How to Write and Publish a Guest Post on HotelMinder

Guest posts are always a good opportunity to tap into a successful team's audience and potential. It's also the perfect way to display the in-depth experience and knowledge about a subject. With guest posts on HotelMinder, you can showcase your thoughts, ideas, products, and services to hoteliers and industry leaders across the globe, thereby establishing yourself as a thought leader, not just someone advertising something.

While nobody wants to constantly see promotional or advertising material, everybody wants an answer to a question, doubt, or query. Getting a user interested in your content can be the perfect way to generate interest for your product or service.

However, what's crucial is the way in which you do it. We thought we'd pen down certain ideas, which would help you understand how to guest post on HotelMinder. These thoughts are based on a comprehensive analysis of various posts on our website, considering what the most viewed ones focused upon and included.

About Our Editorial Line

We only publish content that suits our editorial line. We consider it to be our responsibility to provide value to our readers and visitors. Thus, your content should be:

• relevant to the hospitality industry
• unique not published anywhere else
• honest not salesy / spammy

In addition to this, the submitted content should also be:

• written in proper English and reviewed by a professional copywriter
• properly structured with an introduction, a conclusion, and some paragraphs with headers that make sense
• created with visuals. Ensure you submit one header image, and depending on the length of your content, between 3 to 5 other visuals.

Think About Your Goals: Long Term vs Short Term

Our goal is to become the ultimate resource for small and medium independent hotel owners and managers worldwide. Your objectives might be different, and that's OK.

Depending on your goals, here's what we recommend:

• If you want short term exposure, write about a new feature you released, your plans for the future, your take on the current economy, your predictions for next year, etc. Such articles tend to do well in the short-term, particularly on social media, but quickly become less and less relevant. They are recommended for immediate exposure. For example, look at our Expert Partners guest posts.
• If you're in it for the long haul, write in-depth guides, explain key concepts, share your knowledge and experience, etc. Such articles tend to do well in the long-term. They become a reference point, and are linked to search engines like Google, thereby bringing them to the top of search results pages. Backlinks are quite valuable in these articles, which are recommended for long-term relevance, etc. For examples, look at our Academy pages.

Write Quality Content

It isn't easy to write quality content but anyone can learn. The key is to do some research and try to write the best article on the subject you are covering.

If you are in it for the long-term but don't have the resources to research and put together the right content for a quality article, we can help.

Our pricing depends on the length of the article, on the amount of research required, and the complexity of the subject. Feel free to contact us for details anytime.

1. Research

Google what you want to write about and use Google suggestions to find the sentences, questions, and keywords people have been looking for on the search engine. The goal is to find all the associated keywords and phrases Google built around the subject. This helps you create a comprehensive article that includes everything relevant. It's the secret to the first position on search engines.

2. Structure

Once you know exactly what you're going to write about, structure it. Group keywords and ideas, and put them together in a way that makes sense. There's the skeleton of your article!

3. Copy

Talk to users like you're making conversation. In other words, write like you speak. You got that, right? Read the content you write aloud to someone. If it's good, it will sound like you're having a discussion.

Here's a great quote from Gary Provost: "This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with the energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say listen to this, it is important."

You can use the tool available on hemingwayapp.com to help make your text simpler and better.

If English isn't your first language or you don't have a copywriter, our content team can review your content before publication.

Long form articles rank better, but it's bad practice to add 'fluff' to your content. Stick to helpful advice and information and don't worry about the length.

Make Something People Want to Link To

You are welcome to link to virtually anything you want - as long as it's perfectly relevant and not behind a wall (think paywall or content only accessible in exchange for contact details), but you need to make sure you aim for quality and contextuality over quantity - that's how good SEO and user experience is assured.

Don't link to the same page more than once in an article and remember to only link to websites in a way that is relevant and contextual.

We remove links, if there are too many, and tag the ones we consider irrelevant or spammy as 'nofollow'. To be honest, this is for your own good, and ours too. This is to protect your article's and our ranking with search engines, and it is non-negotiable.

On guests post, we will add small interstitial cards linking to your own listing page from the Marketplace.

Don't Promote your Business

Instead of looking for ways to write about what you are selling, or change what you want to write in order to include your company website in the content, try to add value to your readers or potential customers and don't even think about promoting your own product.

Maybe write a concluding paragraph with certain pointers to your offerings? But don't do it too much. Your readers won't be interested in you selling, but in you providing - core value.

The concluding paragraph is the right place to establish a connection with the main points of your content and the product or service your business sells. Moreover, it makes sure that readers will remember your name as a source of quality content. You can link to your website there - but you cannot use a lead magnet.

Write Under your Own Name

We prefer articles credited to a real person rather than a business name. A face and a name are much better at creating a relationship with readers.

You / your company will remain the credited author of the content you submit, with the following limitations and conditions:

• HotelMinder will update the author section at the bottom of the article upon your request so that it remains up-to-date and reflects your professional profile (or your company) in a good way - but we will not change the author to a different entity.
• The link (if any) in your signature will link to your listing in the marketplace.
• You will allow HotelMinder to reuse the content and publish it in different forms (with attribution back to you as an author whenever relevant).

Write for Our Academy

HotelMinder Academy's goal is to be the ultimate source of quality content for small and medium independent hotels and chains worldwide. It's very ambitious indeed! But we believe we can do it, with your help. Our vision is to aggregate the best resources, kind of like a hub of knowledge. Something like university professors share with their students.

There are a lot of advantages of being a part of our Academy. Our articles are shared with students and universities all around the world. We also regularly review and update the content and check the links for the article to stay relevant, etc.

To get your article published in our Academy, we recommend you first validate the topic with us and give us the structure, i.e., the editorial skeleton of the article with the main headlines and key ideas.

We will always publish quality, vendor-neutral articles for free.

Conclusion

To publish guest posts on HotelMinder, take a look at our partner program. If you want to publish guest posts outside the scope of the 'Expert Package', or wish to include more articles with the 'Expert Package', contact us for details on options and pricing.

For now, let's summarize what we talked about in the last few minutes.

• Posting on HotelMinder is an opportunity to display the in-depth experience and knowledge you and/or your company has about hospitality. You can showcase this knowledge to global hoteliers and industry peers.
• We only publish relevant, unique, honest, and 'not salesy' content written in proper English.
• You should ensure your content is well-structured with paragraphs delimited by headers. It should also provide visuals (header images and about 1 visual per 500 words).
• If you write quality, non-vendor specific, informative content, we would be delighted to publish it as part of our Academy - for free. This comes with many added benefits.
• Only link to perfectly relevant content and ensure the link makes sense for the reader. If you want to promote your own company, we recommend you do it at the end of the article in a dedicated paragraph.
• Provide a photo and a short bio of the author, the author has to be a real person, not a business.