Vacation Rental Marketing We all know the importance of the visual impact a vacation rental makes on a potential vacationer. With my Costa Rica holiday coming up, I’ve pored over images of beaches, monkeys, toucans, fabulously colourful flowers, as well as having the listing site photographs imprinted on my mind. It was the visual aspect that first attracted us to the property and even when we looked at other options nothing else came close. Given this, and my current obsession with Pinterest I’ve been researching how we can use the massive growth in this visual social network to create more link juice for a listing or vacation rental web site. Pinterest hit my radar last year and I took a quick look before deciding it was focused more on shoes, style, design, and moms with too much time on their hands. I’m always open to new things but this didn’t seem to be going anywhere in a direction that could impact our business. Since then more articles have appeared citing it as one of the fastest growing social media platforms, and the ability for it to create interest in a variety of brands. So how does it work? I am too new to Pinterest to try and explain it fully but it’s easy to dive in and try it out. Here’s a few links to articles that helped me understand what it’s about and made me appreciate the value of using it in our business: What is Pinterest and how to use if for marketing your brand A useful overview plus 9 specific marketing tactics for Pinterest “Pinterest is an online pinboard that allows you to collect and display the images you find on the web. You can find boards from other people to discover new things and get inspiration from others. You can use Pinterest to plan a vacation, decorate your home and share your favorite fashion items.” Pinterest Ultimate Guide: How It Works, How You Can Use It This is a great beginners guide “So you may be asking, “OK this is great and all, but how is it going to benefit my website?” There are a few key advantages to bloggers using Pinterest: – Develop Relationships – Get Traffic – Increase Your Visibility – Link Building” The Next Great Place to get Links An explanation of how Pinterest works with in the social media arena “To be effective for SEO, it makes the most sense for products that appeal to women as they make up the largest demographic. If your product ties into food, fashion, DIY, travel, home décor or weddings, and can easily fit into giveaways, it’s also a gold mine.” 10 Pinterest Ideas with SEO benefits For those interested in SEO and how to use Pinterest to achieve results, this list has some helpful ideas “Signing into Pinterest with Facebook will link your Facebook timeline to your Pinterest posts. This means your Facebook friends will be able to see your Pinning activity and click through to see your Pins. You can (and should) also cross-promote, occasionally, your Pins on other networks like Twitter, Flickr or even your blog”. If this hasn’t got your interest, consider why Home Away have started using the platform to promote their properties. They are not directly listing properties – simply posting the best images on different topics that of course link back to the listing. For example, the board titled Kitschy Kitchens has the tagline: “Everyone loves a kitchen fit for the perfect cook! Check out our collection of great kitchen spaces from HomeAway vacation rentals and more.” Getting onto Pinterest is not as simple as just signing up – you have to request an invitation and may have to wait anything from a few days to a week or more to get a response. However if you comment on this post and ask for an invitation, I will send you one. I’d also love you to post any boards you already have and hear about how you are already using them. By the way, here is one of my first efforts: Photographing Vacation Rental Interiors “The people are there, the people are pinning, and the potential for your content to go viral, indexing hundreds of backlinks to your site, is there.”
