Over the past few years "social marketing" has become a pretty popular medium for Realtors including myself. Almost all agents have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, Pinterest, etc. Many post regularly, some post rarely and some post hourly updates of every single detail of their life, their dog's life, the date on their milk carton, et cetera. I try to stay on the one-a-day, maybe posts a day.
Social posts seem to be a good way to reach out to "friends", like a wave in a coffee shop or a quick word while walking down the sidewalk. All that's a nice way to keep in touch with contacts which is important but not that effective or very efficient as far as building "brand awareness," promoting new services, mentioning new listings or an open house. I do believe in the power of networking but I also believe that our marketing should also encompass a wider audience to be most effective. That's why I like Facebook business pages and Facebook ads (did I hear a gasp?).
Normal personal FB accounts are great for personal and even personality-type posts. Posts that are more casual and not burdened with the constant mention of a sale or great details about new listins. Business pages; however, are a great place to put in details about listings, pictures of homes (good pictures!), neighborhood information, market information as well as a mention of a new class you have attended to new designation. The point of the business page is to have a place where you friends and their friends and others join through "liking" the site and understand it's more about what you do and what you have and what they need from a business standpoint. Building an audience for your FB business page can be fun - creativing good content that is shared is an important part of that but well-conceived, simple contests and giveaways will go far for building up your "likes". Will they all hang around after the contest? Maybe, maybe not but for some period of time you have a better opportunity for grabbing them and getting them hooked on your interesting content.
Facebook offers other, more direct, opportunites to market and build awareness. I understand before I write this that the topic is controversial and there will even be some who scoff. I say, "scoff away!" In my particular market, I have had very good results using FB ads for showing off new listings, promoting open houses and even building brand awareness. The FB ad tools are very flexible, allowing almost instant feedback of effectiveness. Depending on your target market, it can be quite affordable. You can choose the time of day, the age of your target market, and you can even turn your ad off.
BEWARE! Not everyone likes seeing "sponsored" posts on their timelines. By far(!!!) the most hostile group to timeline sponsored posts are seniors. I recently posted an ad for an open house in a nice 55+ community. My target for that campaign were adults over 50 living in a 25 mile radius of the community. I ran the ad on a rainy Wednesday night (prime FB surfing time). Within and hour I had received two very hostile personal comments and one direct message telling me to "get off their Facebook" Of course I had not posted the ads directly to their timelines but FB did and these older folks did not like the fact that someone other than the 24 people on their friend list had posted something on their timeline - I send an apology to each of them and adjusted my senior marketing to ONLY post on the right side of the page... things are much quieter now.
Do FB ads work? They do for me. The data shows great numbers for impressions (good for brand awareness) and decent click-through rates. I typically will include a trackable link with any listing information to see how many times that listing was viewed. I love the analytics and they are almost realtime. I have adjusted ad wording and changed ad pictures when my numbers were showing low results.
In short, I am a HUGE fan of Facebook business pages and Facebook ads. Keep in mind your results may vary based on your market, you target demographic and any of a number of other factors. But in my opinion it's worth checking out... put a toe in the water ;-)
Please let me know what you think. Have you tried FB ads? Did you get or are you getting good results?
Charlotte
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