COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Introduction

Founded in 2008, Airbnb is an online marketplace and hospitality service that allows

people to rent or lease home properties and vacations for either short or long periods.

Accommodations include apartments, villas, condos, castles, tree houses, vacation

rentals and farms in over 65,000 cities and 191 countries across the world. Despite the

company not owning any of the properties, Airbnb profits by charging customers a

percentage service fee from both the guests and hosts.

Recently they offer an “Experiences” service where customers can purchase activities

or excursions provided by the host. The company allows the host to set prices and

customize service fees in addition to their standard percentage service fees. The hosts

and guests rely on positive reviews for one another to continue using the service. Airbnb

offers a sense of freedom, flexibility and community when using their services.

Social Media Platforms

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Airbnb is highly active and engaged with most social media platforms. Based on the

analysis from Klear.com, the order for highest to lowest number of followers is

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Airbnb’s blog and YouTube. Each platform offers a

variety of content to showcase their customer’s home and experiences.

Ranking top for most followers is Facebook but least engagement in terms of likes and

comments. Although Facebook is not the targeted audience, with 9.87 million followers,

this platform is ideal to reach the most of their customers. Majority of the content

focuses on their blog and promoting events. Ideally Facebook could be beneficial in

targeting the 30 to 60 age group but Airbnb is using this platform for customer support.

In contrast to Facebook, Instagram has six times the average likes and the most

average comments. Majority of Airbnb’s targeted audience utilizes this platform and

therefore will be most engaged in the content. Students, couples, families and

customers who want affordable travelling costs while maintaining quality and secruity

fall under this category. Based on the overview above, Airbnb is correctly investing their

time into Instagram.

As well, they also have two additional accounts @AirbnbDesignTeam and

@AirbnbExperiences for behind the scenes of the company. There is potential for a new

audience but these accounts are used for a different service.

These two accounts fall behind from the official Airbnb and lack engagement in

comparison.

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Airbnb Airbnb Help Airbnb Citizen

Followers 632000 53700 24000

Tweets 35,800 186,000 2763

Likes 23600 1049 727

0100000200000300000400000500000600000700000

Comparison Between Twitter Handles

Followers Tweets Likes

Airbnb Airbnb Design Team Airbnb Experiences

Followers 2500000 18985 15400

Average Likes 24695 240 0

Total Posts 1612 243 0

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

Comparison of Airbnb Accounts

Followers Average Likes Total Posts

Twitter is another platform used for customer support that similar to their Facebook

page. Due to Twitter’s word character limitations, Airbnb has to be more calculated.

They created a #BelongAnywhere tag to allow customers to interact with the brand and

drive traffic to their blog. Since their audience are within the 18 to 29 age group, Twitter

is another effective platform.

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

They also created two official handles called @AirbnbHelp for customer support and

@AirbnbCitizen for customers “who wants to learn about and advance home sharing as

a solution” as a sub group of Airbnb.

The remaining platforms are Airbnb’s blog, Linkedln and YouTube with followers of

130.6K, 430K and 93K respectively. Airbnb’s personal blog content cannot be analyzed

by third parties and therefore no engagement can be reported.

LinkedIn has an average of 300 Likes and 8 comments per post and 1-2 posts per

month. Unfortately as the lowest number of followers, they lack interaction with their

audience. The platform is typically a B2B to connect with other businesses and vendors

and little B2C. Therefore Airbnb has avoided time into this platform since the targeted

market is not using LinkedIn.

However, their YouTube channel has 114 videos and 117 million views since March

2015. Airbnb’s aims to give a sense of community, adventure, secruity and affordablity

for their travelling customers. Influencers are dominating social media and impacting the

marketing industry through their own blogs. Since Airbnb’s targeted audience can also

be found here, they should take advantage of YouTube by creating video blogs called

“vlogs” to generate more engagement.

For the purpose of efficency and convience, only Facebook, Instagram and Twitter will

be the main focus of this report.

#BelongAnywhere campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMITXMrrVQU

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Audience Engagement

Facebook

Facebook has the most followers but falls second to Instagram for audience

engagement. Interestingly, Airbnb uses this platform to handle their customer service

and compliments. As noted by the example below, their prompt responses to their

customers are done within the same day. In an industry that relies on transpency,

interacting to customer reviews is beneficial to Airbnb to maintain their reputation.

External factors can also affect how a company is viewed. June was LGBT Pride Month

and highest number of audience engagement for Airbnb. The company released six

posts regarding LGBT rights that received positive and negative responses. Creating a

reaction or an emotional post allows the audience to express their opinion and increase

engagement.

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Male24%

Female76%

Dominant Gender for Instagram

Male Female

In terms of improvement, Airbnb should post content that pertains to the age group of

30 to 60 such as security and convenience. A tutorial on how to use their booking app

or the process of using the company from start to finish would be useful on this platform.

Instagram

Instagram is a more aesthetics-based platform for a younger audience. Not surprisingly,

the majority audience will be females from ages 18 to 29 who are interested in

travelling, interior designing, lifestyle, gardening and photography.

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

There is little interaction between Airbnb and their customers since Instagram is not

used to handle customer support. Instead, engagement is C2C by tagging, liking and

commenting on Airbnb’s posts. Instagram is able to manage their account positively and

actively to attain and gain new users. Improvements are difficult to comment on.

Twitter

Twitter has more age range than Instagram and Facebook. This platform is used for

convinencetly in connecting with brands and people, sharing information in real time

and marketing for B2B, B2C and C2C. Female users still dominate but only 16%

difference to male users.

With a limited character count,

Airbnb is more stragetic with their

posts. Simplicity is key for Twitter

and creating hashtags that is

easy to follow and understand is

important.

Lack of hashtag clarification will

involve less interaction and user-

generated content as shown by

the analytics for #airbnbmag,

#rowanontour and

#thriceasnice. Hashtags need to be clear and simplified to encourage users to

engagement with Airbnb on Twitter.

Male42%

Female58%

Dominant Gender for Twitter

Male Female

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Creating different photos or posts would be beneficial to the company and avoids

overlapping between social media platforms.

Content Review

Airbnb’s Facebook offers similar content to their Instagram and Twitter but has a

narrative component. Unlike Instagram, Facebook has no limitation with adding photos

to their page. Since Airbnb sells a service rather than a product, branding can be

difficult when they do not own materials. Instead the company relies on user-generated

content to market their services. As previously mentioned, the content is related to

community living, travelling, interior designing, lifestyle, gardening and photography.

Their content is appropriate to both Airbnb and the Facebook audience. The first

example is from their Facebook page and the second from Instagram. Although the

photographs are the same, different captions are used to tell different stories. Facebook

is a simple narrate of the home while Instagram is rich in storytelling and more

elaborate.

For the Twitter, which is the third example provided, a video and a concise caption was

used. As a short character handle, the content works for the type of platform and

audience. Less detailed as the other two posts but the video is straightforward but users

are more intrigued.

In all, majority of their photos or content is consistent through each platform but

expressed differently depending on their audience. Facebook being more of photo

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

album style, Instagram is more storytelling and Twitter is a concise and forwarded way

to send different messages with the same content.

Facebook post

Instagram post

COMPANY MONITORING ASSIGNMENT – PREPARED BY QUYEN LE – DEC. 5, 2017

Twitter post

Conclusion

In all, Airbnb manages their social media platforms very well since being launched a

decade ago. From asetheticly-pleasing photos to capturing the right words, the

company understands who and where their audience are located. Airbnb has a strong

sense of identity in the travelling industry and shows consistency throughout their

content. Utilizing their user-generated content, Airbnb strives to being transparent to

everyone using their service. Being a decade old, the company has managed to survive

by strageticly and investing their time on who their consumers are.

References

www.facebook.com/airbnb/ www.klear.com www.keyhole.co

www.instagram.com/airbnb/ www.twitter.com/airbnb