Facebook for Vacation Rental Owners

Posts vs. Stories

If you ROUTINELY post interesting and engaging stories, your followers will routinely click on your story.

Facebook Posts & Story Ideas

Ideas for Interesting Posts & Stories

• Highlight your Call-to-Action button.  As a vacation rental owner, your CTA should be set to “Book Now”.  Write a post that invites your audience to explore your website by clicking the “Book Now” button.
• Make an announcement. Are you planning some new updates?  Building a new deck?  Remodeling the bathroom?  Adding a hot-tub?
• Ask a question. Get feedback from your audience about the types of restaurants they like, which activities they enjoy, what events they like to attend.
• Multiple choice. This is a fun way to get some feedback.  Ask them to choose a favorite TV show, favorite National Park, favorite coffee, favorite flavor ice cream.  Then write a post about the answer and highlight a local business in town that pertains to their answer.
• Share a review. Take a snapshot of a raving review and write a thank you with appreciation for all your awesome guests.
• Ask for advice from your audience about the best night spot in town.
• Create a contest or giveaway. For example, book 3 nights get the 4^th night free, or give away a free cleaning fee.  Use a Random Number generator to choose a winner from the list of people who liked, shared or commented on the post.

Destination Marketing Post and Story Ideas

• Share a local event. Get potential guests excited about coming to your town to participate in a local event.
• Highlight a local business. This will also help you build important local relationships.
• Create series posts for social media holidays – such as National Pet Day, Read a Book Day (highlight a local author) Google “Social Media Holidays” for inspiration.
• Share a local restaurant’s menu.
• Share interesting or exciting news from your town.
• Tell your audience a little bit about yourself, or about why you decided to start a vacation rental business.
• Highlight local scenic photo opportunities.
• Highlight local artisans and include a link to their Facebook page.
• Share photos you’ve taken around town.
• Highlight a local historical site.
• Post about a local winery and mention your favorite wine from there.
• Share interesting weather events.
• Post travel safety tips.
• Post travel packing tips.
• Take photos of local wildlife and post about the photo or interesting facts about the area’s wildlife.
• Share information about local music events and concerts.

More About Facebook Stories

So many Facebook users are no long creating original content.  They share memes, photos, quotes, and links that were created by someone else.  Think about how many times you’ve seen the SAME meme.

Stories are a way to prompt Facebook users to create original content.  You have to be a little more creative when posting a story – again, it’s purposeful.  Facebook wants original content and they will reward you with higher rankings in the newsfeed.

A good story will be interesting, funny or valuable in some way to your audience.

• Personalize your Story using camera effects.  Facebook has features for adding stickers and frames to make your photos and videos stand out.
• You can cross-share your stories on Facebook and Instagram, saving you time and easily getting your message out on both platforms.  
• Bring your audience on a journey with your story.  Come up with a story line that can continue on as a sequel.  Another term for this is a story series.  You can use a story series to highlight rooms in your vacation rental.  Show photos or videos from each of the bedrooms and point out details in your story – such as the view, the TV, the bed size, closet space, in-room jacuzzi, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about Facebook Posts and Stories, check out my Social Media Marketing Bootcamp.  Learn how you can become your destination’s go-to social media travel guide and, in turn, get more bookings for your vacation rental.