Airbnb provides a platform for customers to exchange their needs and wants. Travelers can pay less money to live in a nice house while hosts can share their extra rooms to earn extra money.
“Book unique homes and experience a city like a local”, just like this slogan, Airbnb works hard to show this idea to the public with vivid stories.
Airbnb makes use of its own website to write blogs about itself. Writing blog is an effective way to the content marketing. First and foremost, people who visit Airbnb official website is also the potential customers for Airbnb, they came to the website to find out more information. And blog works as a complimentary tool to satisfy consumers goals. Consumers could find out many stories about hosts and guests. If they can find someone’s story similar as themselves, customers are more inclined to book a room.
Airbnb’s Content Marketing on Hosts:
As for Airbnb’s current content marketing effort, it has already done a good job in the host persona part. For example, despite blog site, Airbnb also have a community center for hosts to share their stories, to speak out their voice.
For people who is hesitating about sharing their rooms, can get some ideas about those voices. Maybe you are worried about your asset in the room, maybe you are worried about the safety of your room, maybe you are concerned about your private life, etc. All those concerns can be resolved by going through those host stories.
Airbnb’s Content Marketing on Guests:
However, to my perspective, Airbnb focus too much on the hosts part rather than guests since both of them are customers from Airbnb. There is the community center for hosts to talk about their stories, but for guests, there are few stories about them. You can’t find any guest stories in the community center, guests find it difficult to make their voices to be heard.
For travelers who first visit Airbnb may be curious about booking process, they may want to find out some useful hints for guests. However, they are overwhelmed by host stories. And only for a specific room, they are able to read reviews from other guests to get some idea. Nevertheless, they can find any general ideas to help them.
Airbnb fails to take advantage of the content marketing on the guests part, as they neither solve consumers’ problems nor stimulate consumers to book the room from Airbnb.
Reference:
https://www.airbnbcitizen.com/stories/
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Community-Center/ct-p/community-center
Susu 