Pinterest – A Great Way to Market Your Vacation Rentals
If you own a vacation rental, you are missing out on potential customers by not using Pinterest! This social networking site has become extremely popular and is being reckoned as a powerful medium to create brand awareness and tap into the marketplace. In fact, the power of Pinterest is such that it can also increase traffic to your site where you can highlight all the benefits and advantages of your vacation rental and this, in turn, can increase the number of visitors who convert into customers.
What is Pinterest?
There could be some property owners who may be unaware of what Pinterest is. This is a social networking site where members can create virtual pinboards. These members are referred to as ‘Pinners’ and use the site to ‘pin’ images on subjects that inspire them. While lifestyle topics, such as clothing, cooking and craft, are the most popular, Pinterest covers a huge gamut of subjects. So you can be certain that there are Pinners that pin images about their dream vacation destinations.
How Can Pinterest Help Vacation Rentals Owners?
If you own a holiday villa, you can pin images of house at Pinterest. This will help to create brand awareness amongst the members. As a result, the possibilities are high that when members plan their vacation, they will consider your property over others.
Pinterest can also increase traffic to your site. This can be done by pinning images about the rental and having a back link to your website. If you have a blog or a photo gallery on your site, this step can be done very easily and you will notice a significant rise in the traffic.
Today, vacation rental owners have realized the importance of using Pinterest and you should not fall behind the competition. Using Pinterest can ensure that you have a high occupancy rate and steady generation of revenue.
5 Steps to Promote Your Vacation Rental through Pinterest
Here are simple steps that will teach you how to market your vacation rental on Pinterest:
1. Account making: Previously Pinterest could be joined just by invitation. Thankfully, that is a thing of the past. Now anyone can sign up and open an account. Once you create your account following the instructions, make sure you spend some time getting familiar with the Settings section. This section will allow you to connect all your other social networking accounts to Pinterest, customize your Pinterest account and increase your visibility for search engines.
2. Pinterest Etiquette: Pinterest promotes a culture of sharing. While the site does not mind businesses joining it, it does not advocate obvious self-promotion. Hence, if you want to use Pinterest to promote your vacation rental, you need to be a participant instead of a marketer. This means following other Pinterest users and commenting on their pins. Use the site to highlight the lifestyle of your brand instead of promoting your vacation rental outright.
3. Be Creative: The good thing about Pinterest is that you can have multiple boards. So use one board to highlight the images of your vacation rental and its surroundings. Use another board to draw attention to something that is related to your vacation rental. For instance, if rental is located near the sea, you can have a board about surfing, scuba diving and other water activities or you can have a board dedicated to beachwear. Or, if your rental is located in the mountains, have a board highlighting the trails, nature and camping facilities in the mountains.
4. Use the Pin it and Follow me Buttons: Once you get your board up with your vacation rental images and the surrounding, make sure that you add the Pin It and Follow Me on Pinterest buttons to your images. This allows others members to pin images from your website and boards onto their boards. It is the best way to promote yourself!
5. Put Together a Fan Following: You can do this by commenting and liking other members’ pins. This opens a path of these members to check out your pins and follow you. Pinterest also uses hashtags like Twitter. So you can use it on the captions of your images. This will help to improve your searchability on the site as well as on search engines.
Pinterest is free to join and worth the time and effort you spend on it. If you offer fresh content and innovative ideas, it will improve your visibility and this will help you get more people to book your vacation rental.
For more information about vacation rental marketing and industry, visit VacationCluster Blog.
Suzanne Evans is a professional Sr. Tourism consultation manager and project co-coordinator
associated with VacationCluster.com. She is providing services to several tourism related companies and homeowners’ properties which
include promoting vacation rental homes and packages, in addition to advising the small office
segment businesses and vacationers in buying vacation and holiday packages.