How to Use Twitter to Market Your Vacation Rental

With over 115 million active users every month and on average 58 million tweets being sent out daily, Twitter is an excellent social media platform for vacation rental businesses to utilize. When used effectively and creatively, holiday home managers can establish a strong online presence and expect to see a rise in bookings.

You may be thinking I have Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc., so why do I need to join another platform? Ensuring that your vacation rental business is present on as many social media platforms as possible will strengthen the brand of the properties being advertised and enable you to engage with possible guests and others in the industry. Twitter is an excellent networking tool that requires little effort yet can produce maximum effect.

If you are a holiday home manager yet to jump onto the tweeting bandwagon, here are 5 ways in which you can use Twitter to market your vacation rental:

Build a Community

Twitter is great for creating a brand around the properties being promoted. By communicating with others in the industry, you can project a desirable image that will work to attract potential bookers and refine your brand. Since Twitter caters for all types of businesses in the travel industry, it is the perfect platform for keeping up with the conversation and creating networking opportunities. The 140 character restriction enables you to engage with existing or future customers quickly without bombarding them with too much information.

Tip: To effectively use Twitter and engage with your followers, 90% of information you post should be informative content and 10% should be direct promotions of the properties, that way you will increase chances of acquiring new followers rather than put people off.

Promote Your Properties

Although Twitter is most effective when posting helpful and informative content, it is also a great way to promote your properties for completely free. From time to time, include links to the property listings with appropriate hash tags.

Tip: Since you are limited to 140 characters, make sure that the tweet you send out with a property listing link is descriptive and appealing to followers e.g. Beautiful Apartment Set in the Heart of San Francisco.

Schedule Tweets

Tweeting doesn't have to be time consuming, there are many Twitter marketing tools waiting to be utilized. Scheduling platforms like HootSuite and SocialBro allow users to set up tweets in advance and stay on top of current trends and customer engagement. So that way you can set aside an hour or so to organize tweets at different time intervals saving you time throughout the day.

Tip: When including URLs in your tweets, use a URL shortener so that you save on precious character space. Additionally, Hootsuite’s Ow.ly URL shortener allows you to track how many people click on the link - a great way of finding out what content is most effective.

Help Customers Find You

Hashtagging has become increasingly popular recently and is a great practise for marketing the vacation rental. When preparing what are you going to post, make sure to include a hash tag at the end of the tweet. Use a keyword that is appropriate to your business, e.g #vacationrental will order your tweet into the vacation rental hash tag category. That way anyone searching your chosen terms will see your tweet.

Tip: Don't overdo the hash tags, a tweet like this is confusing and will put followers off - 'Check out our #vacation #rental in #Paris for the #perfect #holiday.'

Direct Traffic to Your Website

Connect your social media networks together and ensure that your vacation rental website includes links to your social platforms and vice versa. Every time your content is retweeted or favourited, you can increase chances of website visits and in turn booking leads. Furthermore, it will help to create a professional brand image and credibility.

Tip: Keep all of your networks up to date and ensure that you have a running theme through them all. It will increase chances of gaining more followers and therefore more exposure to the rental properties.

We hope we have given you an idea of some of the ways you can use Twitter to market your vacation rental. Please feel free to share this post, add any comments or more tweet ideas in the comment section below:

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