Heather Bayer

On today's show, I'm talking to my friend and business colleague, Jodi Bourne. We're talking about content marketing, again.  The reason being is that it's becoming more and more important that we get this aspect of our business right in an increasingly competitive world. And we will, of course, be touching on AI as well, as well as something that's really bugging me a little bit, and that's Instagram Reels and short videos. So let's go and talk with Jodi.

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, and as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again. Every so often I start looking back and thinking, I've been in this business for over 25 years now. It's around 25 years since I first started buying properties and then, of course, going into the property management company.  And there was 20 years in that. And now it's 9-10 months ago that I actually sold the company, and time really, really moves on. But I got to thinking about content and looking back. In fact, what I was doing was going through the content that was on my old Cottageblogger website, and there was a ton of it, probably around about 400 blog posts. And I'm going to be repurposing some of those because some of those posts are pretty evergreen. Things that I was talking about back in 2006 and 2007 are just as relevant today. So as I'm looking at those and thinking about repurposing, I was also looking at some of the coursework that I created at that time. And there were courses on how to blog and how to use Twitter and a number of other, relatively simple, courses just on getting content out there. And that got me thinking about how things have really changed because some of those courses are completely out-of-date now. And they're going to be completely reworked and we're going to be introducing AI into them. We're going to be introducing all sorts of new ways of showcasing properties with different types of marketing strategies. And there's a whole new world out there of marketing and creating just amazing content to drive traffic to our websites.

Heather Bayer

And that's one thing that's not changing, the fact that we do need a website if we're going to go forward with a book direct strategy. So with that in mind, you know that I am really hot on AI and ChatGPT and all things machine learning. So we will be covering some of that in my conversation with marketing expert, Jodi Bourne. Now, for those of you who are interested in our Vacation Rental Formula Business School, Jodi has created some great courses in the foundation part of the course, which is still open by the way, and I'll make sure there's a link in the Show Notes to the Vacation Rental Business School so you can go and take a look and see what courses we have available.

Heather Bayer

Jodi is a major part of creating these foundation courses, and she's joining me today to talk about the changes in content marketing, what she has seen over the last few years, and providing some tips on how to create really engaging content going forward. This is going to be super interesting. So I'm really looking forward to this chat with Jodi. So let's go straight on over to the interview.

Heather Bayer

I am super delighted to have with me once again, my friend, my business colleague, Jodi Bourne. Jodi, you're a regular on the show now. I know people look forward to listening to you and hearing all the bombs of wisdom that you drop, and this episode is going to be no different. So welcome back.

Jodi Bourne

Thank you, Heather. Thanks for having me. You know how much I enjoy it. And yes, you're right. I told somebody yesterday that I was going to be on and they were waiting to hear what we were going to talk about.

Heather Bayer

Well, it's because marketing is the most exciting bit about doing this business and you can't really get super excited about new toilet seats. I think if you're Alana Schroeder, you can probably get excited about linens and bedding. And I talked recently to a great guy called Keith Brady from Florida Vacation Rental Law. And we had a 40 minute discussion on the legal side of this business, and it was really good. But marketing is fun.

Jodi Bourne

For some.

Heather Bayer

For some, but it's becoming funner. Is funner a word? I think funner is a word. No, I think it's more funner. We'll go for funner.

Jodi Bourne

More fun.

Heather Bayer

Yes. So we're going to be talking about really the two aspects of it, which is creating content and then sharing content. Because you can spend a lot of time and have a lot of fun creating it, but then if it just sits there on a website and nobody ever gets to see it, it's particularly worthless.  So let's just kick off with the very basic question with how important is content marketing for short-term rental management? I've asked this question of many people. I've probably asked it of you before, but I don't think I ever get tired of the answer because we've all been through that traditional marketing that we did many years ago. But content marketing still has so much value.

Jodi Bourne

Oh, in fact, they're saying now that 2023 is going to be a big year in differentiating with content marketing and really elevating your content. For professional marketers, I get all these industry reports and trend reports and for the big companies, and all the things that the big companies do, of course, trickles down to the small mom and pop businesses like we have and like we help. So I'm glad you said content marketing is fun because it really can be. I think that's such a… A lot of people come at it as, I've got to do this; I have to do this. And really, if you think about it, this is an opportunity to be creative and to share what you know, which is what content marketing is, is really just being your most hospitable self and sharing who you are and what you know about your destination or the experience that you're providing and then creating that content and then sharing it, which is extremely important.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. Let's talk a little bit more about creating this compelling content. And we are going to talk about later – we cannot have any conversation with anybody these days without mentioning AI and the options there are. Stay till later, people, because we're going to drop some really good information on the fact that ChatGPT is not the only platform out there, and we've got some other really great platforms for you to be thinking about using. But let's just kick off with how operators can create this compelling content that actually resonates with their guests. And I think that's the most important part. You can use ChatGPT all you want and create a ton of content, but if it's not resonating with the people that you've targeted, then it's wasted effort.

Jodi Bourne

Yes, that's right. I think that's one of the important reasons to be using it is to resonate, to show your personality and your authority or your expertise in your area is creating lists and ideas and content about things to do, what to see, what to do, but thinking about it from the perspective of your target market, which I call your perfect guest. Your perfect guest is those people that you really love doing business with and love wanting to help and you've created this space for them. So as you're creating your content, think about what those people want to know. What do they want to read about? What is it that is informing their decisions about where they're going to visit? And also think about it from different points in the buyer's journey, their journey into finding where they're going to go. I think so many people focus on that last step of ‘book my home' that they're not thinking about creating, which you definitely talk about a lot, and I know you're covering in your content marketing course that you're going to be building out, but it's creating content that hits people in the various stages of even making a decision of where they're going to go.

Jodi Bourne

Maybe they know they're going to go take a fishing trip, but they don't even know where they're going to go fishing, or maybe they're going skiing and they're looking for information about the best ski resorts for children. There's so many different ways you can create content to hit different people in the different stages of what they're doing.

Heather Bayer

Yes, and that's really important because I think a lot of people think that if they build this content, it's for people that have already booked. So they can send them this stuff once they've booked, but if you can get them onto your site while they're just thinking about where they're going to go and have that information all in one place. I don't know, I seem to have been banging this drum for many years and it still doesn't hit home.

Jodi Bourne

People are getting it. They're just not really… I think one of the most important things that people should do is really put themselves into the place of being their target market and going out into their community and seeing the things from that perspective. Stop looking at things from the perspective of you as someone who's lived there forever or who vacations there every season and think about this small family with children, young children, what are they specifically looking for? One of the ideas that I was thinking about, I had written some blog posts several years ago for a guy who had property in Joshua Tree. His properties were right out on the outskirts, very beautiful home with a pool and everything, very family friendly. And instead of writing generic content about the best hiking trails in Joshua Tree, which there's millions of articles about that, we wrote content specifically for families. What are five must-do activities with your kids in Joshua Tree? Where can you go at night in Joshua Tree that's safe for families? Those kinds of articles. And they did so well, not only on his blog, but also we shared on social media.

Jodi Bourne

And so that's what I mean by knowing your target market and creating specific content for them. He was a single guy in his 30s. He knew nothing about families, but he knew that's what the place he had created had. That was the experience was for families. That was the content that worked for him.

Heather Bayer

Sue Allen in Norfolk, England. Her company is called East Ruston Cottages. Her niche is people who have multiple dogs. The content that's on her site is all about the dog parks and the dog friendly beaches and all the restaurants where you can take your pet and others…. museums, just all sorts of pet friendly places. And this is what people are out there looking for long before they decide that they're going to come and rent a space because they probably have no idea they can take their multiple dogs. And she said anything up to 6 -10 dogs, she has properties that will take multiple, multiple pets.

Jodi Bourne

That's hard to find, for sure here in the city.

Heather Bayer

I know. But she has created this niche and she's running with it. But that information is there for people to find when they're out there saying, I'm going to Norfolk, where can I take my dogs?

Jodi Bourne

That's a great example of how you actually market with content because we can talk about how to create content and what types of content, but how is it part of your marketing strategy?  What you really need to understand is that by creating that content, not only do you have this information that's good for someone Google searching, what do I do in Norfolk with dogs? Or what do I do in Joshua Tree with kids? But it's also good because it tells people, hey, this is somebody that knows what they're talking about, that cares about me as a person and as a guest and the experience I want to have. And you can put this on your blog, which you should if you have a blog, but if you don't have a blog and you don't have time to create a blog or you don't have the tech skills to create a blog, you can also use it on social media just as effectively. Even if you do have a blog, you should take that same content and put it on social media. Don't forget that social media part of this strategy is important.  Then you're sending people back and forth while they're still making these decisions reading your blog post about this, but now they're following you on Facebook and they see that you've written another blog post all about what beach to go to and what restaurant to go to. Pretty soon you have become their authority on this destination. You've become the person they trust. There's no question in their mind that they're going to book your property – if you've let them know you have a property, because that's something I see quite often that people get bogged down and sharing all this great content and then forget.  Oh, yeah, by the way, you want to book my house here? So that's what I mean by, the content strategy is just as important as knowing what content to create, is knowing how to use it in the rest of your marketing.

Heather Bayer

Okay, let's take that onto the next level and consider some social media strategies for reaching potential guests. Which platforms should people focus on? I know we've talked about this before, and you know I'm having this struggle, this never ending 5-year struggle with Instagram.

Jodi Bourne

Yes, our very first talk was on Instagram, and that was when I created my very first course, which was on Instagram and I'm updating it now because the struggle with Instagram is real, people really struggle with it. But I still think if you have images of your destination and videos of your destination and your properties, or you can get that because you can definitely outsource the actual video. It can be expensive, but I know people that have hired 18-year old high school students to go out and you give them a list of things you want them to do and want them to take photos of, and they can take the photos and the videos and then you have them.

Jodi Bourne

So Instagram, I think everybody needs to be on. You need to be mastering it and think of it as your own mini-website. Your Instagram profile page can be a full website with the content pieces, the videos, the images, the captions, the Instagram stories. Now, Instagram has allowed you to focus on three pinned posts that can be at the top of your profile on Instagram so you can feature specific things.  So feature who you are, feature your property, or one of your properties or your general properties, and then feature your expertise.

Jodi Bourne

Now I'm talking all about Instagram. So backing up – I get excited – I also think everybody should for sure have a Facebook page and be in Facebook groups, not just vacation rental specific Facebook groups, but groups about your experience and your destination.  See the kinds of things people are asking and be the expert in your field there.

Heather Bayer

That's super important. I've seen some really great Facebook groups where owners and property managers have created a group about their location. And then, of course, you get the Facebook… If you set it up correctly, then on the image at the top, it says that the group is by you.

Jodi Bourne

By you.

Heather Bayer

So for example, my Facebook group, which is ‘The Business of Short-term Rental and Professional Property Management'. It says on the front is by Vacation Rental Formula.  So you have it out there and you do not have to get into these groups and start talking about yourself. You talk about the location and people will begin to follow you.

Jodi Bourne

Yes. And that's great. That's content marketing. You're creating and sharing content. So the social media aspect of it is super important for doing your research, finding your target audience, and for putting that content out there. And that's one of the things that I really tell people is, don't forget that your content is not one and done. You don't just write a blog post and leave it on your blog and hope people find it with a Google search. That piece of content should be used over and over and over. If it's an article about 10 things to do on a rainy day, then every day for the next month, post in your social media one of those 10 things to do on a rainy day, and then it's so easy. How often does it rain here? Okay, it's raining tomorrow. I'm going to post the third thing to do on a rainy day and tell people, Oh, by the way, here's a whole list of my 10 favorite things to do on a rainy day in Destin. And you keep posting that over and over again. So you don't just forget about it; it's continuous.

Heather Bayer

I know what happens with me, Jodi, is that I get all these wonderful ideas and they just disappear out of my head. Or I might write them down on a piece of paper or in one of my numerous notebooks, because every time I go to an event, I come back with three or four different notebooks and I have this goal of having one notebook for each topic and it never works. It never works because I get an idea and I'll just pick up the nearest one and write something down and I never find all these ideas again. So that was a long way around of saying, how do you coordinate all this stuff?

Jodi Bourne

Well, so that's hard. And that's the hardest part people have. When they come to me, that's the issue. They have tons and tons of videos and images and things, and they don't know what to do with it or how to set it up. So it's like everything else. You have to start really slowly. Facebook owns Instagram. They have a product called Facebook's Creator Studio. If you have a business Facebook page, you have access to it and you can create draft posts. This is what I tell people to do. I also have a product called the Social Media Suitcase, which is a planning calendar that I sell with content prompts. You can use something like that as well. I sell it and tons of other people have similar products in all different industries. But you can go to… I'm trying to pick up my mouse and go on my screen to show you…. We're not doing that video. But you can go to this and it has a calendar. And even if you're not ready to post yet, set up your drafts. Set up a draft for every Friday, every other Friday, put up a draft, share the article about 10 Things to Do with Dogs.

Jodi Bourne

Share the article about this and you put it in there for over the next six months. Go for six months and every other Friday do this. One of my thing is Foody Friday. If you can't think of something to put in on a Friday, do a Foody Post, something about food on Friday, and then get that planned out. Then a week later, go in and go, Okay, now I have to come up with every post idea for the next three weeks or three months about what blog post I'm going to promote on that week. And that's where ChatGPT and the AI can definitely come in handy. You just write in a little thing, I want an Instagram post about scuba-diving in Florida, and it can help you create that. We'll talk more about it at the end, but that's where you can make that time go by much more effectively, when you're able to use prompts and then go back and talk about it and then put it into some sort of calendar. And as for the ideas…. I'm sorry, I can't stop talking…. but as for ideas, I'm like you, too.  I have multiple notebooks. My best gift I bought for myself is called a ‘reMarkable Tablet', it's an electronic tablet. I love it and you can tag your ideas and so I use that now all the time when I'm listening to podcasts and I'm putting in ideas and I just put a tag on it called content marketing ideas or Instagram ideas. And then I can search through all of them electronically and then it also put it in my Google Drive for me.

Heather Bayer

I've still got to get one of these things.

Jodi Bourne

It's the best thing. I've recommended it to so many people and everybody comes back to me and says it's one of the best things they've ever used.

Heather Bayer

Pricey, though, isn't it?

Jodi Bourne

Yes, it's like 500 bucks for just a writing pad. But if you're a note taker like I am, and you are. I carry it around in my purse and I have it with me all the time right beside me. It holds a great charge. But that is a struggle is what do I do with these ideas? I often say take one idea from a show and implement it. Just put it right away to implement it. Then two months later, when you've got that idea down and you've implemented it and you feel confident in your ability to replicate, then go back to that show, get another tip, or go to your list of things that you wrote down and implement something else. You can't do it all at once.

Heather Bayer

Well, we're helping the audience now because every show now has a full transcript. It's something that people have been asking for for a long, long time. But yes, so you can just go back to the Show Notes if you listen to something and you think, Oh, I know I heard something about such and such a platform or resource, you can go back to every episode… well, not every episode. We've been doing it for about three or four months now, but we are going to be slowly transcribing as many of the most popular podcasts as we can. So I just wanted to throw that in there because I know I'm out walking and I'm listening to James Wedmore, or Pat Flynn, or some of these digital marketing people that I absolutely love, and they'll throw out this absolute nugget. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, I've got to stop it, and I'm going to tell Siri to send this message to me to remember this. It was a great quote. And then I totally forget that I did it.

Jodi Bourne

But you know what? It's a good idea for that. And I just started this because somebody shared this with me. When you're walking or doing something and you hear something like that, go really quick to your podcast screen on your phone and take a screenshot. And it gives you the minute mark of where you're listening. And then you get home and you get all your groceries unloaded or whatever. And then you can look through your camera photos real quick and just jot it down.

Heather Bayer

That is a great tip, too. Excellent.  I thought we jumped on the transcription bandwagon quite a bit late, but in fact, we haven't. There's a lot of shows that do not have transcripts. And I know people have been asking us about it for years.

Jodi Bourne

That's great, and SEO content too, because Google can see that….. We're getting way off track.

Heather Bayer

Okay, okay, okay. Right. Were we talking about videos, or am I just going to segue now into creating videos? Because I have just signed up for a course that I'm doing on creating better YouTube videos and building out my YouTube channel. So it's very front and center of my mind now. But can you talk about creating engaging videos for the business? How can people use video to showcase their location and bring in potential guests? Because we see it all on the Reels and TikTok and Shorts.

Jodi Bourne

Yep.  I think that people make the mistake of thinking they have to be so perfect and professional, and that's the mistake I make and I'm struggling with is I'm very much on my own. When I go out and start talking to people on Reels and TikTok, I feel very fake, I guess. And I know other people tell me the same thing, that they are hesitant to create content because it doesn't look professional, but that's how you get better at it, and you just start. And with video content now, you have to be doing some sort of video. So just go out there and practice. And one of the things I have is something I call a content marketing matrix that I help people build out their content, with what is a content library.

Jodi Bourne

One of the things, for example let's say it's your favorite 10 appetizers in a certain location. That's a very specific topic that you can go out and take a short video of that happening over a week or two weeks or a month. Every time you go out in your destination just think to yourself, Okay, what am I going to get today that goes back to my target audience and these ideas that you've created?  Then you just take a video of it.  It doesn't have to be a pro video. Tell the waiter, Hey, I'm going to take a video of you bringing me out my potato skins. Be sure and smile and be a nice person because you're representing this restaurant or whatever. Those little snippets, video snippets, you can call them B-roll or Reel. You keep those together, create a folder on your phone, create a folder on your Google Drive or wherever you're using, and keep those together and just try to keep it as organized as possible. And then you've got content to use anytime you want. You've got a video of somebody bringing out an appetizer.

Heather Bayer

I'm glad you said that because I always thought video, you had to do it. Plan it, go out, do it, publish it. And it's only while I've been planning out my Instagram account, which is really not up and running yet, but it will be soon. And I've done it for my dog. It's called the Britta Diaries. And it's about my crazy dog and what she does. It's crazy. You know the broken dog thing? My dog lies down in the corner. She's got legs all over the place and her head's twisted around in a really weird angle. And my dog is broken. Well, I've got a selection of ‘My Dog is Broken' videos.

Jodi Bourne

That is so cute. I follow Britta's page, but I haven't been on Instagram a lot lately. Jolene follows Britta too, by the way, on Instagram. Yeah.

Heather Bayer

And if you guys aren't watching this on video at the moment, you're missing Jolene.

Jodi Bourne

She hears your voice.

Jodi Bourne

Here's an example, though. As you know, Michael and I are looking to buy a vacation rental. We've been looking at all the different places and we've narrowed our choice down to Crystal Beach, Texas, which is near Galveston. It's a great little small community beach. We go there really often. We have some friends that own a restaurant there, Tia Juanita's in Crystal Beach. We were going there for Mardi Gras. I took a time-lapse video on my iphone of the Mardi Gras parade. Then afterwards, I took time-lapse videos of the Crawfish Boil party that we went to, another Mardi Gras event. We went to their restaurant where they were part of a pub crawl and they had people come and get all sorts of Mardi Gras beads and things. I took all that video content and now I have about 10 minutes worth of video in different little snippets. Here's a snippet of a couple of children on a market floor throwing beads at me, and that's all it is. But now I have all that content. So if I do start, if I do buy a vacation rental there, I will have content.

Jodi Bourne

If I don't, then maybe one of these days I'll have a client that just needs some Mardi Gras footage that I have. That little snippet of somebody throwing beads from a float; it doesn't have to be destination specific, it's just a Mardi Gras parade. So those are the kind of things that people should think about, go out during the day and think, what content can I get? You may not even know that you're using it in the future. One of an Instagram posts that I did for a client a while back, and this was a Texas client, so I only do Instagram for Texas clients, but we had a client and they had a beach house in South Padre. My girls and I went down and took a bunch…. it was in February, but it was a beautiful sunny February day. We took a video or actually some still shots and video of this girl sitting in the hot tub on a sunny day, threw out some little kid's floaties in the pool that are floating. Then she's sitting there with a hot tub enjoying a pretend pina colada at nine o'clock on a Friday morning. But that content was a short video that we worked into multiple Instagram Reels.

Jodi Bourne

We took still shots of the same thing. We put it on their blog, sent it out in an email newsletter. That piece of content became like a calling card for their property and they sold it. But when they sold it, they sold that content as part of  that exchange. The last time I looked, they were still using that video that we created in their content. That's really an important part of creating content that's specific for your rental, is thinking about your target market and what do they want to see? How can you put them into that house, that destination, that experience?

Heather Bayer

Yes. You've got to get out of your head about quality, as you said. Yes, it has to be quality in terms of using a decent camera, a decent iphone, or a decent phone with a good camera. But you don't have to go out and buy the digital SLR and fancy tripod; it does not have to be like that. And I had to get that out of my head a lot because I was spending hours going onto YouTube videos on equipment for creating YouTube videos.

Jodi Bourne

Right. Thinking that that is the perfect thing when really it's so much about the personality of you and your target market and the brand that you want to present.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. Give some tips then for those – I think one of the tips is do it. Go and start collecting some video footage of your location. That would be the first one. Anything else?

Jodi Bourne

Well, one of the tips that I think is extremely helpful for people is to create a fake Instagram account. Nobody has to know that it's you behind an Instagram account. You don't have to put your real name. I tell people this all the time, just go start. If you don't want to put your real name, your property name, your business name behind it, just start one for your destination. Here's Destin, Florida Favorites, and that becomes you and you create your content and your Reels and who cares if you mess up because nobody knows it's you?

Heather Bayer

How do people find you from that?

Jodi Bourne

Well, you have to practice sharing that content using hashtags. You have to understand how to use that content and promote that content. But Instagram is still one of the few places, Instagram and TikTok both, you can still get people to find you just by engaging with other people as that brand name. That Instagram page, like Jolene has it and Britta. They have their own Instagram page. Nobody knows that Jolene, Ms. Priss Jolene is really Jodi Bourne. As her persona, I can go out and follow people, comment on their videos, comment on their posts, like their stuff, follow them. They'll follow me back. So you can still do all of that as this fake persona.

Heather Bayer

Yes. And this is exactly what I'm doing with the Britta Diaries, is doing my practicing once I get it up and running, which I will do.

Jodi Bourne

Yes. And then it's just about generating those habits, the daily habit.

Heather Bayer

Interesting because I'm just finishing a couple of books I've been reading about habits.

Jodi Bourne

Atomic Habits?

Heather Bayer

By James Clear. Yes, I've read Atomic Habits, and there's another one as well. The book that James Clear based his Atomic Habits on, I'll put the links to those in the Show Notes because it really is interesting that once you have created a habit and had it running for 30 days or so, it is pretty much ingrained. It's like I get up every single morning and regardless of the weather and regardless of how I feel, I put my walking shoes on and I'm out the door with the dog and we do an hour every single day. Since we've been down here in Gulf Shores, I have done an average of five miles a day. So that's quite a lot, for a month is 150 miles.

Jodi Bourne

That's great. And I'm going to be down there in May.

Heather Bayer

I know, after I've gone.

Jodi Bourne

But that's what I'm doing. I'm going down to Gulf Shores to create content for a vacation rental owner – she lives in Minnesota – so I'm going to be making her content library for her. So that's super fun for me.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. If you're out there listening and you don't live in your area, then that's what you need to be doing is having somebody… give them a couple of days in your property to go down and create your content for you. I mean, you've got to know them. We're not talking about influencers here. We're talking about some content creators. People who are going to walk around and go to the restaurants and go to the beach and go to the stores and maybe do a whale watching trip or go out dolphin watching. Or what I'm doing tomorrow is I'm going out kayaking on the canals and I'm going to be doing some content there. So if anybody wants any content on Gulf Shores and kayaking, then I will have it – first bidder?

Jodi Bourne

Well, there's people that do that. My nephew does that for a living. He creates content and sells it as a freelancer. Lots of people do it. Now, it's expensive. It's better for you to hire someone or to learn how to do it yourself or whatever, but take a full day. You have to go down to your property to do the maintenance every year and other things. So spend one day creating content.

Heather Bayer

Yes.  And then just put it in a folder somewhere. Just don't forget where you put your folder.

Heather Bayer

Okay, let's move on a little bit to brand voice and messaging strategies; how can people develop and communicate their brand effectively through these content marketing efforts they're doing?

Jodi Bourne

I think, once again, it just goes back to being true to your brand personality and what your brand values are. If your brand value is environmentally conscious or environmentally focused, be sure that you're creating content about that, that people who are interested in, or who care about environmentally friendly things to do or nature or animals or the cleaning materials you're using.  Be sure you're creating that kind of content around that value so that you can truly say, this is one of the things we value. I'm proving that because here is my article about all the conservation groups here. Perhaps, and that's also a great way that you can write a blog post about your property. So you can write a blog post, the 10 best environmentally friendly cleaning supplies that I use in my vacation rental. Well, somebody reading that could be somebody just planning to use environmentally friendly products in their own vacation rental; who cares? You're showing your brand personality and your brand of values by having that content on your blog. You're telling people who are interested in that, who might be interested in coming to your vacation rental, that you value them and you value these things.

Jodi Bourne

That's important to your audience as well. Then, of course, it gives you great content. How about a video, a Reel on Instagram or just a post on Facebook of your 10 environmentally friendly cleaning products that you use. So much content just from that one value of ‘we value the environment and taking care of the environment'.

Heather Bayer

Just on that topic, Booking.com did a study relatively recently that just showed how many people are looking for environmental… I was going to say friendliness… but sustainability, the impact of them coming to your vacation rental. If you could help them with that, then they're more likely to book with you. So it's really interesting that that is going up and up.

Jodi Bourne

Yes. I'm really enjoying seeing people talk about that as a value now for their businesses. Whatever your value, maybe that may not be a value for you. Maybe one of your values for your business is families. Maybe you value family time. How can you create content about that? Using your values and then also using your own personality, what are the words and phrases that you're wanting to use? I suggest to people that they get a whole list of words that they want to use and they continue to use them over and over again and be known for them. Spoon Mountain Glamping that I've worked with, they use the word ‘spooning' a lot. Spooning is… you know what spooning is, right?

Heather Bayer

Yes.

Jodi Bourne

I didn't know if that was an American word or not. Not that there's a lot of difference, but you know what I mean? Anyway, so they talk about spooning and it's a fun word and it's a romantic word, fun and youthful, and it really gives you a vision of people spooning at Spoon Mountain. They give away these little spoon key-chains for their repeat guests. So they've incorporated that word into so many aspects of their brand, and then their content is all about things to do as a couple.  All their content, couple, couple, couple.

Heather Bayer

Couple, couple. I love that. That is such a great example. Just a very quick shout out because we were talking about sustainability and I want to shout out to Bob Garner of EnviroRental and Vanessa de Souza Lage, who has  been on the show a few times, and she's created a new platform called Sustonica. I'll be meeting up with Vanessa in Barcelona in May and we'll be talking to her about Sustonica. It's a certificate that people will be able to claim for their sustainable properties.

Jodi Bourne

That's awesome.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I am really excited about hearing more about that. Hey, you know how time moves on so quickly when we talk? And we haven't talked really about AI. We did tease at the beginning that we were going to talk about other platforms because we have… everybody's heard about ChatGPT, and I've been talking recently about prompts, the prompts to use. But when we started our discussion this morning, you said that you've been using AI for a number of years. It wasn't new to you when it came out.

Jodi Bourne

Yes, I've been using a couple of different ones. The first one I started using was just a headline generator tool. I've actually forgotten the name of that one, but I started using that in 2018 or 2019 to generate blog post headlines and topics. But for me, Word Hero is great to use. Then there's also Jasper, which used to be Jarvis and is now Jasper. But I might be saying that backwards. It used to be Jasper and now Jarvis, but I'm pretty sure it started out as Jarvis and it's now Jasper. They had to change it because somebody was suing them because of the business.

Heather Bayer

Has it now become Adaptive AI?

Jodi Bourne

No, it's Jasper, I think.

Heather Bayer

Is it still Jasper?

Jodi Bourne

Well, I don't know… Yes, I just logged in…. Okay, Jasper.  They all have free versions or free trials or whatever, but they do cost. Word Hero is a good one. With Word Hero, you can put in the personality you want to use. Or with Word Hero, another cool thing that you can do is you can put in specific hashtags that you want to… Like if you're wanting to write an Instagram or Facebook post with certain hashtags, you can use that. You can say, write in the voice of a lawyer, for example, write in whatever. Word Hero is great. You can also write in SEO keywords you want to write content for. It's very helpful for generating ideas and for writing blog posts. You can upload 600 words of your own writing and have it rewrite it for you in a different style or more active voice. Word Hero is really one of my favorites. I have a little video Word Hero Training. If somebody buys it and wants to reach out to me, I can give them a little training that I did on it or send them the link to that.

Jodi Bourne

Then Jasper, the same thing.  I just suggest if you look at it and it's expensive and you think I can't afford this every month, just think to yourself, Okay, can I afford it for a month? And then get all of your ideas together and then do it for a month. I've had clients that have done that and have said that it's been helpful for them, not only because they wrote the content, we got it in really quick, but it really generated lots of ideas for their future. But as you know, you've got to check… fact check, fact check, fact check.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. When we were having a quick discussion before we started recording, Jodi and I were sharing stories about what can go wrong if you don't fact check? So give me your example.

Jodi Bourne

Well, the biggest example was the post that a client did, and she was pretty upset. She'd done a lot of the AI stuff, and I had not told her to be careful of fact checking because I just thought it should be common knowledge to go back and look. But some of the places that she mentioned were closed. There had been some that were… It was actually a Mardi Gras. There was the different routes, different times, different days, and none of that had been updated in the post. So it was not good because she was writing the wrong content.

Heather Bayer

Yes.  My example was, I just put a prompt in to write me or give me some ideas on a blog post to write about 10 things to do in Destin on a rainy day. And it was brilliant. I don't know much about Destin, I've only ever been there once and just drove through. But it came up with all these ideas. And I know how easily I could have just copied and pasted and that was it. There's a blog post, 10 Things to do in Destin on a Rainy Day. But when I fact checked them, there were three or four that had been closed during COVID and were no longer operating. So absolutely,100% fact check everything that comes at you from AI.

Jodi Bourne

Yes. And insert your personality. I think that's the biggest thing I tell people when they ask about using it. It's a great tool, but you want to come across as authentically you.  Your brand voice, who you are, your helpful, wonderful, friendly self. Pretty soon people will be seeing the same content over and over and over again because even though these chat tools are great, ChatGPT, and all of them are great. They have to source their information from somewhere. So if everybody's sourcing from the same content and nobody's creating new content, nobody's coming up with their own ideas, then pretty soon everything's going to be stale. So the way you stand out is by bringing in that personality and then going back and talking about your own secret ideas, the secret tips, your own personal favorites. Yes, here's a great list of 10 restaurants. What's your favorite thing to eat there? Actually, ChatGPT can't come up with that, you can. And you can tell your audience why it's your favorite.

Heather Bayer

Yes. That's one thing it cannot do is write down your own experiences of doing something, how it made you feel.

Jodi Bourne

Right. And that's so important to creating a real connection with your audience. That's the thing. That's the connection that people are really striving to get from businesses.

Heather Bayer

Let's just wrap up the last question about ethical concerns. We all know that there's ethical concerns about writing essays for academic work. But what about ethics? If it comes up with something amazing, ChatGPT, you write something, a blog post that is just astonishingly good, you change a few words, is that plagiarism?

Jodi Bourne

I always suggest take some snippets and run it through Google and see if you can find another article that uses those same words. I think that it has gotten to a point where it's not as much plagiarism because it's an amazing tool. It is able to string new words and phrases together, and it's learning all the time how to do that better. But you do need to check, and I do have a story. Katie, my daughter, was in anthropology last semester. There was a student in her class that got booted because they had created an entire  paper, and it was ChatGPT.  But the professor could pull out the ‘spot article' that had been plagiarized. She was looking for new ideas. Now, none of us are in college anymore. If we are, we know better than that, and your blog post on your website is completely different. If people start pointing that out, and if Google starts making that more of a priority, then it could be eventually not as useful to people because Google is the one ultimately that decides if they're going to show your content to other people.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. And interestingly, I had ChatGPT write me something this morning about dynamic pricing and revenue management, and I asked it for some analogies, and it came up with… “Dynamic pricing, one of the key strategies in revenue management, is like surfing. You're riding the waves of supply and demand, adjusting your prices in real-time to catch the biggest waves and avoid getting wiped out.” That was so familiar to me. That analogy was so familiar. I've got to go and do that fact checking because I have seen that. Somebody else has written that. It's a great analogy, but I guess…

Jodi Bourne

…It's not yours…

Heather Bayer

…It's not mine. And I thought, I've seen this. I've seen this somewhere. I'm definitely… If anybody's out there listening to this and you wrote that, then let me know.

Jodi Bourne

I've done the same thing. I've seen things that it's written and I've looked and I've been like, I saw that. Because when I'm writing a blog for somebody, a destination, I do a lot of research first. And I'm like, Oh, I saw that. And one I found was – Ashville, North Carolina has a fantastic tourism website. And I found something that I was writing for another property in North Carolina, but it had pulled an exact sentence from that Ashville, North Carolina site. And you have to be careful because people are going to start looking for their content. It's just like photos. People look for their photos. A lot of people don't know that, but if you take photos from the internet, then you can be sued if they belong to somebody else. So you have to be careful with your content. Not to say don't use it, just to say be careful of how you use it.

Heather Bayer

That is a great note to finish on. I know we could, as ever, just keep talking and talking about this subject. And of course, you'll come back in a couple of months and we'll touch on something else. And maybe AI has gone off on another tangent by then, and we'll have loads more to talk about. But until then, Jodi, just give us a little bit of background on what you do, what you can offer to people, and the courses you do. And of course, you and I partnered to bring the Foundation Course to Vacation Rental Formula Business School. But you do have a ton of your own courses as well.

Jodi Bourne

Well, yes, and I'm currently building my new Instagram course. I started it in 2018. So if you're listening to this and you want to get on that list, I have a new action plan. I've had this since 2018, but I updated it this year with audio. So I've made podcast episodes that are lessons for this Instagram action plan. And that's just a free little download thing. I'm doing that. And of course, website design fills most of my days and I enjoy that. But the course that you and I did, if people haven't checked it out, they need to because as we were going through this podcast today, I kept thinking, oh, well, they should just go watch that video that we did in the course, because we cover so much about the branding, the environmental and stuff like that. We cover a lot of that in the course that we've done. I enjoy teaching and helping people. So anybody that wants to reach out to me, check me out on Instagram because you can reach out and ask me any questions. Maybe that's something we should tell people. People reach out to us and ask questions all the time after these podcasts, both of us.

Heather Bayer

Yes, and we encourage it. Please do.

Jodi Bourne

Please do. We want to be as much help for you that we can.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. Okay, Jodi, thank you so much. Always an absolute pleasure to have you with me.

Jodi Bourne

Bye.

Heather Bayer

Thank you, as ever. Jodi Bourne, absolutely wonderful to chat with you. I'm not going to say much anymore about Vacation Rental Business School because Mike's going to be following up on this with a message to you. So suffice for me to say it's a great course. It really is a great course. Jodi and I have put a lot into it. And although we call it a ‘foundation', it's not necessarily for just if you're new to the business, this is for anybody who really wants to perhaps backtrack and just sharpen up their skills in this business. And we are working on a number of additional courses as well. And you're going to hear more about that over the next few weeks and months.

Heather Bayer

So thank you very much for tuning in today. And it's always so nice to be talking to you, and particularly in these really exciting times that we are coming into now. So I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my day. I hope you will do the same and I'll see 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 this episode at www.vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.