What to do about Facebook and the other social networking sites?
You can turn them into money-makers, said panelists at Realtor Magazine’s Young Professionals Network meeting in Washington recently.
Blogging, said one panelist, turned out to be his social networking silver-bullet. It has helped him recruit sales associates, build regional and national credibility, and ultimately make his company more profitable.
He attributed his blog to helping his brokerage receive more than $5 million in referrals in 2008. Plus, he says his blog had a part in recruiting and luring half of the 70 agents he has recruited to the company since January 2007.
Tapping social networking — such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs — can particularly be good tools in reaching the largest segment of future home buyers on the market today, Gen Y and Gen X, panelists said.
Panelists offered the following tips on how you can get similar results in your marketing:
• Advertise on Facebook.
Spread the word by purchasing ads along the side of Facebook pages. You can set an age, gender, and location target market and have your ads appear on Facebook pages that match your criteria. You can also track your ad’s progress in real time to see who has been clicking on it.
• Make information available electronically and virtually.
Gen Y and Gen X buyers love to see rich data, charts, graphs, and electronic forms, but provide all of the information you have for them on a CD, flash drive or online so that they can take it with them to analyze themselves later. Gen Xers (those born between 1961 and 1981) tend to be skeptics and question everything and are fact-seekers, she said. Gen Y (those born between 1982 and 2000) are intellectually curious and tech-savvy.
• Create group or business pages on Facebook.
Create a Facebook group page to connect with prospects, such as a group geared to first-time home buyers where you provide helpful information. Or create a business page for your company, and ask others to become “fans” of your page. Whether on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, the idea of social networking is to communicate within online communities of people who share interests and activities.
• Use status updates to stay in front of your network.
On Facebook, you can use status updates and the Wall — the public viewing area on your network’s pages — to stay top of mind among your sphere. The simple “Happy Birthday” on a friend’s Wall led to three listings for one panelist. Likewise, you can use Twitter — a microblogging site based on the question “What are you doing now?” — to keep people alerted to what you are doing in your business.
• Be professional.
Make your status as a real estate professional clear by posting a professional photo and creating a complete profile at social networking sites you frequent. Remember also that your duties under the Realtors Code of Ethics extend to your online communications.
• Show your personality but not your sales pitch.
Blogging is an opportunity to engage in dialog with customers and employees, to challenge assumptions, meet like-minded people, a way to get skeptical clients to know you, and an avenue to let clients know more about who you are. However, blogging should not be self-indulgent, and you should not attempt to control the message or make it product-driven. Instead, blogging should be transparent, inclusive, authentic, vibrant, and consumer-driven.