Facebook Page vs Profile for Vacation Rental Owners

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.