Starting out with facebook - to promote your holiday rental

[Holiday Ray]

Hiya,

First of all let me point out that this is not 'an experts definitive guide to using facebook to promote your holiday rental' - more an invitation to share my experience as I take the plunge into the mysterious (to some of us) world of the social networking phenomena that is 'Facebook' (fb).

There is a wealth of information about this subject already on the creating a facebook page for your business thread, so if you can't find what you're looking for here, you may want to nip over there and look for the answer, or post a question.

I've started this thread in the hope that some of you can follow my stumblings right from the beginning and hopefully, between us, we might come somewhere close to producing a Marketing tool that will ultimately bring us an odd booking or two for our holiday rental. (If that's not what you're looking for - I think you may be on the wrong thread ).

Some of my much more knowledgeable LMH friends will be correcting and hopefully guiding me along the way, as I get stuck, preferably before I start pulling my hair out !

So you're all welcome on my fb journey and please do feel free to chip in (absolutely anyone) if you can help out here.

Oh, the other thing I should mention is that Facebook is an ever-evolving beast and the stuff posted here was 'about right' when it was posted, but please appreciate that as fb changes, the info here may (probably will) become out of date, so please bear this in mind when 'following the yellow brick road ' .

Thanks

[Holiday Ray]

OK

So it seems (I've learned today) that, for promoting your Holiday rental in the easiest way possible, you must 'create a page' (Other ways to promote include paid advertising).

Before you can create a page you have to 'sign up to facebook' and create a 'personal profile' i.e a profile about you - not your business (but you can do that later).

To 'sign up for facebook' click here (takes you to the 'facebook homepage').
You'll be asked for your name, date of birth, gender, an email address and other details that I don't think you have to fill in. I think that's about it. (Don't worry you can hide just about all of your personal details except your name anyway).
They send you an 'account confirmation' email, you click on the link in that and you're up and running.

[Holiday Ray]

I don't know what you should do first after creating your account (I've only created my fb account today !), but I thought I'd get straight into 'creating a page' (a business page for my HR).

A few things I learned from the other thread above, are that your 'personal profile' page is used in a very different way to your business page.

Personal Profile page - where you 'make friends', but you can also 'like' facebook pages and external website pages.
This is the 'usual' page that fbers use for the usual networking, chatting, sharing stuff.

Business page - You don't make 'friends' here (shame, I hear you say), but you can 'like' other peeps pages.

But it seems that one of the important things about the business page is that if you 'like' someone else's page (fb or external) it won't count as a 'like' for the owner of that other page. So you have to 'like' another page from your 'personal profile page' for it to count for them

As

Ray, you can 'like' through your business page too but unfortunately they do not then show up in the 'likes'
Another shortcut is to post on your status with an @ immediately before the name of your business page. This then highlights your business page and people can hover over the highlighted text which brings up a new box & the ability to 'like' the page. The 'like' box doesnt show up if you have already liked it though.

I'm sure there are lots of other differences and similarities between these two types of pages, but I've not found out about them yet, I'm still a fb fledgling.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could throw a few seeds of wisdom down here somewhere

Right, I'm off to continue creating my business page. I'll come back shortly and let you know how I got on.

[Holiday Ray]

OK, I've created a business page (of sorts )

To do this I hit the 'create a page' button (funnily enough).

If it's not blatantly obvious to you where this (it wasn't to me) it's right at the bottom of the page (any page, by the looks of it).

A new window appears that asks you to choose a category. The obvious two candidates, for the benefit of this exercise, are either -

Local business or place

or

Company, Organisation, or Institution.

There was some debate on the other thread about which to use, but it seems that you can change this later anyway, so for now I opted for the Company, Organisation, or Institution.

I was then asked to 'select a category' from a dropdown box and I chose -

Travel and Leisure.

You then need to enter a 'Company name' in the box below (Which will be the name of your new page) so I just chose the name of my website for now - Valmar Gite.

After you pass through the security (captcha) box, It's then a 3 step process.

1. You upload an image from your own PC, or a website (that's useful )

2. You invite 'friends' . I've not done this yet - not because I haven't actually got any friends you understand , but I didn't want to start inviting people to 'like' my new page, when - well there's not much of it to 'like' yet. I know that's not really 'the point' here, but ...well just call me old fashioned. I'd rather 'like' other peoples pages first, then ask if they wouldn't mind reciprocating. So I'm going to 'invite friends' later. Probably the wrong thing to do, but there you go

3. Add your website url (the good bit) and a description of your business. Again, looks like you can put in as little, or much information here as you wish (with a limit of 255 characters in the free text description box).

I think that's about it to get you up and running with a new business page on facebook

If I missed anything there (probably !) I'm sure anyone following would appreciate a nod in the right direction from someone with a lot more knowledge about fb that I currently possess, so pleeease feel free to post.

There's a 'Getting started' button over on the left hand menu, to help you along and below that is 'The Wall' - that's where you can post comments ( like a blog, or twitter, upload images, videos, etc and I'm sure do other cool stuff that I don't even know about yet).

Oh and if you accidentally create a page, or change your mind half way through and want to delete it (I got half way through my first effort and couldn't figure out how to delete an image I'd uploaded by mistake, so I continued and just deleted the new page at the end)
To delete the whole page you hit the 'edit' button (top RHS) and then go over to the menu on the left and hit the 'manage permissions' button. At the bottom of the next page is the 'permanently delete' button. But only select this of course, if you are sure you want to delete everything on that page forever !

Now back to fb again to upload more pics and see how far I get before crying for help

[Essar]

HR
I'm enjoying this - I have gone through the same process but have not really "Got it" yet, fb that is. So I'm hoping to pick up something along the way.
How about some page views or links as you progress and maybe some pics of yourself doing it - "puzzled expression" - "angst" - "awe".
My daughters (late 20's) have dozens of pages, millions of friends, everything they do , honestly everything, is posted. I made a mistake of being a friend rather that just a "relly" and got hundreds of b****y emails from fb with all these strangers wanting to be my mate. Turned it off and got them to delete me from their whatever it was I was in!
Steve

[Holiday Ray]

Glad you're enjoying it Steve. I still don't quite 'get it' yet either.

And at the mo I'm not enjoying it one little bit. I think my facebook account 'may' have been hacked into and I can't get back into my account at present.

You may want to read this thread before going any further mate !

[Windy]

Ray - You are going to be particularly ecstatic to hear that Facebook have just announced that all FB pages will be converted to the new Timeline format as of 31st March.

It makes a right muddle of the layout - the extra tabs are now even less visible.

I do wish they'd just leave things alone for 5 minutes. They are like little boys who've just discovered their naughty bits - forever playing with them just because they can .

[Nemo]

No......I had heard that it wouldn't include business pages but I see you're right as at today. Perhaps we should discuss on the other FB thread rather than sidetrack this one? I'll pop over there now!

[kendalcottages]

I was rather hoping they might abandon this Timeline nonsense.

I've resisted it with my own Profile page because I think... well... it's awful! I had rather hoped there was going to be sufficient backlash that it might make Facebook think again, but seemingly that's not going to be the case.

[marsh frog]

I was resisting it on my personal page too until I was forced into it, but a word of warning, FB have become very sneaky. I 'liked' an action group that is near my holiday let as I agree with their argument. In order to view an article that appeared interesting I had to give permission to access my profile etc - nothing unusual in that, most apps have that & I have clicked on the 'agree' button loads of times before for stuff. Only this time it was different - just the second I clicked 'agree' I read underneath that it would then automatically change my personal page to their rotten timeline style I hate the look of it but I have it now. I can only view my page as timeline and everyone else will see my profile as timeline in 7 days. It is particularly sneaky as it is their way of fiddling the stats in favour of how many people have changed to the timeline. I cant undo it. I am stuck with it now Then I see they are doing it to our business pages too I didnt see much point in prolonging the agony, so I have published my business page as the timeline now.
Thanks for all the likes from this thread. If I havent 'liked' anyones page please let me know and I will. If you havent liked mine here is the [new timeline] link again - would appreciate it. Thank you http://www.facebook.com/marshviewcottag ... iewcottage

[Nemo]

I have started a new thread re timeline to try and stop Ray's thread being derailed. Please post there about this. I have taken the last 3 posts about it and copied them over there.

[Giddy Goat]

... and it's here!

viewtopic.php?t=16732&highlight=

[Holiday Ray]

Thanks everyone for the support

and windy

I do wish they'd just leave things alone for 5 minutes. They are like little boys who've just discovered their naughty bits - forever playing with them just because they can .

I nearly fell off my chair laughing, when I read that one windy (Ladies - it's a 'man thing' )

Right, back in from work and off to have another go at getting back into my fb a/c. There has been a minor developement, but as nemo kindly suggested, I'll not sidetrack this thread, but go back over to the 'warning facebook account scam' thread and update on there.

[Giddy Goat]

and windy

I do wish they'd just leave things alone for 5 minutes. They are like little boys who've just discovered their naughty bits - forever playing with them just because they can .

I nearly fell off my chair laughing, when I read that one windy (Ladies - it's a 'man thing' )

Not quite Ray - I thought it was hilarious!

[Holiday Ray]

Of course GG, why would I think that only the male variety would find such silly humour so comical. It just 'tickled my fancy' - so to speak