Social Media Marketing Camp 5 is set for Thursday September 9 from 10am to 1pm Mountain.

SMMCamp features a number of real estate social media experts who will share their insights and advice on how to market and sell homes on Facebook.

As usual, the event is online and free and you can sign up at the SMMCamp website.

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Here’s the one common characteristic of most successful businesses – they found a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. They ran into an obstacle that stopped every competitor dead in their tracks and found a way to overcome the obstacle.

Put in other words – the opportunity always lies in the obstacle.

Let’s take online real estate marketing as an example.

I’ve taught thousands of real estate professionals how to use social media marketing to generate new business and an unlimited pipeline of motivated buyer and seller leads.

While they all “get it” when it comes to connecting with prospects on social networks, almost every single person got stuck with the technology needed to create an online presence and convert social network friends into clients.

Now the technology I’m talking about isn’t rocket science stuff. I’m talking about publishing effective blogs, squeeze pages and websites that fulfill one main function – converting visitors into contacts and clients. After all what good is a visitor to your website if you have no way to contact them to market your services.

The obstacle is the technology.

The solution is to find a way to get the technology.

There’s two ways to solve the technology obstacle:

1. Build it yourself, or
2. Hire someone to build it for you.

The first option (build it yourself) requires advanced technical knowledge. If you’re a techno geek you have a huge advantage in the modern real estate industry. I haven’t failed to notice that the top producing agents in most offices all use the internet to generate a seemingly endless flow of buyer and seller leads and almost always seem to be at a closing.

The second option (hire someone) is risky and expensive.

It’s risky because you might hire the wrong technical vendor or end up with a product that simply doesn’t do what it’s meant to do. I hate that!

It’s expensive because the technical skill required is in short supply and we all know the cost associated with the law of supply and demand.

Very few people have the technical knowledge to build it, so that leaves option 2.

Option 2 requires that you hire someone to build the technology.

In the next few weeks I’ll add a number of posts that review and recommend real estate software and technology that you can use in your real estate business. If you can’t wait you can start by checking out Tech Savvy Agent.

So here’s my advice. Take a few steps back and work out why most agents fail as online real estate marketers. Then identify the tools you can use to be successful and find a way to incorporate them into your business.

Find the obstacle and apply the solution.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is Bald, a real estate social media fan and the founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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The one piece of real estate social media software that I simply can’t do without is HootSuite.

HootSuite is a third party application that allows you to view all your social media accounts on a single dashboard, connect all your accounts so that you can syndicate posts and automatically upload RSS feeds from any website (including your blog) to all the social networks.

And did I mention that it’s free!

I use HootSuite extensively to post to multiple groups, fan pages and accounts. It’s really simple to use and includes a URL shortener to help with your Twitter posts.

But the thing I do most with HootSuite is “listen” to the conversation by tracking keywords on Twitter. It’s an awesome way to find active home buyers and sellers in your local area and to keep an eye on local news.

It’s my favorite social media tool and I highly recommend that you open a free acount on HootSuite right now.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald, a real estate social media fan and the founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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Can you use Facebook to list real estate and actually sell a home?

It’s an interesting idea and I’m having a great deal of fun trying to find out if Facebook is an effective real estate listing platform.

Here’s the basic strategy:

1. Create a new Fan Page on Facebook for each new home for sale. Think of the Fan Page as equivalent to a “Single Property Website” with it’s own unique URL on Facebook.
2. Co-opt the owner to invite their sphere to view and “like” the Fan Page.
3. Co-opt all the other Realtors in your office to view and “like” the Fan Page.
4. Do a direct mail campaign to all the neighbors and invite them to view and “like” the Fan Page. At the same time ask the neighbors to write a nice comment on the Fan Page wall and invite their friends to view the listing. Make sure you mention that the value of their home is tied into the quick full price sale of this home. This should encourage positive feedback and stop the guy next door who hates everyone from trashing your listing online.
5. Use Facebook Ads to target hyper local prospects.
6. Host a huge open house and promote it as an “Event” on Facebook and link it to your Fan page. This allows you to invite your entire contact list of clients, past clients and prospects to the event.

This real estate social media marketing strategy has the advantage that even if the house doesn’t sell you have made contact with all the neighbors and can canvass them for their business. It will also be a useful tool when you go back to your client and recommend a price reduction.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress of our first listings using this strategy.

You can also sign up for Social Media Marketing Camp (SMMCamp) on May 27 when we will present a session on using Facebook Fan Pages to sell a home.

Go to www.smmcamp.com to register for this and 4 other sessions on how to use Facebook and Linked In to find more real estate business.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is the baldest man in real estate and a huge fan of real estate social media marketing.

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Facebook made a small but important change to Fan Pages but changing the Become a Fan button to a Like button. The change was made to reflect the true nature of the relationship between Fan Pages and Likers. It’s a small change but it should increase the number of Fans / Likers as becoming a Fan made some people feel like stalkers. You can see the new Like Button right here.

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Metcalfe’s Law explains why social networks are so viral and grow so exponentially. If you grasp the concept you can use it every day to power your real estate social media marketing.

In simple terms Metcalfe says that if you have 1 friend this represents 1 connection. If you have 5 friends this represents 10 connections and if you have 12 friends this represents 66 connections. Do you see the exponential growth in connections as you add friends?

Here’s a more scientific explanation  – Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n²).

In short Metcalfe says “Go send out more friend requests on Facebook already!”

The great news is that Facebook and the other social networks are incredibly viral and you can simply piggyback on their network to virally expand your own personal network. In the Facebook Economy you can reach and connect with so many more people than in the “old days” of door-to-door or tele-canvassing.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is the Baldest Man in Real Estate Social Media.

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I presented a session at Virtual Real Estate Bar Camp called “Building Facebook Communities to Generate Real Estate Business”.

It’s my most powerful Facebook tactic and is used very successfully by top producing real estate professionals throughout the nation.

Here’s the video. You will need to login to view it.

Do you want to follow me as I build a new community from scratch? You can do it right here!

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A number of presenters at Virtual Real Estate Bar Camp spoke about building a local community on Facebook for your town, neighborhood or even subdivision. Real estate social media experts view this one strategy as a powerful way to connect with local homeowners and build your real estate business.

In the next few months I’m going to build another local community and I’m going to let you peep over my shoulder as I record and explain every thing I do. You can use the exact same strategies and techniques in to build your own community.

Take a look at the very short video below as I explain how you can look over my shoulder!

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One of the cool things about Facebook is that you can use Fan Pages to build your business.

In particular you can customize your Fan Page to target your audience and convert “friends” into clients.

Here’s a tutorial on How to Build a Facebook Fan Page and avoid hundreds of dollars in developer costs.

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In 2004 the 22 year old founder of Facebook famously turned down a $1 Billion offer for Facebook. That’s right – a 22 year old kid said thanks but no thanks to a billion dollars.

Nuts!

Turns out he was right. He’s now worth $2 billion plus and he presides over a social network that has over 350 million users and shows no sign of slowing down.

(In case you’re wondering, his name is Mark Zuckerberg.)

The most impressive thing about Facebook is not just its size. What’s just as impressive is the amount of time people spend on Facebook each month – over 6 hours and 30 minutes.

The bottom line is that your clients are on Facebook right now. It’s the new coffee shop and a place where people hang out.

So that’s my simple message for you today – the reason you need to use Facebook is because that’s where you’ll find your next client. You need to think of every new Facebook “friend” as a prospect just waiting to do business with you.

And it’s free! No direct mail costs, no postage, no printer ink! Just open an account and start meeting prospects in your local farm area.

Just as exciting is the trend that tells us that people on Facebook use the site to get recommendations for everything in their life. They ask their friends to recommend service providers like dentists, plumbers and Realtors. If you want to get new business you better make sure people are talking about you online – and saying good things.

That’s the 30-second run down on Facebook for real estate professionals. I’m not going to bombard you with stats because we’ve simply reached the moot point where Facebook is here to stay and it’s going to dominate how you find new online clients.

If it didn’t work the first time you need to get back online and try that Facebook “thing” again.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is the baldest man in real estate, a huge fan of social media and founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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