Things You Should Try in Toronto

Social Media Marketing Individual Assignment

Writing Blog Posts

More than 77% of internet users read blogs[1]. In fact, almost 7 million people visit blogs, comment to blogs, get information and advice from blogs. Nowadays businesses, educational institutions, authors, entrepreneurs and many others feel that maintaining a blogosphere presence is essential for good business.

For this next assignment, you will craft a blog post about customer service or travel topic that the target market of your hotel (group assignment) are interested in learning more about. (Read On!)

Who is the audience?

While your intended audience are those who have an interest in your hotel, other college students, people with a specific question, even idle web-surfers, will often “google” a key word or phrase and will then click on the blog that pops up with the search. Blog posts need to be designed with short attention spans in mind.

The title has to grab your attention.

Most google searches will yield hundreds of hits. Most of us don’t spend a lot of time searching these lists. As soon as something catches our eye, we click to find out more. Some people estimate that 90 seconds is about all most people will devote to scrolling through a hit list. If you are clever with your title, chances are your post will get clicked.

What is your goal with this blog post?

For this assignment, you want to write a short factual piece about a topic that would appeal to your hotel customers and that they want to learn more about. Refer to the social media marketing lectures as a guideline but topics could include travelling, the destination etc. It cannot be about the hotel directly! You will want to begin your exploration with the list of various sources that we researched in class and are posted on Blackboard and then branch out from there. You want to find an attention-grabbing image or picture (that you properly cite) and you want to provide at least one relevant internet link to an additional source of information.

Blog posts have to have an enticing first sentence.

This sentence often forms the shortened lead-in that appears in a search results page. You want to give a hint what your post is about, a teaser, without giving away the punch line.

The content in a blog post needs to be organized to be easy to navigate.

Statements or facts can be set off with bullets, or numbered in lists. Skipping lines (so, having more white space) helps a reader quickly scan the information. Long wordy paragraphs will quickly cause those itchy fingers to click away from your post. Think about the placement of your image- perhaps the image will recharge your reader to keep reading to the end of your post.

Length of your post.

Most people seem to spend no more than about a minute and a half, sometimes two minutes, reading a blog post before the urge to click away somewhere else gets too hard to resist. This means that you have to say what you want to in about 250-400 words. Posts longer than about 500 words are rarely read all the way through (unless the reader is intensely interested). Think about creative ways to add content without using many words. Or by adding a link to a web page that enhances or augments your content. Your posts should be no longer than 500 words.

Be sure to provide links or at the very least a bibliography of ALL the sources that you consult. One of the great things about blogs is the ability to click somewhere else to find out more.