If you are looking for possibilities to promote your vacation rental, social media is a perfect way to reach your target guests outside of the booking platforms and grow your bookings. Where do you start to build your social media presence?
Jodi Bourne, a special guest on the latest Hospitable Hosts podcast, knows the answer. Jodi is a vacation rental business and marketing coach, educator, and website designer with a rich background in business management, brand messaging, digital marketing, and customer service across various industries. Jodi also hosts the Savvy Host Roadmap Podcast, which focuses on actionable tips to help hosts build profitable, professional, and independent businesses.
Jodi shares her tips on using social media to create a professional hospitality brand, connect with your audience, attract your ideal guests, and increase bookings.
Press play now to learn more about how to build an effective social media strategy to take your business to the next level.
If you prefer to read the highlights, we've got a summary of the key takeaways below.
Why Social Media?
Jodi explains that social media is the marketing channel that hosts should be on because it's about building community and network.
"It's just about building that community, whether with your previous guests or other stakeholders in your business, the local community, even friends and family, anybody that can share your message. And, of course, future guests. That's what you're here for. It's building the bookings and the relationships with future guests," she clarifies.
Email marketing is also essential, but it's more strategic and involves "more sales messaging." At the same time, social media gives you plenty of opportunities to share your personality, knowledge, and expertise and establish personal connections with people.
Defining Guest Avatar
Jodi believes that defining your specific avatars is vital for any business. "You have to know who is listening to your message and hone in on what they're looking for in your destination and your guest experience," she explains. That will help you create marketing messages and content for your social media posts that are relatable to the guests you want to target.
Types of Content to Produce for Social Media
Jodi recommends creating a cohesive theme that should be behind your content. For example, destination discovery is an excellent theme for hosts "who maybe have multiple properties, multiple avatars, but they know that their people are coming there to experience the destination." Hosts can share this destination discovery content across all social channels, in a newsletter, and in a blog.
User-generated content is also important, but many hosts are shy about asking for it or need to learn how to ask their guests for it. "That should start with their communications before arrival and then go into the communications after arrival. If you've built a connection with them through your guest communications, it's easy to ask for that," Jodi underlines.
Using vacation rental software like Hospitable, you can ensure perfect communication with your guests across all channels, making them feel cared for and special. Hospitable can also help you automate your hosting routine so you can focus on tasks that require a personal touch.
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Reaching Out to Influencers
Jodi notes that many content creators and social media influencers can provide content for a fee. Not all hosts are ready to pay that fee and give up a night of their rental. "But if you are doing it smartly, you're basically paying for outstanding photography and content," Jodi thinks, encouraging hosts to do that.
"I believe if you have a unique experience, a luxury property, a niche property, or if you want to partner with your destination and tourism board or maybe some other local businesses, that's a great thing to do if you're more of a destination-based property. But when you reach out to influencers, you'll get a lot of bang for your buck."
Social Media Advertising
Jodi recommends using paid ads on social media to increase conversions, but only if you have your direct booking website and a landing page to track them. "Unfortunately, if you're still using an OTA, it's not recommended other than to build maybe an audience."
Jodi thinks that if you have a budget, advertising is a great way to increase traffic to your website and listing in general and build up your audience. "Many people just use it to build a following that they can potentially move to the next step in the booking process," she explains. Jodi underlines that advertising is a strategy and not just a quick fix.
Tune in to the full episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast to discover how to start proactively marketing your vacation rental business on social media and take control of your success.
