5 Tips on How to Successfully Use Facebook for Real Estate

I don't know about you, but I find Facebook very addicting! In addition to all the fun and games, we have really started to dive into using Facebook as one of the many "tools" in our tool chest to promote our brand. With 250M+ members, we feel strongly about "going where the people are" - and in many instances our "people", i.e. clients, friends, family, etc. are on Facebook.

We started the Empire Facebook page a few months ago and have now grown to over 100 fans.

Here are 5 tips I have learned on how to successfully utilize Facebook for Real Estate.

1. Make it fun and not just all about business. For example, for about a week we were trying very hard to get to 100 fans - so as we got closer I would post status updates "We are at 94 fans, just need 6 more to get to 100!!" - so that really motivated a few of our agents. One of our agents, Karen Guarisco invited 4 clients of hers to be fans and one of her clients was the 100th fan. She jokingly said, "do I win a million dollars?" - so I replied and posted a picture of a million dollar bill as a thank you! :-)

2. Post something daily. I think it's important to post something everyday. Your posts will go into your fans "news stream" when they log on. I think this helps keep top of mind awareness about your brand.

3. Don't be overly selective of who you invite as fans! I invited all my friends, why not? Some joined, some did not, but it opened up the door of an interaction with people that maybe hadn't realized Empire or what we offer. It just "opens the door" of opportunity.

4. Post items that will drive people back to your site. For example, many times I will post a link about local market stats for a certain area or zipcode with a link back to that specific page on our company website.

5. Post press releases as Notes and tag people! We submit about 1-2 press releases to the newspaper each week and in addition, we post them here to Active Rain and also onto our Facebook fan page. I also "tag" people in the Note - so not only does it show up on the Empire page it shows up on their page. As well! In addition to press releases, we use the Notes section as a blog - we post tons of great client and agent success stories.

We are excited about the future of social media and the role it will play in our business. I think we have really just scratched the surface.

Would love to see how others are utilizing Facebook! Thanks!

posted by Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Empire Realty Associates, Danville, CA