For many people, the main social media sites they have an interest in are Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Which means your holiday let should really have a presence on one or all of them to reach more of your target audience.
Once that decision has been made, the big question is whether or not you need to allocate a social media budget for this.
It’s possible that you don’t have pre-allocated cash set aside for this purpose. If not, it’s decision time.
Let’s look at the options.
1. Cast caution to the wind and hire an expensive company to handle it
It’s tempting to outsource this element of your marketing efforts to someone else. However if you want decent results you’ll need to consider stumping up hundreds of pounds a month to get them – and even then it’s likely to take some time for the results to start filtering through.
Realistically, this may not be an affordable option to even consider. Additionally, it may only really be worth considering if you have more than one holiday rental property to promote – since the cost will be shared across all property profits, rather than just one.
2. Find whatever spare cash available to use as your own social media budget
The next step down from this is to invest some cash in your own campaign.
For example, you can use promoted tweets on Twitter to reach your target audience or Facebook ads; you select the criteria of person you want your tweets or ad to reach and then only pay for when someone actually interacts with it.
This option is a lot cheaper than hiring a social media company, but it relies on you spending time learning. So the decision here is whether you have that time to spend.
3. Go it alone and invest your time instead
When you’re just getting started with promoting your holiday rental via social media channels, it can work extremely well to invest nothing but your time. There is a steep learning curve here, but the amount you will pick up once that time is invested should produce better and better results as you go along.
You could begin by setting up a page on Facebook and profiles on Twitter and Pinterest. A great tip if you’re just starting out, is to look at how other people in businesses such as yours promote their holiday rentals.
What kinds of pictures do they publish? What tweets and/or messages do they make available? What status updates do they publish on Facebook?
Make some notes as this will form part of the learning process.
In the end while many businesses do hire social media teams to handle this part of their business for them, you may not be able to afford to do that. It’s good therefore to know there are other ways to do things.
The internet is also a never-ending source of knowledge about social media, so if you ever have a question about a particular social media site, Google it!
Promoting your holiday let is essential to maximise booking opportunities. But investigate the best options for you – not all of them involve spending lots of money to achieve good results.
F. Hodgson says
Helpful and encouraging item particularly as I am trying it alone ! Thanks.
PromoteMyPlace says
I’m glad you’ve found it of some use. It can be daunting when you first start using social media, but as long as you take the time needed you’ll start to build up an audience fairly quickly. Then interact. Be social. Share interesting information. And most importantly, be you. This will help build that all-important trust element. Let us know how you get on!