 So, my soapbox has always been about inbound marketing. As someone in the meetings and events industry, it just made sense for me to attract people into my world versus the hard, cold-calling, pushing-selling tactics of other industries. Why do I think that inbound marketing and hospitality go together like peanut butter and jam? I'm sharing that today as well as some platforms you can use as a hospitality professional to amplify your message. Stick around. Fun, it's Leanne. And when I first started in sales, it didn't take me long to realize that the hard sell and the cold-calling tactics used in other industries, well, it just wasn't going to work for me in how I wanted to grow my business. I liked giving to my clients, I liked creating resources, and I liked researching. So when I stumbled on the term inbound marketing several years ago, I knew that it was the strategy for me to use in growing my own business. So why do I think it's such a good fit for hospitality? Well, let's look into that. But first, let's look at a few definitions. Inbound marketing, it's defined as creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and your business using relevant and helpful content to attract them to your website or blog. It can be done through a number of social media platforms, and many inbound marketers use multiple platforms to push their value-based content out to prospects. Hospitality is defined as the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, and cares for the whole universe through the ties to humanity. Wow, those are powerful words. It is the way people treat others that is the service of welcoming guests. Now that you've seen these two definitions, these two philosophies, do you see how they align with one another? It makes sense that an inbound marketing strategy would work in the hospitality industry. So knowing that, what platforms are there for us to use to amplify our messages through inbound marketing, and how do you decide which one is the best for you? The first platform for most organizations is your business's website. Instead of your own branding efforts, ensuring that your business website is welcoming guests, visitors, and strangers through creating valuable experiences, this should be top of mind. The second most common strategy in platform is email. Email marketing is still very much alive and well, and when done in the spirit of inbound marketing and giving back to your clients, providing value in the context of your email, your open and email retention rates may go up. The third platform is webinars, and boy did we ever see these come on strong in 2020. By providing content and entertainment through webinars, you deepen the relationship with your consumers, and you stay top of mind when the time comes for business to be done. Now let's take a look at some of the social media platforms. The one that comes top of mind if you are in a B2B industry is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the business social media platform, and it's a logical fit for hospitality professionals who are in the B2B environment. There are a number of things that you can do on this platform, including optimizing your profile so that people are drawn to you when they land on it, posting articles and posts, extending invitations to potential clients, and commenting on other people's content. These are all great ways to start an inbound marketing machine on LinkedIn. Another social media platform that's really great for B2B but also B2C is of course Facebook. It's proven to be a highly effective platform for hospitality. And if you want to be heard, Facebook has a larger audience for you to tap into. You can extend your content to people you don't know through Facebook ads, but you can also grow your presence organically, either through your own personal page or a Facebook business page. Another highly effective platform for hospitality is Instagram, especially in hospitality where images and video are key for bringing in people. It's where a ton of your potential clients are hanging out, and they're looking for you to wow them with pictures that engage and invite them into your story. You can use your own pictures, or you can lean on your organization's photos to post on your Instagram. One of the most overlooked platforms for hospitality, but incredibly effective, is Pinterest. Pinterest works more like a search engine than anything else, and it's the fastest growing search engine in the social media space. It's that problem solver bulletin board next to YouTube and Google, but it's the graphics and the easy to pin method of cataloging content that makes it so popular. And in hospitality, when tips and tricks are key for bringing in people through an inbound marketing strategy, Pinterest is a great way to do it. Taking your experience one step further is to do some video to showcase your product or service. YouTube and video is still king for attracting people through an inbound marketing strategy. Ensure that you're building consistent content for your guests and customers, and your content will continue to rise up the charts. And finally, good old Twitter, 280 characters to communicate a message and build an audience. Twitter is best done when you cross promote through some of the other platforms, but still seen as an incredible inbound marketing tool as you're advertising the content that you're giving to your customers. Deciding on which platforms to use for your inbound marketing strategy will depend on your customers and clients. Where are they hanging out and how do they best consume their content? Remember, the key to creating content and expanding to platforms has to do with your bandwidth. So ensure you're staying consistent on one platform before deciding to add an additional platform. Are you using inbound marketing strategy to attract clients to your product or service? Let us know in the comments below what platform you are using and how you are seeing effective engagement by using it. And if you're looking for ways to marry your inbound marketing strategy with your businesses inbound marketing strategy, I recently did a post about personal brand and business brand and you can find the tips and tricks right up here. Friends, the key to inbound marketing is testing, testing and retesting to see what content resonates with your ideal client. Keep trying out things, see what resonates with your community and stay committed to trying inbound marketing to grow your business. Best of luck to you. Please stay in touch. Bye for now.