Social Media and Vacation Rental Marketing: To Be There or Not To Be There

There are a lot of mixed views on using social media for vacation rental marketing: some people swear by it while others see it as a complete waste of time.

With the launch of platforms like Twitter and Pinterest, social media hit a big craze with small businesses. It was a free tool that allowed small businesses to have their voices heard without competing monetarily with large corporations. Nowadays the usefulness of social media for your vacation rental management is dependent on your marketing needs.

Social media is great for creating a community:

With a plethora of small businesses having entered social media websites, it is hard to gain a competitive edge over others when it comes to pure lead generation. However, social media is great for indirect marketing efforts such as creating a community. For example, if you own a vacation rental agency in Paris, you can create a Facebook community for travellers who love to visit Paris. In this community you can share photos, “little known facts”, top attractions and latest news related to Paris. Users who have enjoyed their time there can reminisce about their vacation time, and constantly have your brand’s logo and name in front of them in a non-intrusive way.

If there are a large number of communities that already exist, try and go into a niche community such as culinary fans of Paris or walking enthusiasts of Paris.

Vacation Rental marketing with Pinterest:

Many vacation rental agencies have found great use from using Pinterest to market their properties. If you are a luxury vacation rental agency you can post pictures of each of your properties on a board and label it so that people can share it as their “dream vacation home” or as “an architectural wonder”. Otherwise you can post interesting pictures of your local city, its food and funny meme’s on boards. To ensure your properties are re-pinned, place a “share this” button underneath each of your properties’ pictures on your website.

How regularly should you post on social media?

Consistency is the golden rule when it comes to using social media. Users don’t like those who post too often and those who don’t post enough. The frequency in which you post on social media is dependent on how much time you can allocate to it. If you are tight on time, once a week will suffice on the condition that you are consistent on posting every week.

Social Media Management platforms:

The best part of social media marketing is being able to write and plan your posts in advance. Free social media management platforms such as HootSuite, allow you to pre-plan the time and date of a post. That way you can write a number of Tweets or Facebook posts in advance and have them scheduled to post once a week for the near future.

Promote your social media channels:

Gaining meaningful followers is the hard part of social media marketing. If you have a budget set aside for social media, you can participate in social media pay-per-click ads that target users based on income, location, job etc. If you want to organically grow your user-base be sure to include links and a call to actions, such as “Check out our Travelling to Paris community”, to your emails footers, websites, and at the bottom of your answers to travel/vacation rental forums.

Golden Rule: Social media marketing is all about sharing useful information, not about direct marketing. You can promote your own agencies one in a while, but users will resist participating in a community that is focused too much on marketing.

Do you or your vacation rental agency use social media for vacation rental marketing? Do you have any success/horror stories to share with us? We would love to hear your opinion so be sure to write in the comment section below!

If you are in the market for vacation rental management software to manage your inquiries, bookings and marketing, consider using Kigo. You can reach us at [email protected] or on the phone (Spain) +34 512 702 105 ‧ (France) +33 1 84 17 04 18 ‧ (USA) +1 (786) 292-0030
View our social media services eBook.