Facebook Page vs Profile for Vacation Rental Owners

facebook_logo Massive Facebook usage in all demographics is making it a ‘must have’ in the vacation rental marketing tool kit. If your competitors are using Facebook to promote their property listing or blog, or even as a site in its own right, then it’s time you jumped on the bandwagon. If you are already using Facebook and have a few hundred friends, it’s tempting to just add a few photos and start making the occasional ‘marketing’ post. However, if those are mixed up with Farmville updates and less-than-flattering tagged photos from your last family get-together, your message will be lost. Think about it. If you would not add a large amount of personal information on your vacation rental listing, why would you include it in your Facebook output.

The bottom line is – profile pages are meant for friends and family, and business pages are meant for business. If you are business-like about promoting your holiday rental, you need a business page for it on Facebook. Here’s three compelling reasons:

Professional Marketing

Having a page vs a profile shows a business-like approach and sends the message that you are a serious advertiser. With the rise in fraudulent listings and scam operations, potential guests are seeking more ‘proof’ that a listing is genuine and showing a well presented and popular Facebook page is an excellent way of creating confidence.

Facebook Insights

Insights are a feature of a Facebook page that deliver analytics – measurements of the amount of impressions a particular status update has vs the amount of feedback; the demographic breakdown of the users on your Page; and graphs that show interactions with multimedia such as pictures, video, and audio. They help measure the effectiveness of your marketing posts, and are not available on your profile.

Unlimited ‘Likes’

This may not seem a great advantage if you currently limit your profile ‘friends’ to people you personally know, but if you want to create a loyal following to your new page and are posting really interesting stuff on events and attractions at your location, your following may grow quickly. There is no limit on the amount of ‘likes’ a Facebook page can have whereas a profile is capped at 5,000.

There are plenty more reasons to choose a page over a profile and I would be interested to hear how your Facebook page is working for you. Please add your comments and let’s start a discussion.

About the author

Heather Bayer

  • Nicely put.
    The whole facebook phenomenon is not something for us to hide away from and put our heads in the sand. Whether you believe in it or not or have been using it or not, the business opportunities being missed if you don’t get involved will limit you to when trying to maximize your rental potential. Sometimes it’s best to just just suck it up and give it a try…..and you will definitely see some results.

  • Thanks for this article. Im very confused about Facebook, and seem to end up going around and around in circles! Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I have a personal facebook page, and it seems because of this, I am unable to create a business account, and therefore have to manage my business page through my personal account. Do people out there have a separate account to manage their business pages, or do you just link the business pages under your personal account? Here’s my business page:
    http://www.facebook.com/yewtreecottage

  • Natasha: I have two Facebook accounts. I use one for business using Facebook Ads and my Facebook Business Page. The second account is for personal use to keep in touch with my friends. This has worked very well for me.

  • I am sure I am doing this wrong as I have a blended account, mentioning my rentals, posting interesting tidbits about my location (Sanibel Island) and writing about what ever I find compelling at the moment—– which is usually animal welfare, books, travels, restaurants, movies, etc. My FB “friends” for the most part are people I have never met. Despite that, there are a dozen or so “strangers” whom I have come to really like and greatly enjoy reading their posts, which are here and there as well. I know I am not going by the (Face) book formula for marketing my rentals, but I am having such a good time. Do I have to change?