This week’s Testimonial Thursday is a special one. Few relationships show the range of what S&A can offer quite like our partnership with Hosts International, a collaboration that has grown, year on year, into something much bigger.
What began as a single monthly blog post has, over the years, developed into a full marketing partnership covering blogs, newsletters, social media and reporting. Today, we genuinely feel like an extension of the Hosts International team.
Founded in 1988, Hosts International is a well-established provider of homestay and home-share accommodation for international students and professionals across the UK and Ireland. British Council registered, they work closely with universities, colleges and language schools to place guests with carefully vetted hosts.
That trust has grown to the point where we’re now involved in wider marketing decisions alongside the HI team and their other service providers, including recent input into their website redesign. Every month, Hosts International’s director, Harsha, sends us a voice note outlining what she’d like that month’s blog to focus on, and we take those points, along with HI’s tone of voice, and shape them into a finished piece.
Some of that writing has been genuinely difficult, most notably when we were asked to write about the passing of HI’s founder Peter Brown. It meant striking the right balance between the human and the professional and capturing the emotion and angle the client wanted to convey, not just the words themselves.
Alongside one blog a month, we also write two newsletters and manage HI’s full social media strategy, aligning it closely with their SEO and Google Ads activity. We work from a shared spreadsheet with the HI team, and with access to their website, analytics and social channels, we handle everything from scheduling to publishing. Quarterly, we pull together detailed reports across Google Analytics, newsletter performance and social metrics, using those insights to shape strategy going forward.
Our work with Hosts International has also extended into SEO, where we have supported the team with both practical optimisation and ongoing consultation. This has included reviewing website content, identifying opportunities to strengthen key pages, advising on search focused topics and helping ensure that blogs, landing pages and wider marketing activity work together rather than in isolation. We have also provided input on SEO location pages and website structure, helping HI improve the way important services and destinations are presented to prospective clients online. Just as importantly, our SEO consultation is closely connected to the rest of the marketing strategy, so that content, social media, Google Ads and website activity all support the same commercial goals.
Hosts International shows just how far the S&A relationship can go when trust builds over time. Ready to see how we could support your marketing? Contact us today to discuss how we can help boost your digital presence.
Written by Stephanie Clark
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