Your Team Is Your Best Content

We've been obsessed with one question lately:

How do we help larger hotels and corporate properties build the same kind of audience connection that founder-led brands have?

Because let's be real—most hotels don't have a charismatic founder to put on camera. They don't have the "face of the brand" that guests can rally around.

But what they do have is something just as powerful: their team.

And right now, we're testing a content style that leverages exactly that.

Let's break it down.

What Staff-Focused Content Actually Looks Like

We're testing this style across our larger hotel accounts–Countrypolitan in Nashville, Glorieta in Santa Fe, and Alila Marea's wedding account in Encinitas.

But this isn't just "here's a video of our front desk staff smiling at the camera."

We're experimenting with three distinct formats:

Interview-style content where staff share recommendations, insights, and personality-driven takes on the property and area.

Rankings and recommendations—top things to do, best restaurants, hidden gems, day trips, local events. All delivered by real team members who actually know the area.

Story-driven tips and secrets delivered through short clips with minimal on-screen text and long, value-packed captions. 

The on-screen text is just the hook—something like "Most people miss these 5 things when they visit Nashville" or "What brides always forget when planning weddings"—with a CTA to read the caption. 

All the real insights live in the caption itself, making it feel like you're getting insider info straight from the hotel team, even if they aren’t on camera.

The Results So Far

Remember, we're still in the testing phase with this style of content…

But the early data has us excited.

At Countrypolitan, a single “hidden gems in Nashville” Reel hit 890k views and a ranking video of local events and bars hit 472k views. Other similar posts pulled in 115k and 95k views recently.

Glorieta saw 121k views on bucket list experiences around Santa Fe and 45k on day trips in the area ranked by a local.

And on Alila Marea's wedding account, we've seen 326k views on "appointments new brides forget about" and 267k on wedding invite details—both delivered as insights from the team.

These are still tests. We're learning as we go. But the patterns are clear enough that we're leaning in.

Why We're All-In On This

Here's the thing most hotels and hospitality brands miss:

People don't connect with brands. They connect with people.

Look at the absolute powerhouses on social media in our space—The Pacific Bin, The Cliffs at Hocking Hills, Bolt Farm Treehouse. What do they all have in common?

They're founder-led brands. You know the person behind the vision. You see their face, hear their story, and feel like you're connecting with them, not just a business.

That's why influencers crush it. That's why personal brands outperform corporate accounts 10 to 1.

But here's the problem: most hotels don't have a "founder" to put front and center. They're larger operations, often corporate-backed, without a singular face to rally around.

Staff-focused content solves this.

It's the closest thing to a founder-led brand that a hotel can get. 

It puts real faces behind the property. It humanizes the brand. It turns viewers into potential guests because now they're not engaging with a hotel—they're engaging with people.

And the beauty of it? It positions your hotel as the local authority. When someone's researching a trip to Nashville or Santa Fe, they're not just scrolling for pretty hotel photos. They want recommendations. They want insider knowledge.

If your staff is giving them that, you're not just a place to stay. You're their trusted guide.

The Secret Ingredient

Not all staff-focused content is created equal.

The key is finding the right people.

We're looking for team members who are energetic, comfortable on camera, and have personality that jumps off the screen in 10 seconds or less. People who feel like someone you'd want to grab a drink with, not someone reading a corporate script.

This matters so much that our clients are considering making "camera presence" part of the hiring criteria moving forward. That's how critical it is to the success of this content style.

Because at the end of the day, if the person on screen doesn't connect with viewers, the content falls flat. Personality is everything.

How You Can Start Testing This

If this resonates with you and you want to try it yourself, here's where we'd start:

1. Find your most energetic, camera-ready staff member. Bonus points if they're passionate about the local area and can speak naturally about it.

2. Start with rankings and recommendations. Top 5 coffee shops, best hiking trails, hidden date night spots. These are easy to film, highly shareable, and give viewers a reason to follow you beyond just "pretty hotel photos."

3. Test different formats. Try interview-style. Try long captions with storytelling. Social media is one giant testing game—throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

4. Go behind the scenes. Show the team prepping rooms, setting up events, or doing deep cleans. People love seeing the humans behind the experience.

5. Position yourself as founder-led if you can. If you're an owner-operator, get in front of the camera. Share your story. Build in public. If you're not, lean into your staff to give the brand that same human connection.

The world is yours. Test it.

At the end of the day, the brands that win on social media are the ones willing to experiment and adapt. Staff-focused content is one piece of that puzzle, and we're excited to keep refining it.