The recent Bilderberg meetings coming in June 2013 to The Grove Hotel have done some interesting things in regard to their SEO. I’ll keep conspiracies and negativity out of this post and focus on the marketing aspect of having such an event at your hotel. While this event is perhaps seen as a negative to a lot of people, I wonder what the marketing team for The Grove is thinking with all this social buzz around them.
There has been 665 social mentions in the past 30 days according to Topsy.com.
It’s not surprise that holding such an event is going to attract attention, and if that attention is organic links and social followers, then they’re going to clean up. Let’s take a look at what all this attention is doing for them and perhaps you hoteliers can learn a thing or two about events and link bait.
While it’s still early, I expect their link profile to grow by at least 7-10% over the course of the conference. The Bilderberg conference runs from June 6th – 9th 2013 and there will be a lot of journalists and press waiting around in the bush. As for the attendees, don’t expect much to come from them.
Since a lot of the sites the links are coming from are not going to want to give any credit to the hotel, I think we will see a lot less links coming in. With that being said, one quick glance with Ahrefs.com shows that since the announcement, their link profile has experienced some growth.
The Grove Hotel should be in a good spot after this event in both their organic search listings as well as new social media followers. I should have perhaps waited until the conference was over but right now is prime time for attracting links, and I don’t even think The Grove Hotel realizes it.
How Could They Capture More Links?
Since these meetings have such a negative stigma to them, The Grove Hotel hasn’t mentioned a peep about it on their website or any of their social media accounts. The silence itself is interesting but if they chose to tease conspiracy theorists a bit I think they could troll their way to link bait gold.
Idea 1) Infographic Fodder
Infographics are still a link bait cash cow if done correctly and there is certainly enough ideas to grasp from for content. Around this time last year there was an infographic done regarding the members and connections involved with the attendees. While I don’t know how factual it is(doesn’t matter on the internet), it attracted a huge amount of buzz with a lot of the propulsion coming from a BusinessInsider.com post on the infographic.
An infographic dispelling some of the myths about the group might be an interesting angle. I think going for something that will enrage a little and get a debate going will bring in the shares. A lot of high end companies like The Grove Hotel will most likely not have the “balls” to get involved with anything too risque.
Idea 2) Media Coverage Opportunities
Since the Bilderberg group is trying to be more open about its meetings, the press will actually get a slight chance to perhaps talk about it. While every news corporation is owned by someone attending this meeting, I guess this might be an optional marketing tactic.
