Heather Bayer
Have you ever struggled with your social media output, wondered what to post, where to post, and when and how to engage? And also, have you ever wondered about your brand? Is it on point? Are you actually getting the message across to the people that you want to be talking to? In today's episode, I am talking to Alice Fry from Touch Stay and Derry Green from The Secret Garden Glamping about branding, about social media, and about all things engagement.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the vacation rental success podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. As ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again from Gulf Shores, Alabama, which is where I am for the winter and enjoying every minute of it. At the moment, it's snowing at home. There's lots of snow in my driveway.  I check it out every day on my Nest camera and I can see the snowplow coming and going and leaving a nice clear driveway for the car that I'm not going to be taking into it. No, in fact, Mike and his family go up there every so often to stay at the house, so always good to keep the driveway nice and clean and nice and clear for them. But it is nice to know that I don't have to go out and shovel it. I promise you I'm not going to mention Snow anymore. It's on my mind every day, but I will keep it away from the podcast in future.

Heather Bayer
How are you with your social media posting? How are you with your social media engagement? Where are you posting? Is it the right place? Do you have your branding right? What is branding anyway? All these questions are going to be answered today, I hope, in my discussion with Alice Fry from Touch Stay and Derry Green from The Secret Garden Glamping.

Heather Bayer
This all started at the VRMA Conference in Orlando when I met Alice for the first time and I was really taken with how inspiring and motivating she was.  She gets so enthusiastic and certainly on her topic of social media, she knows this subject inside and out. It has just been a few weeks since I  talked to Derry Green at The Secret Garden Glamping, and he was talking about how much he loved engaging on social media and the fact that his social media presence was such an important part of his whole marketing effort for his business. I do encourage you, if you haven't yet listened to my interview with Derry [VRS523], that you go and listen to that as well. It's an amazing story how social media just catapulted Derry and his tiny little business of one glamping pod in his back garden into a massive endeavor. Now with 13 glamping pods and some very exciting news on the horizon for The Secret Garden Glamping, and this all started with social media. He is living proof of how things go viral and how they can change your lives and they can change the direction of your business.

Heather Bayer
So in this interview, we talk about the importance of personal branding. We talk about content, effective storytelling techniques, the best way of converting social media followers into actual guests, which is what the whole purpose of this is.  We'll explore things like collaborations with influencers and how you can strike that balance between promotional content and value-added material in your posts. We'll also touch on a little bit about how social media is changing and how that could impact us in the future.  So, without further ado, let's move on over to this great discussion with Alice and Derry.

Heather Bayer
This is an exciting event. I am so happy to have with me today Derry Green from The Secret Garden Glamping, who has already been on the show. If you haven't listened to that episode, then I suggest you bookmark that right now for listening to later [VRS523]. Alice Fry, who is the Social Media Manager at my favorite platform, Touch Stay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alice. We got the idea for this episode when we met in Orlando at the VRMA Conference, so I'm really glad it's come together. Thanks. I'm so happy to have you here.

Alice Fry
Lovely to be here.

Heather Bayer
And, Derry, it's just always good to see you. You just inspire me so much. You just inspired me so much that I'm now looking at glamping opportunities in Ontario. And when you think that in Ontario, the temperature goes down to.... it can go down to -30°C in the winter. It's going to be quite an organizational event if we ever get this off the ground. But thank you for being inspiring.

Derry Green
You're very welcome. I loved chatting to you last time. I like talking anything 'glamp' in social media and that stuff. So, yeah, I'm really excited for this.

Heather Bayer
Well, today we're not not really talking about glamping. We are talking about social media, everything from branding, to content, to where you put it, and what you do with it, and most importantly, how you make guests out of the people who see your social media. So let's kick off. Derry, tell me about your social media experience before The Secret Garden Glamping kicked off, before you had that viral experience. What were you doing on social media before that? And how has your view, your take on it, changed since then?

Derry Green
So yeah, before I started this, social media to me, I had Facebook, that was it. And it was as far as I was concerned, social media was saying happy birthday to a friend or posting a picture of the kids. That was my total limited knowledge of social media. I didn't really engage with it much, and that was it. Obviously, when I came to doing this, I quickly realized that social media was absolutely key. I mean, in any business now, for what I was doing specifically, getting my content out to my audience and then obviously to guests is vital, especially in my market within Glamping, but any vacation rental. It's a crowded market as far as there's lots of different options, so getting your content in front of people is key. So now I then spent every waking minute, day and night, trying to work out what I was  doing wrong, what needed to happen, how it worked. That was my journey at the start to where we are now. We're the most viewed and most followed glamping site in the UK by a country mile now. We've got three quarters of a million followers across social media.

Derry Green
Last month, our reach was 10.2 million, so it's huge. We've had half a billion views online now on our content. I quickly realized it was key. And then that is really exciting to me. It's ever-changing. Everything with social media, there's always something new coming along and trying to keep up with that really focuses me on what I like doing.

Heather Bayer
And this is all - and I need to put this into context because - this is all in less than three years, right?

Derry Green
Yeah. I started... the first one was March of 2020. I actually opened the site in February of 2021. So, yeah, two and a half years coming up to three years of being open as a site now.

Heather Bayer
Well, I think that's got to be motivating for anybody who thinks I'm late to the social media game. You can come in late.

Heather Bayer
Alice, what about you? What's your background in social media before you joined Touch Stay?

Alice Fry
Yeah, before here I was working at John Lewis. So for your worldwide audience, John Lewis is a retailer in the UK, and I was an influencer manager there. So basically meant collaborating with influencers to feed the content on their social. So that was some nice experience there. Before that, I worked in agency, worked with lots of different companies doing social media. And then before that, I was at W.H. Smith, another brand. So I've been doing it for 10 years now. It's changed a lot. Like, Derry's probably witnessed, particularly in the last couple of years, I think, a lot of... We can go onto that, but a lot of stuff with video has definitely changed a lot. So lots of mixed stuff and now Touch Stay for the last year. So yeah, it's great to hear Derry's story.

Heather Bayer
I absolutely love it. So in the immortal words of Mrs. Merton, if you ever remember Mrs. Merton? Anybody remember Mrs. Merton? This is going back to probably the 90s, a TV personality.

Alice Fry
Loved it.

Heather Bayer
And her thing was… So which was your favorite? When you think of all the places you've been to, which was your favorite? It actually came from… Mrs. Merton was this spoof character, and she would interview people, and she interviewed a World War II veteran and World War I veteran. He sat in the front of the audience and he said, Yes, I was in both wars. She said, So you were in World War I and you were in World War II. So tell me, which one was your favorite?

Alice Fry
Oh, wow!

Heather Bayer
That "Which one was your favorite?" has always stuck with me.

Alice Fry
Absolutely.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, So Touch Stay is clearly your favorite company now.

Alice Fry
Of course. Everyone's lovely. You're lovely. Andy's lovely. But yeah, it's been a real great experience. I think it's great because of the community. I think that's the big thing.

Heather Bayer
Well, this is it. You've done a ton of stuff with the social media output over the... How long have you been there now?

Alice Fry
A year.

Heather Bayer
A year.

Alice Fry
Yeah, bang on.

Heather Bayer
And I've seen it changing, and clearly your influence is amazing. I just want to start off with talking about branding because Touch Stay works so hard on their branding. Secret Garden Glamping is clearly a recognized, such a recognized brand now. How important is it for owners and managers to create a personal brand? In fact, let's start with... I'll start with you, Alice. What exactly is a personal brand?

Alice Fry
I would say it's what is your business? How does it look? How does it feel? What's your tone of voice? What are you trying to... For example, like Derry... I'm Derry, I'm not going to steal your points here, but when I think of Derry's business, I think it's really quite lux[ury], it's very photogenic, it's very beautiful, and it's that brand. But how is that consistent? Through your tone of voice, through your pictures, every single thing that your customer...., those touch points, they see your brand. And it doesn't have to be like luxury and cool. It can be like family-orientated. Well, how can you do that? Can you do that through your tone of voice, through some lovely pictures of families together, that sort of thing? So I haven't answered that succinctly, but to summarize, I think I'd probably say it's everything. It's what you want to kind of evoke as your brand, what it stands for, I would say.

Heather Bayer
I know when I think of The Secret Garden Glamping, in my head I immediately think of being outside. So I think of being outside surrounded by fairy lights or maybe in a hot tub and just having that wonderful family experience, or even romantic experience. That's what comes to mind. When I think of Touch Stay, what comes to mind immediately, and I think this is a fabulous branding, is Touch Stay Rockstars. You label all your clients, Rockstars. That branding goes with you everywhere. Everywhere I've been, if I'm speaking at a conference, or if I'm at a conference, I get the little tag that goes onto my lanyard that says Touch Stay Rockstar, that says Rockstar....

Alice Fry
....Yeah, that's so true, and we're going to change it. Sorry, just so you know, Heather, we're going to give out friendship bracelets next time.

Heather Bayer
What does branding mean to you, Derry?

Derry Green
Yeah, so it's we just said about then. To me, it's getting across to your audience, to your customers, what's important to you and also what's important to them. So whether that be what I do or whether you were saying, Alice, whether it be family-orientated, whether it be sustainable, accessible, whatever it is, your brand is then distinguishing you from your competition. So like you say, when people see my logo or my content, they know straight away it's me. They know exactly what they're getting. Every time we build a new unit, this is where we are focusing on with the brand to the site. We're building a new unit at the minute. It went online for pre-bookings last week. It's sold out in 47 minutes and nobody's seeing a picture of it. Nobody will see any pictures of that unit, the Wonderland, until it opens on the 19th of January. But we've built up a brand now, so people know minimum standards, what they're expecting to get, and then we always try and exceed that. They will book a unit that they don't know what they're getting based on our brand because they've got trust in it. They know what we're focusing on. They know what units we provide. That builds confidence with your audience. They know what they're going to get when they come to you, and then you can then exceed expectations as you go forward. So yeah, it's getting across to your audience what's important to you and what's important to them.

Heather Bayer
Forty seven minutes?

Derry Green
Yeah, 47 minutes. That one is now currently fully booked until 2025, and nobody's seen a picture, all it is is a logo. That's it. That's all anybody knows. Nobody knows what the unit is, what's going to be there. It's going to be awesome. It's looking great.

Alice Fry
Your rivaling Glastonbury there with ticket sales.

Derry Green
Honestly, it's ridiculous. We have to take on extra servers every time we do a launch to make sure that we've got enough capacity on the website to have tens and hundreds of thousands of people all trying to book at the same time.

Heather Bayer
And this all comes down to social media, because this is how you were discovered. This is how your very first, and I have told this story, and you come to word-of-mouth, I've told this story to so many people since we last talked. I've probably convoluted it a bit over time and probably added a few things. But the tent in the backyard, it was COVID and you wanted to give your kids something to do and that's how somebody picked it up.

Derry Green
You see... Back onto the branding side of things, that's what I'm getting across within my branding is my whole story, my journey, my endeavor. It's making sure people understand that we're not just a big brand like John Lewis, for example. At heart, the reason I did it was to provide something for my children, not to make money. And that's still the case now as we're going forward and things like that. So you can get all these different things across within a brand that people know and recognize and then fall in love with and engage with and want to be part of.

Heather Bayer
That's a great segue into storytelling, telling the stories. And you hear a lot about storytelling at the moment, everybody's talking about you've got to tell a story. What does that actually mean, telling a story? I mean, Derry, you're telling the story of how you started out, but is that just what it is? Or is there more to it than that, Alice?

Alice Fry
I think it is... There's lots more to it, I think. I think it's the difference between someone seeing something and going, all right, but on the flip side, someone seeing it and going, oh, I'm connecting with this emotionally. I think there's three ways of doing it, whether you're inspiring someone, educating someone or evoking some sort of emotion in terms of humor or cry with happiness, that thing, painting that story so they feel immersed in it, so they can see themselves in it. I think that's a big difference. You could have like a flat picture of something and be like, Here's a room I've got, come and get it; it's half price at the moment. Or you could say, Hey, look at this. I had my morning coffee out here. It was such a great experience. It's great to get away. By the way, we have 50% off this night. I think that's the difference. Making people.... It's all about immersing people into that experience. That's how I see it anyway.

Heather Bayer
Derry, how do you tell stories? Can you give us a couple of examples?

Derry Green
Do I? I absolutely agree with Alice. So for me, it's all about aspirational content. So as you just said then, you've got to create that image in their head where they can picture being there. So we do it a lot when we do our content, if you notice. So we have bar areas around by the hot tub and things. So instead, you could just leave it as a space and that's it. But we actually stock it. So it looks like a bar. We have cocktails made on the side. We have the drinks fridge full of drinks and everything else. And what you're trying to do is get the customer to imagine sitting there and drinking a cocktail at night and how they'd feel and enjoying it with the friends and that kind of stuff. So it's creating the aspirational point. Now, the funny thing is when you come down to it. We have the bar fridge and everything set up. Their aspiration is they're going to sit in the hot tub all night drinking cocktails and reconnect with friends, whatever it is. Now, the reality of that is entirely different.

Derry Green
So the reality is, we have the bar fridge and nine times out of 10, instead of it being full of your nice drinks and champagne and everything else, it's got some sausages in there and some bacon and some bread. It's never used like that. But when they were looking at that content and when they were looking at then making a booking, the aspirational part of that was that's what they want to do. Now, it's a really good way to get people to engage with what you're doing because they see it as well. You're not selling to them overtly. It's genuine content, and that's where you alluded to earlier on.

Derry Green
There's been a big change the past couple of years with content creation, which took me back a bit, because people now don't want to be sold to, they want to see and make the decisions and the choices themselves. Now you can point them in the right direction by doing different things, like storytelling. We do it quite a lot where you spend the night with us, or what would you do with  seven of your friends here tonight, that sort of stuff, and try to coax them in the right direction. But you don't want to do it overtly, but days have gone now with social media of openly pushing stuff into their faces, trying to sell to them over and over again. They don't want that experience anymore.

Heather Bayer
Right. Yeah, I think that's so important. Let's go on to this content thing, about how content has changed. Years ago, I was an avid Twitter user, and I even wrote a course on how to use Twitter and how to engage with journalists and other media folk on Twitter. I haven't used Twitter for a long time. I'm certainly not using X right now. I know Tyann is still out there using Twitter, but then I think she uses absolutely everything. Tyann Marcink, with 28 hours in her day, as opposed to the 24 that we all have. She uses those extra four hours so well.

Alice Fry
Totally.

Heather Bayer
But Alice, how's the whole business of platforms changed? Before we go to content, what about platforms? Because 10 years ago we didn't have TikTok. We now have X. What happened to the ones that have disappeared?

Alice Fry
Yeah, this is a really great question, actually. And it sort of relates to what, I guess, what I guess what Derry and I were saying in the sense that you can't really just promote the way you used to. You can't just go, Hey, this is yours. I'm telling you to have it. You have it. They've got to really feel immersed and engaged with it. I think platforms like TikTok because they're so immersive and they're so fast and so it kind of immediately tends to lean on that way that we now learn. We want it quickly. We want everything so fast in our lives. We want something tomorrow on Amazon, we can go and get it, and that sort of thing. It's now changed into the way that we take in, digest our media. So I think it's all changed with the way maybe like, Myspace, right? Do you remember that? And platforms like that where it was maybe just like a one-way dialog? Now it's like a two-way thing. You'll have videos on TikTok where people are like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much fun. I could jump on this trend. And the same way that Facebook and Instagram are working out.

Alice Fry
It's a bit of a... you know..., in terms of the target market, it's an older generation that are on Facebook. Don't get me wrong, there's a big mix, but it's a higher percentage. And then on Instagram, it's a bit of a mix. And then on TikTok, mega-Gen Z. So it depends who you're targeting. But yeah, I would say the messaging is usually video, because now people want to see it. They want to feel like they're in there. And if you do use just photography, not just because it's amazing, but it's got to look slick and it can look... Yeah, it's got to look very, very good for it to fly. And maybe it might not be photography, maybe it could be something funny, like a meme or something, but it's got to really hit the nail on the head, I think, in terms of humor. So yeah, I think it's definitely changed in terms of the way we digest our media. That's definitely changed.

Heather Bayer
Derry, what platforms are you strongest on?

Derry Green
So to be fair, we have a strong following across all the platforms. Our biggest is still Facebook. Three hundred and twenty, three hundred and thirty thousand followers on Facebook is still our biggest one. TikTok is the elephant in the room. That's the big change that's happened. When TikTok came along, we were kind of an early adopter to TikTok, and I found it so strange to use. I was used to creating for Facebook, really, really slick promotional videos that were longer form. I loved them. I absolutely loved them. It took you through a journey. It started as you're walking down the path and through the trees and eventually getting to the unit and then finally revealing the unit. When TikTok came out, that content just bombed. It did not work. TikTok has thrown it the other way around. You want the end of the video at the start and then you reverse it. You want the big reveal instantly, which I didn't like. I genuinely didn't like it. And it took me a good little while to get my head around how TikTok as a platform works, how the algorithms worked, and what it was doing. Now, I do like it.

Derry Green
It's harder to just tell stories on TikTok because you've got shorter time to do it and you're doing it in reverse in theory. But with Facebook and Instagram now, TikTok's come along, took a huge share of them. And all they've done to come back against it is copy them. That's the top and bottom. So prime example, last week we had a video on TikTok. It did about 1.2, 1.3 million views, took that exact same video, put it on Facebook. Facebook was about 2.2 million, Instagram 3.6 million, I think it was. TikTok now, I use TikTok as a platform because the brilliant thing with TikTok, to me, it's like a test, basically. I can test as much content as I want on there. There's no limit to it. You can put on 100 videos a day if you want, and every video you put on is judged on its own merit. So if you do a great video, it's shown to millions and millions of people. If you do a terrible video, it's shown to a hundred people.

Derry Green
Now, flip that around onto Facebook. If I put any content on Facebook, it is shown to a huge audience. A general post I put on Facebook will get an engagement of somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000, regardless what it is. I can mess with my content on TikTok, see what does well, and I can do that over and over and over and over again. When I find content that works well on TikTok, I automatically know it's going to work well on Facebook and Instagram, because they're copying their algorithm. TikTok then, once I worked out how to use it, was a game changer. It meant I could do lots of testing very, very quickly and work out what was doing well and the content that was going out, because at the time, again, now TikTok has caught up and exceeded our Instagram following now, although that's been going really good recently. But it meant I could test all the content I wanted to on TikTok without having to worry about my reach on Facebook and Instagram getting drawn back, because I wasn't producing the content that they wanted to see. So, yeah, TikTok is a phenomenal platform and it's being adopted by everybody now. My Nan's on TikTok, because I've taught her to use it.

Derry Green
It's a great platform, although it's still for a lot of people they have this thing of, Oh, it's just silly little videos of kids dancing or whatever else it might be. It will work out very quickly what you want to see and it will only show you that. If you're interested in cars, it will show you every car video ever and none of the rubbish that you're not interested in. It will narrow down your audience automatically for you very quickly and it's free. Facebook and Instagram are geared up around paying now.  That's the top and bottom is if you want to get reach, if you want to get audience, if you want to find new people for your bookings, you pay for it. That's it. They're a monetized platform where TikTok is still new, so everything's free. It's great. You can build up a huge audience. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't, you're no better or worse off, whereas with Facebook, if you pay for a post to generate views, you don't know if that post is any good and Facebook is still going to charge you for it regardless.

Heather Bayer
Gosh. What a great strategy. I'm one of those new people to TikTok.

Derry Green
On TikTok, we're part of what's called TikTok's High Value Acquisitions team. We have bi-weekly Zoom calls with TikTok to let us know what they're doing. We find out what music's going viral. We find out what's changing in their ecosystem. Now, with TikTok, what they're trying to do is now, they're going to try and monetize the platform. They've been going for a couple of years now. They need to start generating revenue, and they can't do that with short-form content. They can't. You can't monetise a 10-15 second video. They're going to start prioritizing longer-form content. What they want TikTok to be is basically a new Google/Tripadvisor platform. The way they see it is you will see a product for sale, whether it be a new kettle, a vacation rental, a car, whatever it is, you'll then search for that item on TikTok and you will find genuine content of what that item's like to use, to stay in, whatever it might be. Because review sites now, for example, Tripadvisor, even Google reviews. People are done with it. They know the people leaving five-star reviews probably just really like it. The people leaving one-star reviews are probably it's just not for them.

Derry Green
You can't really judge your business now based on Tripadvisor/Google reviews. Before when I put out content, it would be on a beautiful sunny day with no wind and everything would be in the perfect place to look good for that video. When a customer makes one, it might be a rainy day in November when the decking is covered in leaves. But if they look at that and the customers that were there are having a great time, regardless of what it looked like, then they know that that's genuine. They know the people who enjoyed it, who were here had a great time and they take that as an indicator, Right, we can book because we know this content's genuine. Again, when it comes to content now on TikTok, it's all about making you, even if it is trying to sell something or trying to put your content out there, you're still trying to come across as genuine to the people believe it is, because again, if you try and sell on TikTok, ooh bad! Does not work!

Heather Bayer
What's your take on TikTok, Alice?

Alice Fry
So doing it for ten years, it did scare me at first as well as Derry. So I'm glad you've had so much success with it that it used to scare you. So there's hope for us all. I think it's great because I think you can have a niche and you can go. There's people doing some amazing things out there that they wouldn't necessarily have even had the platform before. For example, I was talking to a guy the other day that he was at a tourism award and he has a glamping sight and he also, on the side, trims horses' hoofs. And he was telling me about this guy that does that on TikTok. And people are fascinated in it because there's something they've never learnt about before and it's really unique. I mean, it might not necessarily be unique in that field? But it is to someone like me and it's great. It's so great. And if you, exactly like Derry's saying, if you aren't overly promotional, if you're trying to bring that value, which is above everything, is what you should be trying to do give value, if you'll be able to do that in a quick, sync way, then boom, you're able to do it.

Alice Fry
You see people that put just the odd video.... It is hard, it is. But you can put the odd video out there of something that's quite interesting and it can go nuts. There's some great opportunities in there, as long as you're not frightened to do it. You just need to do it.

Heather Bayer
I think people have been saying this for years. Video is easy. You just get behind your phone, that's it. I think it's becoming more and more comfortable. But I think there's still a lot of people out there that just don't like that idea of being in front of that camera. But of course, you don't have to be. You don't have to be you in front of the camera. That whole business about TikTok got me thinking about Booking.com's Sustainability Report and the fact that it's the Gen Z generation, where 70% of them are looking for more sustainable options when they go traveling, which is why those people in short-term rentals should be focusing a lot more on their sustainability features, and that just got me thinking about how useful TikTok would be to do that focus.

Derry Green
You're absolutely correct, because any sustainable stuff that we have here, we're doing a lot of battery storage, solar power, wind power, that content absolutely bombs on Facebook. Absolutely bombs. I would love to do more content about it, but I know my audience on Facebook isn't looking for it. And because of that, I can't then show that on Facebook because the rest of the audience, it doesn't go any further. TikTok, I can do a video today of a wind turbine. Tomorrow I can do a video cutting the grass, and the day after I can do a video of the pods. You can have that kind of change within it, where Facebook and Instagram, you can't have that change. We've gone down such a narrow focus now and I've worked out exactly what I need to put on Facebook and Instagram, where TikTok, I can play about with it all the time.

Derry Green
The first viral video I had on TikTok of all things was me loading two pallets of fire lighters into my car that I bought from Home Bargains. It went viral. Yeah, my Mrs just videoed me putting them in the car. Literally, the whole boot of the car was just stacked up and it got like three, four hundred thousand views. I was like, How the hell? It was like 10 seconds. How the hell is that interesting? And you can put that content out there and it can grab and just go bonkers. And you can go from having 50 followers one day to 50,000 the next, just from one little thing.

Derry Green
It has slightly changed now.  When you were saying then about being in front of the camera or being on video, that is one thing that's changed significantly over the past 6-8 months, probably. That sort of content now is doing really, really well on TikTok. If you're talking about your business, your product, your vacation rental, whatever it might be, again, it's engaging with your audience and coming across as genuine and people are buying into you. It's not something that we've done yet, because even though I love doing this, I still feel uncomfortable talking about it on a TikTok video. I've tried it a couple of times and I don't know why. It's myself. The video is probably great and it would do well. I just don't like it at the minute. So I need to get more comfortable with it, because my story, my journey, would play really well on TikTok. It's not something we've had to do yet, but it's something we've noticed that's been changing. So that content really does do well on TikTok and then flows over to Instagram and Facebook.

Alice Fry
Yeah.

Heather Bayer
I want to talk about actually converting. People are watching these videos. How do you actually convert them, any social media follower, into an actual guest? Because to me, it's all very entertaining and I watch the things all the time, but I do struggle a little to figure out, do you have to have very clear purpose behind every post, or can you just do it randomly and still have people convert?

Derry Green
Do you want to take this out?

Alice Fry
I'll let you take it..... We'll do a bit of both. You start, I'll finish.

Derry Green
It is very hard because the thing with social media is you can't equate it to a booking in general. Because when your content's out there, if I put something out today and 50,000 people see it, I might get no bookings, because they're not looking to book at that time. It's about being in front of them at the right time for when they are booking. But then, if you're gaining an audience, you're creating content that they want to see, they start following you. Once they're following you, I could put out 10, 20, 30 pieces of content and none of them make a book, because they're not looking to book, it's not that. But at some point, if they're following you and they see your content, when it comes to like, Oh, I could really do with doing something for my daughter's birthday next year. Then your content says, Oh, okay. Then it's just feeding it to them all the time. That can be once a day, could be once a month, it could be once a year, whatever it is.

Derry Green
Consistency is key. Getting your content out there, clear, over, and people assume it needs to be every day or 10 times a day or anything like that. It doesn't. What you're trying to create is content to engage people, not to sell to them, to get them to follow you and interact with your content. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will do the rest. When they're looking, Facebook, again, the algorithms now, they know when somebody's been on Google to search for a holiday. Next time they go on TikTok, I guarantee you they will show your content to them. That's it. You don't have to do the legwork for it anymore. They know, the platforms know who's looking at what, when and where.

Derry Green
So if I search on my phone now some new work boots, next time I go on TikTok, I guarantee there'll be a TikTok video of a certain brand of work boots showing me it, because they know I'm going to engage with it and then it follows through from there. So it's not necessarily about targeting your specific times of year or specific guests or anything like that. It's just making sure your content's out there. So when they're ready to book, you're there in front of them.

Alice Fry
Yeah, perfect. I'll just add a little bit to that because, yeah, Derry's nailed it, as usual. But I would say also just make sure if you're promoting something on your stories, a little bit trickier with your grid content because obviously you can't put a direct link on it, but put those swipe-up links, track them. Make sure that anything you're doing does have those trackable links. Make sure you've got your bio sorted out, it's all tracked up and that you can see how people are converting with it. If there's a particular bit on your site that someone's particularly looking at say, for example, like with Derry, the upsells, like what can you get when you're actually on site? Make sure that you do a bit of content around that. Actually look at what people are interested in, try and convert them, work backwards slightly. But yeah, at any point, make sure that you are looking at the analytics and how they're actually making sure you're sending them to the right place as well.

Alice Fry
And also things like, this is old school but it does work, but things like competitions. I thought it's a really old school thing to do years ago, but it still works now. And if you can drive them to a page where they're putting in their details, then maybe you can get from them their email, their certain demographics about themselves, details about themselves, like they've got family, where they live, etc, etc. Obviously, of course, doing it all above board, within your privacy policy, etc, but make sure you've got that so then you can put them into a newsletter and then... Yeah, so like getting them and then promoting to them further really helps as well.

Derry Green
Alice, you've hit a nail on the head there, because that's exactly what I do.

Alice Fry
Is it?

Derry Green
That's exactly what I do. So at this point, we're driving people on social media to go to our website, but they can't book. We're fully booked. The earliest available date now is 2025, and that's midweek on any of the units we've got. So you're right. We're converting all these people from social media to the website and can do nothing with them, so we're losing them. So what you just said is exactly right. It might be old school, but I love it. On TikTok, you're allowed one link on there on the top of your bio. You click on that link, it will take you to a competition page on my website. And once a month we do a competition. We've generated the lead, got them to the website. We then get them to fill in their details. They're in for a chance to win a night down here. We've then captured their details for when we do have availability, when we're doing more things, when we're opening more sites, more units. That's exactly how I do it.  And that's what I do on TikTok, because we can't generate. We're not putting any offers out. We're not putting any new dates out, that sort of stuff. We're literally doing a data capture to try and get that information from them so we know where they are and who they are.

Alice Fry
Amazing.

Heather Bayer
Great stuff. You've talked about analytics and measurement. To me, I'm a strategy person and analytics is down in the depths, in the weeds, but is so important. Do you have to be a social media manager or be really geared up to all these different platforms to know how to do the measurement? For somebody who's just ordinarily out there wanting to do a couple of TikTok videos and get going on their social media strategy, how important is that analytics and following what happens to those posts? Alice?

Alice Fry
Yeah...., I was going to go straight in there. It's so important. And even if I ever take a moment where I haven't looked at something, you're suddenly like, Oh, I don't really know how that did. It's just out there in the open and you're not really sure. So it's so important because otherwise you might spend a load of time doing something and it just might completely bomb. So you need to learn from it and you need to see what's working and what's not. And also you just need to see what's resonating, basically. And you can do it at any level of your social media experience. You can go on your insights on Instagram very easy and just have a little look. When you've got the professional dashboard, you can have a little look and see how each post is performed. Also, there are lots of different, like Hootsuite, Later, all those things. Other places are available, but you can use all them and you have a free trial. And there's a big community out there on their sites themselves answering questions, anything like that. And it's pretty easy to just plug in and go and particularly with Facebook as well, you can have a little look in the back end there and just see what's performing and what's not. So I would say yes, very, very important, because you don't want to just keep putting content out there into a black hole and not really knowing what's happening and if it's working and you can do it at any level.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. And it's clearly important to you, Derry, and you do it. You follow everything.

Derry Green
Yeah. Well, as Alice just said then, Meta give you all the tools you need to do it. They literally pin it out for you. It's kind of like a game. It's like getting different levels. Because again, they're doing the same thing. They're trying to engage with you, so you use their platform. They're doing the same principles as what we're doing. So Meta will give you all the tools to see every bit of data, who's there, what they're doing, why they're doing it, what posts are doing well. We do benchmarking. You can benchmark yourself against other businesses and see how well you're doing against them, what content they're doing. That's always a good place to start. If you've just come into it and you have no idea what to create, look at what others are doing. You'll look at what other posts, what people are doing, which is doing well, and create content based around that. I do the same thing with my own content. I put out 10, 15, 20 videos and I see which one of them does well, and then I home in on that one and do 10 or 15 more that are similar to that to try and work out these analytics, because they'll never tell you what the analytics are. They're changing constantly and how it works.

Derry Green
TikTok specifically is a mind-blowing one, because it doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to it at times, where Facebook and Instagram, you can see patterns through it to see why stuff does well. But yeah, they give you all the data. So if you're just starting out, benchmark a couple of other sites, whether that be locally to you or bigger people within the market, see what they're doing and start there. If you want ideas, just start there, see what's doing well. And you know, again, if they're performing quite well with them, it's a good place to start rather than starting off on your own.

Heather Bayer
You talked about a video of you loading up all these fire starters in the back of your car?

Derry Green
Yeah.

Heather Bayer
Can you give me some other examples of videos that have done really, really well? Because you just said, I looked at 10-15 videos and I'm thinking, well, what's in these 10-15 videos? What are you actually out there filming?

Derry Green
Our content is literally just the units themselves. They always pretty much start off on the same script now, especially because of TikTok. They'll start off with, whether it be opening a gate, opening a door, opening a hot tub lid, something that draws you in. It's all about that first three seconds, which is the hook. It's not really three seconds, to be fair. It's more like one and a half seconds. So getting that first little thing, what's behind that door? What's around that corner? Or whatever it might be. And then what we're testing is we're doing it on a micro-scale now. So we'll do 10 videos, which you would pretty much think of the same video. It might be a different soundtrack, it might be a different speed, it might be a different color font, even down to stuff like that. Where the text appears, where it goes, whether it's relating to what we're doing on the site, or whether it's relating to what we're doing on the unit. We're honing down to micro details, which you don't really need to worry about at the start.

Derry Green
We're just working out, for example, the one last week, that was content of our Treehouse. So it started off walking up the... You go up steps where the slide is and then you go across a bridge into the unit. We were trying to work out how much of that journey we could extend. Because like I say, it is constantly changing. Before, that would have been a whole 30-second intro going up the stairs and exploring before you go into the unit. The reveal is opening the gate to the unit after you go across the bridge and seeing all the lights and everything else. So we're trying to see how far we can extend that to tell more of a story. And it's hard, because if you go too far, it gets nothing. And if it's too little, it's getting nothing. So it's playing about with that. But that's what the content we're creating is all around the units at the moment and different things that you can do in the units, whether that be specific ones about the hot tubs or the pool tables or the saunas or whatever it might be within that part of the video. But that's the content that we're creating at the moment.

Heather Bayer
I think that's great, because I think a lot of people think, when they're trying to think of their content, they're thinking, or they're going too deep into their thinking.

Derry Green
With vacation rentals, it's pretty easy. People want to see where they're staying and they want to see that quickly, whether that be if it's a house, it's opening the front door and showing them in a space, or it could be showing them the outdoor space, whatever it is. You can do it really well with holiday rentals, that sort of stuff, because that's what they want. They want the big reveal. They want to know what's behind there. As soon as you've hooked them for that first one and a half seconds to three seconds, that's TikTok, and Facebook and Instagram's kind of cue that somebody's interested in that content. Because you'll see it dip off. If we do a 30 second video by second 29, the audience is down to 1, 2, 3%, that sort of stuff. But it doesn't really matter, because at the start it was really engaging. That then gives TikTok, and Facebook, and Instagram the key to go, Right, let's show it to more people. That's what you're trying to do. The job all the time is, from my point of view, I always see social media as I have three customers, really. We've got three quarters of a million social media, but really I've only got three. I've got Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. All I'm trying to do is impress them enough that they'll show my content to millions of other people. If I sit and try and target three quarters of a million people every day, I'd have no chance in a million years to be able to do that. Where actually, if I just target one, which is Facebook, for example, they'll show it to their 100 million customers. It's way easier to think that way. You're trying to create something that Facebook thinks is good. Their benchmark is, Well, if it's engaging for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds, it's good. They don't care what the content is. It can be me loading fire lighters in the back of my car, or it can be a stunning view over the fields in the morning with the sunrise and Facebook do not care.  All they care about is whether that hooked people long enough and then they will show it to everybody in the world.

Heather Bayer
Well, this is such a great conversation. I can't believe we've got to 45 minutes already. I do have one more question because, Alice, you worked with influencers. I know this is a question that comes up with so many people, because a lot of owners and managers get consistent inquiries from "influencers"....

Derry Green
You have to put that in brackets.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I was going to do that, that was the air quotes.

Heather Bayer
In a nutshell, Alice, how does this whole... If you can make this really in a nutshell....

Alice Fry
I will try.

Heather Bayer
..... How does this whole thing with influencers work or does it at all? Is it necessary?

Alice Fry
I think it does work. I think you need to just make sure that the influencers you're working with are aligned with your brand and they are going to provide your audience with value. It's not just you're doing it to tick some boxes. They actually really resonate with your brand. They genuinely really enjoy it. And so the content they make, people will enjoy watching it. And I think I wouldn't worry too much about them having millions of followers as long as they're getting some really decent engagement. That's what you've got to look at. I think in recent years I've always tried to look a lot at micro-influencers. That's a hugely popular thing to do. But even as much as going into nano-influencers, if they're producing some really decent... If you're using that on your own channel, by the way, but if they're producing some really decent content, you can really get great value out of it. If you want to leverage their following, of course, you want them to have a decent enough following that it's going to drive the reach. So you have that. But you have to be really careful that: A, do they align with your brand? And B, are they going to create the content that's going to bring your audience and their audience genuine value? And is it authentic? Does it fit?

Alice Fry
And yeah, definitely had some really great experience where conversions have been pushed sky high. But you need to watch that everything just aligns, I think. I'm sure, Derry, you get inundated with requests.

Derry Green
Yeah, we do. We get, I mean, like any business now, from somebody who's got 500 followers to somebody who's got 50 million followers. And we judge each one on its own merit sort of thing. But with the influencer side of stuff, exactly like Alice said, make sure it aligns with your audience and what they're creating. Look at what content they've created in the past for other places. Does that work for you guys? But coming back to when you were saying a lot of people are not comfortable creating content, making videos, that stuff, influencers will do it for you. You can look at it. If you've got an empty night in a unit that was going to do nothing, give it to an influencer. On the basis they create you a video and you can use that video on your own social media platforms. So instead of paying a videographer to come in and charge you £300, £400, £600, whatever it might be to create some content for you, you can use an influencer when a night's going to be empty anyway. So in theory, it's costing the changeover cost, but they're going to create content. What you'll find is a lot of influencers, especially micro- influencers and nano-influencers, they'll create loads of videos for you.

Derry Green
They'll create hundreds of videos for you. If you do a deal with them and you  say, Listen, you can have next Wednesday, we've got nobody in there, obviously don't give away your prime weekends, summer holidays, those sorts of dates. But if you've got a date in June that nobody's going to take and you can get some content for your own social media, I see it as part of my marketing budget. So we can get content. Although, again, we do create all our own here, but certain celebrities and certain bigger influencers look good in our content as well. So that's works for us. But down on a smaller scale, you can get content for your own social media in theory for free as long as you wasn't going to use them anyway.

Alice Fry
Yep.

Heather Bayer
I think this is inspiring me to perhaps do a completely separate episode on influencer marketing, because we really have come to the end of our time and it's just gone so fast. And you have both been so generous with your tips and your recommendations and your suggestions, that I'm sure people are going to find this super, super useful. Derry, this is your second time on the podcast; it's not going to be the last. We will revisit this. You're so generous to say, Yes, I'll come back again.

Derry Green
I love it. Honestly, I could sit here and talk about this for the next six, seven hours. You need to do a long-form one where we're here and chat all day long. It's the subject I love. It really is. And any way that I can help other people to do what we've done, I genuinely see it as.... It's like the old saying, a rising tide raises all ships, if we're all creating good content. Then you look at.... In the UK, we've got Travelodge [low-cost motel chain] have done a whole thing of..... An advert on glamping. And do you know what? The advert is great. It makes me laugh, but it's basically they're losing market share to us. So if I can get other glamping sites to all create great content, it's going to overtake theirs. So I may as well help everybody do it. And then teaming up with somebody like Alice from Touch Stay, Touch Stay is an amazing platform to get your guests engaged in what you're doing, because it doesn't have to just be social media. It all blends into one: your social media, your website, your welcome guides, it all works together. It's really good.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Touch Stay because I don't have to.

Alice Fry
I didn't do it, which is hilarious.

Heather Bayer
Well, you know what an advocate of Touch Stay I am. My company, CottageLink Rental Management, is still using Touch Stay and probably still will for the foreseeable future. So it's always a favorite of mine. And the team at Touch Stay is the best.

Alice Fry
You're an influencer, Heather. You're an influencer.

Heather Bayer
I'm an influencer for Touch Stay.

Heather Bayer
Thank you both....

Derry Green
I totally agree. Touch Stay is phenomenal. It has honestly been a game-changer for me. Our guest engagement rate and our feedback from it has been phenomenal. It gives us another point of call where we can put content on for people to engage with, and they do. They sit there and read every single thing on there; they know more about this site than I do.

Alice Fry
Oh, brilliant. Derry, we're going to clip that up.

Heather Bayer
For those of you listening, the information on Touch Stay will be on the Show Notes, as will the link to The Secret Garden Glamping. I'm going to pull out all your social media links as well, Derry, so people could go in and take a look and see what you're doing.

Heather Bayer
Thank you both. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you with me.

Alice Fry
No worries.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Derry Green, and Alice Fry. That was a fantastic conversation. I enjoyed every minute of that, learned a huge amount, and I hope you did. So don't forget to go to the Show Notes where I'll put links to all the things I said I would put links to, and you can check that out there if you want to get in touch with Derry to talk about social media or indeed, Alice.  Their contact information will be on there as well. That interview went on for nearly 55 minutes, so I am not going to spend too much time on this outro, just to say thank you, as always, for joining us. I will look forward to being with you again next week.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.

"Gain valuable insights on branding, social media, influencer marketing, and guest engagement in the vacation rental industry from industry experts in this insightful podcast episode."