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Blogging Basics For Campground Owners

Blogging Basics

So, your campground or RV park has decided to take the leap into the blogosphere. Great! There’s no shortage of ways blogging can benefit your business. However, the world of business blogging may raise a number of questions. What should your blog discuss? How many posts should get published, and how often? Who is your audience? This guide is intended to help you hit the ground running with tips on creating timely and fresh blogs that meet the needs and engage the minds of your readers.

 

Lay a Strong Foundation

A great campground or RV park blog starts with a great plan, and the planning stage is where you first answer the big questions that will determine what you write about, who you write for, and why you’re writing in the first place. Before you get drafting, be sure to know the answers to the following questions:

  • Start with buyer personas—who is going to be interested in what your campground or RV park has to say? What are their pain points, and how do your products or services address and resolve them? Targeting your content to a specific readership makes it more likely to be seen (and shared).
  • Develop a list of keywords relevant to your buyer personas. What kinds of search terms will they use when they’re looking for campground or RV parks? Knowing your keywords and putting them into use can optimize your blog to be found, guide your writing process and keep your copy consistent.
  • How often will you write? The fresher and more frequent your content, the more you’ll have to offer to your readers, and the more Google’s page rankings will look favorably on your website.
  • Set measurable goals in both the short and the long term. What is your focus? Are you looking to grow your email list and cultivate new leads, or are you working on making your brand’s voice trusted and authoritative in your field? Whatever your goals, ensure that you have reliable metrics for measuring your progress.

 

Select your Topics

Are you drawing a blank every time you sit down to write? It can be hard to come up with fresh, new content regularly, but don’t just default a product feature or fluff up a sales pitch: the point of your blogs is to provide value to your audience, not to sell to them. Remember your buyer personas? Review their pain points or problems, and assemble them into categories. These categories and their relevant personas will focus your writing and guide your use of keywords to optimize the SEO boost that the blog post provides. From here, you can begin to address some general topics.

 

Another great source of blogging inspiration is your existing customer base. Think about the kinds of questions from your campground or RV park customers that you answer on a regular basis. Many of these represent common pain points, and can easily turn into full blog posts. For every one customer who comes in or sends an email with a common question, just imagine how many there are tapping their query into Google in search of an answer!

 

Focus on Engaging Content (and Not Just Copy)

Getting the copy down is one thing, but your blog will be as dry as a bone without engaging content to supplement that copy. The content that your copy supports, more than anything, is what sets your blog apart from your competitors and drives the solution to your readers’ problem.

 

It’s best to make your own, but there are plenty of resources out there for those who don’t collect data or employ a design team.

 

  • Statistic Visuals

Provide relevant and substantiated statistics in the form of graphs and infographics—these add credibility to your posts.

  • Header and Sub-header Images

Use visuals to break up the text. The text of headers and sub-headers can often be incorporated into a relevant image that draws the reader’s attention and invites them to read further. A well-chosen graphic or photograph can serve to break up the monotony of plain text as well as add a visual frame to the information the audience receives.

  • Screenshots/photos

Finally, use screenshots or photos to demonstrate your solution in action. Remember that you’re here to provide value, not to sell.

 

The more your readers can learn from your post, the more likely they are to return to your blog when they have another question that needs an answer.

 

What’s your Campground’s or RV Park’s Story?

Tell compelling stories (and entice readers with snappy titles). A narrative is a powerful tool, and experts use it in sales and marketing all the time. Framing the movement from conflict to resolution as a journey makes your audience more receptive to the information you have to share and puts it within a familiar and memorable framework.

 

What is your voice? Choose one that best encompasses your campground or RV park. Anecdotes and stories can use the first-person voice (I, we) to draw readers in and demonstrate your unique way of overcoming challenges in ways that others can learn from and put into practice. A second-person voice (you, your) allows readers to visualize themselves acting out your solutions as you offer them, while a third-person voice (he, she, they, them) is suited to communicating stories about how your campground or RV park has been part of another customer’s success.

 

Leverage your buyer personas and their challenges to tell stories that will engage your audience and show how your business fits into their lives. Your posts don’t have to read like a novel, but putting your info in action will help transform your blog from a lecture into a success story.

 

Sharing is Caring

You’ve written something you’re proud of, so be sure to put it out there! Share your new blog on your campground’s or RV park’s other marketing channels, and put the work in to gain readers from outside of Google and your website. Leveraging your social media following to widen your blog’s audience has the added benefit that a new post that a follower finds useful or interesting is always easy to share with their own network. The more readers that come to see your campground or RV park as a trusted source of information, the better!

 

Where there’s an overlap in information or your blog posts address similar issues, have them link to each other! An engaged reader will always be ready to find out more and demonstrating that you have more information to offer shows you’re invested in them.

 

Finish Strong

Finally, and importantly, bring things home with a call to action. While the point of your blog isn’t to sell, it’s important to give your readers something to engage with that allows them to take action and apply their new knowledge. Whether it’s more content, a link to a product or promotion or a contact form, your readers will have a way to act on their inspiration, and you will have a way to track engagement and turn readers into leads.

 

Ready to start blogging for your campground or RV park? By following these tips, you should be well on your way to inspiring your own readers with engaging stories, compelling content, and valuable information that will provide a reliable source of information for your customers.

 

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