We’ve always had the ability to share VacationRentalDirect.com property listings on the top social networking sites.  However, we recently updated this technology to allow Facebook users to post their property directly into their Facebook “Wall”.

Here are a couple of examples:

Periodically posting your listing to your wall is a great way to introduce your property to your network of friends.   If your friends like it, they in turn will visit your listing on VacationRentalDirect.com and may add the listing to their wall, thus introducing your property to their network of friends, starting the process all over again.

Social media vacation rental marketing, if done correctly, can be a powerful way to gain exposure for your vacation rental.

To share your listing on Facebook,  first mouseover the “+ Share Listing” image at the top of your listing.

Next click on the Facebook icon

and finally, add some introductory text to introduce the property to your friends on facebook, choose the image of your property that you would like displayed in the posting and then Share it with all of your friends!!

I had a nice conversation with the owner of a Blowing Rock North Carolina Vacation Rental the other day, so I thought I’d feature his rental on my blog as well as tell my readers a little more about Blowing Rock North Carolina.

Waterfall Tree House United States » North Carolina » Blowing Rock   View This Listing at VacationRentalDirect.com   Beautiful Tree House like cabin near waterfall in private gated development.   Property Details Type :Cabin Pets :Yes Listing :13708 Children :No Sleeps :1 to 2 Pool :No Bed(s) :1 Bath(s) :1 Amenities Air Condition Radio Hunting near by Washers & Dryer TV Cable DVD Player

Contact: michael Kirkland        Phone: 828-719-5761

Holiday Rentals | VacationRentalDirect.com | Vacation Homes

Blowing Rock is a small town just outside of Boone in North Carolina. The town has a wonderful variety of shops, small hotels, resorts, golf courses, state parks and local activities. Most weekends it is very busy with tourists. Parking can be difficult on the weekends, especially in the summer because it’s always about 10 degrees cooler in Blowing Rock.

Expect to wait when having lunch. My wife and I prefer to visit on a weekday if possible, simply because of the crowds.

We’ve never stayed in Blowing Rock over night, however there are some super nice hotels just a few hundred yards from the downtown. You can view all of the Blowing Rock Vacation Rentals by clicking here.

There are some decent boutique clothing shops for women, and even a nice one for babies. I don’t recall a lot of options for men. There are a few touristy shops, but many are more artsy in nature. There is a Tanger Outlet Mall in Blowing Rock as well.

Overall, Blowing Rock a great place to spend an afternoon. There is a ton more to do in the area, that I have not explored. One of the things I aim to do this spring is a little bit of hiking in the area. I found this article about hiking around Bass Lake, which seems like a wonderful trek:

Trail Map for the Moses H. Come Memorial Park (includes Bass Lake Trek)

Owning a vacation rental site has its perks. Every day I get the illustrious opportunity to help users upload photos to their listings. No matter how easy I make it, there are always a bunch who just can’t figure it out. The same thing is true for adding a Google Map. Nonetheless I get to review tons and tons of vacation rental websites every week. I would say roughly 50% of them are complete junk, 35% do a good job and 15% are completely amazing.

Here are the 5 most stupid website mistakes that I see very single stinking day.

1. Shrinking a 1mb 1028×764 pixel image into a 100×100 square. To further the offense, they then repeat this for at least 10 images on the same page. The result is a very slow loading page and images that are grainy and distorted. The sad thing is that when I click on “view image” and see the full picture, many times they are great pictures.

2. Image width less then 250 pixels. Hello people….you own a vacation rental, people want to see large images of your unit. Not little thumbnails.

3. Sound. I cannot believe how many people think it’s cute to put up some annoying beach music on their website. 10 years ago this was novel, now it’s extremely annoying. Usually these are the same people that shrink their 1mb images down to 100×100 or smaller.

4. Dark and unclear images. Seriously, why would anybody promote their vacation rental and use dark, dingy, unclear pictures to promote it? You would not believe the number of vacation rental owners that take just horrible pictures and proceed to put them up on their website.

5. and finally my worst pet peeve, are large annoying, myspace like, background images that either repeat themselves across the entire page or are nearly the same color as the text of your website.

It is not at all uncommon to see websites containing all five elements on the same page. To illustrate my point, I am coding a new application that will automatically post the junkiest websites that I come across to this blog. I love my customers and all, but someone has to call them out. Sometimes an intervention is needed.