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[00:00:05] Sarah: Hello. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:09] Annette: I’m Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:11] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:12] Sarah: And this is the–

[00:00:13] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.

[00:00:14] Sarah: If you want to get your questions answered on the Hosting Hotline, all you have to do is go to hostinghotline.com. Ask your question. We’ll give you our feedback or our experience, and if we don’t have an answer for you, we’ll tap into our colleagues, our friends, anyone who would be appropriate to answer your question, and you will not only get the answer to your question, but then you’ll help thousands of other hosts who tune in each and every week because what seems so specific to you is actually quite general. And today we have a question from Jenny.

[00:00:45] Question: Hi, Annette and Sarah. This is Jenny, and I had a quick question about social media for short-term rentals. My first ever STR is currently undergoing some major construction, and we’re hoping to launch it by this winter, fingers crossed. But I’m really lucky to say that I already have a social media presence as a travel and outdoor lifestyle blogger.

[00:01:04] We have around 50,000 followers across the platforms, and I need to utilize this existing audience to promote the rental. But the thing is, I don’t want to change my handles. So what do I do? Do I create a separate account for the rental and start all over? Or do I somehow utilize what I already have and not create a separate social media account for the STR? I would love your advice before it officially launches. Thank you.

[00:01:30] Sarah: I love how Jenny is already thinking about marketing because she’s a blogger, and she gets it.

[00:01:35] Annette: Yes. And you can follow Jenny at @girlof10000lakes. She has a book about ice fishing. So cool.

[00:01:46] Sarah: So cool.

[00:01:46] Annette: We love it. But we are so excited for you and to help you. Number one, we absolutely think you should harness the power of your current social media, your combined 50k followers. This is so incredibly valuable. We are actually going to ask you to take a look at another account, and that account is @arrowsandbow. They have a hotel which unfortunately had some devastation during Hurricane Helene, but we still want you to follow her.

[00:02:24] That hotel, they did a lot of storying about it during the rehab and got their followers very excited about it. They do have a separate handle for it now. And you can see in her profile it says stay and then at has their hotel profile. So that’s one person we want you to really take a look at. She has over 800,000 followers. I think she’s doing a really nice job of marrying those two.

[00:02:52] But one of the ideas that we had for you is we definitely do want you to have a handle for the home in case people specifically want to only look at the content of the home. But you can weave it in in the beginning. But we think doing a giveaway with your followers to get followers on the new account.

[00:03:13] And then also create an email list that’s specific to people that you know want to stay at your short-term rental would be a great way to get hype about it. And you could have that said giveaway have them have their friends follow to gain followers on the new one. But the reason we want you to have that specific account is that way you could market to maybe people that don’t even know about Girl of 10,000 Lakes in the future. But absolutely we want you to utilize your current following.

[00:03:44] Sarah: I want to give you some insight into Arrows and Bow, Jenny. I watched her grow her account, I think she started in 2019, 2018 maybe, and she had a couple of thousand followers when I started following her. I don’t even know how I found her, but I’ve watched her grow exponentially over the years. And when they started their hotel, they didn’t have the 816,000 followers they have now.

[00:04:09] So Jenny, I don’t want to make it sound like, well, of course she can. She’s got this giant following. No, no, no. Ashley, the owner of the Arrows and Bow account, she started promoting her motel when she had a much smaller audience. And even still today, she still weaves in on her Arrows and Bow account content about her motel.

[00:04:29] So Jenny, eventually, you will have to create content for your property and for Girl of 10,000 Lakes, but it’s all going to feed interchangeably because here’s the cool thing, Jenny. You just said it. You’re a travel blogger, so travel is already a part of who you are and your brand. How can you weave that in to the experience your guests are going to have at Juniper Cove?

[00:04:53] How can you make it so that your followers of Girl of 10,000 Lakes would be interested in staying at Juniper Cove or know someone who would want to stay at Juniper Cove? So you already understand marketing, and you already understand keywords and SEO. So how can you, not only with your following, but take the education you’ve already garnered as a blogger and apply it to your property?

[00:05:17] We do know people who keep their existing account and then just have a highlight on their existing account to promote their short-term rental. I think that you could do that, but depending on how far you want to take Juniper Cove, and I don’t know how epic of a property it’s going to be and be able to stand on its own. Maybe there’s going to be offshoots of it. Who knows?

[00:05:41] Because who knows, you might want to– we rarely advise people to start more than one Instagram account. But I think in your case, it might make sense to leverage your original one and then speak to the new one, and then eventually, yes, you’ll have to– but you could probably have some of the same content you can repurpose on both accounts, maybe tweak it a little bit here and there. But we’re excited for how you can already drum up interest.

[00:06:06] And like Annette said, I think giveaway is a brilliant idea. And then all those lessons you taught yourself or people reach out to you on your blog to get exposure, now you’ll need to do that for Juniper Cove. Not only leverage your own email list and your own SEO on your website and across your social channels, but you might want to reach out to other bloggers, friends of yours, friends of their friends, and do some content exchanging to start drumming up interest also in Juniper Cove.

[00:06:33] Annette: Because you are a prime advocate to have their own direct booking site and be able to market on your own and get guests coming directly to your website, booking with you directly, and not having to share any of the booking fees with the online travel agent. So we also want to offer that to you. That’s a way to really squeeze the juice out of this amazing following that we know that you’ve worked really, really, really hard to create.

[00:07:06] Sarah: One last thing I want to mention is, Jenny, before we listened to your question, I was like, ooh. I was thinking that you wanted to take your existing account and then only talk about your short-term rental. And where that doesn’t work sometimes is because, and maybe even if your original account was so off topic of travel or stays etc., not lifestyle at all, it might not resonate with your audience.

[00:07:34] I can think of an example, but I’ve seen people try to do that. They take their existing follower, change the content entirely that they talk about on their Instagram, and then their engagement nosedives. And so I don’t think that’s the case for you. I think you still create the content that you’re already creating as a travel blogger, and you weave in some really cool aspects of your new short-term rental into it.

[00:07:57] But I just wanted to mention that for anyone else out there who’s thinking, maybe you already have a following for a previous career, and you want to take that account and start posting totally different content, it might not resonate because you’re talking to totally different avatar, you’re giving them different content, and they don’t care about it. So if you’re in that boat, just think about that. You might have to start from scratch if there’s no way to leverage it. But I don’t think that’s your case, Jenny. I think there’s enough similarities there that you can leverage what you’ve got. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:08:26] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:08:28] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:08:28] Sarah: Talk to you next time.