Unlock Facebook Success | Vacation Rental Marketing Foundations

I talk about Instagram quite a bit. I get that and people ask me. Very often if I suggest using Facebook. And honestly, Facebook is still a great place to be with your content. It's a great place to show up for your audience. And there's a lot of ways that you can use Facebook successfully with, or without having an Instagram account. If you don't have a Facebook and you're not using Facebook consistently. Then I encourage you to start because your guest avatar is on Facebook for sure. And it gives you a great place to connect with your followers, but with other local businesses, influencers. And in Facebook groups. So in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing my tips for unlocking Facebook success. And I'm creating engagement and touch points using Facebook. So let's get started.

Last night. I was scrolling through my Facebook memories. I do this pretty often, probably twice a week, just because I like to see, especially pictures of my kids and my dogs. And. And the places that Michael and I have visited. Recently I started seeing posts from 2008. That is when. I joined Facebook with this current Facebook profile. I had one in 2005 one of my first bosses at an internship, taught me into closing my Facebook page account. So I mistakenly took that advice and then, in late 2007, I opened my Facebook page again. And it's going through my memories. At that time, you couldn't even add photos. Think the prompt would say. What's on your mind today? I started managing my first Facebook page when I started working at the, domestic violence shelter that I worked at, and since then I've managed. So many pages I can't even count anymore. And it was super easy to get Facebook engagement on posts. It was just, it's such a snap. Anything that was entertaining or. Just a photo or a content related to your business, if you just started a Facebook page for your business then you don't know, you don't remember back in the day when you could post a photo of your vacation rental and all of a sudden. You had 50 comments on the photo. That man. I would be amazing. But it's not that way anymore. So getting Facebook followers to pay attention to you, even getting new followers difficult. I'm sorry. It's a bitch, but it can be done. And Facebook is slowly making it a little bit easier for businesses to get in front of a new audience. So in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing a few tips on how you as a business can get in front of a new audience and start generating a little bit more engagement on your posts on your page. More interest, hopefully some more shares. And also reach what reach means is the number of people who saw your post. And those people don't necessarily have to be following you. And they're still seeing your content and that's great because they're aware of who you are And that leads me to another point about followers. Yes, it's great to have a ton of followers on your Facebook or any social media. However, once again, I'm going to stress. It's not just the followers that you have, but the relationship you have with them. Are you interacting with them? Are you answering your messages and your DMS? Are you going back and forth in comments and helping them? Make a connection between their comment in your business and how you can help. And you can do that even off of your own page. You can do that on other people's pages and in groups. And that's what I'm going to go over with you today. Is how to use it. Other people's pages. Other people's groups to grow yours. Another thing, another great bonus for you. Is as a tourism business, a destination focused business and experienced business. Then you have a lot of content that people are very interested in going back to what I said earlier. You have content that people want to see? Beautiful photos of your destination, mountain views, beautiful beaches. Videos as well, videos are hot on Facebook, just like they're hot everywhere else. So I encourage you to learn video strategy. But you have the content that people want to see, and that is. Definitely a bonus for you. If you understand how to create, how to put together a content strategy, if you understand how to write and create better content. How do you get started? The first thing I want you to do. Is optimize your Facebook business page. So your Facebook business page is not your personal profile. It's your business page. If you don't have one, you have to create one now. You want your business page to be your business name, also, if you can, you need to include the location. Blue sky, vacation rentals, Myrtle beach. You want that in your name? If at all possible. Now, if you created your page a long time ago, Facebook sometimes makes it harder. You can try to change your name. But sometimes they don't let you do that. If you don't have very many followers, on your current Facebook page, you can create a new page with your business name location. And then you can connect the two pages together. Reach out to me. If you need more tips on that, I have a video somewhere. The next thing you want to do with your Facebook page is you want to make it so that when people go to your Facebook page, That they immediately realize that you're a business they want to follow. So you have to optimize your page for followers and interest the first thing you do is you need a really nice cover photo. You need something that stands out. You want it to showcase your beautiful property. These are your wild shots, your Airbnb cover shots. You want those to be in your Facebook page cover. You can use Canva to create kind of a collage. If you want, you can just use one photo. Facebook used to let you do like a slide show. They stopped doing that. But you can create something beautiful. You also want that Facebook page cover photo to be seasonally optimized. So I would suggest changing it out every season. Be sure that your cover photo represents your destination. If you create a collage, you want to include some of those destination photos you have to create a really short and sweet bio. I think that they give you or in Facebook, they call it an about section. I think they give you about 150 characters. You want to be short and sweet and to the point of what you do. Who you are. You do want people to be able to look at that page and know exactly what you do. Another reason that's important is because when they hover over your name, a little pop-up comes up and that pop-up shows your about info. The next thing you want to do is make sure that button underneath your cover photo. Leads to something. And is it call to action? You want it to say, learn more? Message us contact us. You definitely want that set up. You also want to set up your messenger. I'm not going to go into that, but you definitely need to understand how to set up your messenger then, what you're going to do is you're going to add photo albums, not just individual photos, but you're going to add photo albums. Of your properties. If you have a ton of properties, start out with just one, two or three, and then in side of the photo album, As you're creating it. You're going to give a caption. Now these are your best photos. This isn't where you're going to share all your bathroom shots. This is, the great view, the beautiful dining area, the fireplace, the fire pit outside, whatever your wild shots, and you want to describe them. And you want to add a location tag to each of those photos. Once you have a photo album, you want to share that photo album to your newsfeed. So you're going to do that. If you have multiple properties, do two at a time, once a week for several weeks, then you want to go back through your content, any content that you have that. Received a lot of engagement. If you don't have that kind of content. You can start creating that content today, start sharing. First of all, start sharing photos of reviews. That's a great way to start building content on your Facebook page so that when people come back to you, they're going to see that top con they're going to see that content. You also want to create content. Relevant to your destination. Perhaps you have a blog that you've written, or you can create a mini post with several images. There's lots of content that you can create that will get more engagement. What would you want to see on a Facebook page about your destination and about your business that would make people interested? You also want to understand the Facebook algorithm. It really wants to see photos really wants to see videos. It really wants to see like the big post with the colored backgrounds, which you can do. And wants to see that kind of content. What it doesn't want to see is a link to back to your website. That will kill your Facebook. So you don't want to just create a bunch of links big mistake. I see all the time is just Facebook pages, full of links, back to search for a vacation rental. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't have calls to action. You definitely need calls to action on your posts. You want those calls to action to be check out our, learn more button to find out more about our vacation rentals. Or send us a DM to find out more about this property. You want them to be gentle calls to action, and yes, you do want to do a major call to action every couple of weeks, but you want to remember people want information, they want resources. They want to see fun, beautiful things. They don't want to be reminded to just go back and book your rental because. They've built a relationship with you you've built a relationship with them you've provided great information they're going to remember you because you've created the touch points needed for them to remember you when they are ready to book then you want to take your best posts and you want to pin them to the top of your Facebook P feed. You can pin stories and you can pin reels and you can pin posts so that when people come to your page, not only do they see these photo albums pins, but they can see other content such as reviews, et cetera. Oh, and by the way, you can make a Facebook album. Just have review screenshots. I definitely encourage you to do that as well. Okay now. That you have an optimized Facebook page. The next thing you want to do is as your page go out and like other pages. Follow other pages that are relevant to your destination and to your business. So if you're in Myrtle beach, Then you want to go out and you want to do a search for Myrtle beach, Facebook pages, and you want to follow Facebook pages relevant to your target audience. So you might want to follow pages such as the local golf courses or, the Myrtle beach boardwalk you definitely want to follow other vacation rental businesses. You want to follow those, especially the big property management companies once you have made a list of those pages that you're going to follow. Oh. And then when you're following, when you're looking through this. Keep up with the list. as you're making your list, note, which ones, because just as you hover over their name, you can see how many posts they've had recently. How many followers they have. Want to follow the ones who are posting frequently and who have followers. So you can even click over to their page if they're only posting once a month and they only have two people liking it, don't worry about them. You don't want to clutter up your newsfeed with that content. You want to follow? For example, I saw saw one that I think it was a vacation rental company. They posted two days ago. They had 23 comments on their post so you definitely want to follow. The content that is getting likes, shares, and comments. You also want to be sure and follow businesses and influencers. So local businesses, the people. That you want to network with in your area, the local restaurants, all these local businesses that you can support with your business, because you definitely want to show your support by liking their content, sharing their content, commenting on their content with. If a local restaurant posts their menu for the week, comment on how much you love their Wednesday special, or that you recommend this place for lunch for all of your guests that local business is going to see your business. Liking, sharing and commenting, and they will reciprocate in return. So that's growing your network, now you also want to follow any relevant groups, Facebook groups, relevant to your target audience. Relevant to your destination relevant to the experience. So what do I mean by that? Your target audience is full of families. Then you can join a Facebook group as your business. That is. Travel for families with toddlers. There's a ton of travel focused, Facebook groups, beach lovers. Pet friendly beach lovers. There's so many different groups. So make a list of what is relevant to your target audience and where they're hanging out. You can also join community groups. You can join tourism groups. I know a ton of hosts on Facebook and the only groups they are a member of are the vacation rental. Related groups. Okay. That's great. But the only people that are going to those groups are people looking for a vacation rental or other owners. So those groups that's full of competition for you. But you may be the only vacation rental company who is in the group as of. Beachcombers of the outer banks. I don't know if that's a real group, but it might be. So find those niche groups that really relate to your target audience. If you find a group that is related to your target audience related to your destination, that you can not join as your business page. I highly recommend that you go back and join that page. Join that group as your personal profile. There's definitely some ways you need some strategies for optimizing your personal profile so that people understand what your business is about. I'm not going through that, but definitely you want to join and comment and interact in those groups with your personal profile. If you can't do it with your business. The next step is to go to your Facebook. Newsfeed your business newsfeed every single day. If you can't do it every day, do it every other day. But I guarantee you, you have 20 minutes in your day, every day. Where you can go through your business page newsfeed and you can interact. You can answer questions in groups you can, and you can comment on a business page post about a local event coming up. You can. Answer a question on a Facebook page. So that local business is going to see you answering the question. And the person that asked the question is going to get a notification that you answered the question, and they're going to see your name and they're going to see your page and they're going to see what you're about. And they're going to decide if they want to follow you.

So now obviously you see why having a page optimized. With great content is so important to this strategy. Because you're going to be interacting with people in Facebook groups. You're going to be interacting with people on Facebook pages. They're going to click, they're going to see your business name. They're going to see your personal profile name. If you're using your profile in groups. And they're going to look at who you are, because you've just answered a question. You've just helped them. You've just shared a post of content. I worked with a, an owner last year. And she was in the mountains and people were asking questions all the time about the weather and the snow, so she started posting the weather report and the snow forecast every day in a various groups for her destination. She got a ton of followers coming back to her page. That's how it works. Just simple content that you can share. Then you have it on your page, you pin it to your newsfeed, you share it in groups, you share it in, with your personal profile, you share it with your own personal friends, fairly often, especially fun content, destination, content, tourism focused content. You want to share information and photos and videos. All of that content is important too. Building the touch points with the people who have decided to follow you. That is how Facebook marketing works. You want to create content that gets noticed, gets attention. So what kind of content should you be sharing? On Facebook and also social media. That is just one of the focuses of my new upcoming group coaching starting in October. You can join the wait list for the savvy host marketing group coaching program. Jody bourne.com backslash wait list. Because in the group coaching, I cover Facebook marketing. I cover Facebook strategy. I cover Facebook content creation. As part of a proactive marketing strategy, whether you're booking direct or you're just pushing people to a listing on an OTA. This program covers all of those things. So if you're struggling with creating content, You're struggling with knowing what kind of content to post. If you're struggling with writing the words, putting it all together, adding images. Taking and, and using videos. Then I highly encourage you to sign up for the wait list and learn more about this program. It's several weeks long, lots of mentorship. Lots of back and forth. Lots of accountability and lots of other extras. I'm so excited about this because. I've been doing it a lot of years and I still see some of the people who took this early on. Jennifer from cottage stays. Still consistently sends me messages and lets me know about something that I taught them that they started using or something new that worked or that they went back to an old video. To relearn something and it's just, it can be such a game changer. So sign up for that wait list. If you are ready to really start learning how to market your vacation rental. Sign up for that white list and you can learn more about some of the successes that other businesses have had. So your action item for today is just get started. Optimizing your Facebook page, change out your cover photo you just go into canvas and search for cover Facebook cover photos. You want to make sure they're mobile optimized. You want to add photo albums of at least one of your properties. You want to write a description of one of your properties and share it in a post with that photo album? And then you want to. Make a list of Facebook pages and Facebook groups that have lots of interaction, have lots of comments, have lots of posts and questions that you can start interacting with as your business and as your personal profile. And if you have any questions about Facebook marketing, Facebook engagement, Facebook content that I encourage you to reach out to me over the next few days, because on Friday's episode, I'm going to be going over even more about Facebook marketing. And I'm going to share. Some ways to optimize your own personal page. And I'll be talking more about how to leverage Facebook groups. So I look forward to Friday and I hope y'all have a great day. Aye.