In this week’s episode of Booked Solid Show, formerly Direct Booking Simplified, we sat down with Paul Anderson—also known as The Social Media Hotelier. Paul is a marketing strategist specializing in leveraging Instagram to drive direct bookings for short-term accommodation businesses.
As a retired guest house owner, international bestselling author, and expert in consumer psychology, Paul transforms complex marketing concepts into actionable strategies tailored for hosts. Known for his practical insights and engaging delivery (and yes—his now-iconic orange beanie), Paul helps hosts cut through the noise and turn lookers into bookers with ease.
Paul’s journey—and his proven framework—offers a timely reminder: social media isn’t about going viral. It’s about showing up, consistently, for the guest you actually want to host.
Summary and Highlights
We covered a lot in this conversation, but here are the takeaways that really stood out:
🎯 Post Less. Measure More.
Paul doesn’t believe in endless posting. In fact, it almost broke him.
Instead, he came back with structure. Three posts a week. Same time, every time. And most importantly: a system for tracking performance, so he could double down on what worked and ditch what didn’t.
“I was halfway through a 30-day content challenge, and I found myself tossing and turning at 2 AM trying to come up with something to post. I realized the content was rubbish—and it was hurting my mental health.”
📊 Track What Actually Matters
Paul is not impressed by follower counts or vanity metrics. What does he look for?
He teaches his students to measure profile conversion rates—how many visitors hit ‘Follow’—and link clicks, because that’s where bookings begin. Not likes. Not reach. Just action.
“Link clicks as a proportion of profile visits is the holy grail. There is no target. What we want is everyone who visits our profile to hit the link in bio and come off the platform… and ask three things: Do they have vacancies? Can I afford them? Where’s the book now button?”
Paul’s 3 Quick Wins for Better Instagram Performance
Before wrapping up, Paul shared three specific, actionable tactics that every host can implement today to improve their Instagram strategy:
1. Optimize your Instagram name field
The name field (that bold line right under your profile photo) is keyword gold. It’s one of the first things Instagram’s algorithm scans when users search. Instead of repeating your handle, use keywords your guests are likely searching—like “Smoky Mountain Cabin” or “Pet Friendly Rental Lake Tahoe.” It’s simple SEO that most people miss.
2. Always post in 4:5 portrait format
Tall images (1080×1350) take up more screen space, helping your content stand out in the feed. Square or horizontal content gives away real estate to other posts—and can reduce visibility. For reels and feed posts alike, fill the screen.
3. Don’t stress about trends. Focus on fundamentals.
Forget the trending audios and the perfect posting time. Instead, get clear on who your ideal guest is, what they care about, and how you can communicate that consistently. Nail the basics. Everything else is just noise.
“If you haven’t got the fundamentals down, you’re literally doing the proverbial in the wind and hoping something sticks. It’s a complete waste of time.”
These aren’t hacks—they’re habits. And they compound when practiced consistently.
Want to Go Deeper with Paul?
Paul’s coaching program, Instabooked, is packed with practical tools for hosts who want to stop posting aimlessly and start building momentum. It’s not a content template library or a done-for-you service. It’s a system you can own—built from trial, error, and a whole lot of spreadsheets.
And Paul is offering 30% off Instabooked exclusively for our listeners and subscribers.
🎁 Use code CRAFTED at checkout:
👉 thesocialmediahotelier.com/instabooked
Rapid Fire with Paul Anderson
As always, we wrapped up the episode with a few quick questions:
📚 One book everyone should read?
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (for laughs), and Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller (for clarity).
⚡️ One piece of tactical advice to take action on today?
- Optimize your Instagram name field for search.
- Post portrait (4:5) images to dominate the scroll.
- Forget hashtags and trends—speak directly to your ideal guest.
Connect with Paul
Want to reach out or follow along with Paul’s latest content?
- 📧 Email: info@thesocialmediahotelier.com
- 💬 WhatsApp: Chat with Paul
- 📸 Instagram: @thesocialmediahotelier
- 👍 Facebook: facebook.com/thesocialmediahotelier
- 🌐 Website: thesocialmediahotelier.com
Final Thoughts
This episode wasn’t about hacks or algorithms. It was about getting back to the fundamentals—knowing your guest, telling your story well, and building trust at every touchpoint.
And if you’re looking to build a website that reflects those same principles—clear messaging, fast performance, mobile-optimized for bookings—our team at CraftedStays is here to help.
We believe great hosting deserves a great online presence.
🧡 craftedstays.com
Transcript
Paul: And so the journey from the piece of content to the profile and onto the website need that, that slide as such needs to be as smooth as possible. Link clicks is a proportion of profile visits, is the holy grail. There is no target for that. What we want is everyone who visits our profile to hit the link in bio and come off the platform, see our beautiful website, and essentially within the hope that they would have only three questions.
Paul: Does this host have vacancies? When I want to travel, can I afford them? And where is the book now button?
Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to direct booking simplified, where we break down the strategies and tactics to win in direct bookings on today’s show. I have Paul Anderson, Paul, welcome to the show.
Gil: Yeah,
Paul: spoke last time. Very, very excited to share direct booking tips with your
Gil: yeah. I’m, I’m glad to see the, the orange beanie again, uh, the very on brand.
Paul: Yeah, it’s also very, very cold here, so it is keeping my head warm at the moment. The United Kingdom is kind of frosty and snowy and floody at the minute, so yeah.
Gil: Do you, uh, do you wear the beanie in the summers as well too?
Paul: Ordinarily, no. So, the beanie was bought, um, when My firstborn was very, very young and we lost him very briefly in a crowd. And I’m sure as most parents would remember, if you lose a child, even for five seconds, it feels like an hour. Totally freaked out. Um, and so I thought, well, what I need is a beacon to stand out in a crowd.
Paul: So I bought this orange beanie because I’m six foot some. easy for him to spot me. And it was really, really effective. And then our second came along. It was really, really effective. And then. I was presenting, uh, for a whole week and I had to show up every evening and I had COVID. So I was all wrapped up, determined to see it through blankets and scarves and hats and such.
Paul: And I wore the beanie. And then the central heating went off in my guest house and we couldn’t get it back on for a few days. So all the guests had electric fan heaters and stuff and I kept it on. Couple of weeks went by and the next time I was on camera, I didn’t have my beanie on and I was just bombarded with direct messages saying, where’s the orange beanie?
Paul: Where’s the orange beanie? Where’s the orange beanie? And so now when I’m on camera, most of the time, particularly when it is cold, like it is today, I will always wear the orange beanie. And I think it It, it translates nicely because in order to stand out in a crowd of social media, because there’s so much of it out there, any little thing that can distinguish you from someone else and make you instantly identifiable can make, can make those little differences that just push, push people over from casual observer to someone who’s particularly interested in you, and what you have to say, and what you do, and all the rest of that.
Gil: I definitely want to dive a bit deeper than there’s, there’s actually, you’re probably the third person with some type of head covering that is. Uh, part of their uniform that, that I’ve come across and it’s been part of their brand. Um, and I’m just amazed at like how much consistency you guys have in wearing it day and day out, regardless of the weather.
Gil: Um,
Paul: This does come off when I’m in board shorts. It
Gil: I, I thought you would have like a, uh, like a orange baseball cap or something that that’s suited for the summer.
Paul: I have a, I have a blue baseball cap that fits with my brand car. Hang on a minute. Lemme,
Paul: I shouldn’t run. Uh, my, my, I tore my calf, but yeah, I have, can you see that?
Gil: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul: Yeah. So I tend to wear that in the summer if I’m outside filming, uh, an Instagram story or talking head reel or something. Yeah.
Gil: So it, it didn’t come from the orange bean. It didn’t come from you being the social media guy first. It actually came out of utility more than anything else. And it then eventually evolved into being part of your personal brand now.
Paul: Yes. So as soon as people started recognizing me in it, I thought, well, maybe I, maybe I want to be recognizable and so maybe I should be wearing it a little bit more. Um, and so I tend to chop and change between either the baseball cap or this equally orange is my favorite color. So I’m quite happy wearing it, despite my mother’s protestations that I look, look like I should be taking out the trash for everybody.
Gil: Am I, at my last gig, there was a guy that. Um, almost religiously wore a blue baseball cap, and it was just a plain blue baseball cap, but it was a kid’s baseball cap. Um, so it fit, like, above his head. It wouldn’t actually, like, yeah, it wouldn’t actually crown over his head. It would just be, like, placed on top of it.
Gil: And he wore it, like, just off to the side, and he wore it every single day. Um, and he was previously at Google, and he was wearing it as well, too. So everywhere for, I would probably say, Six years, he was wearing that cap. I don’t, I met him in person a few times when we had all, all of our company offsites, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him ever take that thing off.
Gil: And he has several versions of it. So it’s the, he has clean ones. They’re not, they’re not
Paul: So I have to watch this and I have to defuzz it because I can’t find another one that’s just quite like it. I have bought spares but no. I think, I think if we, if we take that concept and apply it to other clothes, if I was to tell you that the t shirt was a Of this particular character was a dark yellow with a black zigzag stripe across it and the person’s head was round Would you know who that was?
Gil: Is that Pikachu? Wait,
Paul: nearly you’re too young yeah, that would be Snoopy and woodchuck and Charles Schultz and all of that. So historically if you look back certainly at things like cartoons and all this of course Charlie’s t shirt was always too long for him. It was always yellow and always had a black stripe. Didn’t matter whether he was in bed, whether he was outside, whether he was indoors.
Paul: It was consistently the same. And so if you take, certainly old cartoons like that, I haven’t had a lot of time to watch cartoons recently, but they will always have some motif that always carries through. So they’re instantly recognizable, whether you see them on the front of a book, or whether you see them in an animation.
Paul: It doesn’t really matter. You can instantly identify who they are, and you know what they’re about. You know what that is. What that character portrays. Um, You could extend it to brand values and all that type of stuff. But you, you get an idea and you can empathise with whoever that character has been to you previously.
Paul: Simply by a colour scheme. It’s awesome.
Gil: yeah, yeah. That’s
Paul: Perhaps that was a bad example. It depends on your age I
Gil: I admittedly did not watch much peanuts slash Snoopy in, in my early days. Maybe I’m not that old or young. Um, I don’t, yeah, I didn’t really come across it, um, in my younger years.
Paul: Yeah, I don’t know, maybe Marvel or, or, D, D, C. Batman is always black and yellow. Superman is always blue and red. Spider Man is predominantly red. All of those things are always quite, um, they’re always very uniform. You get variations of them, but they’re usually fairly, fairly set, and you instantly know what that character’s about.
Gil: Yeah, absolutely. Um, Paul, we went pretty deep into one segment already, but I wanted to kind of like pull back a little bit and kind of introduce yourself. We didn’t, we didn’t get the chance to get to know who you are yet. Um, so do you mind giving folks a kind of a brief introduction on who you are? Who, who’s the man behind the, the orange beanie?
Paul: name is Paul Anderson. I’m currently sitting in what was Sanfield Guesthouse. I grew up here when my family moved back from the United States in the early 80s, moved into this house. I hated it. There was no central heating. It was single glazed. It was it was awful. It was it was a horrible old building.
Paul: And over the years we renovated it. We did it up. We extended it and then in the early mid 90s my parents retired from the armed forces of teaching and decided that they were going to Turned their hand to running a bed and breakfast. My sister and I had left at that point. So they kind of played with that for a couple of years and then realized we’ve retired and we don’t really want to be doing this.
Paul: So they mothballed it and it went back to being a family home. And then in the early 2000s, I’ve been living and working in Brazil for about four years or so. Global financial crash, everyone ran out of money. At the same time, my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and she was worried about rattling around such a big old building or falling in the bath or that type of thing.
Paul: And so she called me up and said, Could we have one of your other properties? I have a couple of apartments and bungalow. Um, and I said, yes, can I have the old family house and I’d like to turn my hand into running a B& B. So when I started Sanford Guesthouse, it had six bedrooms. I could take a maximum of eight guests.
Paul: I had no idea what I was doing. Uh, I put a sign outside, I got my fire checks, I got internet installed, um, updated a few bits and pieces and then just waited for Trade to come in. Remembering of course that in 2009, um, TripAdvisor was still just a review site, Booking. com didn’t really exist to speak of, Airbnb wasn’t a thing, let alone now a noun or a verb, um, and so I, I, I used to do a lot of lumpy marketing, um.
Paul: I used to pound pavements, take trifold brochures that I printed and designed myself out, used to take inquiries over facts and then call people back. That was as high tech as it got. And so my first guest arrived in June of 2009, over the course of 15 years, um, particularly during COVID, I had to take a step back and I realized that despite.
Paul: Having worked for myself and knowing very very well in it being almost like a mantra of work hard and advertise advertise more Advertise again, I’d I’d stepped off from pounding the sidewalks and going to the tourist information centers and that type type of thing so I I Googled modern marketing and of course what are now to me the usual suspects it was Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter, still don’t really know what Twitter is, but it’s good, um, and now, now threads and these things.
Paul: And I, so I embraced that. And it was Instagram that really, really took, took off for me. Eventually, um, I discovered that most of my followers were other similar businesses who were big, boring, inverted commas, stealing ideas. Um, I was very, very flattered and complimented because at the time. About 30 percent of my website traffic from my guest house was coming directly from Instagram.
Paul: Um, and I also think that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. But I also knew that that was diluting my audience. I wanted people following me who wanted to book with me, not people who found me interesting, whether that was for business reasons or entertaining. And so I set up the Social Media Hotelier a little over two and a half, three years ago.
Paul: Um, the Social Media Hotelier teaches hosts and short term accommodation businesses how to leverage Instagram. Effectively into the marketing strategies. So that’s the kind of hop, skip and a jump from 1984 to 2025.
Gil: So it’s, it’s, it’s been a lot of, it seems like org or almost organic growth yourself. Like it wasn’t that something drove you. It’s really that curiosity that kind of led you from doing organic marketing out on the streets, pounding pavements, and then you really trying to figure out how do you amplify this using some other method and, and you stumbled upon on Instagram there.
Gil: Um,
Paul: that, that grabbed me. So I, I, I had a Facebook page. It, it was dusty. Um, I’ve never been a massive fan of Facebook personally. Um, I have used it in the, in the, in the past, but. Instagram grabbed me, and I think the best way to explain why is, is to go back to my high school days.
Paul: So when I graduated high school, um, in the United Kingdom, you do what are called A Levels. You tend to do three, four. I did Maths, Physics, Economics, and Art and Design. And had I not done the Art and Design, I would never have been as successful as I was at the other three. And Instagram represents, or represented for me when I started out, um, the perfect mashup of Stats and tech, I mean there’s cameras all around here, I love taking photos and video.
Paul: Editing, copywriting, all of that technical side of things. Um, particularly when it comes to data driven analysis. With an incredibly broad and deep, dynamic, artistic range of options. And so I think it was the art and the opportunity there that kind of sucked me into it, combined with Oh, actually I can get insights and I can figure out what is working and what isn’t working.
Paul: And I get to tell my wife that I really need this new lens for my camera. And that’s, I think, inspired me because there wasn’t a lot going on during COVID. I was running around like a mad thing trying to pay the mortgage. But beyond that, there was, there was no outlet. I couldn’t go and play rugby. I couldn’t join my colleagues in the Royal Air Force.
Paul: There was all of that solitary stuff. And it gave me a passion. Um, or I developed a passion for it. My wife would say I was obsessed with it. In fact, she’d probably say I’m still obsessed to this day. Hmm.
Gil: when, when the pandemic hit, and I would say out of all the things that happened out of the pandemic, and there’s a lot of bad things, but on the flip side, I also saw a lot of people find new discoveries during, during that period, and if anything, it allowed us to be obsessed with something because yeah, There was nothing else to really do, um, and it’s amazing what some people were able to transform their lives outside of the, out of the pandemic and do projects and do things that they wouldn’t otherwise have done.
Gil: And it’s because they had nothing else to do, they had to find new ways of making, making ends meet, like they just try different things and it’s amazing. So many e commerce stores spin up so many small businesses just start because people are had an idea like, I like doing this hobby and let’s try to go in all in.
Gil: So it’s actually really good to hear that you end up discovering this whole new path of of your life now that has led you down a very different, different, different way.
Paul: Absolutely. I mean, I, I do remember, and one of the reasons why I’m so grateful for Instagram, it sounds like a trite thing to say, to be grateful for a social media platform. But, when I first started, of course, I started researching. What the Instagram gurus suggested doing and a lot of it was around we need to be posting every day You need to do three reels a week.
Paul: You need to be doing three five stories a day and it was it was very very intense and excuse me, and I I Remember tossing and turning at night because I’d undertaken a 30 day challenge We had to post 30 pieces of content in 30 days And I was about halfway through it two thirds of the way through it.
Paul: I’m tossing and turning at night and And I was about halfway through it It was about two in the morning. I thought I’ve just got to get something sorted. I’ve got to post something. So I got out of bed, I put something together, I hit post, and I went back to sleep. And the following morning, when I woke up, I realized that not only was I producing utter rubbish, not only was it not good for me, not good for the algorithms, not good for my ideal guests, but it actually represented a mental health challenge.
Paul: It was keeping me up at night. It was disturbing my sleep. It was upsetting me. And so I, I, I stepped off Instagram. I was like, I’m not doing this again. This is complete rubbish. Um, and then a very good friend of mine, there is a mentor, Mark Simpsons encouraged me to get, to get back to it. We said, whatever you do, do it on your own terms.
Paul: And so when I came back to Instagram, I had About six or eight weeks later and I’m really glad that I did now because I’m sat here talking to you Gil. I came out and I decided right I’m just gonna post on a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday. I’m gonna decide ahead of time what I’m gonna post and I’m always gonna post at the same time of day.
Paul: I’m not gonna be worried about The nitty gritties of when are my audience online? When is the peak moment? What’s the best time to post? I’m not going to worry about hashtags. I’m going to post at the same time every day Um, and that was when I take my kids to school And a lot of people like why would you do that when you’re taking your children to school?
Paul: Well when i’m not When i’m not injured, um, it’s about a mile and a half walk So i’ll walk them down. I’ll drop them off And as i’m walking up back up the hill at half past eight in the morning, my posts will go out But that’s my opportunity to engage with people who’ve left comments, to engage with other creators, to engage with other businesses, with my ideal guests, with direct messages, and I found having a constant drip feed of content rather than a boom and bust combined with engaging with the platform, not just posting and hoping everyone comes and makes bookings and that type of thing.
Paul: I’m absolutely convinced that that Built the momentum that ultimately saw the success that my guest house’s Instagram account enjoyed
Gil: interesting. I hear two ends of the spectrum quite often where folks spend a lot of effort on their social media, and they don’t get much traction on it. And then the other end, kind of your story, where they do consistently deliver high quality content and followership, high engagement as well, too.
Gil: What do you see? And you probably alluded a little bit to this just just now. But what do you see as being the difference of why people either succeed or fail at really leveraging social media effectively.
Paul: Wow, that’s a that’s a short question with a very big answer. Why do people succeed or fail? So, um There were two things that two words that you mentioned that that will always trigger me as such The one is is having a large followership and the other one is high engagement So if we go back to basic principles, it’s absolutely the case that if one posts more content and it’s not rubbish content then you will get more eyeballs on it so that is known as reach the more reach you get the more brand awareness you can create fact however followers and engagement don’t necessarily translate to cash
Gil: Mm hmm.
Paul: and so slight tangent if people are going to if hosts are going to measure I would highly recommend that they measure versus profile visits, how many followers they’ve gained in a given period and how many external link clicks they gain.
Paul: If people don’t click an external link and leave Instagram and go to your listing or your booking page, they don’t have any way of giving you any money. Followers are nice. algorithm and show the content to more people. Um, but I would far rather have, say I had one unit. That could accommodate two people.
Paul: I’d rather have 52 followers that all want to book that unit than 50, 000 who just think I’m exciting or interesting or funny or stupid or whatever it is, whatever engages them. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that it’s come back to my original story is that Quantity doesn’t necessarily equal quality. And there’s there’s two angles to that. It’s very very easy. To publish content that speaks to everyone and doesn’t resonate with anyone in particular. It’s very easy to assume for example that Instagram is the same as Facebook. People, I see people putting things like URLs in captions. Well, on Instagram, they’re not clickable.
Paul: What we’re actually asking people to do is literally take out a pencil and paper, because they’re on a mobile, write down https tiny dot url dot bit. ly forward slash abc12336 and then faithfully translate it. So there are key differences in that approach. However, I’m also a firm believer that if one does enough reps, then one will always improve.
Paul: And I think having a measured way of drip feeding content in a predictable fashion, both for one’s audience and the algorithms, is the only way really to build any sense of momentum. And so, those who succeed at successfully leveraging not just Instagram, but social media at large, will have a very, very good idea.
Paul: who their perfect potential guest is. They’ll have a very, very, uh, refined list of the information and the subjects that they know that perfect potential guest either wants or needs to know in order to know, and then like, and then trust them enough to make a booking, particularly with direct bookings.
Paul: Um, and then have that constant, planned drip feeding of content. The key then is to measure the performance of the content. So, I was on a coaching call, a one on one coaching call this afternoon, a lovely lady called Dina, she’s had amazing success over the last year, she took 15, 000 worth of bookings for one property in three months with just three posts a week, which is huge.
Paul: And Dina’s question to me was, well, what next? And I said, well, the reason why we haven’t spoken for such a long time, the reason why I was so firm with you when I was coaching you, and you need to be disciplined in recording the metrics, is I’ve taken your spreadsheet, and this is how you can, you can move it around to infer data.
Paul: So we took the spreadsheet of all of her content, which is, um, hook, caption, call to action. image, all of the performance stats, so reach, likes, shares, follows, profile visits, and link clicks. And then we just started sorting it, so we quickly identified that 44 of the 150 odd posts that she’d done were above average in terms of reach.
Paul: So what do we do? Right, we look at those, and we double down, we can carbon copy the first half of them, and then tweak the second half. And then we did the same for profile visits. Why are people visiting the profile? So what that means is that over, over the course of time, one can quickly begin to understand, I say quickly, once you have the data it’s very easy then to understand what’s working so you can double down on it, what’s not working and you can discard it and over time iterate.
Paul: Because Instagram and content marketing is a long game, it’s top of funnel, it’s not, it’s not niched down, it’s not dialed in. You’ve got to be, whilst it’s a one to one platform, people think of it as a one to many platform, Um, there are generalisms that can be applied to it that you wouldn’t do if you’re having a conversation or making a sales pitch.
Paul: Um, and so over time iterating and then using the space that is created by duplicating or repurposing content, then use that either, that extra time either to dial up the frequency with which one is posting content, just take time to spend on other parts of your business, or um, just go and have a cup of tea. But over time, you can, you can consistently iterate and improve, iterate and improve, iterate and improve. And it’s very difficult to do that if you don’t have a mechanism for capturing what works and what doesn’t.
Gil: Yeah, so it sounds like you’re, I think the first thing is really, like, putting in the reps, the consistent reps, to start to farm that data, to really understand what resonates with folks. the reps for your own good and where you’re actually constantly improving the way that you deliver content out there.
Gil: Um, so you’re doing those reps and then you’re looking at really the analytics behind it all and figuring out out of those reps, which ones were the most effective ones. And what you’re saying here is spend, do the math, figure out, pivot out how, how, what, what pieces of content works, why it might be work, start analyzing.
Gil: Your own social media and then flipping it around where then you’re still, you’re turning, starting to double down on those efforts and starting to divest in the efforts that did not perform as well. And hopefully eventually over a period of time with enough reps, you’re starting to deliver higher and higher quality content that it’s not necessarily better overall, but it’s better for the audience that you’re trying to capture there.
Paul: absolutely right, absolutely spot on. And if you look at any of the, of the large successful creators out there, it doesn’t matter what industry it happens to be in. If you, if you look fairly closely and just get a sketch on what they’re actually talking about, it’s actually, it’s very finite, it’s very delimited.
Paul: There are parameters on what they talk about. Um, and so I was teaching Dina earlier. She had a, an amazing post about a piece of food, a type of Greek food, uh, called brine, I think brine or brine. And she had a picture. And I said, well, how about the next time you cook it, do a reel. And then she had a nice reel of a sunset and it went really, really, really well.
Paul: And I said, well, I think it’s the caption in the hook that have worked well. So why don’t you just take a few pictures when you’re next there and do that. So not only can you carbon copy and there’s no harm in carbon copying at all, but you can repurpose what you’ve already done within those same parameters.
Paul: And it’s the same for short term accommodation. There’s only so much you can say about what you deliver your ideal guest and how you do it. And so, you, everyone will get to a point where they have to repeat themselves. It’s just then a question of, what do you repeat? And do you repeat it in exactly the same way as you did last time, shortcut?
Paul: Or, do you try something slightly different and see if it takes off even more? And then just keep doing that.
Gil: Yeah, how did you go from pounding pavements to googling modern marketing to now being such an expert? Like what resources help you bridge kind of more traditional marketing to what you focus on now today? What, what got you there?
Paul: But there was, there was an en, an enormous gap. I just stopped marketing basically. I stopped actively marketing. It just fizzled out and I think that was because I was a bachelor at the time I was having a lot of fun. I could turn the guest house off and on whenever I wanted. I could go away on trips And TripAdvisor had had gained traction in terms of where people certainly in the United Kingdom where people were Getting user generated content and feedback about establishments before they booked.
Paul: Um, out of 80 some guest houses and B& Bs and inns in my area, Oxford City. Um, I was always floating number one, number two, number, number three, and I just became complacent. And it was during COVID that. I had to scramble for trade, so I was one of the only guest houses that stayed open in my neighborhood.
Paul: Everyone else was larger than me. I was a one man band. I was allowed to take, um, key workers, health workers, medics, would you believe it, um, professional sports athletes and their crews? Weird, I don’t know. Um, people who came for funerals and all of that type of stuff. And I’m in a district of Oxford that’s close to hospitals.
Gil: Hmm.
Paul: So, I had to scramble to get my name out there because everybody assumed that we were all closed. Everybody assumed that they couldn’t travel. Um, so I, I tried all manner of things. I used to go to the local travel lodge. They’re like a, like a, like an easy holiday inn type place. Um, and there’s a, there’s a premier inn and a travel lodge and a few of these kind of motorway.
Paul: Highway stop motel places and I used to camp out at night and wait for contractors because people were still building Wait for contractors to pull up and then I take notes of the phone numbers on the side of their vans and I phone up Go, why are you staying there? You can stay here. I know you’re working around the corner I was trying out the police came.
Paul: What are you doing in this car park? It was nuts And I just got on back on that bandwagon if I’ve got to tell people that I’m still open I’ve got to tell people that I’m safe I’ve got to tell people that they can stay, traveling is slightly different, but they could stay, given that there were a lot of hospital workers that needed places to stay.
Paul: Um, I, I was an obvious choice for that. And that just prompted me to go, there’s got to be a better way of doing this. There’s got to be a better way of doing this. And as I said, I then just Googled like cheap ways to advertise your, your business and all the social media platforms came up. Little did I know then is that there isn’t.
Paul: No such thing really as a social media platform. They are all advertising agencies Meta makes 98 percent of its hundred and thirty odd billion dollars from ad revenue.
Gil: Yep.
Paul: As soon as I as soon as that click I was like, okay I need to keep people on the platform But my mission is to get them off the platform and that just reframed everything for me
Gil: Yeah. So what were some of the resources that helped you gain that knowledge there? What was that nugget
Paul: It was a combination
Gil: of nuggets?
Paul: Yeah, so it’s It’s very easy to get sucked into this Instagram guru world of post every day and do this and do that and here’s the new trending audio and here’s the hack and all of that. But in my experience, that information, whilst it’s perfectly valid and it’s backed up by data, um, It’s perfectly true. I think it’s what people often Either don’t realize or they forget is that there’s the team of 15 people behind them. They’ve got copywriters. They’ve got videographers They’ve got video editors.
Paul: They’ve got all manner of I recently someone sent me an Opportunity for a job and it was it was to respond to direct messages for someone so you could have a career responding to direct Messages so these these careers have oh have opened up But as as someone who ran his own business, I couldn’t put everything I had into marketing.
Paul: I had to, I had to go for it, but I still had to do front of house, still had to do bookkeeping, still had to do maintenance, still had to, you know, sort out the housekeeping, all of those things. Um, and that’s when I realized actually what I need to be doing is going back to marketing fundamentals. Um, the, the row of books I’ve got here, uh, tonight, um, what have we got?
Paul: Sorry, habits. com, secrets, the art of focus. Um, Don’t believe a word of it. Most of it was just fundamental marketing principles. And so I, I taught myself because I didn’t know previously when I was doing trifolds and, and, and such, um, who’s your ideal guest, customer, client, what do they want to know? Where are they and where do they want to be?
Paul: How do you bridge that gap? How do you communicate that? And so when I returned to Instagram, having had a break, it came back with. Some very, very basic building blocks of what any marketing department worth is. So the questions that they’re going to ask when presented with a project. And the first question is always, who are we communicating this to?
Paul: Um, and once I got that in, it gave me parameters. And I think
Paul: artistic endeavors and creative endeavors, which is what creating content is all about, um, always succeeds when there are parameters. So when I did my art at high school, it was always, you will paint the canvases this size. Paint what you like, but the canvas has got an edge to it. And that was what you were permitted to do.
Paul: Translate that to Instagram. I am communicating that I’m perfect for one perfect potential guest, or maybe two, three, depending on season, on changing between seasons. But I’m just doing that, I’m just telling them why. They should come and stay with me while they’re perfect for me and why I’m perfect for them.
Paul: And if I if I stayed within that lane Everything seemed to go well as soon as I went and did something slightly different So for example, I accidentally posted a holiday picture for some reason and it got total they got total crickets and of course it did because Instagram’s algorithms didn’t know what to do with it because it didn’t match anything prior.
Paul: So That’s the long and the short of it all in one big go. There were no specific resources as such. It was just, just a blend. And then a lot of trial and error. A lot of trial and error.
Gil: Yeah, I hear this quite often. Um, in our industry, specifically in, in, in short term mental marketing, vacation, mental marketing there is that our industry, it’s not special, or from a marketing perspective, it’s not special. It all hinges on the same fundamentals, regardless if you’re marketing to SAS businesses, B2B, B2C, B2C, B2C, B2C, B2C.
Gil: It all is the same. It’s all the same fundamentals. And it really starts with really knowing who your customers are. What do they care about? What are they trying to achieve? And it all starts there. And I think we see this over and over again, the hosts, property managers, the operators that really are in tune with their ideal guest avatars are the ones that I find have the strongest direct booking rates.
Paul: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. Um, and there’s a, there’s a variety of reasons for it. I mean, there, there are the usual tropes. Market to everyone, sell to no one. Um, people buy from people, yada, yada, yada. They’re all, they’re all true. But I think the I think you, you hit on something in that, I think whenever one is in an industry, we always think that it’s the be all and the end all because we are in it.
Paul: Um, and I, I think if you were to take that into short term accommodation, if you’re going to have your contracts and your legal set up, having the foundations of a legal understanding are going to be helpful. You’re going to be decorating or redecorating a room. Having an understanding that green and neon pink are probably not going to go well together is probably a good idea.
Paul: And it’s only by repetition, I think, that you get to that conclusion. What I would also say, and I’ve lost my train of thought here, Gil, you’re gonna have to cut this section.
Gil: No.
Paul: What was your question? What did you say?
Gil: Oh, well, that marketing pretty much applies regardless of what industry you’re specifically at.
Paul: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and the second thing to point out about it is that most people Treat social media as if they’re standing on a stage and they’re talking to their followers. To 500 followers, 100 followers, 5, 000 followers. Not the case at all for two very important reasons. Number one, if for example, and this is another good reason why you can just recycle and carbon copy content, if an account has a thousand followers and they Publish something and it’s seen by 500 people.
Paul: Really, really good. And let’s say 250 of them, they’ve done a really good job with discoverability keywords. 250 of them are non followers. They didn’t know that account even existed. That still means that of those 1, 000 followers, 750 of them don’t even know that content exists. So you can just repeat it.
Paul: No one is obsessed with your content as much as you are. The second thing is that, People see it as a one to many platform, and Instagram particularly is not a one to many platform. It’s very, very rare that you see a group of people huddled around a 3 inch by 6 inch screen. Very, very, very, very rare.
Paul: Usually people are on a commute, dare I say, in the restroom. Or they’re under their desks at school, or they’re hiding from their boss, or they’re lying on their couch, or they’re sitting up too late in bed and ruining their sleep hygiene. It’s one person on the other side of the screen. We are not standing on a stage proclaiming our greatness or how much value we can offer to this group of people.
Paul: It’s to the one person. And so, having that one person in mind is absolutely crucial. Absolutely crucial, particularly to social media marketing and those fundamentals, um, as you well know, and you’ve spoken at length about, um, those fundamentals then translate to the words that we put on our hero images on our websites.
Paul: They translate to the nature of our blogs and the tone of our blogs. Um, it translates to the authenticity of a host, particularly if it’s a smaller organization and the connection they can create with a guest at the earliest point of their guest journey. Because social media is right at the top of the funnel.
Paul: Right at the very, very, very top. And if you can grab people’s attention and connect with them there, it makes life so much easier to gently ease them down through and out the other end to turn them from, it’s a cheesy phrase, from luckies into bookies.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me like even me as a, as a consumer, um, and I try to limit my consuming, but definitely like we all, we all fall, fall suited to it every, every once in a while, but
Paul: It’s deliberately designed to do that to you, Gil. It’s there to suck you in.
Gil: yeah, I read the book hooked and I, yeah, it’s a, it’s a good one. Um, and the social media platforms, they know it, but, um, as you’re, as you’re saying that there’s the, there’s these two reasons, one that there’s a lot of followers that you’re not hitting, even when you do post content and second, that you’re, you’re talking one to one with the other person on the other end.
Gil: I do think that like, for me, like I’ll give an example. I follow two folks in in my career. Um, one is Dan Martell and the other one is Alex Ramosi. Um, and they’re really, really good marketers. Um, and they’ve gotten so good at what they talk about. And I’ve probably heard them say the same thing probably 10 times.
Gil: And every time they say that same thing, I’ll like the post. I’ll share it with, with, with my tribe. Like it’s, it resonates. And that signals to me that although it’s the same content and they know it’s really working really effectively, I’m sure that they’ve done analysis on figuring out like what, what, what actually.
Paul: almost analyzes the life out of everything.
Gil: Yeah. Um, but like, it speaks to, even though you’re creating the same content over and over again, and if you know what that content is that hits. It’s still going to resonate to that person, even if they’re seeing it for the 10th time.
Paul: Yeah,
Gil: It does not matter.
Paul: and it, it could be Alex stood in front of a whiteboard, or walking through a car park, and the language will be slightly different, or he’ll be in the gym, getting pumped, or what, what, whatever it is, and even just changing up the scenario can make all the difference, whether it goes for him writing stuff on a board, to him talking about it, or him having a prop and demonstrating something.
Paul: It can be exactly the same message, but delivered through the same medium. But with a different vehicle to do that.
Gil: Yeah, yeah. Um, I think that leads to me to like one of the areas that I wanted to talk about because you mentioned it a few times now where data is really, really important, especially when you’re putting in those reps and trying to figure out what is going to resonate and what, what doesn’t, um, what You mentioned some of these stats, um, click throughs to external pages and so on.
Gil: Um, but where are you getting this data and, and is it something that you need to pull off platform or are you looking at the analytics that for instance, meta or Instagram actually provides you? Hmm.
Paul: like Metricool for example that will give you third party access to data. What I’ve found is that depending on the platform that you use, you get slightly different results. Um, and unless you’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of followers and millions of likes and engagement and all the rest of it, then Actually, having a very strong handle on those numbers is a very good idea.
Paul: So, if anyone was going to go and measure their metrics, I’d recommend two things. Use one platform or one platform only, so you’ve got consistency, so you’re measuring apples for apples. And I always recommend, particularly with Instagram, is use Instagram’s insights. So if you go to one’s profile, you can tap the three lines, the hamburger in the top right, go to your insights.
Paul: And I would use those, because they are direct from the horse’s mouth. The two groups of metrics that, um, that I teach measuring, uh, one would be account performance and the other group is content performance. So account performance on a weekly basis, I recommend literally going into the insights and the overview is in three sections, there’s a little arrow next to it, you tap that and you get a little bit more detail, but I would be recording.
Paul: And paying particular focus to profile visits, new followers, numbers, and external link clicks.
Gil: Hmm.
Paul: Over a week. Sorry, do it every week, but over 30 days. If one does it over 30 days, that means that if, for example, you are posting on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there’s then a two day gap until the following Monday. But if you always do it on 30 days and you always do it on a Sunday evening or a Monday morning or a Friday night or whatever it is, you are always comparing apples for apples and then you’re looking for, for trends.
Paul: The reason why I do say, oh, follow account doesn’t matter. The reason why I recommend measuring new followers as a proportion of profile visits is it gives a very, very strong indicator of the alignment between one’s profile, the bio, the kind of portal that we have to get people through to get them off platform, and our content.
Paul: So, we would look 100 profile visits in that 30 day period, and 25 people followed as a result of those profile visits. visits. That would give us a 25 percent PCR profile conversion rate. I would highly recommend that if you can get anywhere in or around 20 percent you should be happy with that. It means that one in five people who visit your profile then go on to follow you.
Paul: And the reason why this is helpful is if we’ve spent time understanding our ideal guest and we optimized and crafted our profile to speak directly to them. If our content starts to drift away from that, because we haven’t reminded ourselves exactly who we are, then what we will find is that people will see a post, they’ll come through to the profile, and it won’t be what they expect.
Paul: Or it won’t be what they’re looking for. And so we can pull it back in. Equally, it could be that we’ve adjusted our ideal guest persona, and we’ve updated our bio, and we’re waiting for the The content to come back in line with that. So the two need to sit together. So the profile conversion rate is very, very good for identifying dissonance between content and the profile.
Paul: Remembering that people will find our profiles either by a search or by, or via a piece of content. And so the journey from the piece of content to the profile and onto the website, that slide as such needs to be as smooth as possible. Link clicks as a proportion of profile visits is the holy grail.
Paul: There is no target for that. What we want is everyone who visits our profile to hit the link in bio and come off the platform, see our beautiful website, essentially within the hope that they would have only three questions. Does this host have vacancies when I want to travel? Can they afford, can I afford them?
Paul: And where is the book now button? And so measuring link clicks as a proportion of profile visits is also important. The second bucket is measuring the performance of each individual piece of content. Whether that, I wouldn’t go to necessarily, if you’re in the early days, necessarily to the lengths of recording, uh, the performance of Instagram stories, but certainly everything that goes onto your feed.
Paul: And that’s as simple literally as you go to that post, and in blue underneath it will say see insights. The important thing with that is, is to always give each piece of content the same amount of time to perform. If I give a single image post 24 hours and I give a reel two weeks, the reel is clearly going to outperform
Gil: Hmm.
Paul: longer to gain traction.
Paul: So what I teach my students, particularly those who do Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, is on the following day, frame that post. with an Instagram story, share that Instagram story, and that will remind you to go to the insights and make a record of how it’s performed. So reach, likes, shares, don’t get those in the United Kingdom because there’s something to do with data, but I don’t
Gil: I did not know that.
Paul: Doesn’t tell, it won’t tell me how many people have shared my content from the UK.
Gil: Interesting.
Paul: Um,
Gil: From the audience in the UK, or that your account’s based in the UK and you can’t see at all? Like, do you, can you see
Paul: The account, if the account is registered in the United Kingdom, Instagram won’t tell me how many times that piece of content has been shared. Which is sad because shares are a really, really key metric for the algorithms at the moment. Um, because Instagram is leaning away from, um, people just consuming content on the home feed to people building connections.
Paul: And the activity in direct messages is now surpassing activity in the home feed.
Gil: Interesting.
Paul: So those are the two buckets account performance and content performance over time with account performance. We’re looking for trends, not hard numbers. Um, and with content performance, we’re literally looking for those raw numbers so we can take that data stack, sort it whichever way we want, double down on what works and ignore what doesn’t.
Gil: Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna touch on this again later on. Um, but, you pointed off camera just for a little bit. And, and pointed at a stack of books that has helped you in this. I’m interested in understanding, around what we just talked about, of understanding your analytics. And not specifically for short term rentals, but more generically in marketing, what are some of the books or resources that really helped you understand that whole concept there
Paul: I’ll be honest with you. None of those books helped with any of that at all. Um, I confess I am both a reformed lawyer and a retired logistician. Um, I am obsessed with Excel spreadsheets and I’m trying Google Sheets. I’m pushing myself into that, but the whole interface just fries my head. And so it just.
Gil: is trial and error.
Paul: Just trial and error and, and hearing other people saying in, in, in, in all different worlds that if you’ve got data and you can use data to see whether something is effective or is not effective, then you’d be daft not to use it. And so it then came to, okay, how do I collect the data? So I just built a spreadsheet.
Paul: Okay, so now I need to be recording so I can actually understand what the data relates to. So the spreadsheet became bigger and it turned into a content calendar. So it’s literally day by day. Date, the content pillar, the sub pillar, and then I break the caption into hook, value, call to action, some image notes, and that’s it.
Paul: And then I use that to plan the content through. It’s just another series of columns against those that I know refer to that content 24 hours after it was published. I just do it, and my students do it, just regular habit. You post a piece of content 24 hours later, I want to see how it did. Don’t obsess over it, just record it.
Paul: Over a year, if you’ve got 150, 200 posts, you’ve got the data on 150, 200 posts. Maybe you only have 4 or 5 pillars and you go, Oh, that pillar is not doing very well. And you can go and figure out why. Or, that piece of content is doing really, really well. I’m going to do it again. Leave a sensible gap. You don’t want to be doing back to back the same thing.
Paul: Um, so yeah, it’s just, it’s just common sense. If it’s working, and you’ve got data that tells you it works, then why wouldn’t you use it?
Gil: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Um, I was going to wait until later on the show to talk a little bit more about this. Um, but do you mind talking a little bit about. What you’ve been spending your time on and specifically your, your coaching program and kind of what you kind of guide folks through. Yeah.
Paul: hosts. ’cause I knew there were people needed help out there. Everyone was under the, the, the cosh of Covid as such. Um, and then people started reaching out, asking, oh, can you, can you help me? And, um, so that turned into one, one-on-one coaching, played with that for a little while, and then it led to strategy design.
Paul: That was a disaster. Done for you services. That was a disaster. I’m not going anywhere near either of those again. Um, so I went back to the 101 coaching. And then, as that grew, My, my, my students kept, kept saying This is absolute gold. And they were seeing better results than I was getting. Which was kind of disheartening for myself somewhat.
Paul: But I was pleased for them. Because I was giving them value. I’m a natural, what’s the word? People, people pleaser. You have to find a way of sharing this with the wider world. So the one on one coaching programs take people from, it goes through the fundamentals. So the nice thing about it is it can be applied across the digital marketing landscape.
Paul: So work really hard on drilling down. Deep, deep, deep dive on who the perfect potential guest is. And that’s more than who is booking with you right now. It’s who do you want to host? Who are the easiest people to satisfy? Who are those who cause you the least trouble? Who are those who will always write reviews, will always want to come back time and time again, from there, we then understand.
Paul: Content pillars. There are usually five that work very well for all accommodation, short term accommodation businesses. They would be service in space. What do we do? How do we do it? Where do we do it? Nourishment, because it doesn’t matter whether you’re traveling or if you’re at home, you need nourishing.
Paul: And that can be local in terms of restaurants and takeaways and delivery services, right the way through to grocery suppliers, the facilities we offer in our kitchens that can be hyper local. Pillar three I’d recommend would be local activities. Um, so not just things you can do in the environment around the property, but what do you do if it’s smashing it down with rain and you’ve actually come to go hiking in the Smokies?
Paul: Oh, well we have streaming TV, we have a pool table. Activities, local and hyper local. Number four is perhaps the easiest as well as the most powerful, and that’s reviews and testimonials. It’s far more impactful for other people to say, Hey, you should stay with Gil, he’s awesome. Then it would be for you girls to say, hey, come sit with me.
Paul: Aren’t I great? It just resonates really, really well. The mistake that people, just to jump, jump in on that, the mistake that people make with review posts is they put the entire review on an image on a post and the handwritten ones are particularly difficult because everyone’s looking at them this size. And then people show them to stories and it disappears after 15 seconds. So the way I recommend, really good top tip, recommend creating review posts is get a Image of your property. Put the review in a caption with a little hook to introduce it, to thank the person who wrote it, and a call to action at the end.
Paul: And then take what I call a soundbite from the review. So if the review says, um, I don’t know, above and beyond, or immaculately clean, or can’t wait to return, take those words and put them on an image. Because particularly once it’s served its purpose. In people’s home feed it will then be part of the first impression when people land on the profile And they’ll just see immaculately clean.
Paul: I can’t wait to go back Outstanding service because no one’s really going to read into it If you put a block of text on it, people are going to go straight past it. So that’s pillar number four pillar number five is To give people reasons to book direct what’s in it for them and it doesn’t just have to be oh, it’s more cost effective people are starting to resonate with the notion of contributing to a local economy, to cutting out the middleman, to reducing competitions, to be booking with an independent business rather than a global conglomerate.
Paul: You can tweak things so that people can check in earlier, check out later. All of those things give people a reason to come to you direct. Particularly when it comes to building trust. You need to work hard to build trust. So, Avatar, Pillars, We then translate that into a content calendar. We then measure the metrics.
Paul: And that ultimately is the, like, the bare bones of the strategic arc that we would take. After that, it’s iteration. So what I’ve done is I’ve turned that into a digital program called Instabooked. Um, it’s videos, and then all the videos are downloadable as audio files so people can listen to it as podcasts.
Paul: And what I’m really excited about, and there are about 45 students now, is we do live group sessions once a month. So we will always talk about production updates because I have yet to get to the end of the program. We’re about two thirds of the way through. So I’m keeping in front of all the students as they’re coming up behind me.
Paul: Um, we always do a live profile audit. We get special guests on and there’s always a hot topic. Um, and all of those are recorded so people watch them back. And that’s, that’s turned out to be really, really, really powerful. And it’s all managed and coordinated through. A dedicated Facebook group. And, um, I’m so, so, so pleased that, that people have embraced it as a safe space where they can go I tried this and it didn’t work.
Paul: And people can go Oh, I think it’s because of that. And no one’s upsetting anybody else. It’s nice, it’s small, it’s intimate. Um, I’m really keen on maintaining that as it grows forward so people can stay accountable. And they can share challenges and questions and wins and successes and all that stuff. So that’s the Instabook program.
Paul: Um, I would be very, very excited. Would you be interested if I, if I had some deal I could offer you?
Gil: Yeah, absolutely.
Paul: Okay, um,
Gil: listeners will get about a lot of value out of that.
Paul: okay. So, make, make a decision Paul. Okay, so let’s do 30 percent off for all of your listeners. If they go to thesocialmediahotelier. com And I, as soon as we finish this session, I will create a coupon code and we’ll call it Crafted.
Paul: Block capitals C R A F T E D. Crafted. For
Gil: Love it. Love it. I’ll, I’ll be sure to include that into the show notes so that folks don’t have to. Write that out in pencil and paper and copy that over.
Paul: Yeah, one marketing mistake I did make was the social media hotelier. But still, tough. It’s there now. I’ve got to live with it and so do you guys. The social media hotelier dot com forward slash instabooks. Coupon code crafted.
Gil: Yeah, I like the programming. I think Azure is talking about it. It reminds me that marketing is not just about the single channels by themselves. It’s really how it all comes together. Because as you talked about those five pillars, it actually applies very much for your sites as well too. When you’re talking about all the things that you post for, the services that you provide, the nourishment, the local activities, reviews.
Gil: Why they might want to book with their directly with you. That’s actually a lot of content that we encourage our, our customers to put on their websites. It’s, it’s no different at all. So I think that there’s actually a lot of synergies between all the places that you talk to your customers and some consistency there and you want them to really build that trust with you to really understand one that your accommodations for them, but two that they should be They should be booking with you.
Gil: Um, so I think that there’s actually a lot of parallels there and it reminds me that it’s not necessarily like when you figure out what your marketing tactics is, what your taglines are, how do you speak to your ideal guest avatars? It’s not just on social media, it’s in your email campaigns, it’s in your direct booking site, it’s in your guests messaging.
Gil: It’s everywhere that you talk to that customer. So you cannot, like the efforts that you put in there, and I think Instagram actually is a good way. The efforts that you put in there to really figure out what resonates with folks has compounding effects across all your marketing efforts.
Paul: Absolutely right, yeah, um, Instagram is, is, what’s the right word for it? I’ve recently been, um, doing a lot of study of a man called Dan Coe, and he talks at length about using Twitter, or X, and threads to test content. Use that, and then if it works then push it down into Instagram, and then push it into a newsletter, and da da da da. And I spoke with another, one of the Instabook students rather than a one on one client this morning, um, because he’s been really struggling with content ideas. He says, I’ve been doing this for three years and I don’t know what to post on, I don’t know what I’m doing and all the rest of it. I said, don’t worry, I’ll sort you out in 20 minutes.
Paul: He’s like, really? I said, yeah. So we come off the call. I opened up his website. I opened up a spreadsheet and I put service in space, nourishment, local activities. Reviews and testimonials, and book direct. And then I just went through his website. I went through his blogs. And I went through it, and I was like, well just do that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that.
Paul: And I sent it off, and he said, how did you do that in 20 minutes? I said, I just looked at your website. I didn’t use ChatGBT to scrape it, or anything along those lines. And so the whole, the whole ecosystem feeds into itself. And if you’re top of funnel, you can afford to take a few risks. And, one of the nice things about being top of funnel, is if you publish a piece of content.
Paul: And it’s, and it’s utter rubbish. The algorithms will know that, and no one will see it. So it doesn’t matter if you make a fool of yourself, because no one will know. No one will know! Like, 25 people might see that piece of content, so what? But if you hit one that works, and a thousand people see it, that’s a whole nother ballgame.
Paul: So you’re absolutely right to hit on that you can use social media to test out what is resonating. So long as you’ve got your idea, it gets dialed, dialed right in. And then you can translate that, as you say, to words on hero images or different sections of a website. Absolutely right. Yeah, spot on. I’d never thought of it in those terms.
Paul: I’d never seen that
Gil: Yeah. I mean, as you’re explaining, I was like,
Paul: directly.
Gil: yeah, as you’re explaining kind of like your, your coaching program and things that you walked your. Your clients through it’s, I think about as we design our templates, as we design our platform, what do we encourage folks to put on their websites? What do we encourage them to upload and to include in there?
Gil: And it’s almost line by line, pretty much the same. Like it’s, it’s ironically, it’s, there’s no different there. And it just reminds me that marketing is marketing and like, whether or not you’re on one channel or another, you’re still threading that same person through all the different touch points. And you do want to have that consistency there.
Paul: Absolutely right, absolutely right. And that, that applies to brand voice. It applies to the colors that you use on your, on your graphics. So that ultimately when people leave Instagram and come to one of our booking pages, we don’t want them to feel like they’ve gone anywhere.
Gil: Yeah, yeah,
Paul: I feel a news, a newsletter coming on about using stuff to test out for a website.
Paul: I will have to attribute that to you Gail. Thank you for inspiring that,
Gil: I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Um, I do want to touch on one topic before we kind of close things out. I saw a recent post that you had, um, at the turn of the new year, and it was talking about AI and the use of AI.
Paul: I love AI.
Gil: talk to me about Azure, Azure coming into, or we’re now in 2025, but as we progress through the year.
Gil: How do you see AI being leveraged either for good or for bad, um, when, when hosts leverage AI, um, or lean on it?
Paul: I think it very much comes down to what hosts think AI can do for them. So a few broad brush statements. Um, AI generated imagery can be spotted a mile off. AI generated caption and verbiage. You can smell it. You can just see as soon as you see it. dive into the tranquility and the mystery it’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of garnish I started my working life in restaurants and I worked in one particular restaurant it was all very anti garnish so we’re doing this I don’t need all of this fluff and that that fluff is number one it’s easy to spot so it smacks of inauthenticity and I think people C Fluff, historically, is, is almost trying to hide something.
Paul: Like, it, it gets in the way of the message. And so, I see, I see stats such as 54 percent of internet content is now AI generated. I see the speed at which AI generated content can be produced and published. I see a, a wave, a sea of it coming. And in fact, I think it’s already here. We’re in the middle of the swell.
Paul: And I, I firmly believe that as a result, a bit like the orange beanie, then the way to stand out is to be your perfectly imperfect self is to be authentic. Um, I know creators who will deliberately put spelling mistakes in their captions to demonstrate their authenticity. And so that people come out and go, Oh, you made a spelling mistake.
Paul: And he’s like, Oh, thank you for the engagement. So there’s a whole range of. Uh, well, it’s out there. I think if,
Paul: if one is going to use AI, then I would use it to, and in fact, um, on the, on the socialmediahotelier. com website, there’s a video on how you can build your own marketing, um, agents or marketing manager using AI, but it begins with using AI to help you understand your ideal guest, but then you have to go and think about it yourself.
Paul: And then feed that back in again. And then ask it for pillars and go, No, actually what I want to do is stay within these five pillars that Paul and Gail say are absolutely Now I want you to do X, Y, and Z. And the problem with AI is that it doesn’t have any agency. It needs a controller. It needs someone to drive the car.
Paul: It doesn’t have agency of its own. It will only follow the instructions. And so it’s a wonderful way of stepping off from a blank sheet of paper. But it’s a terrible way to cross the finishing line. My metaphors are completely mixed up because it’s late here in the UK. But I would recommend using AI to stimulate ideas, stimulate notions, but never ever, please, for the love of God, don’t ever copy and paste AI generated content
Gil: The final content. Yeah.
Paul: awful. It’s awful. Use your own voice. Take notes. Rewrite it. Take your own pictures. Get a photographer. There’s so many ways to do it. That don’t require AI. But AI is an amazing tool. I use it several times every day to write my own content. To stimulate ideas. To polish ideas. To come up with turns of phrase. And then I go write my own content.
Gil: Yeah. I, I, I find that AI is a good companion as you’re doing the writing. It cannot be that person that Or the pseudo person that you hire to write all your content for you. It cannot be.
Paul: AGI might get there one day, but AI, no. ASI perhaps, if that ever comes into existence. But AI itself, no. AI is like a tireless intern. who has yet to cut its teeth properly on what it is you’re asking it to achieve. Unless you ask it to achieve very specific things and then you go take that and you do something different with it.
Gil: Yep. Yep.
Paul: Yeah. Authenticity. The hosts that win are those are going to be themselves and shine through with that.
Gil: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. Wholesale.
Gil: Alright, Paul, I I peppered you with questions pretty
Paul: Keep them coming, man. I love this. An opportunity to talk shot where people aren’t going to leave the room as soon. I’m like, I’m sat in a bar talking, talking shop. I turn around, everyone’s just gone.
Gil: I hope it’s a little warmer there now after we’ve, we’ve chatted for almost an hour.
Paul: My radiator is, is slowly warming up. So yeah, it’s good.
Gil: Um, but Paul, we, we usually end our show with two questions. I actually want to change it up a little bit. Um, the first question I actually want to ask you is what’s that one book that you have read, and you probably answered this question many times on all the podcasts you’ve been on, but. But coming into 2025, I’m spending a lot more time reading myself.
Gil: Um, I’m slowing down in life and really trying to learn and not, can not stop learning. Um, so I always love book ideas, book tips. So what’s that one book that you always recommend to folks to read, um, that perhaps maybe even change your life?
Paul: You know what? I’ve never actually been asked that question before. I’ve been asked what is my favorite book at the moment, but not which one would I recommend. Have a look.
Paul: So the, the fiction book that changed my life would be Decline and Fall by a man called Evelyn Waugh. It’s just one of the funniest, um, satires of British culture out there. It’s short, it’s punchy. There is a section, one section in the morning, in the middle that’s a little bit dull, but the whole thing is just hilarious.
Paul: So that’s Decline of Fall by Evelyn Waugh. And, from a marketing perspective,
Paul: it’s got to be Brand Story by
Gil: Donald. Yeah.
Paul: Donald, Donald,
Gil: Don Miller.
Paul: Don Miller, that’s right. Yeah, marketing book. Story brand. Everyone, so many hosts make themselves the hero. We’re not the hero. The guest is the hero. We are Obi Wan Kenobi. We guide Luke Skywalker. They are Luke Skywalker. We’re
Gil: That one’s a, that one’s a good book. Um, and I think, uh, extending what we just talked about on AI, he actually, the StoryBrand franchise just
Paul: Yesterday, released a seven day trial, did they not? Yes.
Gil: Yeah, they, they start, they started brand story AI, which helps you figure out who your, who your customer is and how to, like, create content that really resonates with them.
Gil: Uh, I, I, I looked at it actually very interesting because I think a lot of folks have like writer’s block to figure out, like what questions to ask themselves to help figure out what that, what that person is.
Paul: Yeah, um, when I started on this marketing journey, um, one of my son’s friend’s mother, I discovered was it was a brand, something or other. I didn’t know what it, what it was and she said, Oh, I can help you find out your brand. So Sanfield guest house, just a quick, quick story. Yeah. When it was a guest house, it was one of four guest houses out of five buildings.
Paul: And she took me through a series of exercises and then we were walking the kids to school and I very sheepishly said. I think I know what my brand is, or how to define it. She was like, oh yeah. I said, I think I’m the brand. And she did this dance in the street, because I’ve lived and I’ve grown up here, and it was always me answering the door, me answering the emails, me with the local knowledge.
Paul: I know the buses, I know the local shop owners, that whole thing. The others are much larger than I am, don’t have any of that. It’s all kind of managed. Um, Very often, particularly if you’re a smaller organisation, you as the host, you are the brand. You are what’s set you apart from your competition because everyone has safe spaces, warm comfortable beds, same location, same attraction, same reason to be there.
Paul: The thing that will separate you is you and it comes back to the authenticity and leaning in AI to help but not to rely on it and being authentically your perfect imperfect self. Oh yeah, Donald, Donald Miller, all over that. Brilliant.
Gil: Yeah, yeah, he’s nailed it. Um, the last question. What’s the one piece of tactical tactical advice that you would give to our listeners today that you want them to take action on
Paul: What do you mean by tactical?
Gil: something that they can put in practice today. And so not, not, not strategic, but something bite sized enough for them to get started today.
Paul: Can I give you three things?
Gil: Sure.
Paul: Okay, so on a profile there’s a section in bold, it’s called a name field. You’re allowed two edits in any two week period, no more than 64 characters. This is keyword in SEO gold. It’s the first place that the algorithms will look to when returning a response to a search query.
Paul: This is where you can use Google Analytics, GA4, understand what words people are using to find your business in the wider internet. Get those in there. So many people will just repeat their at handle. Oh, I’m at Crafter’s Days. Oh, I’m at No. I’m at Vacation Rental Inn. That’s number one. Discoverability.
Paul: Absolutely key. Really often overlooked and missed. Number two. Always try to post portrait images that are 4×5. So 4×5 high. So 1080 wide by 1350 high. Square images will allow on the home feed the next piece of content to creep in. If that, if your piece of content is seen by a non follower and, I don’t know, Cristiano Ronaldo or someone famous follows, uh, follows yours and they are following that account, they’re going to go straight past yours to that one.
Paul: So always, always please use portrait images because you will dominate the screen’s landscape, particularly when it comes to Instagram Reels. The volume of Instagram Reels that I see from hosts on one of these, so 1920 by 1080, that’s 9 by 16, and the video’s like that big in the middle.
Gil: Yeah. You’re giving a lot of space for someone else.
Paul: Don’t do it! Why would you do that? Don’t do that! That would be number two. Um, number No, it’s kind of borderline strategy.
Gil: You can, it can be a little bit strategy. It can be started planning some seeds. Nice.
Paul: Don’t stress about trends. Don’t stress about hashtags. Don’t stress about the perfect time to post. Understand who your ideal guest is. Decide what they need to know or want to know. To make a decision to To go further down that funnel with you and start with the fundamentals. Anything else, if you can’t get the fundamentals right, you’re literally doing the proverbial in the wind and just hoping something sticks.
Paul: It’s a complete waste of time if you haven’t got those fundamentals down. So, do that. And you can do that on Instabooks, or you can do that with me one on one. I’ve got all this lovely cool stuff to help people out. Learning from my experience, and my failures predominantly, because there are a lot of them, a lot of them.
Paul: A lot of stuff went really wrong. And I’m happy to
Gil: it is trial and error. There is the error that comes along with it.
Paul: Absolutely right.
Gil: Yeah. Paul, it was really good to have you on the show. It was really good to dive deep into a lot of parts of social media and branding and many more. I have a feeling you’ll probably be back on the show in a little bit because there’s so much more that I want to talk to you about, but we’re already pretty much at the hour over an hour.
Gil: Um, um, but yeah, definitely. I, I got a lot of value out of that. I think our listeners did too.
Paul: Gail, it’s always a delight to talk to you. I’d like to do it on a format like this. And yeah, I would love to do it again. Whether it’s just a chat or whether it’s recorded and shared for the world to enjoy. Either way, it’s been lovely. Thank you.
Gil: Awesome. Thanks Paul. Bye.