Facebook is an essential component of any business. When you consider that Papa John’s Facebook Strategy was directly responsible for improving sales by 28% in 2009, you start to recognize its power. For real estate, a business page is critical, but the fact is, most real estate professionals do not utilize the features and functionality of the page to the best of their ability. So, here is my definitive guide to building a successful real estate business page that does NOT require tons of your time. I like automation and conversion, so that’s what this guide will focus on. Building a page with features and content that are designed to impress visitors, create fans and push them back to your website and lead generators where they can convert to contacts, leads and clients.
About 6 months ago, I noticed that every Realtor on earth started a Facebook fan page and for some ungodly reason, every Realtor on earth with a fan page asked me to fan their page. Needless to say, I didn’t. Why you ask? Because their pages were just lame and irrelevant to me. Then came Kevin Tomlinson… Kevin wanted a fan page that rocked the web. Now, Kevin is no slouch when it comes to content creation or hiring the best people to do the right job so, of course he came to Dakno and Sacrilicous. Together with Kevin’s already rockin’ fan page content Brad and I added listing search and welcome tabs through the FBML application. The secret sauce is creating a call to action welcome page and a Listing Search page then supplementing the functionality with applications like LinkedIn, Realtor.com’s MyListings and Slideshare. Creating a multimedia experience along with the delivery of quality content all within an interactive user experience.is the key to creating the most valuable experience possible for visitors. Here are 5 Tips that will help you build one of your own.
Become a Fan of Real Estate Fan Pages on Facebook and get updated news and tips on how to make your fan page more valuable.
1. The custom welcome page and/or custom IDX search page
Landing on a Facebook wall is just boring. It is a wall of information that really doesn’t give people the full picture of your real estate business. And let’s face it, most of the real estate content there is somewhat boring, so create a custom Welcome page that uses proven conversion psychology to call visitors to action to fan your page and push over to your website and lead generators. Make sure you include a brief bio, all your contact information and call to actions to your lead generation tools like property search, market reports, contact form and even community profiles. Resources for buyers and sellers would also be helpful.
Examples: Samantha Nichols Thomas Druck Kevin Tomlinson Leigh Brown Sotheby’s Sam Miller Castles Magazine George Tallabas Carl Martens Lee Taylor John MacArthur Missy Caulk Janis Gigliardi Ken Jansen
Bonus Tips: Be sure to use the FBML application to customize your landing page and set the new page as your default landing page for new visitors. Also, remember that calls to action that push visitors back over to your website are the most crucial thing you can include on a custom welcome page!
So far Sacrilicious has been successful at integrating Tiger Lead, Wolfnet, 1parkplace, Z57 and HomeFider IDXs, but challenge us with yours and we will do our best!
2. The things people forget!
Fully fill out your fan page profile – make sure you include your name, a profile picture of you or your logo, contact information, brief bio and
Promote your new Facebook Fan Page to your friends by suggesting it to them through Facebook and list it as a link on your personal profile alongside your website and/or blog.
3. Promoting your fan page.
Make sure people know about your fan page so, be sure to write a new blog post about your page and ask people reading to fan it and use the Fan Page Widget to promote your new page on your website or blog. You can also buy the Facebook ads to it, if you want to spend a little money to build your presence. But, truly the best way to gain traction is to just suggest it to your friends.
Bonus Tip: Most people forget that your largest Facebook presence is on your profile, so remember to list your Facebook Fan page as one of your websites on your Facebook profile.
4. The essential application
Creating the right content for a Facebook Page is essential, but also making sure you use the right application and streamline that process is important to keeping a page fresh. Here are a 5 tools to help get you started in providing a richer more useful experience for visitors and an efficient experience for you.
Realtor.com’s See My Listings if you currently use Realtor.com, you should definitely have this application on your page. It will automatically pull in all your Realtor.com listings onto your fan page.
Social RSS Got a blog? Then make sure all that content is pushing back over to your page with this handy application.
My LinkedIn Profile allows you to install a LinkedIn widget to your fan page so you can connect oyoru Facebook and LinkedIn networks.
I Endorse. I Endorse is a Facebook application that allows you to collect endorsements for the purpose of building your reputation whether you provide a product, service, or just want to have fun.
Slideshare. SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Upload your presentations, documents, PDFs, add mp3 audio to make webinars or embed Youtube videos into them. You can also import your SlideShare.net presentations into Facebook. Every Realtor should be using Slideshare on their profile and page!!!! It allows you to share listing presentations with potential clients and instantly makes you an expert!
Bonus Tip: Use Friendfeed.com. If you aggregate and push your entire lifestream of social media content through Friendfeed, you can easily populate your page content from your Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Youtube, etc accounts.
5. Use the custom url/username feature
Once you have over 100 fans, you can apply for a keyword rich custom username by going to www.facebook.com/username. This keyword rich url is public and is searchable by Google so you can build SEO value to your page which pushes some of that value back to your primary website (of course, this assumes you LINKED to your website in your profile!).
Alright, that’s all for now, kids. Here’s the deal. I am offering a one time discounted rate for a Facebook Fan page at $200 for full development of a customized welcome page or an IDX listing search page by Feb 28, 2010! My normal rate is $350. If you are interested in pushing your Facebook presence to the next level and helping your fan page stand out, email me here and let’s start building a dynamic page!
Examples: Samantha Nichols Thomas Druck Kevin Tomlinson Leigh Brown Sotheby’s Sam Miller Castles Magazine George Tallabas Carl Martens Lee Taylor John MacArthur Missy Caulk Janis Gigliardi Ken Jansen and Leigh Brown
Popularity: 50% [?]
