LiveRez is designed to help professional vacation rental managers increase their bookings.

One of the key selling points of LiveRez’s vacation rental software platform is its ability to get professional vacation rental managers more bookings. Here are some of the ways LiveRez helps managers increase their bookings:

Rank Higher – LiveRez-powered websites are specifically designed to help you rank higher in search engine results. Simply put, ranking higher in your desired searches means more travelers visit your website.

• Read “Why SEO Should Matter to You”

Convert More Often – LiveRez-powered websites are designed to offer travelers the fastest and easiest way to book a property online. Through our 3-click booking process, travelers can search, shop and book a property – all in just three clicks. This proven process helps create extremely high conversion rates on all LiveRez-powered websites.

• Read “A Look at Conversion with LiveRez-Powered Websites”

Book Online – Travelers want the convenience and security of booking their vacation online, anytime day or night. With a LiveRez-powered website, you can ensure that visitors to your website have the ability to close the deal online. It’s a common fact: once someone books, they stop shopping. LiveRez ensures that you never lose a customer because they couldn’t book online.

• Read “Online Booking: Top 6 Reasons Why It’s So Important”

Attract More Properties – Owners in the area will take notice of your LiveRez-powered website. They’ll fall in love with the design and envy the results you’re getting for your current owners. And once they find out about our special Owner Logons, which let them make their own reservations online and view key reports about their property, they’ll be hooked.

• Read “How to Attract More Owners and Grow Properties Under Management”

Affiliate Marketing Channels – Have your properties found in more places with our ability to list your properties on a variety of notable directory websites.

In summary, LiveRez’s formula for getting you more bookings is fairly simple:
1.) Increase the amount of properties you manage
2.) Get those properties seen by more visitors
3.) Ensure more of those visitors actually book

Hatching a winning strategy for growing your Twitter following isn't rocket science. Follow a few simple guidelines, and you'll be on the path to success.

Want to get more Twitter followers? Here’s 10 quick ways to spur the growth of your Twitter following.

1. Follow Strategically – Many people will tell you to follow as many people as you can on Twitter because they’re more likely to follow you back. This is partially true, but Twitter has limited how many people you can follow, so you don’t want to waste your time following people you’re not interested in. Besides, if you’re using Twitter correctly, you’ll be using it as much for listening to conversations as spreading the word about your business. I suggest following people key to your industry: journalists, brands, thought-leaders, etc. You’re going to want to listen to them anyways. And, although they’re less likely to follow you back, they have a larger network of followers, and you’re more likely to be put in Twitter’s “Who to Follow” suggestions for the people following them. It’s just like networking in real life; you want to connect yourself with people who share your interests and who are prominent.

2. Share Killer Content – Twitter is all about sharing content. The better content you create and share, the more people will take notice. But, don’t just share your own content. Share content from others, whether it’s through a retweet or just something cool you came across on the Web.

3. Interact – Make sure you are using hash tags, @ signs and retweets to interact with other Twitter users. You’re not going to make friends if you don’t interact. Need help understanding all this Twitter lingo? Check out our recent blog: "Twitter Explained." 

4. Make Lists – Making lists will not only help you organize your listening efforts and keep you up to date on the industries you’re following, but it will also create something of value for other people to follow. Not to mention, the people you put on these lists may take notice.

5. Use Twitter Badges – Every piece of Web real estate you have should somewhere have a Twitter Badge (icon) that people can click to visitor your Twitter page. It should be on your website, your blog, the signature lines of your e-mail…you name it. If you can put a Twitter badge there, do it. Just make sure that when people click on it, your Twitter profile opens into a new window. You don’t necessary want them leaving your website or your blog all together.

 6. Install a Tweet This Button – Unlike a Twitter badge which is basically a link to your Twitter profile, a Tweet This button allows people to automatically share a piece of your content on Twitter. This can be one of your blogs, a photo, an element of your website or some other form of sharable content. The more your content is shared, the more people will recognize your brand. There’s even some speculation that your ranking on search engines will rise as your content is increasingly shared more often.

7. Let Your Friends Know – Let everyone know you have a Twitter account. Slip it into an e-mail to your contacts, post about it on your Facebook and Google+ pages, and look for opportunities to promote it on LinkedIn.

8. List Your Accounts on Directories – There are a number of places you can list your Twitter account. From these accounts, people can look you up by interest and follow you. For example, Listorious.com is a great place to list your Twitter account and also any Twitter lists you create.

9. Schedule Your Tweets – You want to have a consistent presence on Twitter. Therefore, you’ll want to consistently update your Twitter stream with new posts. The problem is you’re probably already really busy. The good news is with programs like Hootsuite you can schedule a whole slew of tweets all in one sitting. You decide what to tweet and then schedule an exact day and time for the tweet, essentially automating your posting process. Just make sure you check back and respond to the people interacting with you.

10. Listen – Too many people focus just on posting and don’t spend the time needed to listen to what others are saying on Twitter. You can learn a lot quickly by following what people are saying on Twitter. I suggest two main ways to listen on Twitter. Option 1: Set up lists on Twitter and follow them using a program like TweetDeck. Option 2: Set up alerts for Twitter through the use of feeds and watch them using a program like Netvibes. I describe how to do this in a recent blog on Web Monitoring. Listening in itself may not directly grow your following, but it will help you better understand what you need to do to grow your following.

Learning how to use Twitter isn't complicated. A simple overview can put you on the fast track to social media success.

Twitter is a strange bird (pun intended). Many people, especially those used to Facebook, can have a hard time picking up Twitter and utilizing it to their fullest. But, it doesn’t have to be confusing. In fact, once you learn a few basic concepts, Twitter is actually really easy to use.

It’s a great place for sharing content, getting advice and giving advice, and following the news. If used correctly, it can be a great tool in your marketing arsenal, both for disseminating your messages and for listening.  In the following blog, I will attempt to briefly describe Twitter and how to use it.

The main distinguishing feature of Twitter is brevity. On Twitter, you can only post in 140 characters or less. Because of this people mostly use their Twitter posts (called tweets) for short one-line updates, or use their posts as a headline and then insert a link that people can click to learn more. This makes Twitter a great place to get a breakdown of the “news” you care about. Now while many journalists are now breaking stories online, I use news in a more general sense. If you want to see what’s going on in the world as it relates to some topic, Twitter is one of the best places you can go…if you set it up correctly.

Let’s say I’m interested in the travel industry. I’d want to start following people important in the industry: journalists, brands, thought-leaders, etc. If I follow enough people, I’ll get a good idea of what’s going on in the industry all throughout the day. Not too many big things happen anymore that don’t make it on Twitter.

Twitter Lists

Now let’s say I’m interested in multiple topics, and now that I’m following so many people from so many industries, it’s hard to keep up with my feed. For example, if you follow 1,000 people, you’re likely to get a new update to your stream every few seconds. Twitter anticipated that and they created a list feature. Now, you can put any one of your contacts on one or more lists. So, if I want to follow only people in the travel industry, I’ll just go through and put those people on a Travel Industry list. Using programs like TweetDeck and Hootsuite, I can view those lists in separate groups making them easy to follow. And, for people who don’t want to spend the time making a list, they can just follow a list someone else has made. Listorious.com is a great place to search for these Twitter lists.

Hash Tags

Let’s say you want to follow just one topic or one event. Twitter has what they call a hash tag. To make a hash tag, all you have to do is enter a # before a string of characters (without spaces). This is a great way to follow conversations about a certain topic, even if you’re not following everyone who talks about it on Twitter. You have to be careful with hash tags, though. Hash tags are at their best when a group of people designate a certain hash tag for a certain topic. For example, the hash tag for this year’s 2011 Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) Conference was #VRMA2011. Anyone tweeting about the conference could include that hash tag in their tweet and then anyone following that tag could get their update, even if they weren’t following that person.

Mentions

Another cool feature of Twitter is an @ mention. Let’s say your tweet involves someone else on Twitter or might be important to a specific Twitter user. You can mention them in your tweet by including the @ tag and then their Twitter handle (for example, @LiveRez). That person will see that you mentioned them in your tweet when they check their mentions. It also creates a link back to that person’s account from your tweet.

ReTweets

ReTweets are a quick and easy way to share a tweet from someone you follow. All you need to do is hit the retweet button below their post and the post will be sent out to all the people who follow you. Good content on Twitter is often retweeted, and sometimes will even go “viral” because it becomes so popular.

DM (Direct Message)

If you want to send a private message to another Twitter user, you can do that through a DM (direct message). This type of communication is not used as much on Twitter as it is on other social networks.

How Twitter is Different

Twitter was designed to be more public. It’s more about sharing with the world, than sharing with your friends. You should know that everything you do on Twitter is public (besides DMs), unless you protect your tweets. If you decide to protect your tweets, only the people following you will be able to see your tweets, and people will only be able to follow you if you allow them to. However, very few people protect their tweets, especially if they’re trying to use Twitter professionally.

So, there you have it – the basics of Twitter. Do you have any advice for using Twitter? Have a question? Leave a post below using our Facebook comment plug-in (oh, the irony). And keep an eye out for an upcoming blog, where I’ll discuss the top 10 ways to grow your Twitter following.

LiveRez helps professional vacation rental managers grow the number of properties they manage by offering them solutions they can use to meet home owners' needs.

One way for professional vacation rental managers to grow their business is to attract new properties. And, the best way to do this is to show vacation home owners that you have all the tools needed to meet their needs. First, let’s consider what vacation home owners are looking for:

• They want travelers to book their property
• They, too, want to be able to stay at their property
• They want reports on how their property is performing
• They want to know their property is safe and secure
• They want good communication from the person or company managing their property

Professional vacation rental managers using LiveRez can easily make a strong argument to these vacation home owners because their partnership with LiveRez allows them to meet many of these owners’ key needs. Here’s how:

• LiveRez websites help professional vacation rental managers get more bookings for their owners, through a combination of high search engine placement, elevated conversion rates, the ability to take online bookings and additional exposure through affiliated marketing programs
• Because of their beautiful design, LiveRez websites look extremely professional, which increases a management company’s credibility with the owner
• LiveRez’s Owner Logons allow owners the ability to make their own reservations online and see reports about how their property is performing
• LiveRez offers the ability to automate e-mails to owners upon a number of events
• LiveRez’s robust back office also helps reduce a management company’s labor hours, which means managers and their staff have more time to focus on owner relations

Many LiveRez partners have already experienced a dynamic growth in the amount of properties they manage. You can read some of their stories at LiveRez.com/success.

Most blogs and news articles have a place at bottom where you can comment. This USA Today article uses a social plugin from Facebook that actually lets you comment on the article from your Facebook account. Make sure to include a link back to your website when you comment on blogs and news articles. It can help your SEO efforts.

Adding comments to news articles (and blogs) related to your industry is a quick and easy way to give a boost to your SEO strategy and create awareness about your company.  Commenting on these articles will help you create back links (links back to your website) for both SEO and marketing purposes.

You can find these articles through searches or just keep tabs on them through a comprehensive Web monitoring strategy. Once you find the article, scroll down to the bottom. Many news articles will have a place where readers can leave comments. They might request that you sign in and create an account. Once you’re approved, draft a comment that is related to the story and make sure to include a link back to your website.

But make sure your comment is adding value to the conversation or else your post might come across as comment spam (and the moderator might not approve your comment).

This strategy works equally well for commenting in a forum. Just make sure you include a link back to your website in your signature.

Facebook has become an important tool for vacation rental managers in reaching potential guests.

Social media is as important as ever today. And right now, Facebook is the emperor of the social media universe. Running your marketing and communication through Facebook is no longer just a hip thing to do; it’s essentially a must.

Consider some of these statistics from the Digital Buzz Blog:

• Facebook has more than 500 million users
• More than 700 billion minutes a month are spent on Facebook
• One in every 13 people on Earth has a Facebook account
• More than 50 percent of Facebook users log on every day
• The average user has 130 friends
• Almost 72 percent of all Internet users in the United States are on Facebook
• More than 200 million people access Facebook on their mobile phones
• And, in just 20 minutes on Facebook, 1 million links are shared, 2 million friends are requested and accepted, and 3 million messages are sent.

At LiveRez.com, we understand this and offer a simple way to connect your LiveRez-powered website with Facebook through either a link to your Facebook Fan Page or a “like” button, which automatically makes the user a fan of your company’s page. As a fan, they’ll receive updates about your company directly in their news feed.

To learn more about how LiveRez does social media, visit our social media pages:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+

Public relations can yield great results for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts through cultivating back links.

Public relations is an important component of business development. Getting your company publicity is a great way to connect with new customers and increase brand awareness. But, many businesses fail to realize its importance for search engine optimization (SEO).

Distributing press releases that includes links back to your website can help create back links, one of the most crucial components of how Google and other search engines rank your website in search results. The quality, quantity and relevance of sites linking to your website (called back links) help determine your own site’s authority in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.

News websites tend to have a lot of authority in the eyes of Google. A link to your website from an article on a major news website could give your SEO efforts a big boost. For example, if you’re a vacation rental business and you manage to score a mention in an article in USA Today’s Travel section, the back link you receive from the article would be rated highly by Google in terms of both authority and relevance.

But, getting into major newspapers is not easy. It requires great news judgment, solid news monitoring and the formation of working relationships with journalists. The good news is that you can start doing all of this for free, and get back links in the process.

Step 1: Write the Release

First, you’ll want to learn how to draft a news release (it’s becoming the preferred nomenclature for press release). Publicity Insider offers some great advice on writing a press release.  In addition to their advice, you’ll want to get a working knowledge of Associated Press Style (AP Style) – the specific style news articles are written in. Writing in AP Style will make it a lot easier for writers and editors to reuse content from your release.

But the single most important thing you can do to make your release successful is to highlight the news-worthiness of what you’re writing about. This requires you to have sound news judgment – that is, know what is news and what isn’t news. And, as you’ll see in the next section, news-worthiness will vary by the journalist and the news outlet.

Step 2: Distribute the Release

Links to your site from other sites, called back links, are important to search engines because they view these links as a vote of confidence in your website.

Next, you’ll want to create a list of journalists who write about topics related to your business. You can do this through monitoring news coverage and doing some quick searches online. Once you have their e-mail address, you can begin to send them releases.

A word of advice: Don’t send releases to reporters that don’t pertain to their topic areas, or beats as they are referred to in the journalism industry. For example, if the reporter just covers travel in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, don’t send him or her a press release announcing the hiring of the new sales manager at your vacation rental company in Florida. The one exception might be if the manager used to work for a prominent travel business in the Treasure Valley.

For even better results, if you have a story idea specifically targeted to an individual journalist, send him or her a brief note with your pitch. But, keep it brief; reporters tend to get a lot of e-mails.

Paying close attention to which journalists you send releases to will help you build relationships with journalists. Show them that you’ve done your research on what they cover, and let them know that you’re there to help make their jobs easier. There are plenty of public relations professionals that fail to recognize the importance of this, and they quickly lose their credibility with journalists.

Step 3: Post it Online

In addition to e-mailing journalists, there are plenty of ways to distribute a press release online. You can pay to have your release distributed on news wires like PR Newswire, PRWeb, MarketWire, etc. These services are generally pretty spendy, so exercise sound judgment in utilizing them.

Alternatively, there are plenty of websites that allow you to post press releases for free. And, if you do your homework, there are probably other news sites in your industry that let you post your own news stories. You’ll have to investigate which of these sites allows you to put live links in your release. Remember, you’re looking for back links to your website.

HINT: Reserve your less news-worthy press releases for free online sites. This will keep you from harming your relationships with journalists by sending them “junk,” but at the same time make a public announcement that can be pulled up directly by the consumer in searches – and maybe even reposted. And again, you’ll also develop back links.

Results

You never know what will happen when you write and distribute a news release. Be prepared to accept calls from journalists and be ready to answer their questions. They may ask you to provide them with more material, like in-depth statistics or images. And remember, when talking with a journalist, don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want publicized, even if you think it’s “off the record.”

If done correctly, your public relations efforts will win you coverage eventually, but don’t expect to get a story from every release you send out. Chances are that many of your releases will not get picked up by the media at all. That’s normal, especially for small businesses. If you judge your public relations efforts purely on news placements, you’re bound to be disappointed. Remember, public relations is about building relationships – both with your target consumers and with the key influencers of those consumers. Work on building these relationships by releasing consistent news about your business and respecting the role of journalists, and you'll be on the path to public relations success. And, along the way, you’ll get plenty of back links, too.

Rumor has it, adding a Google +1 button to your website could help your SEO efforts.

Earlier this year, Google introduced its own social network, Google+ – believed by many to be the company’s answer to Facebook. While Google+ is not yet available for businesses (it’s coming soon, they say), businesses can still take advantage of Google+ right now by utilizing Google’s answer to the Facebook “Like” button.

You may have noticed that little “+1” button next to the results in your Google searches. Clicking that button is roughly the equivalent of liking that page (or result) and recommending it to the people you’re connected with through your Google account. As you +1 pages, your recommendations will be shared with the people you’re connected with via your Google account. The video below explains the concept more fully.

According to rumors in the SEO community, increasing the amount of +1s your website has will help improve your search engine rankings on Google. Therefore, as you seek to grow your vacation rental business, you’ll want to put a +1 button in all the places you would normally put a Facebook like button: on your website, on your blog, etc.

You can generate the html code for the +1 button here. The video below shows how the +1 button helps give searchers recommendations, and provides instructions for how to add the button to your website. And, if you use WordPress for your blog, there are a lot of great social media plug-ins that include the Google +1 button (no coding experience necessary).

If you’re interested in the increasingly important intersection of SEO and social media, check out our recent blog on social search. And, to see the Google +1 button in action on a website, go to LiveRez.com. And, be sure to +1 us!

Information presented in LiveRez.com's Guerrilla Marketing webinar is now available for download as a white paper.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, LiveRez.com hosted a webinar entitled “Guerrilla Marketing: 5 Tactics to Grow Your Vacation Rental Business Now.” Nearly 180 vacation rental managers from across the nation signed up for the free educational presentation.

If for some reason you missed the webinar or want to brush up on some of the things the LiveRez marketing team went over, you can download the webinar as a white paper.

Download the white paper here >>>

During the webinar we received numerous questions, and many people were sharing their ideas for how to implement these Guerrilla Marketing tactics to help their individual businesses. If you have questions or want to share your ideas and brainstorm with other vacation rental managers, check out the discussion on our Facebook Page.

Join the Discussion on Our Facebook Page >>>

And for timely updates and expert advice from LiveRez.com, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@LiveRez), or check back here at the LiveRez.com blog.

Cocoa Beach Best Condominium Rentals experienced dramatic increases in search engine placement, website traffic and web bookings in just its first few months with LiveRez.com

When Sheila Hobart of Cocoa Beach Best Condominium Rentals signed up for LiveRez.com’s SEO/SEM service, she had a clear plan in front of her for the customer demographic she wanted to reach – she just wanted a little helping getting her company in front of them.

After working with LiveRez.com SEO/SEM Manager Sam Martin to nail down her target audience, Hobart let LiveRez.com’s SEO/SEM service design and execute a custom plan.

And, in just a matter of weeks, Cocoa Beach Best is starting to see results.

“Our website is hitting its targets, and our numbers look good,” Hobart said.

In just over one month with LiveRez.com’s SEO/SEM service, Cocoa Beach Best’s search engine placement for seven strategic keyword phrases increased by 316 percent. On May 19, Cocoa Beach Best had an average search engine ranking of 75 among those seven keyword phrases. But, as of July 1, its average ranking has increased to 18.

Quick Stats on Cocoa Beach Best's success with the LiveRez SEO/SEM program.

Thank to LiveRez’s efforts, one of those keywords phrases – “Cocoa Beach FL Vacation Condo Rentals” – has moved from a No. 83 placement to a No. 8 placement, essentially skyrocketing the business from an eighth-page placement to a first-page placement in just over one month.

These results have given Cocoa Beach Best some great search engine visibility, and have helped monthly traffic to cocoabeachbest.com more than double.

“We were unknown before, and now we’re on the first page of Google,” she said.

These elevated placements – along a mix of intelligent in-house marketing and the addition of Martin’s Google Adwords campaign – have helped Cocoa Beach Best yield some astonishing increases in online business. From May to June, Cocoa Beach Best’s web bookings exploded, yielding a 2,900 percent increase in bookings and a 3,855 percent increase in nights stayed.

With her online business booming, Hobart couldn’t be happier with the value she’s getting from LiveRez’s SEO/SEM service.

Said Hobart: “Sam has been worth every penny.”