Vacation Rental Traffic From Social Media

If you’re not using social media to help market your vacation rental, you’re losing out. Social media networks are a free way of marketing a rental property. So, why wouldn’t you use social media as part of your vacation rental marketing strategy? Are you not using social media to market your vacation rental? Tell us why.

In today’s post, I’m going to share a free social marketing tool with you. I’ll also teach you how I use it to drive traffic to my vacation rental websites and how you can use it, too. If you’ve ever wondered how to get visitors to your property website, check out the video in this blog, I’ll demonstrate one way!

I’ve been trying out this new social marketing tool and I wanted to share it with you. Tell me what you think of it.

Hey V.R. Community, Ever hear of a URL shorten-er?

But first, do you know what a URL shorten-er is? It is what it sounds like: it makes a website link shorter than it really is.

But why do you need to shorten a URL? You may want to share a blog, article, picture or post to Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus but sometimes the URL is super long, which makes a post look messy.

Here is an example of a long URL:

http://isbeingbuilt.com/villamarketersold/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Teachers-Quote-Chinese-Proverb.jpg

Same URL Shortened

http://bit.ly/1x4Umkb

Which looks neater?

But that isn’t the only reason for using a URL shortener! Some URL shorteners actually enable you to increase your web traffic. Let’s talk about a few free social media tools you can use today in your rental marketing.

Vacation Rental Helper:  Google URL Shortener

I’ve used two URL shorteners in the past, one of which is Google’s link shortener, found here https://goo.gl/ Google’s URL shortner is free and can track how many people have clicked on the links you share. This feature helps you to understand the level of engagement your social messages are getting.

It helps you to discover which types of posts are most popular in your social setting/network and sheds light on what type of content you should be sharing.

 

Vacation Rental Helper:  Bit.ly URL Shortener

Next up is Bit.ly.com. Bitly works a lot like Google’s URL shortener.

I’ve used both of these free social media tools and the two are great, but there is a new shiny tool that has caught my eye.

 

Vacation Rental Helper:  Snip.ly URL Shortener

Let me introduce to you Sniply http://snip.ly/Ydmg

Snip.ly offers a couple of HUGE advantages that the other free social media tools just don’t have. (But you’ll have to keep reading to find out!)

 

Vacation Rental Community:  Why share content?

So, why should you use this social marketing tool? There are a couple of reasons. First, if you’re going to be successful on the social marketing scene, you’ll need to share other people’s content. Why?

If you want people to share your marketing and content, you’ll have to share theirs. You just won’t be as successful as you could be with social marketing if you ‘re only sharing your content. I mean, think about that for a moment… What would you think of someone who only talked about themselves?

That’s sorta the same thing when you only share information about yourself. Social marketing is about being social… and sharing is an important part of the social world. A smart marketer is one that shares other people’s content. It’s sort of like “vacation rental marketing Karma,” and Sniply encourages that behavior. What comes around goes around!

Not only will this social sharing tool help your marketing Karma, it helps you to keep your followers and friends engaged with your posts by sharing great content regularly. Using Sniply to share other people’s content with your own social networks will help you to share great content you find online, while leveraging it to drive traffic to your own vacation rental website.

Never share content that isn’t relevant or appropriate for your followers, just for the sake of sharing someone else’s content in your network. If you post great content, even if it’s not your own, people will look out for your post and see you/your vacation rental more often, especially using this social sharing tool.

Although people are much more likely to share your content if you share theirs, you wouldn’t get direct traffic by sending people to other sites than your own. That was before Sniply.

This cool social marketing tool lets you share other website links with your audience, with the added benefit of an inclusion of your head shot, logo or avatar with a call to action that encourages people to visit your site.

Vacation Rental Tools:  What about you?

Have you been using social media to market your vacation rental? How’s it going for you? Do you know of any other free social media tools? Please share your thoughts and comments below.