How to Make Sure Your Vacation Rental Blog Posts are Popular

For vacation rental managers, blogging is an excellent and inexpensive way to generate more bookings. Posting on a weekly basis and sharing on social media networks will increase website traffic whilst establishing your vacation rental business as a reputable brand. However coming up with fresh blog content ideas is easier said than done, let alone creating posts that are guaranteed to be popular.

Checking that your blog posts are being well received is just as important as creating the content. After all, nobody wants to spend time writing blog posts that aren't going to be read, especially busy vacation rental managers. If you aren't blogging already, read our previous post on blog topic ideas to get you started.

Meanwhile, we're going to go through some practices vacation rental marketers can follow to make sure that those beautifully created blog posts are being read by potential guests:

Check out industry leaders' blogs

A good way to find out what's popular in the vacation rental industry is to keep an eye on what the leading websites are blogging about. By following their Facebook and Twitter accounts, you will be able to determine which posts are most popular by how many interactions they've received. The most likes, re-tweets or shares will give you an idea on what potential guests are most likely to engage with.

Tip: An easy way to monitor many different industry leaders, is to set up a private list on Twitter including their accounts. That way you will create a separate quickly digestible Twitter feed.

Ask your following

If you're unsure whether your social media followers are enjoying your blog content topics or are stuck on ideas, ask them directly what they would like to read about. From that feedback, you can then shape a blog post around it and increase chances of engagement.

Tip: Don't ask a question that is too broad as it will deter followers from answering at all. Give them an option e.g. "Would you like to know where the best places to shop in London are or where the best places are to eat?". Providing options will encourage your social media followers to respond as the answer is already there.

Measure popularity on your social media channels

On your Facebook admin page, there is a little button called 'See insights'. This collects together data to tell you how well your previous Facebook posts are performing. It measures how many people the post has reached and how many of those have engaged. Social media management tool Hootsuite also allows you to measure how many tweeters have clicked on your Twitter links under the 'analytics' section. It gives you a list of the most clicked links and what regions the clickers have come from.

Tip: By taking a look back through the data, you should be able to determine what kind of theme your followers engage with most e.g. top 10 lists. Create more blog posts around this topic or follow this pattern to keep your followers interested.

Here's to posting popular vacation rental blogs! We hope we have given you an idea on how to tell if your blogging efforts are working. Do share with us any of your ideas, vacation rental blogs or thoughts in the comment box below.

If you are in the market for a vacation rental software, channel manager or website, consider using Kigo. You can contact one of our vacation rental software experts at [email protected] or on the phone Europe: +34 93 1980 697 ‧ USA: +1 646 652 0489 ‧ Asia: +852 8199 0013

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