With summer on its way, it’s time to build your social media strategy for your vacation rental business. Before diving in, there are a few things to consider, like keeping your goals concise, knowing your audience, knowing the competition, and having a plan to analyze your progress.
Having a social media strategy is far more than simply posting about your business on your social media platforms. Likewise, the content that you post can impact your business positively or negatively. Having the right social media strategy for your vacation rental can ensure a positive ROI and social media experience.
1. Define your goals
Setting goals for your social media campaigns matters. The more defined and measurable your goals are, the more effective your social media strategy will become. Clearly defined goals allow you to adjust your campaign when goals are not being met. Unlike traditional marketing, social media marketing allows you the ability to analyze campaign performance in real time. So, if something isn’t working, you can adapt your strategy to improve performance.
One or two main goals for your social media campaign is sufficient. Trying to achieve too much in one campaign often leads to a lot of work and little progress. That’s why you should keep it simple and focused.
Knowing your audience is also the key to a successful social media strategy. Who is your ideal guest? Know your target audience demographics like age, income, motives, etc., and build your buyer personas from this. This will allow you to send the right messages at the right time to appeal to your target audience.
Finally, any well-defined social media strategy goal should always include knowing your competition. Remember, their target audience is likely to be yours as well. Research your top three or four competitors to see what they are doing online. What type of content are they posting and which platforms are they posting it on? Knowing what is working for your competition will give you a better idea of what is likely to work for you as well.
2. Plan your social media strategy
A little creativity in content creation goes a long way. Keep your messages straightforward, but exciting. When your guests engage with you on social media, that’s when the magic happens. Vary your strategy by adding variety and value-added content. This gives your audience something to talk about and a reason to come back for more.
3. Audit your progress
Once your campaign is active, be sure to test and evaluate your efforts from time to time. Not everything will work for everyone every time. Sometimes, you need to adjust your efforts to hone in on what matters to your audience. There are a few ways you can do this. For example:
- Create audience polls
- Run analytics
- Check for fake accounts
Polling your audience on their content preferences allows them to give you direct feedback on what they like, dislike, and what they want to see more of. It also helps to promote customer engagement on your social media pages.
Another way to fine-tune your efforts is to run analytics on your social media campaigns. There are a lot of great tools out there to help with this. Two of the best-rated tools, according to TrustRadius reviewers, are NetBase and Spredfast. TrustRadius reviewers gave NetBase an 8.5 out of 10 while considering Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform, Radian6, and Brandwatch as alternatives. Reviewers rated Spredfast 8 out of 10 while also considering alternatives like Sprinklr, Percolate, and Hootsuite.
Social media analytics tools provide valuable information on how your posts are performing in terms of views, engagement, and which posts are outperforming others. With this information, you can fine-tune your strategy to bring your potential guests more of the content they like.
Finally, be sure to check your social media platforms for fake accounts set up in your business’ name. It’s not something we like to think will happen, but reality shows us otherwise. Eliminating false accounts by reporting them to the social media platform helps to ensure that your potential guests are finding and interacting with your real accounts –and that’s better for your social media strategy and your business overall!
Social media is always changing, so your social media strategy should, too. As your audience and engagement increases, adapt your strategy to success by creating new social media goals and continue to grow your online presence.
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