How Accommodation Owners Can Get Started With Twitter & Facebook

Many of our website owners tell us that they don’t know what to write when it comes to Tweets or Facebook posts. They are unsure of just how to get people interested in their accommodation.

Equally, they haven’t got time to play around – their marketing activities need to pay! So let’s look at how to market on Twitter & Facebook in a genuine way that gets the results we’re looking for.

First off, let’s change from ‘selling’ to ‘informing’

The word ‘sell’ can make us feel uncomfortable. None of us want to come across as pushy.

It’s not surprising we feel this way. Many cottage owners don’t see themselves as having a “business” – and not many of us came into business as natural sales people. But that’s exactly what you have to be if you want more bookings!

How about we put it another way? Yes, your objective it to get people to want to come and stay in your accommodation, but what if we inform people about what you have and simply invite them to get more information?

Think about it. You’ve got great accommodation, and expert knowledge of what there is to do in the area that you can share with your readers. Your accommodation may be exactly what many of your twitter audience would want to know about. You could be the perfect match!

What makes Twitter so unique is that we can tweet with anyone – no invitation to connect is necessary. There are no gate-keepers, and everyone is up for a chat. Everyone is open to hearing about what you have to say.

In fact, if someone has taken the action to follow you on Twitter, they want to hear what you have to say!

Remember though, that successful tweeters are those having conversations and building relationships – that is where the Twitter gold is. You don’t do that by just tweeting.  So in a similar way to when you start chatting to someone new, the more you chat, the more you learn about each other, and the more likely they are to consider your accommodation – especially if you were to tweet out a special offer or late availability.

TIP: Always include a link to your website where people can find out more information.

How to Get Started:

• Take a timer and set it for 30 minutes. Turn off all distractions.
• Write or type out as many messages about your accommodation and area information as you can. Think about the benefits and why people would want to hear about your accommodation.
• Aim for 10 but I bet you can think of more!
• Refine until you’re happy with them
• Save your messages and send out one a day.
• Repeat when all your messages are used up!

When it comes to Twitter, you are restricted to 140 characters including spaces, so you will need to truncate your messages – but with Facebook you can have as long a post as you want!  Don’t forget to add the link back to your website.

The ideal scenario would be to get a blog added to your website, and to create a new blog post based on each message. Then you use this blog post to link back to from Twitter & Facebook. eg. write a blog post on an amazing walk near to your accommodation. You can post the first paragraph on Facebook with a read more link back to the whole article, and for Twitter have something like: “Get details of this gorgeous circular walk, just yards from our cottage! Read more [link]”

You get the picture!

We hope you found this article helpful, if you want us to write about something specific, please contact us!