Our Managing Director Mark Worden said “We’re delighted to be able to continue our support for these awards, which shine a light on those leading the way in the tourism and hospitality marketplace. Having been involved with the awards for so many years, we know that the bar is set incredibly high; anyone who wins an award on the night deserves all of the recognition and praise they receive and are instrumental in making the South West such an attractive destination for those not only in the UK, but all over the world!”

We will be sponsoring the Visitor Information category, which fits well with our own work within the industry; we are proud to say that seven of the region’s most significant destinations now use MiHi as their web development agency.

Winners will be announced on the 16th November. Good luck to everyone involved in this year’s Devon Tourism Awards.

The post MiHi Digital continues support for the Devon Tourism Awards appeared first on MiHiDigital.

We were first approached by Birchill Farm toward the start of the summer period. They knew we were specialists in tourism marketing and wanted our guidance on how to increase bookings, having taken the business over just a couple of years ago.

Once we’d visited and looked around, it was clear a large gap existed between what was on their website and the heavenly reality of what is there. With that in mind, replacing the old site with one that does them justice was a central part of our plan; there is no point in driving lots of traffic if people can’t easily see how blooming awesome it is!

We also gave guidance on their approach to listing sites, as well as their approach to email marketing.

You can view their new website here: https://birchillfarm.co.uk/

The post New website launched for Birchill Farm Holiday Cottages appeared first on MiHiDigital.

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.

The MiHi team recently helped Great Eckworthy to launch a website just as stylish as their luxury holiday cottages.

When the new owners of Great Eckworthy moved down to this area of Devon, they knew they wanted to work with an agency who understood the tourism industry like the back of their hand. In other words, Mihi were the perfect fit! With no existing website, they needed a team to create something sleek and sophisticated from scratch.

And the mission was a success, don’t you think?

You can view their website here: https://greateckworthy.com/

The post New website launched for Great Eckworthy 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.

Because we work with more than 100 accommodation and hospitality providers in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, as well as some of the major destinations, we’re fortunate to have a front row seat to overall trends in the industry in this part of the world is seeing. 

Here’s what we’ve noticed….

A drop in early traffic levels during the year

Many sites within the South West Tourism Industry have seen year-on-year traffic for Q1 drop by somewhere between 5 – 25%.

There are two core reasons for this:

• January of last year was at the back end of the post-Covid traffic surge of 2021 (brought about by a lack of international travel and people seeking their first opportunity to get out after lockdowns). This means that figures were artificially higher last year, and you would expect to have some drop off this year.

• However, there has been a noticeable drop in demand since last year, which has been exacerbated by people booking closer and closer to the date of their arrival. This means, as an example, that traffic that would commonly be booking for the summer may currently be booking for Easter. As a result of that summer booking traffic levels (which are often higher) are being pushed to later in the year.

In terms of good news, the majority of the 5 – 25% drop is usually found in January, with February and March traffic levels rallying against and sometimes above last year’s numbers.

My overall feeling is a lot more positive now than it was at the start of the year.

Uncertainty leads to a delay in decision making and bookings 

We’ve mentioned that people are booking closer and closer to the time of arrival, but why are they doing that? As humans we like certainty, and many people need it when planning. Over recent months we’ve faced what seemed like a long winter, economic difficulties, a cost of living crisis, a war in Europe….the list goes on and on….

All those factors bring uncertainty and that in turn delays decision making. For you, it means their booking comes into your booking engine closer to when they’ll be joining you. That in turn brings you uncertainty, as you look at your calendar and feel that it’s not as full as it usually would be by now 

My view on this is that bookings will come, but they will come later; I’ve every expectation that if your marketing is right, booking revenue this year shouldn’t be dropping by any large amount.

The importance of repeat trade

There’s one thing that trumps the trend above (of people booking later) and that is the beauty of repeat guests; they book earlier, they come more often and they’ll also tell people about you too! 

There’s never been a more important time to be on your game when it comes to getting people back to your property than now; if you’re not doing it then you’re going to be paying more for new guests (see my next point) and you’re going to have the stress of them booking later. 

Levels of supply are still high 

Another factor affecting the market is the level of supply. During the Covid period, and just after, the number of cottages on the market through platforms such as Airbnb soared. That wasn’t a problem when supply was also soaring and there was a limited amount of international travel. 

However, there has been a drop in demand and because supply is still high in South West Tourism, it means that demand is spread across a wider range of options. Just like spreading jam on a loaf of toast rather than a slice, it means that booking coverage is being stretched and effective marketing to a defined audience is becoming more important. If you don’t market, you’re likely to find yourself often being the ones with the gap.

My summary: 

• Traffic to sites was down in January but has begun to rally.
• Levels of supply are still very high, and demand has dropped slightly.
• People are generally booking later.
• A focus on repeat trade can insulate cottage owners from market fluctuations.

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 Our Overview of the South West Tourism Sector During Q1 of 2023 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.

Instagram and YouTube have a more varied audience
For most businesses, Instagram and YouTube provide a better target market. TikTok has been dominated by Gen Z since its launch and that is showing no signs of changing. This is great news if your business is targeted at Gen Z but bad news if it isn’t. The limited audience range makes it difficult to promote your business, whilst in comparison, Instagram and YouTube have a varied user base so no matter how niche your business is, you’ll be able to find an audience for what you offer.

Instagram and YouTube are more business friendly
TikTok is widely known for its informal and light hearted content with trends and dances becoming particularly popular. This means there is less scope for selling products and services effectively, particularly when you compare it to Instagram and YouTube which actively make it easier to sell your products/services through features like clickable links. Whilst you can of course use trending audios and take part in challenges, the chances are that very few of these are going to be suitable for your business.

Instagram offers more format options
Chances are when it comes to your products or services, you need to get a certain amount of information across. This is where Instagram and YouTube can reign supreme over TikTok. Both these platforms allow you to post longer format videos, letting you get all the information across whereas TikTok is more geared to short, snappy content. Instagram also gives you more options on how you’d like to present your content, including images, stories, longer captions, reels and videos. This makes it easier to create varied content that will appeal to a wider audience, as some people will prefer image content over video.

Instagram and YouTube deliver better results
Whilst it can be tempting to focus all your energy on TikTok videos because of its popularity, the goal of any business’s social media is to increase brand awareness and revenue. For most businesses, lead generation on TikTok is going to be significantly smaller because the target market is not going to be as wide as Instagram or YouTube. That’s why we recommend focusing social media marketing efforts on Instagram or YouTube, ahead of TikTok.

Whilst there are pros to using TikTok and it does have a large user base, the core issue with it is that for most businesses, their target audience is not going to be on it. You may get video views but if they’re not engaging with your business, endless views aren’t going to help you.

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 TikTok for businesses: Are Instagram and YouTube still relevant? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Today we meet the second star of MiHi Digital, Tanita. Bunny mum with excellent hair, she’s relatively new to the team but has become a vital part of the MiHi family after only a few weeks! So here are 10 vitally important things you MUST know about Tanita…

What’s your name and role?

Tanita Clark, Digital Marketing Executive

When did you join the MiHi Team?

November 2022

What’s your favourite viral video?

CATCH HIM DERRY!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9lXfu6jLDw&ab_channel=SteadyPop

Who’s your number one influencer?

Currently @whereispoppie

What is your office essential?

Cup of tea

Where was your best holiday experience?

Disneyland Paris

Top tip for starting out on social media?

Make sure you’re clear on who your audience is, this will help to inform everything from imagery to language.

What would your Mastermind category be?

The very niche topic of bunny rabbits!

How many followers do you have on your most popular social media account? 

I only have a personal account on Instagram, but you should check out our MiHi Digital account at @mihidigital

Recommend a great place to eat/drink in the Southwest?

Slice of Cornwall, Falmouth

I highly recommend the waffles!

sliceofcornwall.com

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 Meet the team at MiHi Digital… Tanita Clark appeared first on MiHiDigital.