a nice touch that Threads has a ‘take a break’ function, which will remind you to leave the app after 10, 20 or 30 minutes.

Additionally, Threads has the option to completely hide any replies on your posts. This function isn’t available on Twitter and has been praised by many marketers, journalists and entrepreneurs already. For example, marketing tycoon Steven Bartlett described this as “the most overlooked feature in [Thread’s] pursuit of creating healthy / friendly conversation” and explained that “if someone abuses, scams or trolls in your replies, you can remove it from view completely”.

Should my business be using Threads?

This is a tough question. Why? Because it all comes down to context.

If Twitter is already a significant part of your business’s social media strategy, and you’re making great progress there, you could assume that you’ll do pretty well on Threads too. Particularly if you’re seeing a lot of your followers leaving Twitter amid the Elon Musk fiasco, Threads could be a great opportunity for you to connect with them elsewhere.

However, it can be dangerous to assume that something that works well on Twitter will work well on Threads too because, currently speaking, we don’t know what kind of culture is going to develop on this new platform. You could end up catering to a whole different crowd.

Equally, if you have a substantial following on Instagram, many of these users will transfer over to Threads and you could continue to craft a relationship with them here. However, you need to bear in mind that your strategy on Instagram, where reels and images take front seat, will look very different to your strategy on Threads. You can’t simply copy and paste your content from one platform to the other – and frankly, that would be pointless to do anyway.

But possibly, threads could offer a place for you to nurture relationships and focus more on gaining feedback from customers. For example, if you run a hotel, you could ask your followers ‘what are the key qualities you look for when choosing somewhere to stay?’ or ‘we’re revamping our website – does anyone have any requests?’ or ‘what are your favourite family days out in the area?’ But this is only really worth doing if you have enough followers on Threads to conduct a decent-sized survey.

The truth is, if you’re already performing well on a social media platform, you might be better focussing on that rather than trying to branch out to Threads. This is especially relevant if you’re already overworked, burnt out, and trying to balance multiple tasks as a business owner.

But on the other hand, if you have room to experiment, why not give it a go? It might be all for nothing if Threads crashes and burns within 6 months. Or, it might be the best social media decision you ever make. Where are your bets lying?

But be warned: once you’ve made a Threads account you can’t delete it without also deleting your Instagram. So, if you give Threads a go and then decide to back out of the platform, you can deactivate your account but please don’t delete it! This would wipe all of your following across Instagram too – and building that back up would be a monumental task.

If you use social media to create a lot of paid ads, Threads probably won’t be much use to you. Not for now, anyway. According to The Guardian, “Meta will not be accepting ads on Threads for this year at least.”

Final thoughts

All in all, this is an exciting time and the Mihi team will certainly be keeping a close eye on this new app. Happy threading (or not)!

Need some help growing your business via social media? Or need a hand identifying which social platforms will work best for you? Get in touch with us today.

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post What we know about Threads, Meta’s new rival to Twitter appeared first on MiHiDigital.

So, if you’re wondering if you’re on trend, behind or perhaps even a little ahead of the curve, here are our Managing Director’s thoughts on how the South West Tourism Sector has been shaping up in the second quarter of this year…

When are we now comparing to?

You’ll be familiar with the saying you want to be comparing ‘apples with apples’ or ‘oranges with oranges’. It’s certainly no different with website data; you want to be comparing like for like, season with season, year with year. However, Covid has obviously made that very difficult; if you compare 2021 with 2020, you’ll likely be filled with a warm fuzzy feeling. Compare 2019 with 2020 and you’re likely to be brought out in lockdown sweats.

But when should you be comparing to? Up until the start of this year, I had been a strong advocate of comparing your data back to 2019. It was the last year of ‘normality’ and a decent gauge of where you stood against that stasis. However, far too much water is now under the bridge, so it’s time to move that comparison forward and reflect on where you stand against the same period last year.

Although there are of course variances to take into consideration, we can factor those into our own thoughts and feelings on overall performance.

Let’s take a look at the average performance against last year….

Bookings are still being made late

I highlighted at the start of the year that people were making booking decisions a lot closer to the date of arrival. This trend has continued throughout the second quarter of the year, with those looking forward in their booking calendars still seeing gaps where they’d usually not. But, when looking back, thinking to themselves that performance on the whole has certainly not been as bad as they would have anticipated.

Late bookings are an obvious breeding ground for uncertainty and nervousness. However, with website traffic starting to rally, my belief is that bookings should pick up from here, although they will be made later, even as we head into the school summer holidays in some cases (read on for more on that!).

The exception to any late booking rule is repeat bookers; they will always book earlier and more regularly, so if you aren’t already putting in place methods to woo people that have already been with you, then now is the time to get moving.

Your cash flow will look better as will your booking calendar.

Website traffic has strengthened through May

The first four months of the year represented a 10 – 20% drop in traffic for most websites when compared to last year. That kind of makes sense; they’re booking later, so they won’t be looking earlier!

However, May was the first month that we saw most sites rally above their 2022 traffic levels; sometimes only marginally but some are up by 10 – 15%. These are certainly encouraging signs for those still looking to fill the months ahead and do buck the trend of lower traffic often seen on bank holidays (if you’ve forgotten, May was rammed full of them!).

Further evidence of the late booking culture is the level of traffic seen during school holidays; this is riding higher than usual and does suggest that some are looking for a holiday during the actual period of the school holiday. Very last minute indeed.

The July and August divide

Funny one this; if I tell you that people are booking later, then logic would suggest that July is booked before August. Not the case for many; several of our clients are busier in August than they are in July. If I cast the data net wider, that’s not necessarily uncommon and we’ve often seen a trend of August booking before July in the past.

However, if you’re reading this and thinking you’re the opposite, then you’re also not alone! Several of our other clients are seeing strong July performance with a more hollow August.

The only common denominator here is that there are still gaps in these school summer holiday months when there are usually not. Remember though, later bookings suggest that not all is lost here.

Deals aren’t gaining traction

We’ve seen a poor response to deals and offers. Why might that be? It’s important to remember that a deal or special offer is there to nudge someone over the line; it won’t change their mind completely. What I mean by this is that if someone is wanting to stay during July, when they can get time off work or it’s during school holidays, offering them a discount for June is not going to work. Having an offer that makes your price competitive for when they are staying will.

But what I would say there is that that is more about price than the offer itself. We’re undoubtedly in a strange pricing stage; we had Covid and the resulting period where prices went up purely because demand was so high. Since then, the input costs for you as a business have soared, so the temptation is to now rise again. That’s understandable but getting your pricing right now will mean you’ll gain more than any deal or special offer you have to resort to down the line.

Our overall feeling?

Reasonably optimistic. We’ve had a slow start to the year and all indicators are suggesting that the late booking trend will continue into the busiest part of the year. The growth in traffic during May and into June gives definite hope that demand is picking back up (although there is still too much in the way of supply on the market), so getting your pricing and proposition right now will stand you in good stead for what’s to come.

If you’re a business in the tourism industry that needs help from experts in the field, then get in touch with the team. 

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Our Overview of the South West Tourism Sector During Q2 of 2023 appeared first on MiHiDigital.

If you’re here, it’s likely that thought is going through your mind! Writing content that enthrals potential customers and appeases search engines can seem like an overwhelming task. Fortunately, we’ve created a step-by-step guide and broken it down into three easy parts to help you produce thoughtful and targeted content, that will deliver traffic right to your digital doorstep.

So, grab a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit (or two!) and let’s get started with part one!

What is website copy?

In short, website copy is the term used to describe the main body of text on your website. Its purpose is to tell visitors about your brand, advertise your services or product, guide visitors around your site and direct them to what action you want them to take.

Before you start writing your content, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

1. Purpose

Before you begin writing it is essential you understand its purpose. Knowing what you want your website copy to achieve will help you craft the perfect content to support your goals. Ask yourself questions like:

• Are you trying to sell a product or service?
• Is your main goal to attract new clients and generate more leads?
• Do you want to create a community?
• Are you trying to improve customer satisfaction?

Be specific with your aims. The more you can define exactly what information you want visitors to your website to know and what action you want them to take, the more successful your website copy will be and the easier it will be for you to write!

2. Research

Research topics will vary depending on the nature of your website, however, the most basic yet vital research you should undertake is to understand your audience and know your competitors.

Audience:

The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to convert them into customers. Try to get into their mindset and ask yourself, who are the people coming to your website, what do they want or need and what terms are they searching? By writing copy that speaks to them in a way they can relate to or solves problems you know they have, you can create a foundation of trust that will generate loyal customers.

Competitors:

It is almost certain that visitors to your site will be looking at competitors’ websites to determine their best option. To convince visitors to choose you instead, it is key you know what your competitors are offering. Find out what they are doing, what audience they target and what type of content they are producing. This will allow you to make strategic decisions about your own website as well as spot trends you can use to get ahead of the rest.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO can seem like a bit of a scary exhausting obstacle. See what we did there? Yeah, sorry about that. Whilst it may seem daunting at first, writing with SEO in mind is important for helping your website to rank higher for relevant searches.

• Keywords: From researching your audience, you should know what words they are searching for. These are your keywords. Whilst you should avoid keyword stuffing, adding keywords to your titles, subheadings and body text will help increase traffic to your website.
• Metadata: Keeping it to one or two sentences, write clear and enticing descriptions of your web pages to encourage click-throughs.
• URLs: Ensure your URL is descriptive yet as concise as possible.
• Interlinking: Interlinks are links that direct your visitors from one page to another within your website. Including interlinks points users towards other valuable information, (potentially preventing them from leaving your website and looking at a competitors), as well as showing search engines that you have other relevant information.

These are the absolute basics of SEO, but they are a great first step in climbing the search engine ranks and reaping the rewards of more website traffic.

Preparing to write your content may seem like a tedious task, however, taking the time to really understand who you’re speaking to and what your content needs to do will help you get some top-notch content right from the get-go.

Don’t forget to check out part two and part three of our ‘How to Write Content for Your Website’ guide, where we focus on what you need to think about whilst writing and what to do when you’ve finished writing!

If you’re wrestling with your writing and need help, give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post How to Write Content for Your Website: Part 1 appeared first on MiHiDigital.

But if that isn’t enough, here are a few more reasons why you should be taking full advantage of social media for small businesses…

·      It gives you the potential to reach and attract new customers.

·      You get to know your customers.

·      You get a better understanding of your competitors.

·      You will build your brands awareness.

·      You can connect with your customers and build trustworthy relationships.

That being said, it’s a huge task if you’re not that way inclined, so we’ve pulled together a few top tips to get you started:

Top tip number one: Plan ahead!

We often hear that business owners and employees just don’t have time to be posting on social media every day, which let’s face it is completely understandable. Or they say it’s easier to spend a little bit of time every day, making something up on the spot and posting for the sake of posting. But trust us when we say that’s not doing you or your business any favours, and often ends up being more time-consuming and stressful in the long run.

Having a calendar gives you the time to find out what your customers really want from your social media, and what’s valuable to them. Just test out some different messaging in your calendar, this is called A/B testing and shows what messages work best with your particular audience, find what works and build from that! 

So, avoid the last-minute scrambling and plan ahead with a social media calendar. We’ve written a whole blog about why and how to start your own social media calendar here – Top Tips for Creating Your Social Media Calendar

Top tip number two: Schedule your posts!

Now that you’ve got your plans in your calendar, get ahead of the game and get scheduling. Not only does this free up your time by scheduling a block of social media content all at once but it also means that you can focus on the other important tasks in your week, without having to worry about what picture to post later.

There are lots of free and paid scheduling tools online to help you, including our personal favourite, the Mata Planner for Instagram and Facebook. Most of these tools make your life easier and show you when to post when your followers are online too! But if you use a tool without this feature, it’s always a good start to aim for 7pm in the evening when everyone has settled down into their socials, or 7am in the morning when people are having a morning scroll. But remember to keep an eye out when planning ahead, things change quickly in the world of business and you need to make sure your content is still relevant.

Top tip number three: Keep track of what’s working!

There’s only one way to tell if you’re getting results and that’s by checking your analytics. Even for small businesses, knowing what works and what doesn’t will be super valuable for when you’re working on your next set of content.

All social media will show some form of analytics, so take the time to understand it and try to replicate the content they’re loving! – repurpose it for other platforms e.g.

Top tip number four: Pay attention to trends!

Trends are trends for reason, so give the people what they want and get involved with a few if they are appropriate for your brand.

Although be wary, don’t just jump on every bandwagon you see on Tik Tok, if you’re a serious health brand your customers probably won’t want to see you risking damage doing the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, for example.

Top tip number five: Be social!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, social media is meant to be social! So, once you’re done planning your content, make sure you’re spending time replying to comments as timely as possible, reacting, commenting, and sharing other relevant posts. Take half an hour out of your day every day and you’ll see the extra engagement for your accounts too, it’s a great way to get to know your customers, plus you can have a quick nosey at your competitors to see what they’re up to – Win, win!

And one last extra tip! Be consistent! The more you drop in and out, the fewer people will see your posts, so take the time to get ahead with your scheduling and watch your reach boom! 

If you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow on social media, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post 5 Tips to Successfully Use Social Media for Small Businesses appeared first on MiHiDigital.

If you’re creating content sporadically, not only is this taking your time, but you’re probably seeing a few more typos than you’d like and maybe even a change in tone across your platforms which ultimately isn’t the best look for your business. So, planning ahead and creating a social media calendar would be a much better use of your time as well as giving you the opportunity to proof your posts before those blasted keyboard warriors pick up on every typo or inaccuracy in the book.

What the heck is a social media calendar?

By creating a social media calendar, you’ll be able to plan your posts, manage whole campaigns and give yourself some sort of structure for creating content that week, or that month if you’re feeling brave! It’s also a good place to find any gaps in your media library that might need filling.

Depending on what floats your boat you could be setting up your calendar in a spreadsheet or in Google Calendar or some sort of over-expensive social media management tool. But our favourite is the Meta Planner because it gets the job done and even better, it’s free!

So, where to start when creating your social media calendar?

A good place is to take a proper look through your current social media profiles. See what kind of content worked before (and what didn’t) then have a good nosey at some of your competitors to see what they’re up to because odds are, you can use their ideas for some inspiration.

Next, you need to think about what social media platforms you want to focus on, do you have a photogenic, hands-on business that would work perfectly on Instagram and Facebook? Or are you more of a B2B organisation that would have value in Twitter and LinkedIn? Remember, you can start small and build up to more as you learn more about your audience and customers.

What should you be including in your calendar?

Well, this totally depends on what your business needs for example a small business might need a few details and a picture whereas a big organisation may need full tracking links budgets and management approval. but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s likely that you’ll just need the basics like:

·      The platform you’re posting to

·      The date and time you’re posting

·      Your caption

·      Any media – images or videos (or a link to where they’re stored)

·      Or just a link to an already published post or webpage.

If you wanted to go into more detail, you could label what your posts are, remembering the social media rule of thirds:

·      1/3 of your content should be relevant news and tips that are beneficial for your followers.

·      1/3 of your content should be promoting your product or service.

·      1/3 of your content should be interacting with others and be personal.

Now fill that calendar with some crackin’ ideas!

Start with noting your ideas for each day and build those into captions, then plan how you’re going to create the media for your posts.

Take note, it’s always a good idea to proof your calendar with another member of your team too, just remember to schedule your posts in when they’re ready!

And that’s it, we make it sound so simple right? As with everything social media, the more you do, the more you learn about your audience and the easier it will be to get that spot-on content in your calendar!

If you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow on social media, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Top Tips for Creating Your Social Media Calendar appeared first on MiHiDigital.

We know it has its downsides from definite limitations when it comes to categorising your business to the fact that anyone anywhere can write, well, anything about you, your service and your staff, even if they haven’t experienced it first-hand! 

But we still believe that the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to making the most of your TripAdvisor profile.  First things first, it’s largely free. There are very few other spaces in the online world that still offer such reach and marketing capabilities for nothing at all. But really making TripAdvisor work for you goes beyond simply claiming your free profile and hoping for the best.

Here are some easy things you can do right now to supercharge your TripAdvisor page:

1. Follow up and ask for honest reviews…

If you don’t ask, you don’t get and it’s just good business sense to ask every guest who visits for their feedback. Send a personalised ‘thank you’ email to every visitor with a link to your TripAdvisor page, asking for a review.

Most booking systems and CRM systems allow you to automate this so it’s super easy, simply set it up to send the first message between 24 and 72 hours after the visit and follow up with a reminder a couple of weeks later.

2. Tell them what you want to hear…

TripAdvisor of course wants its reviews to be the most useful to its users so don’t be afraid to prompt your guests on what to include in their feedback. Questions like ‘what was the highlight of your experience?’ and ‘how easy was it to book?’ for example could elicit a much richer review which will go down well with the TripAdvisor algorithm.

3. People can be lazy, make it easy…

Trust us, no one wants to search out a way to offer their feedback unless they’ve had a dreadful experience. So make leaving a review as easy as possible by including direct links anywhere you can and incorporate it into your website by adding your rating widget to your footer and booking pages.

Make sure you include any TripAdvisor certificates or awards logos into your website footer with a direct link to your profile too for extra ways in.

4. Train staff to ask…

Guests always respond better to a personal, verbal ask than an email so if you get a chance to have a conversation with your visitors, don’t be afraid to ask!  And make sure your staff are trained up and feel confident to have those conversations too especially your front-of-house team.

5. Have 10+ high quality images…

TripAdvisor is a pretty effective digital shop window, so make sure you’re setting it up just right. It’s been proven that businesses with 10 to 15 high-quality photos on TripAdvisor get double the customer interaction, so take some time to find your best images (or get some taken), get them uploaded and show off your business. It’s also a great way for reviewers to confirm they’re reviewing the right place and encourage photos in their own reviews.

6. Interaction is key…

Like every other social media platform, being social is non-negotiable. Make sure you’re setting aside time to respond to reviews, even (some might say, especially) the negative ones. People need to see that feedback is being heard to encourage them to leave reviews in the future. Thank them and remember to be respectful and professional, as you well know – it’s all very public! But don’t be afraid to let a little personality shine through.

7. Add physical signage…

Add some signage with a QR code to your TripAdvisor account around the place but especially at exit areas as a priority. If guests have had a great time, they’re more likely to leave a review as they leave. 

Check out some great examples on the TripAdvisor website

8. Lean in on your regulars…

Reach out to your regulars and membership base, if they’ve visited recently email them and ask for a review. If they’ve signed up to be a member for example, you know they love what you’re doing and they’re likely to leave you a good review.

9. Use reviews in your marketing…

Take advantage of this by using authentic, positive reviews and images on your social media, in physical marketing and on your website – just make sure you thank the reviewer! This fires up the concept of social proof in your followers and potential customers while also encouraging new reviews too! It’s a win-win!

10. Keep it positive…

Even when dealing with a negative review, keep things upbeat but don’t be afraid to challenge factually inaccurate reviews. Visitors are really wising up to the unqualified negative review now so if you find yourself on the receiving end of something like this, be professional but clear in your response. Visitors will see that you’re really engaged with your business and customers. If a negative review has merit, again, holding your hands up, apologising and outlining what you’ll do to rectify the problems raised is so much better than simply leaving it unanswered. 

Doing all the above consistently will start to see your business creep up the TripAdvisor algorithms and gain more visibility in a very busy space. Just remember the three pillars of the TripAdvisor algorithm, Quantity, Quality and Recency. So, make sure you’re getting regular reviews, of a good quality (not just ‘nice place’) and that they’re recent as reviews from 2 years ago won’t do anything for your account!

if you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Boost your TripAdvisor ranking with these 10 Proven Tips appeared first on MiHiDigital.

What is the Instagram Explore Page?

Before you can get your content on the Instagram Explore page, it is important to understand exactly what it is. If you’re already familiar with the Explore page, you can skip this bit and head straight to the how to get your content on the Explore page section below!

The explore page brings together content that Instagram feels a user will be interested in based on their activity. For example, if a user likes a picture of a cat, the algorithm will take note of this and show a user more cat related content. As it is so individual, no two Explore pages are alike, meaning you’ll largely be competing within your own industry for a target audience that is likely to already be interested in seeing content like yours. The explore page includes photos, videos, reels and even stories. More than 200 million accounts visit the Instagram Explore page daily, that is 50% of the platform user base! This is a huge audience to tap into and a great place to generate more leads.

How to get your content on the Instagram Explore page

Understand Your Audience
Understanding what your audience is interested in is the key to generating content that delivers results. As your audience informs so much of what you do, it’s best to make sure you’re clear on who is following you and what they like first. If you’re not entirely sure who your audience is, take some time to analyse your current followers. Go to Instagram Insights and take note of information like age, gender and location. This will help you to craft the most appealing content for your audience. You can also look at which of your current posts are the most popular and create content that is similar in style.

Post at the best time
For the algorithm, what time the content is posted is vital. Recent posts that are getting immediate engagement are more likely to appear on the Explore page as Instagram will perceive them as high value content that others will also enjoy. To establish the best time to post, again look at your Instagram Insights and see when your current audience is the most active. You can also Google the most popular days/times to post in your location and base your posting times on that.

Encourage engagement
Whilst you’re hopefully posting interesting content your users want to engage with anyway, you can use a call to action (CTA) in your caption to help encourage this. For example, ask your users to leave a comment, visit your website or watch your story. There are also story options like polls and questions where you can encourage your audience to interact with your content. This can also be a great way to gauge what content your audience wants to see more of! Don’t forget to engage back with your audience by liking and responding to comments.

Stay on topic
It can be tempting to jump on every social media trend that is gaining traction, but the reality is that not every single one of these trends is going to suit your specific business. To generate engagement and build an audience that you want to convert to customers, consistency is essential. This also relates to the algorithm, for example, if you post about fitness one day, travelling the next and dogs the day after, Instagram won’t know what your account is about and therefore won’t recommend it to an audience. Keep your message consistent and only use trending audios, challenges, etc, that work for your business.

Use all the content formats
We all process information differently and prefer different formats, so it’s important to take advantage of Instagram’s different post formats and post stories, reels and pictures, as well as create opportunities for interaction, for example, story polls. More recently, Instagram has revealed that video content, such as reels or IGTV is highly favoured and is more frequently shown than pictures. With this in mind, it is important to create reel and video content for your brand. If you don’t yet have video content for your brand, you can be sneaky and use still photos in reels instead.

Use tags
Hashtags, geotags and account tags give you the opportunity to expand your posts reach as the Explore page allows users to search for hashtag, location and topic. By adding relevant tags, you can help your audience find you. Statistics show that accounts that use tags receive more engagement on their posts than accounts that don’t. Make sure that you’re only using relevant hashtags. It can be tempting to jump on hashtags that are trending or popular, however, this can have the opposite effect of your post receiving less exposure and engagement as it appears spammy or is showing up in searches where it’s not relevant.

By using a combination of the above, you will be well on your way to featuring on the Instagram Explore page, expanding your audience and bringing in new leads for your business.

Struggling with social media and need help with your digital marketing strategy? Give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Explore the Instagram Explore Page appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Increase website traffic
A study by HubSpot Marketing showed that businesses with a blog get up to 55% more website traffic. Blogs are a great way to answer questions, solve problems your customers have, advertise new products/services, and allow your audience to get to know your brand on a more personal level.

Take the time to research what questions your audience is asking/what they’re interested in and try to answer these questions and provide a solution to any pain points. Content that offers value will help to attract potential customers to your website and increase your leads.

Good for SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Optimising your website is important to ensure that it ranks higher in search engines and is therefore more visible to potential customers.

Some of the factors that go into ranking in search engines include new content, keywords, the number of indexed pages and backlinks. By updating your website with high quality blogs on a regular basis, you can cover all these areas, which will help to improve your search engine rankings and attract more customers.

Creates content for social media
Blog content is great for repurposing as social media content, helping you to fill up spaces in your social media content calendar, as well as encourage users onto your website.

You can simply link to your blog as a whole or turn it into bite sized chunks of information, reels, highlights, infographics, or videos. You can even repurpose it to go out via email as a newsletter. The possibilities are endless!

Establishes authority within your industry
Not only does a blog allow you to connect better with your audience and give them a greater insight into your brand, but it also positions your business as an authority within your field.

Having a blog that is consistently updated, well-written and offering high-value content tells your customers that you are a credible source of information. We all like to purchase from brands that we can trust, and a blog will go a long way in helping to establish this trust with your customer base.

Drives long-term results
The good thing about blogs, particularly those that cover certain topics or answer specific questions, is that they continue to generate traffic. This is why it is so important to make sure you’re providing relevant content that is helpful to your target audience. Many businesses find that a large percentage of their organic traffic arrives on their site via blogs, this means that a blog is still working hard for you weeks, months or even years after you uploaded it.

We hope this has inspired you to get blogging but if you’re wrestling with your writing and need help with your digital marketing strategy, give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post 5 reasons you should be blogging for your business appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Here we explain exactly what that means and how you can avoid potentially costly mistakes.

What exactly is copyright?

Whilst we’re not lawyers, we’re going to give you a quick overview; if you take a photo, then you own the copyright to that photo and can choose where it goes and who is able to use it.

You could choose to use it on your own website, or you could allow someone else to use it on theirs if you were happy for them to do so.

The key point is that you have control of the image and you’re happy for someone else to use it.

Where problems arise is if someone uses that image without permission. If you were browsing the internet and found that someone else was using your photo and hadn’t asked, you’d probably be annoyed and rightly so.

And this is where people are being caught out when they (hopefully innocently) use a photo that they don’t have permission to.

When can you use an image and when can’t you use an image?

You can use an image if:

–        You took it yourself.

–        You have asked for and gained permission to use it.

–        You have purchased a license to use it (usually from a stock photography website, such as iStock or Adobe Stock).

How about images you see on Google?

When you do a google image search you will see an option to allows you to select USAGE RIGHTS (you can get to this by tapping on ‘tools’ under the search bar).

There are two types of image copyright you can choose from:

Creative commons licences:

Creative Commons licences are free licences that a rights holder might attach to an image. It lets people know how they can reuse an image without having to go back to the rights holder to ask for their permission.

Commercial or other licences:

Commercial or other licenses: These images have non-Creative Commons licenses and can be from either site available at no charge or commercial sites that require payment.

The latter would need checking in terms of whether or not you can use it, but if in doubt, simply don’t.

What happens if you use someone’s photo without permission?

If they find that you have been using their image then you’ll likely receive an email from a company such as Alamy, who will detail the page and place you’ve used the image without permission. This will also include a fee they would like you to pay in compensation. This fee can run into hundreds of £’s, so the key point here is never to take images unless you have permission, have bought them or have taken them yourself.

Please note this article is not providing legal advice for image copyright and is only an introduction to the topic area. Always seek professional legal support should you wish to discuss or learn more about this subject.

if you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow, then get in touch with Mark and the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

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