Greg Brown Facebook Local Pages for Business
Facebook has become a way of life for people as well as business. It is not uncommon for business to openly ask people to Like their Facebook pages just so as to garner additional SEO on the Internet.
There are also the personal Facebook pages as well as our own business pages.
Then there are the local community pages which are intended to be informative for the community and keep company and personal promotions to a minimum. That was the topic for the Zoom call this week.
Greg Brown is a real estate agent in the Greater Toronto area, Durham region. He started a Facebook business page
Whitby Neighbors is his local business page, with a current following of almost 6,700 people. He uses the page to offer local news and events and does not use it all for his real estate business, yet he does not promote his real estate business on it.
He does not allow any other real estate agents to become members to keep that to a minimum. With 76,000 agents in his market, it could easily get out of hand.
He started this business page as a personal page was just not successful.
He is very particular about the people he will accept to the page and has rules that must be accepted and followed. He gets almost 100 request to join weekly and will usually spend one portion of 1 day a week viewing and processing the friend requests.
He is most particular about his artwork and photos and will not use a cell phone to take photos. His wife also does all the graphic design work for the site.
He has specific questions that must be answered and rules that also must be used as a guide so as to not offend any members of his site.
With the tabs at the top of the page and the side tabs, he is very particular about the entry to the site. He is not afraid to give someone a ban from the site.
He works to invite businesses that are local such as restaurants, or local service businesses. The site for him is intended to be soft marketing only.
Wednesday is business Wednesday, and he encourages the local non-real-estate companies to submit a post.
While he doesn't promote his real estate business on this business page, he has gotten 4 transactions from the site and while trying to get businesses to support a local charity, he got a listing that was worth over $3.5 million.
Greg has set up the site with key words which will let him know when something inappropriate is being entered or a business type is coming on that he feels will diminish the tone of the page.
He has started to reach out to local businesses to interview them to put them onto the site. he does not actively promote a type of business. For example, he asked on the page where people got their pizza. He had almost 50 pizza places mentioned on the site and tried to be non-committal to which he may prefer.
He mentioned how his wife had interviewed a new coffee shop in the area. The owner mentioned that she only hires handicapped people in her shop. Within 3 days of posting that information on that business, the owner said 50 people came in and mentioned the post.
He mentioned a member asked about someone that could repair a washing machine. Others volunteered a particular person that does quality appliance repairs. Greg then went to that business and mentioned how he came to know of him and encouraged the owner to join the page and use the Business Wednesday to promote his business
This is his soft marketing that he feels will generate something in the way of business for him down the road.
He has used his page for food drives and also for promoting other local events. As he doesn't self-promote local businesses are familiar with his page and are very forth coming with donations for his local charity efforts.
When he does go out to visit businesses in the area, he does it as the Administrator of the Whitby Neighbors site. He also always wears a shirt that identifies him as a real estate agent.
He offered a different perspective on using Facebook for his business but as a member of his community that cares
Greg Brown Facebook Local Pages for Business
Comments(15)