How to Promote Your Airbnb Instagram Account

As a host, building an audience for your Airbnb Instagram account is a great way to increase traffic to your Airbnb listings and your chances of having your property selected for wish lists on Airbnb. For the most part, you should just follow the rules for building a highly targeted Instagram following. The only difference will be that you are not promoting a website but listings on a third-party site.

Here are our Airbnb Instagram tips that we think apply to the majority of Airbnb hosts who are trying to gain an audience on Instagram.

How to Set Up Your Airbnb Instagram Account

The first step that you need to take is making sure that you properly set up your Airbnb Instagram account. After you’ve created an account with your Facebook account, email address, and phone number, just sign in and go to your profile page.

On your profile you’ll be able to add a photo, bio, and link to your website. Make sure that you link back to Airbnb as your website address and connect your Facebook account. Then complete the text for your bio with some information that reflects your Airbnb business. Include your location, emojis and hashtags. Use casual but professional language. From time to time, update your bio to display fun announcements, such as new amenities, events, or Airbnb listings you’ve added.

Weekly Story Tours of Your Neighborhood for Visitors

Posting weekly story tours of your neighborhood on Instagram shows the depth of your knowledge when it comes to being a local real estate expert. Your Airbnb guests will appreciate that you are going the extra mile to provide them with quality localized content. They will readily subscribe to your Airbnb Instagram stories, especially if you can guarantee a posting time and date each week. They will also see it as an incentive to rent from you versus less experienced or engaged hosts.

Tag Influencers in Your Industry

Hospitality, real estate, and local tourist destination influencers can provide a boost to your Instagram. In addition, this traffic is highly targeted because the majority of people who look for travel influencers on social media are usually hoping to plan a business trip or vacation after reviewing the recommendations posted by these influencers.

The other benefit of influencers is that they will share your Airbnb Instagram content with other top influencers. This will allow you to expand your network of go-to influencers who will promote your brand to their followers as a trusted company to work with in your industry.

Only Follow People in Your Industry / Target Market

When you start to gain followers on Instagram, you might be tempted to give every follower a follow back. However, it is recommended that you focus on ensuring that your account only follows profiles that are in your industry, your Airbnb Instagram target market, or are media interests.

By doing so it demonstrates that your brand is trying to gain authority within a specific niche. This method can also work in your benefit as you work to improve your Instagram rankings for specific keywords as Instagram’s algorithm starts to recognize that your posts are always niche specific.

Regular Posts of Things to Do in Your Area

Instead of posting the same hard sell photos of your property, you should also make sure that you incorporate regular posts of things that are interesting to do in your area. It can be a photo of something as simple as a local park or cafe.

By doing so you demonstrate to potential guests how much fun it is to visit your location. The appropriate ratio of content should be 60% your neighborhood points of interest versus 40% your property and its amenities.

However, no matter how professional the photos or videos are, it’s important that you’re always posting new ones. Consider how you can mix up your content with various visual effects to show your local area and property off in a different perspective each time.

Link Your Facebook Account

By linking your Facebook account with your Instagram account, you can increase your Instagram followers. The audience that you already built on Facebook will likely follow you on Instagram as well.

However, it’s important that you don’t just assume that all of your Facebook followers already use Instagram. You need to give them an incentive to check out your Airbnb Instagram campaign, such as a discount, special event, or other giveaway.

Use Your Instagram to Link Back to Your Blog

By linking back to your blog whenever you post new blog articles on your website, you can increase the number of shares of your website, which will in turn increase shares of your Airbnb Instagram account.

Creating links back to your site can also increase the amount of time that users spend on your Instagram. These visitors will have already been warmed up on your website. As a result, they will spend more time reviewing the content that you’ve posted to Instagram.

Use Local Hashtags in Your Airbnb Instagram Campaign

Local hashtags are very useful when it comes to helping rental accommodations to stand out in tourist destinations. Local hashtags also reveal what type of content is preferred by the locals, as well as travelers, to your area.

As a result of reviewing this content, you’ll be able to target your listings more closely with trending hashtags in your area. This will help to build your authority as a trusted Airbnb host in your local area.

Use Video Whenever Possible

When you have the opportunity to create a high-quality video (even with your phone camera), take it. Video is much more effective when it comes to photos versus videos on Instagram.

Videos are also helpful because they can be republished to YouTube to help you build your audience there as well. Finally, like your Facebook profile, consider creating backlinks from your YouTube account to your Airbnb Instagram account so that you can use Youtube to help you get more Instagram followers as well.

You can also create live Instagram events by posting promo videos to YouTube and Facebook and then solely allowing the full content to be published on Instagram. This will force users to follow you on Instagram and they’ll only be warm visitors who are already interested in your content and pre-sold as well.

The Bottom Line

Building an Instagram following isn’t only about your photos and videos. It also means that you have to consider other technical factors that could impact your rankings on Instagram. As you build your audience on Instagram, make sure that you don’t forget to request likes and shares, just as you would on the Airbnb platform.