Is LinkedIn Helpful for your Vacation Rental?

As with any social media platform, LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site. LinkedIn is also a powerful tool for vacation rental managers in growing their businesses and connecting with like-minded professionals. However, what does a LinkedIn profile do or say? Do you even have one? Is LinkedIn beneficial for your vacation rental?

Let’s dive into some facts and stats:

• LinkedIn has over 740 million active users (HubSpot)
• In 2020, LinkedIn was voted the most trusted network (Business Insider)
• In a study of over 5,000 businesses, it is found that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74% (HubSpot)
• LinkedIn profiles typically rank on page 1 on the google search engine.

If you are a new user or existing, the article will guide you on:

• Helpful reasons why LinkedIn should be practiced for your Vacation Rental
• LinkedIn tips for Vacation Rental Managers
• 4 Ways to gaining LinkedIn Vacation Rental Exposure
• Top 6 LinkedIn Groups to join

Helpful Reasons Why LinkedIn should be practiced for your Vacation Rental

Below are some benefits on why LinkedIn is helpful for your vacation rental. Keep in mind, LinkedIn allows you to improve your vacation rental marketing:

Strong Professional Profile Page

By just creating a LinkedIn profile, showcases your vacation rental business, increases credibility and professional expertise. Like any social media platform, LinkedIn allows you to update status, share, and like, including links to other networks or vacation rental sites that lead to SEO visibility and generate possible booking leads.

LinkedIn enables recommendations either from employees, guests, or business partners directing traffic to your page reaching larger audiences.

Tip: When creating a profile, insert relevant keywords, this increases the chances of SEO and exposure of your business/property.

Being Part of A Community

By joining vacation rental groups on LinkedIn, you have the opportunity to be part of the community. These include participating in discussions, addressing topics or issues regarding a vacation rental, receiving professional advice, and staying up to date with what’s going on within the industry.

When participating in discussions, you offer knowledge to the community leading to an increase in business credibility, exposure, and visibility to your brand.

Connecting with Other Businesses

LinkedIn has an excellent database, as a result, allowing users to seek and connect with business opportunities and other vacation rental professionals to help grow your business and your network.

A great feature that LinkedIn has is that it notifies if you have mutual connections with local businesses.

LinkedIn Tips for Vacation Rental Managers

Here are some helpful basic tips on what to include in your LinkedIn profile:

Tip 1: Have a Professional Photo

By having a professional photo, it is more likely to be more viewed. Not talking about taking a glamorous shot, I’m talking about having a professional photo that sets you apart and is distinguished from others. As it doesn’t have to be formal but should represent you as a professional.

Tip 2: Strong Headline

It is important to have a strong headline for your business and your company. This also includes knowing who you are. Mention your contact information, location, and services you provide, and the company link to your website as a bonus tip as it gets normally overlooked at times.

Tip 3: Summary

This is one of the most critical factors of your LinkedIn profile that should be more focused on. Not only is it the first thing a user sees but also helps your profile with the search engine finding your profile.

The summary is really:

• Who you are?
• What you do?
• And how well you do, what you do!

Additionally, your summary should have qualifications, experience, and strong selling points stated. But also use strong keywords for SEO such as vacation rental managers, vacation rental management, etc. in helping you boost your profile page.

Tip 4: Experience

Here you must highlight your past experiences. It doesn’t mean that you have to have a background in vacation rental management. But your professional experiences still counts and is what keeps users keen. Don’t forget to keep it short and sweet but powerful; by including the important responsibilities and goals you have achieved.

Another important point, I would like to point out is that your skill sets and recommendations should be up-to-date. Not a lot of profile users highlight their skill sets. Now, don’t just go on adding skills but focus on the key core strengths that you are excellent at. Skills help users glance at your expertise.

With that said, ask for recommendations or endorsements for your skillset. And this helps you with credibility and expertise.

Pro Tip: Connect with colleagues and endorse their skill set- a two-way street. This way, it helps build long-term relationships with professionals in the vacation rental industry and gain exposure.

Tip 5: Connect,Connect, Connect

You must connect with people. Start with users with who you want to connect and send an invitation. That way it grows your network; who may like you or potentially want to do business with you. But do not randomly click connect instead connect with people/individuals that you can help in their business and potentially help you in the long run through referrals.

Tip 6: Join Groups

There are a lot of LinkedIn groups to join relating to the vacation rental industry. Type vacation rental industry on the search bar and a whole list of groups will appear that you maybe keen on joining and maybe valuable to you whether it is specific to marketing and sales, vacation rental management, etc. Just make sure you join groups!

How to Gain Exposure on LinkedIn for Vacation Rental Managers

1. Online Resume

Think when someone searches your name or business, your LinkedIn profile is likely to appear on top of the page every single time. Hence, it is an online resume that is available 24/7 so make sure it is always up-to-date.

Having a LinkedIn profile, allows potential customers to glance through your professional backgrounds such as your qualifications, experiences, skills, awards, and interests. That way, LinkedIn is a tool that helps to grow your network with similar interests whether it is an individual or a business.

2. Join Groups and Participate

There are thousands of LinkedIn groups to join from however the max is 50. It is important to join groups you are keen on rather than simply joining groups that don’t make sense to you.

Why is this helpful for your vacation rental? Well, LinkedIn allows users to connect and interact with other users outside of their circle. This way it scopes a targeted audience and builds relationships with the group by engaging through likes and shared content or participate with relevant topics. When participating in the group, do consider to:

• Ask and answer questions
• Pay attention
• Always stick to the topic

With that said, being an active member leads to potential customers. And once you have built a relationship with your connection in the group, it will lead to potential meetings or maybe even phone calls.

3. Write and Share Content

With LinkedIn, it enables users to write featured articles, publish and share posts. It could be from vacation rental insights to tips and tricks and more. With that said, users can either share these articles depending on the topic to the public or within a group in gaining targeted exposure.

Keep in mind, it is important to engage with other users by either including them or sharing their articles with your connections. This way it builds up connections by helping them establish credibility within the community.

4. Watch what you Like and Share

Unlike Facebook, your activity shows on your profile page at all times, hence the best practice is to keep it professional when sharing and posting content. It’s understandable that it is a social networking platform and the largest professional networking site but keep in mind, it is not a place to contribute to posting offensive or inappropriate content.

Top LinkedIn Groups To Join for Property Managers

1. Vacation Rental Groups- The Vacation Rental Group

With 14,300 members, this group focuses on open discussions and shared information on topics around products like vacation rentals, vacation homes, serviced apartments, holiday rentals, Airbnb, and more. It also provides members with uplifting peer-to-peer support and community to strengthen the vacation rental industry.

2. Vacation Rental Managers Association (Official)

With 6995 members, it is founded in 1985, Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) is an international and professional trade association for property managers and hospitality industries.

3. Vacation Rentals WorldWide

Created in April 2008, with 4795 members, this group connects with individuals that are in the vacation rental business. Here, the group discusses trials, benefits, and possibilities for growth in this industry.

4. Vacation Rental Distribution and Marketing

This group concentrates on open discussions such as their successful marketing strategies and distribution channels in helping generate added bookings for property managers. It is mostly based on vacation rentals and vacation homes, corporate housing, and other types of home-style lodging.

5. Vacation Rental Sales and Marketing

Here, members share and learn techniques on winning sales and marketing from industry professionals.