Facebook Fan Pages are getting a lot of attention lately in the media and rightfully so. Research indicates that 70% of viral marketers report increasing brand awareness as one of the most successful areas of their social marketing campaigns. Not since the onset of the internet and websites have you been given the ability to reach out across the miles to millions of potential prospects in such an exciting and targeted fashion. Best of all, it’s FREE!
As a real estate professional, you are your brand. You create logos around your name and business. If you’re a broker, then brand awareness is even more crucial. If you have an organization, business, product or personality that you intend to keep in business through this year and beyond, well then you’ll want to setup a Facebook Fan Page.
Facebook Fan Pages are customizable pages setup to help a variety of promotional groups “join the conversation with Facebook users”. They allow unlimited users (unlike personal profiles), business-to-consumer interaction, and content sharing. One of the most important aspects, but often overlooked is the fact that they allow you to create a very targeted focus group for your business. (I'll get into that much more in my next post) If all that still hasn’t convinced you, well then you should know that they are even beginning to show up quite quickly in major search engines. Did I get your attention now? Everything from corporations, major newspapers and television shows to individual celebrities and non-profits can leverage the power of a Facebook Page to promote brand awareness.
Facebook Pages are similar yet quite different from personal profiles. Instead of “friends”, Pages acquire “fans”. Fans are sent updates (posted by page administrators) via news feeds on their personal profiles, which are then promoted to their ‘friends’.
Posts by your Page go to your Fans’ News Feeds, and comments by your Fans go to their friends’ News Feeds. Those posts are hyperlinked back to your Page. News feed promotion helps spread brand awareness among an exponentially large group of people. If you have a personal profile on Facebook, you may have already seen this in action. Under ‘News Feed’, you’ll see a list of the updates that have been made by your friends. Along the far right hand side of the page you may see thumbnail images with the title along with an announcement that “John Smith” is a fan. Along with it is a link for you to click to “Become a fan”.
Page creation can be difficult to find. I’ve provided you a quick link to help you out (you can thank me later). Click here. Creating a page is not difficult or time consuming, and involves only a few fields of pertinent information.
1) First, choose the category in which your Page will be seen in the Facebook directory. Select whether you are Local, a Brand or Product, or an Artist, Band or Public Figure. As a real estate professional, you’ll most likely find the right designation under “Local”. Select ‘real estate’ from the drop down menu. (Note: if you want to setup a Page for a non-profit you care about, you’ll find “non-profit” under Brand or Product)
2) Choose your name. This part’s important. Tread carefully!! Once you have chosen it, Facebook does not allow you to change it. It’s also important to know that whatever you choose will be found in the URL of the page, which is great for search engine effectiveness. That’s why you’ll want to make sure that the name you use is the one that you use in all of your other marketing. Now is not the time to be cute – keep it simple and obvious. If you’re not sure, take a look at your marketing tools; business cards and brochures…how do you present yourself? Go with what you see most often in your marketing materials, whether its your name, your company name or a URL, select the name that you feel a potential buyer or seller would use to search for you.
3) Finally, perform the “security check”. The security check is just simply a Captcha box that requires you to type in the words you see on the screen. This is just so the system can verify that you are indeed a human.
4) Click ‘Create Page’ and you’re done!
Now what do you do?
1) Take a break and get a treat for yourself…you’ve officially began your social media campaign!
2) Start customizing. Select an image to upload- make sure its professional. It's going to follow you around on Facebook so you want it easily recognizable and clear. A logo or photo identifying your Page is critical…don’t leave the goofy question mark you’ll see there (you can change this any time if needed).
3) Fill out the info page. This is good for search engines; add as much as you can and be as descriptive as possible. You want people to relate to your group so they’ll become your fan.
4) Fill the page with useful and interesting content. You’ll want to start obtaining fans but if you have nothing interesting to lend, you won’t have any fans!
If you’re a real estate brokerage, post statistics on your market area, show off your company websites, and brag about your sales numbers. You can announce new agents to your team, brag up a particular listing agent who was a recent top producer or even highlight an agent of the month. Use the page as a way to market your business.
If you’re an agent, post open houses to your events, show off your website(s) through link posts, share photos of featured listings and communicate with prospects via updates. Be creative! The more clever you are, the better your Page will be.
5) Finally, start promoting. Remember you are now a needle in a haystack. You need to spread the word about your page. Post your Page information to sites like delicious.com, twitter, your website and your blog.
In my next post, I’ll give you all kinds of information on how to promote your Page, how to update your fans, how to target your updates and more. Until then, Happy Socializing!
Comments(9)