How do we link our listings to social media and other ways to promote?

@jaquo

If anyone has knowledge that they wouldn’t mind sharing on how to promote our listings in the cyber world, please tell us who are not technically savvy. I thank you in advance!

I’ll be very happy to help as much as I can. I’ll be back… :slight_smile:

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I think most people use Facebook? If not it’s easy to join up and it’s a great way to promote your listing. (Personally, I hate FB! But it’s an excellent way to get your listing out there.)

I think it was @dcmooney who posted once that she has quite a few FB ‘friends’ who were guests?

If you have a Facebook account, you can easily add your listing to your ‘about page’. Go to that page and you’ll see that you can add your listing (and your other site or blog) there.

Just hover your mouse to the right alongside where it says ‘websites’ and paste in the URL of your listing at Airbnb.

That’s a great start but the important thing is to share your listing - or news from your listing - regularly. Let’s take an example. Your messages need only to be simple but it’s best to always include a photograph. (The cuter the better!)

You might post when you have made some improvements to your listing, when you have interesting guests (even better if you have interesting pets), when you’ve reached a certain milestone (such as the dreaded superhost) or when you’ve received a great review.

If you’ve ‘friended’ the guest you are writing about you can tag them to alert them to your post - and the chances are strong that they’ll share it with their own friends. It’s also likely that some of your guests will post about their stay with you and then you can share that with your contacts.

The problem that a lot of people have with promoting themselves to their Facebook friends is that they feel that it’s somehow now quite right to promote their listing to their old schoolfriends and so on. But truly people will be interesting in what’s going on in your life and ‘enjoying a glass of wine with our new guests from Paris’ is much more interesting than ‘I’m eating a tangerine’. (That was the boring comment years ago that made me vow never to look at my timeline!)

As your friends questions. Two examples, taken entirely at random, are ‘do you think I should have an electric kettle in my rental room?’ and ‘when staying in rented accommodation, do you prefer a duvet to sheets and blankets?’ :wink:

You can get some useful info but more, you’re also promoting your listing and showing that you care about the comfort of your guests.

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Awesome! Thank you so much!

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Twitter coming next :slight_smile:

I’m not on Twitter … Facebook, yes. I’m sure others are on Twitter, though.

It’s easy to join and use :slight_smile:

Do you have your own FB profile for your air listing? I was thinking about creating one that I can post from that my friends can like and share and just sharing applicable things there. That way I don’t have to be “friends” with guests, but previous guests could “like” and follow my listing.

No I don’t, Sarah, but I think it’s a good idea. The reason I don’t is that I have a local tourist info account that has loads of followers so I promote my listing there. (It’s the ‘Las Olas Boulevard’ page shown in the screenshot in my post above).

As I said, I think it’s a good idea to have a page for your listing and if any hosts here create or have one, please post the link here so we can all ‘like’ it.

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Here’s my newly created page: https://www.facebook.com/HotelDeWarren/

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And yeah, we can share each other’s listings this way too!

@Sarah_Warren - I ‘liked’ your page - hopefully other people here will do so too :slight_smile:

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Do you have your own personal page on FB? If so, post on your timeline and ask your ‘friends’ to follow the page. Ask them what they think so that you can get a dialogue going.

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Does everyone think that it is a good idea to have the address on their AirBNB Facebook page?

And I don’t understand the target audience for a Facebook page. My friends aren’t going to stay here. I am not even sure I want them to know i have an airBNB running. And none of them live close by particularly. I mean they do, but if they had family or friends coming to visit, they would be able to find an AirBNB much closer to their houses.

I am pretty technically savvy, and I don’t get this as a marketing platform for a small airBNB.

@anon67190644 - the idea is that your friends - be they guests or old school friends - will want to share. People on FB are looking for items to share with their friends and a lovely place to stay (with someone they know) is far better than daft updates (I once saw one from a contact whose latest update was ‘I have no clean underwear’!)

Honestly, your friends will love to promote your listing :slight_smile:

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My favorite was actually a tweet: “Foodler is down. How will I eat?”

Not sure that my group of friends would be interested in ‘sharing.’ I actually only have friends on FB who are real in-life friends. Gonna ponder this.

Twitter is even better for promoting listings than FB :slight_smile:

I have my air listing as my website, but I have told my friends that when they share they should mention that people are always welcome to contact me directly to book and get the referral discount (which is of course no air fees!). With me offering a full apartment, there is definite draw to friends sharing with their friends and family who come in town to visit.

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I have a FB page with a 'Book Now" button that links to Air. I’m not sure how many bookings I have gotten, but I do get a a decent amount of traffic on it. I make sure to post things several times a week to keep it active and interesting.

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Just ‘liked’ your page, here’s mine…

I do sometimes run ads on FB,.
I don’t spend much money on this advertising though, although I have gotten three bookings when I’ve done it (max I spend is $8).
You can set a certain audience to receive your ads. For instance, I will frequently choose Brooklyn + 50 miles, women aged 25-65.
You can also choose ‘interests’ for that audience, meaning those people have ‘liked’ other pages or ads/posts that fit into those interests, such as nature, hiking.
There are free tutorials on FB on how to set up a business page, and how to create effective ads.
FB makes it very easy to take your money :slight_smile:
But the important things to remember: the more likes, views, comments your page gets, the more it will show up in newsfeeds, and this advertising cost is of course a tax write off,

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