Why do business people use social media sites?
The quick answer is to promote their businesses. This makes sense regardless of whether you’re promoting a holiday rental or something else entirely.
However in our case we’re focusing on holiday rentals, so let’s use this as an example.
And let’s start with a question…
Why would people follow you on social media sites?
This is probably one of the most important questions you can (and should) ask yourself when you’re about to set up or revitalise your social media profiles.
Here’s the thing. No one likes to be advertised to. That’s why many people record TV shows with adverts so they can watch later and fast forward through the dreaded ad breaks.
It’s also why we’re more likely to unfollow people on social media sites who do nothing but promote their product or service.
Apply the 80/20 rule
You may have heard of this principle – it basically says 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.
It can be applied to all kinds of situations too.
Here you need to make sure 20% of your social media efforts are spent on promotional messages and associated content.
The remaining 80% should be spent providing value and worthwhile content for the people who are following you. Yes, this is free content but that’s exactly the type of content they’ll carry on coming back for.
And when they do come back, they won’t be worried about seeing the odd marketing message from you alongside all the useful information you’ve given them.
That’s the power of the 80/20 rule, and it applies just as neatly to social media marketing as it does to anything else.
Don’t give in to temptation
Temptation rears its head everywhere in life, and that holds true for social media marketing too.
It’s easy to assume marketing means constantly promoting your holiday let full on and never doing anything else. Yet more subtle marketing (using the 80/20 rule as you do so) makes for much better results in the long run.
The best way to tackle this approach is to think about how you can help your potential clients – what kind of information might they be looking for? What would they be interested in learning about?
The answers to these questions will vary depending on where your holiday rental property is situated and what kinds of attractions are nearby.
Incidentally you can use these elements to help inspire fresh posts for your Twitter feed, your Facebook page and any other social media site you use.
The rule of thumb is to post a couple of promotional messages for every eight other messages you post. Or if you prefer, one promotional message for every four helpful ones. It doesn’t have to be done this precisely but you get the idea.
By giving more away than you get from your social media efforts, your results will actually improve significantly over time – meaning the potential of more bookings for your holiday let.
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