Tag Archives: Real Estate

Have some fun with your Facebook business page

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More and more  small and sole proprietor businesses are realizing the importance of a presence on Facebook through a Facebook business page.  Those who create pages want to  induce “likes” to raise their status, their credibility, and to get their message out to as many people as possible -because everyone just loves to hear you go on about how cool you are and how good your business is to work with, right?   Well, people who really really like you personally may be willing to spend their valuable time visiting your Facebook page, see a continuous stream of self-promotion and advertisements.      Funny thing about social media and Facebook, it’s as easy for your Likers to un-like you as it was to like you in the first place.

For small business, social media is about 2-way communication, engagement, not advertising.  People who are likely to be active in social media do not want to be advertised to.   So how do you do a  business page that is engaging,  yet still lets people know about your business?  Simple.  Make it interesting.  Sorry to break it to you, but your real estate listings, the number of new clients you added this month, or tedious stats about your industry don’t interest me.  And when you think about it they don’t interest very many others except your relatives, raving fans, or folks that have lots of time on their hands.  So why not do a few things to make your business page more interesting:

Remember that Content is King

Share some interesting stories on your business page

  1. Unusual and wacky stuff: Everyone likes a bit of humor and weird stuff periodically.  Visit Mental Floss and NeatORama for unusual content
  2. Pass along some wisdom from the gurus:  Seth Godin and Chris Brogan are interesting, but there are many others.
  3. Local news and happenings:   your local newspaper, TV stations,  radio stations, and chamber of commerce all have websites.  Post interesting local content: interesting events, places to go, etc.

Add some pictures and videos

  1. Always have a camera and compact video camera with you.
  2. Post some pictures that have general interest to your target audience- maybe  neighborhood activities, or the opening of the new Wal-mart,  one of your interesting clients in real life, and a few irresistible samples of your work..
  3. Video can be fun.  If your business is locally oriented, do some neighborhood tours with commentary through the windshield of your car (usually best to have someone else drive for you); video neighborhood and community events, and other things that make your town unique.  Video cameras are cheap, and you can do just about anything you will need to with a Flip or Kodak Zi8

ENGAGE!!!!

Monitor your page.  Thank people for their comments on all the interesting content you have produced.  Encourage them to post something on the same theme.  Be friendly.  Be nice.  The world is watching.

Analytics

Facebook pages have incredible, free analytics called Insights. Quickly monitor demographics, likes,  and interests of your page visitors.  Are you hitting your target demographic?  What is interesting to them?   Correct as necessary.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Personal Case Study”]I have 2  Facebook business pages.  One is strictly real estate; not just listings, but relevant RE news stories, local market conditions, my RE blog posts, and it has a real estate URL.   It has an average growth of <1 “liker” a day and at this writing has 678 likers.  Engagement level is virtually nil.  My other business page has listings, real estate news, market conditions, my RE blog posts, AND local news, humor, wacky news, posts from my Memphis blog, local commentary pictures of anything I think is interesting about Memphis, video of neighborhoods, events, music acts, and posts from followers of the page.  It has been up for about a quarter the time the RE page has.  It has an average growth of >10 “likers” per day and has 3180 likers.  Engagement level is quite good.  Get the message?[/stextbox]

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Midtown Memphis neighborhood map

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RE-Post (sort of) – from 10/15/2010

I lost the original post asking for your help in filling in some Midtown Memphis Neighborhoods when I had to do a major server change.  So, in the meantime I have updated it some.  Click on the map for details.  Your continued input on neighborhoods not already highlighted will be appreciated.

View Midtown Memphis Neighborhoods in a larger map

Social Media is about the culture, not control, domination, and leverage

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Jump on the social media bandwagon

Browsing through a real estate trade magazine supposedly targeted at highly successful agents, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the amount of editorial content and advertising focused on social media and internet marketing:  Social media ROI, dominating Google, new media marketing, and crash courses in social media.  Of course, internet marketing and especially social media marketing are all the buzz in the real estate world now.  I am inundated with invites to webinars, offers for training, and book pitches. In an industry dominated for decades by push marketing techniques, giving real estate agents a little basic technical knowledge, without a thorough orientation on social media culture can have disastrous effects.

It is very revealing to check out the social graphs of the real estate social media magazine writers and the highly-touted social media instructors in the industry.  Many real estate instructors have had to adopt their 20 year old course content rather quickly to the ever-accelerating utilization of social media, technology, and other web based innovations. But it’s not enough to learn how to setup a Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn account, build a Facebook business page, or set up a blog if you don’t understand the culture you are stepping into. I don’t see many articles in the trade magazines about social media culture or engagement, just how to control, leverage, and dominate.    One absolute truth about the social media culture:   it has very little patience with being controlled, leveraged or dominated.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Matt Hamm

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