Talking Shizzle

Booked & Branded: How to Build a Hotel Everyone Wants to Stay (and Post) In

• Taylor Shanklin

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About the Guest(s):

Mallory Green is the founder of Rains Marketing, an agency dedicated to creating scroll-stopping content for hotel and travel brands. With extensive experience in hotel branding, influencer collaborations, and social media strategy, Mallory has built a reputation for transforming generic content into engaging, user-generated social media experiences. Her expertise lies in blending creativity with strategic planning to deliver compelling campaigns that resonate with target audiences. Mallory also hosts the Oui Oui Travel Podcast, where she explores the dynamic world of travel marketing and shares insights from her work in the industry.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Talking Shizzle, host Taylor Wilson sits down with Mallory Green, founder of Rains Marketing, to delve into the vibrant world of hotel branding and influencer marketing. With a focus on crafting distinctive identities for hotel brands, Mallory shares her expertise on creating content that grabs attention and drives engagement. The conversation unpacks the intricacies of working with influencers, planning creative campaigns, and the unique challenges faced in the travel marketing sector. Listeners will gain insights into the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into developing captivating social media content for leading hotel brands.

The episode tackles the myths and realities of influencer marketing, showcasing how Mallory's team effectively sources and collaborates with influencers to create authentic and impactful content. They discuss the balance between digital engagement and the on-ground realities of hotel branding, emphasizing the importance of understanding each property's unique offerings. The discussion also touches on the evolving social media landscape, exploring the role of platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and even emerging technologies such as AI in shaping brand narratives. With a focus on innovative strategies and experiences, this episode is a treasure trove for marketers seeking to enhance their brand's visibility in the competitive travel sector.

Key Takeaways:

  • Highlighting the role of influencer marketing in creating authentic connections with audiences and driving hotel brand engagement.
  • Emphasizing the importance of user-generated content and detailed planning in crafting successful marketing campaigns.
  • Understanding the challenges and strategies in differentiating hotel brands in a homogeneous market.
  • Exploring the potential of AI and emerging social platforms in enhancing the impact of travel marketing efforts.
  • The crucial balance between creativity and logistics in event planning and executing marketing initiatives effectively.

Resources:

Dive into this enriching conversation to uncover the dynamic world of travel marketing with Mallory Green. For those seeking to master the art of brand differentiation and engaging content creation, this episode is not to be missed. Keep tuning in for more insightful episode

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0:00:00 Taylor Wilson: Foreign. Hey, hey, hey, all you lovely people out there, I know you’ve got a.

0:00:08 Mallory Green: Lot going on in your day and.

0:00:09 Taylor Wilson: You have big dreams for your brand. Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and overall interesting people who.

0:00:23 Mallory Green: Like to shake things up?

0:00:24 Taylor Wilson: I’m your host, Taylor Wilson, founder of Creative shizzle, and I’m stoked to bring you a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle today. This show is all about helping you think differently so that you can grow your business or your cause. Check us out on the web at creativeshizzle.com now let’s get into it and talk some shizzle.

0:00:51 Taylor Wilson: All right, welcome. Welcome to a new episode of Talking Shizzle where we talk all sorts of shizzle when it comes to marketing and entrepreneurship and growing a business. And I’m excited to talk today to Mallory Green. What’s up, Mallory?

0:01:06 Mallory Green: Hello. What’s going on, Taylor?

0:01:07 Taylor Wilson: Good. It’s a Friday, so that’s good. I saw before we started recording, you showed me your puppy. You got a new dachshund. I’ve got a dachshund. You’ve got multiple dachshunds. So, like, I’m feeling good about this.

0:01:19 Mallory Green: Anybody who has a doxy, I’m just honestly, like, drawn to them. I’m like, we just get it. We understand each other.

0:01:25 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, like, I see you. So this. This episode’s going to be even better than I ever expected. So, Mallory, you started rains marketing, and you, you’ve been in the marketing game for a while. You started your agency to really help build brands and as you call it, scroll stopping. Yes, scroll stopping content on social media for hotel brands, travel brands. And you work a lot in the influencer marketing space.

0:01:55 Taylor Wilson: You started your own podcast called We Travel, which I love because it’s French. It’s like a play on the French word of we like, yes to travel. It’s clever. And so I wanted to talk today with you about, like, tell me about the world of hotel branding and marketing and working with influencers. That is not something that I do or we do. And so I’m always fascinated to talk to people who do marketing in other arenas than myself.

0:02:23 Taylor Wilson: And, like, what’s a day in the life of that?

0:02:25 Mallory Green: Like, honestly, I feel like this is really repetitive with what other people say, but each day is never the same. So, like, from content creation to working with these hotels, like, last week we went to a new boutique property here in San Diego, the Boardwalk Hotel, steps away from both the Mission Bay and then the Pacific Ocean, you can go kayaking in one, you can go stand up, paddle boarding, surfing, swimming, whatever in the other.

0:02:48 Mallory Green: And we were there from like 8am to 12, just like shooting different styles of content. We had like the models, all those fun things. And that ties back to like the influencer marketing site. Right. Constantly getting engaging, fun, like you said, scroll stopping content. You have to have these influencers who a understand flexibility and can capture the content that you visualize for the property, that the team visualizes for their social media channels and what they visualize for their own page. Right. So it all has to align and fit in within all those different, I want to say like landscapes and content type. So playing around with those two things, getting the content, making sure the influencer, the collaboration all aligns and then at the end getting that scroll stopping content on everyone’s feeds and pages and having it go viral like that is like the creme of the creme, what we really go after.

0:03:40 Mallory Green: And while that sounds like everything goes to plan, it’s a dream and it’s a great photo shoot and video shoot. It’s like weeks and weeks and weeks on top of planning behind the scenes that goes into that. So that’s just one day. But those weeks of planning before that and then like sourcing the influencers and making sure the deliverables were all met and the contracts were all signed and everybody was happy. But we do about three or four of those a month, so at different locations all over the country.

0:04:09 Taylor Wilson: So you probably spend your days traveling around a lot. Like you’re probably on site most of the time.

0:04:15 Mallory Green: Right. I dedicate myself to all the local properties within California just because I have two small children at home and now puppy and another dog and husband. Can’t forget about my loving husband. So I, we have a team now of six or seven that I can say, hey, can we plan for next month? We’re going to Colorado. Can you just pack up like your drone photography to get those aerial shots that we need for this one campaign that they’re hosting in October to showcase the new wedding veranda or so on and so forth.

0:04:44 Mallory Green: So we make sure that everyone’s schedules are compatible with that freedom to travel whenever that they can. So that way I can always know in advance who’s available to go to what property and make sure it all aligns with what the property team client wants.

0:04:59 Taylor Wilson: I bet it’s really different. That’s why I think it’s fascinating to think about because like we work with a lot of our stuff is more digitally Focused like in terms of like we’re on zooms and we’re working with a lot of B2B brands and, and nonprofit organizations, small businesses. And so it’s not so much like going on site all the time and being in the weeds of it. And I think it just sounds probably really, really fun, but also really like stressful in some ways, I’m sure. Kind of much like event planning. It’s probably like, there’s probably a lot of shit shows too where you’re like, oh, everything went wrong today.

0:05:35 Mallory Green: There’s some stories, we put out fires. Luckily enough though, the event team, like the sales and catering team that’s always on property, they usually do like a beo banquet of events order form as like our photo and video shoot. So everyone on property knows exactly what’s happening, happening at all times. But yes, humans, obviously we make mistakes. There’s errors. One time we were at a shoot and they set up the wrong banquet room and we had to quickly pivot exchange rooms. It was like a U shaped layout. We needed rounds for an actual like wedding event space and it was set up as like a meeting space in the wrong banquet room. So it’s just things like that. You have to think on your feet and be super.

0:06:14 Mallory Green: You’re like just guzzling coffee all day, you haven’t eaten in the last 12 hours and you’re just sweating and you’re going through different camera gear, change gear, whatever and it’s, it’s just fun.

0:06:25 Taylor Wilson: How about like MacGyver marketing a little bit more, you know, where you have to be like MacGyver on set and figure out what’s a funny story. What was one of the funny, like, I don’t know what, Give me one of those crazy stories. Like what was one of the things we had planned? Everything just perfect and then everything went wr. And what did you do to get around it and work around it and make the brand still look great?

0:06:49 Mallory Green: It was at a San Diego property and we had four models and it was for like a recent big wedding catalog. And so we wanted to showcase the various different venues that were on site that the models could like go and take pictures of. Well, one of them didn’t show up. So we made it, we made it work. But it was more of like a, I don’t want to say a throuple. There’s just three of them. It was two brides and a groom. And we made it as if like the sister. The bridesmaid. The bridesmaid was there also dressed in like a Nice wedding dress. It didn’t look like the wedding gown, but. So it looked like a thruffle. It wasn’t. We just pivoted. It looked like a bridesmaid kind of wearing a wedding dress. And it was, it was funny.

0:07:39 Mallory Green: But in the end, like, the, the videos that were captured, like the two brides are, like, doing each other’s makeup and like, the groom came over and gave the sister a peck on the cheek and then like kissed the other one romantically. And they were all looking over the veranda and it was, you know, pretty. We had the aerial drone, but it did make for a funny story because people, like passing by, they’re like, are they trying to capture like a threesome wedding, like, going on? But in the end, editorial feature and everything, it was very tasteful and it did not look like that.

0:08:11 Taylor Wilson: Did they plan that or was the bride surprised?

0:08:15 Mallory Green: No, it was fine if they were all models. Our other model didn’t show up. I guess we could have had someone on site be like one of the extra grooms and come on board, but we were so busy running around that it just ended up working. The photo still came out great. The client was happy. We still were able to post on our side and make everything look professional and cohesive. It was just interesting from if you were there and looking at it, like, what is happening here? Why?

0:08:40 Taylor Wilson: So one of the things we were talking about was the fact that it seems like a lot of travel marketing feels the same. Again, I’m not in this, but I do see almost like a similar brand vibe when I think about, like the travel brands that I scroll through Instagram and look at. How do you stand out? What are some of the things you do to differentiate and make a hotel brand or a travel brand really, truly look unique from others?

0:09:10 Mallory Green: So I always see those brands and I know exactly the company that’s doing their branches. I’m not going to say it. They’re very cookie cutter. They make a lot of stock photography or they source a lot of stock photography. They’re not very cohesive with overall branding and it just kills the overall vibe and what exactly the hotel is trying to offer and get their guests to come and stay at. Because every, every other page looks the same, whether it’s looking at like a doubletree Hilton or a Marriott, like a Courtyard or something like that. Like those, those smaller brands, like three star level, two star level.

0:09:45 Mallory Green: And it’s really frustrating because each of those independently has something to offer, whether that’s like the free breakfast or the pool or the, the amenities like within the room or walking to the beach if it’s in a tropical place or to the mountainsides if you’re like in Aspen, Colorado. And it just frustrates me that these agencies just think that every one of these branded hotels is the same because that’s absolutely not true.

0:10:10 Mallory Green: So we come in and we rely heavily on UGC that already sourced user generated content influencers and how these collaborations to come in. Take these reels, carousel posts, stories, whatever it may be. We get full access and usage rights forever for these collaborations and we utilize them for our next content calendar. So it just kills me that some of these agencies come in and just kill the creative side.

0:10:34 Mallory Green: Totally don’t even mention what each of these hotels has to offer and just has stock littered all over these social feeds. No one wants to see that. No, that’s not scroll stopping content. That’s just someone being lazy and thinking that it applies to all hotels across the board and it truly doesn’t and it just is going to hurt them in the long run. So I’ve been very vocal about this. On the Rain’s marketing side.

0:10:57 Mallory Green: I send dms like no other to these brands, whether these doubletree Hilton to the court on Marriotts or whatever. And I’m like, hey, we’re here, look at our stuff. I send them our portfolio. Like we can help differentiate what you already have. We really focus in on what makes you unique, your property, rave about all your guest reviews. People love to see what other like what other people are saying. People get FOMO and we really hone in on fear of missing out and making that the number one thing that when people are on social media they’re like, I want to go there, I need to stop what I’m doing, grab my laptop, book a flight and go stay there. Because that woman just looks like she had the time of her life and I want to feel that way, like we want it to emotion.

0:11:42 Taylor Wilson: Do you focus mostly on like hotel brands? Are there other travel brands or types of travel brands that you’re focused on or is it primarily hotels?

0:11:52 Mallory Green: Primarily hotels. I would love to work with travel groups like media and Amadeus and different kind of like revenue focused groups. But for the most part since we are B2B, I think we’re going to just stay in focus in our lane at this point in time and make the client happy with getting their social media feeds and making those booking conversions happen on that side. But I’d love to branch off into like travel and tourism authority here in San Diego or Visit California, like, doing those huge brand partnerships. So it’s something that holds just.

0:12:30 Mallory Green: That would be really amazing to work with.

0:12:32 Taylor Wilson: I got a totally random question. When you travel, hotel or Airbnb, I’m.

0:12:37 Mallory Green: Not going to go in someone’s home when I can just go stay at, like, a fun hotel and get room service and, you know.

0:12:44 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, there’s a bar. Like, when you run out of toilet paper, you just go down the front desk.

0:12:50 Mallory Green: I have enough out my. My. My home here on my plate. So, yeah, I love hotels.

0:12:56 Taylor Wilson: Like, I love traveling around and going to different hotels and seeing how they’re all different. And I love the consistency that hotels bring to. To the travel experience, especially if you get into, like, a brand and you kind of know what to expect with certain brands. That’s one of the things that I. I enjoy about hotels, personally, over, like, Airbnb, even though it’s funny, I used to manage Airbnb, but, like, never actually would stay at an Airbnb.

0:13:21 Mallory Green: Okay. How was the man managing?

0:13:23 Taylor Wilson: It was fine. I mean, we had a property manager that helped us with, like, cleaning crew and bookings and everything like that. So it was pretty hands off. And to be honest, like, it was kind of a cool experience to figure out, like, how to make an Airbnb experience like a hotel experience. So that was the sort of thing that I thought about as the property owner, to, like, bring the hotel experience to Airbnb, because that’s where I think a lot of Airbnb stuff goes wrong, is, like, it’s inconsistent. And a lot of people, they just, like, don’t do those little fine touches that you get at a hotel.

0:14:00 Taylor Wilson: So that’s like. This is totally off topic of what we’re gonna talk about, but I think it’s always interesting to ask people, especially since you were in this space.

0:14:08 Mallory Green: Yeah, no, I honestly think that’s great that you made it so like, a hotel, because, like you said, people expect things from hotel brands, and it’s that. That acts of service. I think that’s what really makes a difference. So, like, if you had an amenity or like, a stocked fridge when they arrived, not like, with food, but, like, with beers or wine or whatever their favorite drink is. Like, I think that would add so much more. And your. For your ratings, too, on Airbnb.

0:14:35 Taylor Wilson: Exactly. You know what the biggest thing is that a lot of people don’t do, right, Is they don’t put enough plugs to plug people’s phones in. You should just have a lot of USB ports all throughout the house, apartment or whatever it is. And that’s something. The hotels get it, right? Like, they’re in the little bedside tables and they’re kind of all throughout, and there’s plenty of them. And Airbnb people, like, they just.

0:14:58 Mallory Green: They just don’t do it, don’t get it. Like that technology. They just need to add more wall outlets. Airbnb, Come on, guys, do better.

0:15:06 Taylor Wilson: Okay, I want to hear from you what it’s like working with influencers and, like, building collaborations. How do you start a collaboration with an influencer? Like, take me from like 0 to 60 when it comes to working with influencers.

0:15:22 Mallory Green: No, for sure. We have a whole funnel system, so we manage 11 different hotel brands right now. And every time because people do they dm, they say, hey, can I come stay with you for two nights in exchange for so and so kind of content. And we don’t respond via D, we respond via dm, but we’re not talking there. I send them a link to our website, ra. Com, and then I do slash influencers, and it’s this whole intake form. They have to tell me their TikTok Instagram, Facebook handles their audience, total audience, their engagement rate, their most recent travel, resort, hotel reels, link them there, as well as impressions and all that from those links.

0:16:02 Mallory Green: And then they have to consent to be on my email list and also consent to sending if they were to stay the analytics from their posts, their carousels and their stories. And so even before I’m even talking to them, everything has already been signed. There’s some kind of contract in place, and they know exactly the deliverables because they have to check mark at least five out of seven deliverables.

0:16:26 Mallory Green: It’s a gifted exchange. So I love that because that comes directly to my inbox. And then I get to reach out to them after all the boxes are ticked to see if it makes sense for them to come and say one of our brands. So it’s a very organized fashion, and if I get excited about, like, their stats and their analytics and stuff like that, I go and vet them and make sure that what they’re saying is true.

0:16:48 Mallory Green: Because, you know, people love to fluff up their stats and make themselves look a little bit better, inflate their ego. There we go. If it doesn’t align, I really delete it because I don’t like to work with phony people. But if everything looks right, all the boxes are checked, then I have my team reach out to them and we set up a call with them. And the property team and then if that all checks out, we send over the contract, make sure the dates and reservations are all set. If they’re going to make a spa massage restaurant reservation, I’ll call to those places directly.

0:17:18 Mallory Green: And if there’s comps parking we throw in a free amenity and and stuff like that. Making sure everything’s wrapped up in a nice pretty bow. And they come and stay, take all the content, they hopefully enjoy their stay, write a good review and then put up all the deliverables on social media.

0:17:32 Taylor Wilson: Tagging us and how do they find you? So I think this is applicable to whatever kind of brand you are. If you’re thinking about influencer collaborations like how do they even find you? Are you running ads to influencers or what? Or it’s word of mouth or y’ all just have really hot social media.

0:17:52 Mallory Green: Yep. If they come on to one of our clients social media sites and they want to say they want to come work with us, they usually send that DM or they somehow find my I guess they can contact on my rans marketing website, the contact us page. But they’ll look and see that we’ve already worked with other influencers who are tagged on our Instagram page or like the UGC and everything and they’re like I want to go stay at that property that looks cool. And then they’ll DM one of those accounts and then one of my VAs or whoever will respond with that link to the range marketing slash influencers.

0:18:24 Mallory Green: So then they have to go and click that and fill it out before I even ever picture. So I don’t know how many inquiries we get. Honestly, I just know once they fill it out it comes directly to my email inbox and then I go and bet them if everything checks out on the boxes, it’s actually the only thing I do for free. Everything else I put dollars behind when it comes to marketing. So I’m kind of enjoying it’s like a win win. I mean I charge my clients influencer marketing fee. I don’t pay anything behind it to get to it. I don’t need to charge a cert pay a service agency to go and find the influence because it’s all incoming.

0:19:03 Mallory Green: I’m not doing any outbound reach.

0:19:05 Taylor Wilson: I was wondering yeah, how much what’s the balance between like how many influencers are coming to you versus do you go seek out certain influencers?

0:19:15 Mallory Green: I will backpedal a little bit if we’re have if like there’s a Morgan Wallen concert coming to Denver and three of our properties, like, want a country influencer to come and stay to go to the Morgan Wallen concert. I will reach out to someone in Nashville and be like, hey, are you in the Morgan Wallen concert in Denver? I don’t know why you would, but come and stay at our hotel for free in exchange for getting up a carousel post. And they’re like, cool, yeah, do that.

0:19:39 Mallory Green: So it’s just specialty events or things that they want to inflate. When it comes to big downtown civic center activity, that’s always like the biggest influencer I try to find. Or like a big, like the Houston. The Houston. The Astros were in the World Series, I think in like 2021, 2022. And we had a previous baseball player from like years and years and years ago come and say Houston hotels during that time and he posted this reel. It like basically went viral and we got so many interested bookings, like the following month when it was a series and the hotel was sold out, unfortunately. But still, like, it’s proof that when you have the right person and it’s the right fit for both parties and the content is great, you’re going to get the results that they want.

0:20:27 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Cool. What’s like the ROI like on influencer content versus paid ads? Do you look at that?

0:20:38 Mallory Green: This is like the hardest thing because it’s so hard to track unless you’re giving them a specific booking link that they then use, like their stories and their audience can click on and you can see like the clicks and the CTR generated through that. All of these hotels I work with are branded and they don’t have vanity sites. So all the branded sites I can’t go and make different utms and trackings for influencer marketing. So hard to track if you’re working with boutique hotels and there’s no brand on top of it and they all have their own vanity stack. You can make little bitly links and put in your stories and upload through Canva and all of that stuff. Great.

0:21:15 Mallory Green: But the majority of these are run through Marriott or Hilton and they have obviously their revenue managers who keep track of all of that. So we had to get really crafty in ways that we can track influencer marketing. And that all comes back to shares. So even though there’s no way to track the actual ROI, if something gets 7,000 shares, that’s a really good piece of content and that’s going to be played over and over and over again.

0:21:40 Mallory Green: And so I make sure that we get like the full usage rights for that. So that way every year we can, if it was for an event or if it was for like someone’s wedding and we could say, congratulations on your one year anniversary, repost the video, it’s going to get some more shares, maybe change up the audio each year. So that way it’s always trending. But that’s what I look at. I’m like, that’s a gold mine for reusing content because in the end no one’s going to see everything you ever post.

0:22:05 Mallory Green: You can go back a few years and something that did really well, you can bring up to the surface again, just tweak a few changes, maybe get rid of transitions, because we don’t like transitions anymore, and change up the audio and make it into a more cohesive reel for today’s standards. And that will probably go off like that. So it’s just creative in that way. But I would say it’s easier to track the ROI for the paid ads and make the client like, see the actual numbers.

0:22:31 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, it’s like that in podcast marketing, like that’s something that I struggled with. You know, it’s funny, it’s like I always think of like, but the leads, but the leads. And then there’s certain, there’s certain things in marketing like this where you’re like, can’t tell you the exact person, but look at like how many people saw.

0:22:51 Mallory Green: It, you know, so if these influencers were great, we just had one. I’ll, I’ll go into one of my examples. We had one stay in Houston in April and her content was amazing. She reposted something on TikTok from Instagram and that went viral. So we got so many inquiries for our Houston property that the, the sister property in Denver wanted her to go there. So then she went there at her last week, two weeks ago in July, and already she reposted that same thing. She made a video on Instagram, did really well. So she reposted on TikTok.

0:23:25 Mallory Green: Not that we have TikTok for any of our accounts, but that overall exposure has helped tremendously, especially with the market now in Denver. The market, anywhere across the board. It’s who you work with and if you want to work with them again because they were so great at one of these other properties. That’s the magic. So I can keep her in my back pocket for like future collaborations and stuff.

0:23:46 Taylor Wilson: Cool, cool. I was gonna ask you Instagram or Tick Tock.

0:23:49 Mallory Green: Instagram’s number one for sure. I know the majority of Gen z is on TikTok, but hotels, honestly Are, like, their target audience starts at like, 30 even to 35, and majority of it families. And they’re catering to, like, I have a couple of properties in Napa, So obviously it’s 21 plus. It’s more elevated. So you want, like, the median, you know, income to be at a certain rate. And that just isn’t happening at the Gen Z level.

0:24:17 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, it’s more like millennials and older millennials.

0:24:21 Mallory Green: Millennials are jam. And I feel like a lot of millennials are still utilizing Instagram. And honestly, TikTok takes so much time.

0:24:32 Taylor Wilson: Tell me about that. Because we’re literally just about to get on TikTok. I just have to put TikTok on my phone and. And, you know, I don’t know what to do with it. I get all these notifications now, and I’m like, what is this even? Just opening up the app immediately. It’s like, you know, with like. Like, sound and noise, and it’s, like, way more disrespectful than Instagram.

0:24:59 Mallory Green: The biggest thing that people do is go on these lives on TikTok. I think it’s called TikTok Live. And they sit there and they make so much money, whether they’re talking about relationship advice or they’re trying to sell something. And so it’s more like, generated towards Gen Z. And they’re all over the world, and people can send them gifts and little payouts, little hearts, and if they say, oh, thanks, jjw23y, like, that was so great, then they get even more engagement and money and likes. So it’s not something that a hotel can just come on board and we’re like, oh, yeah, come and stay at our hotel.

0:25:35 Mallory Green: It just doesn’t. It doesn’t align. Doesn’t align to sell and do. So I just. I’ve told this. I’m like, Listen, guys, TikTok isn’t really generated for our target market right now. Maybe in like a year or two. A TikTok is very different right now. And we spend so much time on content and production and, you know, getting those photo and video shoots happening. I love going on a feed and making it look curated and just beautiful. And if you ever go to, like, the Beverly Hills Hotel does it the best there a couple of weeks ago, I’m like, dang.

0:26:11 Mallory Green: Everything is like, to the t. From their branding to, like, the experience, the arrival, like, even getting there is a treat. You’re just like, this is so beautiful. You’re in Beverly Hills. And then you walk out and like, here’s A glass of champagne. You’re like, oh, my gosh. Like, I feel like a queen. I’m just some random person. But they make sure every person entering feels like a celebrity, even if they’re not.

0:26:31 Mallory Green: And it’s just hard to embody that on a platform that doesn’t put that first. Instagram puts that first. Doesn’t. Yeah.

0:26:39 Taylor Wilson: I was sitting out on my front porch over the weekend last weekend and was like, okay, I’m gonna open. I’m gonna, like, scroll through TikTok. And I’m scrolling through because I’m. I’m literally just like, what is this world going to be? And my takeaway was that, see, I grew up. I was born in the 80s and really grew up in the 80s and 90s when we had a lot of infomercials. And my takeaway is that a lot of these lives, they were like. Like, they reminded me of the Ronco food dehydrator guy that I used to see as a child and be like, mom, we should get a food dehydrator.

0:27:18 Taylor Wilson: I can dehydrate all of our strawberries. And, you know, I can make beef jerky. And it’s funny because then, like, I’m seeing all of these, and I remember, like, Suzanne Summers and what was The Thigh Master? TikTok lives as the new infomercial. There are all these women doing these lives, selling all these, like, little exercise machines that I’ve never heard of. And then I’m like, of course. My next step is like, let me find out what this thing is on Amazon. Maybe I need this. This could be kind of cool. And then I’m like, what rabbit hole am I going down?

0:27:50 Mallory Green: You. You’re like, TikTok made by it. That’s a little hashtag. Hashtag TikTok made me buy it. You didn’t know these things before going on. And then suddenly now you’re like, what is rebounding? What is this tiny little trampoline I should be on every single day, bouncing up and down?

0:28:04 Taylor Wilson: Oh, rebounding. Did you know? Are you not rebounding? If you aren’t, your lymphatic system might be getting jacked up. Just want you to know that drainage.

0:28:19 Mallory Green: Isn’T happening without rebounding. I need to get one.

0:28:22 Taylor Wilson: Okay, so that makes sense. Instagram is more like. You’re in a space where, like, you’re working with elevated brands. Your target audience is more on Instagram. What about Facebook? Are you kind of like, what are your other top channels? Is it. Is Instagram number one Facebook?

0:28:38 Mallory Green: We kind of just Monitor the page. We’ll like post things here and there. Anytime we do a reel, we make the reel go on to Facebook as well. Just cause the two are connected. And then since I run all the paid social, if a reel’s doing well on Instagram, I’ll put dollars behind it through Meta. And then it also goes onto and stuff since it’s all the same company, so it’s all controlled ad accounts and stuff on Meta.

0:29:01 Mallory Green: What about Reddit?

0:29:02 Taylor Wilson: Do you do anything on Reddit?

0:29:04 Mallory Green: Don’t do anything on Reddit. Don’t do anything. I do stuff on LinkedIn. So some of the clients for. Yeah, so LinkedIn is great, especially from the hotel management side of things because obviously they want their people to feel connected while working there and like sharing the behind the scenes people love. Also on social seeing like Employee Appreciation Day, seeing that we’re not just like showcasing events and things happening at the hotel, but we’re also taking the time to thank our people, thank their people. It’s not my hotel, but it’s that connection and people feel like they belong when they feel celebrated and that kind of thing. LinkedIn’s big kind of Facebook and then Instagram and then we’re trying to start to play in Pinterest.

0:29:47 Taylor Wilson: Pinterest, Okay. I was wondering if there was anything else because I was. I’m kind of thinking through like threads. Who cares? X not probably the target audience. I was curious about LinkedIn. What was the other one I was thinking about? I asked you about Reddit. A blue sky probably also irrelevant. But Pinterest makes sense.

0:30:07 Mallory Green: Pinterest, yeah, because these influencer campaigns, if they go well, then we put it on the hotel page and people come and see that. And again, Pinterest is a giant search engine. It’s less social media and more just searching that. That next trip. If you type like next trip to or planning a trip to Belize or whatever it may be, photos and stuff are going to pop up. And the more fomo again evoking that emotion of like you want to go stay there right now? Like that’s what I’m trying to build on this Pinterest page and get people to just book that next destination.

0:30:41 Taylor Wilson: Do y’ all do anything around TripAdvisor and influencer blogs or posts on that platform?

0:30:49 Mallory Green: Nothing with TripAdvisor itself because the hotel actually has their own budget with TripAdvisor. So as an agency we wouldn’t do that since we’re not like representing the hotel directly, but we honestly ask the influencers to. Yes, write a TripAdvisor review because that just goes on their page, brings them more to that number one spot which everyone’s trying to get to. But they do have to say gifted.

0:31:13 Mallory Green: And a lot of people, that’s a turn off. I don’t know about you. Are you ever on Amazon and if you’re looking at the reviews or like Sephora or like for makeup, and the minute it says gifted, collaboration or partnership, I’m like, oh, you don’t count.

0:31:26 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I agree. I don’t believe anything.

0:31:28 Mallory Green: You got the free get thing. Like, you’re not gonna tell me what I wanna hear.

0:31:32 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I mean, I, I kind of don’t even believe any reviews now on Amazon, I’m like, there’s so many bots. I just like, I try to. So I really look for like the per, like number of reviews up and like, you know, I do very fancy math when I’m thinking about like the number of reviews and the stars and the percentage difference and whatever it is. Yeah, you, like, I really believe nothing now, so. Okay, cool. Well, this has been really awesome.

0:32:00 Taylor Wilson: I think I’ve. I’ve run out of questions for now. I appreciate your time. Is there one sort of last thing that you would tell someone who maybe is aspiring to get into the world of hotel branding and marketing and scroll stopping content? What do you wish your younger self knew?

0:32:21 Mallory Green: Don’t be afraid of what other people think. Block out the noise. I was so afraid of what I was doing in the beginning that I, I found myself, like, limiting what I could do versus just saying like, yes, yes, yes to everything and getting that exposure and like, gaining more confidence. I was just like, no one knows me. I just started, who’s gonna even hire me? Like, it’s just that negative self talk and being too afraid to just go with it and see what happens.

0:32:49 Mallory Green: It left me having that, like, I know it’s a buzzword imposter syndrome feeling. What am I doing? Why do I think I can do this? I think that just takes away from what you’re trying to accomplish, which is you’re trying to grow, you’re trying to learn, and you’ve opened up this. I opened up this agency after having like five years of experience in the hotel marketing world in social media at a time when social media was. Is thriving and booming.

0:33:15 Mallory Green: It was 2021 and I just felt myself being limited by my, my negative self talk and not asking people for more help. So if I could tell my younger self, go and ask for more help, it’s okay to Say, I don’t know, but go and find the answer and practice confidence because it’s, it’s obviously something you have to keep practicing and mustering up the courage to find it. Because I wasn’t someone born with confidence, I had to go find it, learn from it and then over time build that expertise and knowledge.

0:33:47 Taylor Wilson: Final, final question. What do you think is going to happen in the world of social media? Like, where do you think social media is going with AI and AI influencers? We didn’t even open up that whole can of worms. But that just that your response made me think about that.

0:34:03 Mallory Green: Yeah. So I actually just got on Invideo, which is all AI. It’s a platform, it’s a service where it creates those videos for you. Like you type in a script in video.

0:34:16 Taylor Wilson: What’s the website?

0:34:17 Mallory Green: Yeah, it’s in video. I N V I T E o dot I O. It just creates the most lifelike, amazing quality reels and videos and showcase for hotels and resorts because if we can’t make it to like the Bahamas because it’s like, you know, inclement weather or whatever, we can create these awesome videos and they’re so lifelike. It’s so beautiful. And then like put that on the page, looks like an influencer made it.

0:34:47 Mallory Green: That’s when the AI influencer thing comes in. But right now we’re also in the power of de influencing and people are so against being influenced by anything. It’s a tumultuous time. I feel like to be a content creator you just have to be careful with the brands and collaborations you work with and what you say online because again, what you say online stays there forever.

0:35:09 Taylor Wilson: Well, Mallory, this has been a pleasure. I’ve really had a lot of fun. I’ve learned a lot. I again, I love talking to other marketers who do stuff completely different than what I do because I get to learn so much and I know this will bring some new insights to our audience. So if people want to find you, get in touch. What’s the best way to do that?

0:35:28 Mallory Green: They can go to rainsmarketing.com for our agency, Instagram. It’s Oui Oui travel podcast. And then my own personal account is Mallory Heather Green. If you just want to go and say hi, I’ll say hi back.

0:35:44 Taylor Wilson: All right, send Mallory a dm and until next time, go get your good shizzle on people. Well, hey there. That was fun.

0:35:58 Taylor Wilson: I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every single episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don’t miss a beat of the Talking Shizzle podcast. And if you’re listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review we’d love to hear from our listeners so that we can bring you all the good, juicy business growth shizzle that you’d like to hear about.

0:36:33 Taylor Wilson: Be sure to get in touch with.

0:36:34 Taylor Wilson: Us and follow along at creativescizzle.com or shoot us an email at podcast@creativeshizzle.com now until next time, we hope you go get your big SHIZZZLE done.