To tweet or not to tweet? Twitter has become a hot spot for many industries to quickly share knowledge from the field, tell stories, and connect with customers. Still, vacation rental owners frequently skip over this platform. Many owners think they’ve already covered their marketing bases by using Facebook, Instagram, and email to promote their short-term rental, but they’re missing out on a big one.
Tweeting isn’t just for the birds. Twitter for vacation rentals is a genius way to spread the word about your business in an easy, 140-character kind of way. This platform will be a great addition to your social media toolkit and can increase your bookings when done right. If you’re not a “tweeter,” don’t worry. We’ve got all the tips and tricks for using Twitter to promote your vacation rental.
Why does your vacation rental need a Twitter account?
Owning a vacation rental business comes with an enormous amount of tasks to do. Whether it’s physically checking the property, communicating with guests, or managing your reservations, adding social media to the pile sounds like a real bear. Social media is one of those necessary evils (although fun once you’ve gotten the hang of it!) when running your business. Luckily, Twitter is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your reservations if you do it correctly.
Stay up to date on industry trends
If you’re still hesitant to manage an account, you can always sign-up for Twitter and start by focusing on the industry alone. This is one of the many benefits of Twitter. There are plenty of vacation rental groups, companies, and professionals that have their own hubs of knowledge on Twitter that your business could profit from.
Start by going to the search bar and looking for vacation rental groups with related keywords. If you own a beach rental, look for groups and industry leaders in that niche. Perhaps you’re interested in what furnishings other vacation rentals are using: there’s a group for that too!
Twitter also features hashtags that help to lump together ideas under one “tag.” Searching for vacation rental hashtags like #villarentals and #airbnbsuperhost, you’ll be sure to find ideas that spark interest. Remember too that hashtags are a great way to brand your vacation rental business, but more on that later.
Get in touch with a younger audience
Who tweets the most? According to a recent study by Hootsuite, Twitter users are typically “younger, wealthier, and more educated than the average American.” If that’s an audience you’re looking to explore or grow then this could be a great platform for your business.
It’s hard to break into the world of social media, especially when it comes to millennial travelers. If you’ve tried your hand at getting through to this audience on other platforms, like Instagram, without much success: try Twitter!
You’ll notice that the most successful brands, even outside of vacation rentals, market their brand in every space they can think of. Coca-Cola advertises at football games and beauty pageants, Zillow promotes their product on park benches and magazines; why? The further you spread your brand, the more likely you are to pick up new customers. You may not have the advertising budget of the big brands mentioned, but what you can do is get your name out there on all social media platforms.
Most social media sites, like Twitter, are completely free to sign up. There’s no risk or potential loss for making a Twitter account amongst other social media platforms. The more present you are on social media, the better your brand will appear. Why? Imagine you’re a potential guest and Twitter is your preferred platform. You’ll probably check there first to see if that vacation rental has an account. If not, you’ll be missing out on opportunities to spread the word and get new bookings. Put your business out there in every place you can.
How to use Twitter for your vacation rental business
Making the decision to sign up is the easy part, but gaining a following and using this platform to convert customers is slightly more difficult. Having an account with zero followers and no posts is just as useful as having no account at all. That’s why you want to make sure that you’re not only creating the account but putting it to good use too.
Join as many vacation rental twitter groups as you can
As mentioned earlier, having a Twitter account grants you access to knowledge that you might not get from other platforms. There are many experts and professionals working in the same field as you, ready to share their tips; you just have to know where to look!
Finding vacation rental groups in your area or niche will be a great way to see what other people in the industry are doing and stay up to speed on any trends or changes. Not to mention, learning from other vacation rental Twitter accounts and groups might give you the competitive edge you’ve been looking for to get ahead of other vacation rental owners.
Keep it short and consistent
Twitter has a fairly tight character count, so don’t expect to be able to write novels. What keeps readers engaged on this site is short-form, quick posts. You’re encouraged to get your point across in only a few characters so try to consider what would be appropriate content for this length limit. Dropping fun facts about your property or promoting weekend offers would be perfect content for Twitter and easy to stick within the character limit.
Encourage retweets
Like all forms of social media, your account will only thrive if there’s engagement. If you have no followers, no likes, or no circulating hashtags, you’re not going to pick up any traffic. You’ll want to encourage your followers to share or “retweet” your content.
The best way to do this is by making your content share-worthy or adding a call to action. If summer is approaching, you could write a tweet that reads, “Retweet if you’re in need of a looong summer vacay.” Just make sure your tweets are relatable enough for users to share on their own page.
Use #followfriday to partner with other accounts and businesses
What’s really great about Twitter is the hashtags. Although hashtags are prevalent on all social media platforms, it’s a true staple for Twitter. The sidebar features some of the most talked-about hashtags of the day, but there are also recurring hashtags like #followfriday.
Follow Friday is your chance to promote other businesses. It might seem counterintuitive at first, but it’s actually a great opportunity to partner with local businesses and tap into their audience and followers as well. When you boast about another business, they’re likely to retweet the praise which will then get your business displayed. Restaurants, spas, local tourism boards, and other vacation rental activities might be a great source for partnership.
Limit how much you self promote
Obviously, the purpose of your page will be to promote your business, attract new customers, and get more bookings, but this needs to be done with a certain level of subtlety. No one is going to follow or retweet an advertisement. Your page needs to be mainly entertaining and engaging with a hint of self-promotion.
Set a limit for how often you plan to advertise your business. Still, keep it fun too! These are promotions on your own page and you don’t want to lose followers as a result. Try to limit how often you self-promote and keep it fun and engaging when you do.
Follow other vacation rental twitter accounts
Keep your friends close and your competition closer. It never hurts to see what your competitors are up to. In the same way you would stay up to date with the industry trends at large, you might want to keep an eye out for what the other vacation rental owners in your area are doing. If their promotions or tweets are performing well, you could try to analyze what’s so successful about them. Use their accounts as inspiration for your own.
Videos are good, images are better, text is best
Hear us out on this one: text-only tweets actually perform the best on Twitter. Contrary to some of the other popular social media giants, video and image sharing isn’t as successful as text. In a recent study conducted by Quick Sprout, they found that the majority of tweets are text-based and they’re also the group of tweets that performs the best. Even more interesting, 65% of those tweets contained a link. This brings us to our next point!
Link your Twitter account to your vacation rental website
At the end of the day, having another social media account to maintain is a bit of work, so you might as well make it worth it. By linking your vacation rental website on your Twitter account and the reverse, gives potential guests the opportunity to book your vacation rental. If anything, it takes them one step closer to where they need to book. This might be the gentle nudge they need to make the decision to book a stay!
In Short
If you’ve been looking to take your vacation rental business into the social media realm, Twitter might be your best option. It’s easy enough to follow along, the content itself requires little time to prepare, and you’ve got an incredible potential audience to tap into.
Make sure you’re putting your vacation rental twitter account to good use by following the tips provided. Engaging content is a must, but don’t forget to take advantage of your Twitter account and all its great uses: industry knowledge, competitor analysis, and guest communications, to name a few.
Once you’ve reeled in all those new reservations from Twitter, you’ll need a platform to manage them. Lodgify provides top-notch vacation rental software to make reservation management and guest communications a breeze. Give it a try today with our free 7 day trial.
