Linda Davis has a secret Facebook Marketing weapon – Facebook Groups.

Linda and our other real estate and social media experts wowed us at SMMCamp 14 by sharing how to generate business on the new Facebook. I’ve included a free link right here to Linda’s session. The recording is just 15 minutes long and shares how she uses Facebook Groups to create a community forum and interact with her neighbors and local community (a.k.a. – her target market).

You can get all the other recorded sessions from SMMCamp 14 plus all previous SMMCamps (that’s over 40 sessions) at our Socially Savvy Agent site. You need to become a member (just $20) but you’ll be able to access all the past speaker recordings plus the Social Media Marketing course (worth $497).

Become a member right here!

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1. Top Ten Facebook Timeline Tips Here’s my Top Ten Timeline Tips Report to help you...

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Here’s my Top Ten Timeline Tips Report to help you get the most out of the new Facebook timeline.

On March 30th all Facebook Pages automatically converted over to the new timeline design.

Facebook has spun the change as a way to increase your brand’s visibility but while this is true it is also true that they’ve removed a number of key free marketing features – like the ability to send visitors to a custom default landing page (where you can get their contact details).

The report contains a number of work arounds that will help you generate traffic and increase lead generation.

You can download the Top Ten Timeline Tips Report right here.

(Here’s the full link if you’re having problems downloading the report – copy and paste –  - https://s3.amazonaws.com/SMMCamp14/10+Timeline+Tip+for+the+New+Facebook.pdf)

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Here’s a Press Release from a Fortune 500 company about getting Facebook fans for your Page that really caught my eye.

In the Press Release the company claims to have set a Guinness World record for the most Facebook fans in a day – 1,571,161.

WOW – I’m impressed!

And the name of the company?

Frito Lay.

So how did they do it and what lessons can you use in your real estate business?

The campaign was launched by providing fans with an inside look at the creation of a new flavor of chips in the Flavor Kitchen. This gave fans a behind the scenes look at the creation process. It was then backed up with the give away of 24,000 bags of chips (value $3.99 each) to the first 24,000 fans who liked the Page and registered at a custom tab.

That’s a great way to build a fan base and a mailing list.

But that doesn’t explain why the campaign went viral and collected more than a whopping 1.5 million fans.

The key is that whenever someone liked the Page, posted a comment or interacted with the Page it resulted in a post to that fan’s news feed. That’s a minimum of 1,571,161 news feed mentions plus an untold number of wall posts and comments.

But that’s not all, folks.

Frito Lay has extended the campaign by offering discount coupons in your Sunday newspaper.

So how can you incorporate a campaign like this into your business (especially with your budget – I mean with no budget)?

The first observation is to recognize that rewards work. People didn’t flock to Frito Lay’s Page because they have an insatiable love for their potato chips. They were attracted by the reward.

So what reward can you give (and how do you deliver it)?

• You could give everyone a bag of potato chips. It worked for Frito Lay so why not for you.
• You could negotiate a discounted product from a local vendor (like a 99 cent ice cream cone that you get for 25 cents). You do a deal with the ice cream parlor whereby they discount the price to cost and you promise new customers.
• Keeping with the food theme you could do it with other popular foods like tacos, burgers or coffee.

In each case you would require that the person likes your fan page and opts in to a mailing list. When they enter their email address you can send the discount coupon.

From a tech perspective you will need to create a custom landing tab for your facebook Page with a “fan gate” and email capture form.

You can set a budget by limiting the number of coupons and you can re-inforce brand recognition by including a codeword or phrase that will make people think of you. I’m bald and my last name is Hair so I always use a code that includes the word bald. I also use code phrases like “bald is beautiful” or “the baldest man in real estate” . I do this to make sure people associate me with something good like a discount coupon.

About Ross Hair

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

P.S. – In case you’re curious here’s the Press Release:

“PLANO, Texas, April 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division today announced that its rapidly growing Facebook community set the Guinness World Records® title for “Most Fans on Facebook in 24 Hours,” garnering 1,571,161 new “likes” (i.e., fans) on April 11, 2011. As a thank you for setting this groundbreaking 24-hour record, Frito-Lay will reward its fans by giving away 24,000 bags of chips made with all natural ingredients.

Beginning April 29, 2011 at 2 p.m. CDT, the first 24,000 consumers that have “liked” the Frito-Lay Facebook page www.facebook.com/fritolay and registered on a special product giveaway tab will receive a coupon for a free bag of chips valued at $3.99. For more information and complete details about the product giveaway, please visit www.fritolay.com or www.facebook.com/fritolay.

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Has Facebook killed the real estate blog?

I got caught up in a conversation with Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, about the role of Facebook in real estate marketing. Two things we debated were if it was advisable to add listings to your Facebook Page and whether new agents would start using Facebook as their primary website instead of a blog.

On the subject of adding listings to your Facebook Page (and by Page I mean your Fan Page and not your Personal Profile) I’m 100% certain that you must add listings. Jay is not so sure.

I like the idea that you can show listings (even of no one looks at them). It demonstrates your commitment to marketing real estate and your search box acts as an indirect contact capture form where you can convert your visitors into contacts. I also think that your clients will expect you to market on Facebook and we all know that perception is just as important as reality when it comes to closing a listing contract.

Jay doesn’t think Facebook is meant for listing real estate. It’s a social medium where people want to connect and communicate with each other and not look at listings. Besides, there are already so many better real estate search and listing sites.

What we both agree on is that we have no idea if adding listings to your Facebook Page will actually sell real estate.

This conversation gave rise to a larger conversation.

Is it possible that many new agents will forego the “traditional” real estate blog in favor of a real estate Page on Facebook?

Will Facebook kill the real estate blog?

It’s an idea that I’ve been playing around with for the last year.

The reason it interests me is because it is my experience that 90% of the real estate industry bump into a huge technology hurdles when it comes to online marketing. The primary hurdle is the lack of a credible and effective online presence. Most real estate professionals have some kind of online presence but this is normally limited to a page or sub-directory on their company website.

Few agents have their own blog, IDX search site or website.

It’s not that they don’t want all the online tools but they just can’t afford to hire a developer or subscribe to a service and they don’t have the technical skills to build them.

So they settle for a page or a branded sub-directory on their company website.

If that’s the case then why not settle for a Page on Facebook?

Facebook has more traffic than you can shake a stick at (600 million users), it’s free, it’s easy to set up, it’s easy to manage and it supports applications that allow you to brand and customize your Page,  add blog posts, contact forms and real estate search to your Page.

But more importantly you don’t need any technical skills and you don’t need to hire a developer.

And did I mention that it is an incredibly sophisticated viral communication platform designed to help you connect and engage with friends and fans?

This is where Jay gets very serious about his convictions.

“There’s no way that a Facebook Page can even begin to compare with hosting your own real estate blog and packing it with search friendly hyper local content.

With your own blog you control the look, feel and architecture of the blog. You own it. You own the content. You own the SEO and Google Juice, you own the conversation”.

All valid points! All really good reasons to host your own real estate blog!

Now you need to put some of this is context.

Jay Thompson is The Real Estate Guy, not just the Phoenix Real Estate Guy. He travels the nation talking about blogging and how it propelled his business from a small husband and wife team to a vibrant and successful real estate office with around 30 agents (and growing). Jay dominates local real estate search for the Phoenix area and can track dozens of closed real estate transactions (and closing checks) straight back to his blog.

Jay knows that hyper local blogging works so he spends a great deal of time and money making sure that he turns out a top quality product.

But I think that’s really the point about this article.

Jay and I don’t disagree about whether or not having your own real estate blog works and, if done correctly, will greatly improve your real estate business. If you have the budget or technical skills it is absolutely a no-brainer for you to create a local real estate blog.

However, if you don’t have the budget or technical skills what do you do? If you’re an agent who hasn’t yet invested in your own website and blog can you just use a Facebook Page?

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open an account on Facebook at www.Facebook.com
2. Create a Page for your business from your Personal Profile  or by going to www.facebook.com/pages
3. Name the Page the same as the name of your business and get a unique username (you first need to beg, borrow and steal to get 25 people to like your Page)
4. Pimp your Page with your branding, contact details and personal information
5. Add the Notes application to your Page. You can add blog posts to the Notes application.
6. Add the MailChimp application to your Page. You can add an online email capture form using Mailchimp which is free up to 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails
7. If you’re a Realtor add the Realtor.com See My Listings application to your Page, or
8. Add the Roost Listings application to your Page, or
9. Add the Static HTML application to your Page and insert an image of your company real estate search box or IDX search box into the Page. Make sure the image links back to your company or IDX search box.
10. Send out 20 friend invitations a day through your Personal Profile and then invite your new friends to become fans of your Page.

It’s a simple formula and I think it will work. Not as well as your own real estate blog but better than just a silly page on your Company website.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is completely bald, a full time real estate investor and broker and founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

About Jay Thompson

Jay Thompson is a nationally recognized awesome guy and real estate blogger aka the Phoenix Real Estate Guy.

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One of the best ways to get the maximum return on the content you post online and protect yourself against being shut down by Facebook is to marry every new Facebook Page to a new blog.

The idea is pretty simple – whenever you create a new Facebook Page you should also create a corresponding blog on the same subject, ideally with the same name and a matching domain. Then when you post new content you first post the content on your blog and then syndicate the content to your Facebook Page.

You can syndicate the content by using an application like Social RSS or using a share plugin on your blog like Facebook Share.

This tactic has the advantage of creating and growing your own web presence through your blog and you get the benefit of publishing your content on Facebook.

You own the blog and all its content. You also own all the SEO and Google juice.

This is important if Facebook changes its terms of service or decides to restrict or even terminate your Facebook account.

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Facebook recently changed the design of your profile page and added a feature called the photo strip. It didn’t take long before a number of members produced really creative designs and brandable images.

At the top of your page there are a series of 5 photos called the photo strip. You can tag 5 pictures and arrange them so that they produce a single continuous image. The image can include branding and a message, like instructions to Become a Friend or your website address. Unfortunately Facebook randomly re-orgaizes the picture order (and breaks your image) but you can get around this by using a photo strip application.

Here are a number of very creative ways that you can use the photo strip to promote your brand or message. 

A cool tool that you can use is the Profile Picture application (app) by Schweppes or Profile Banner. You can use the app to create a more stylistic picture gallery. 

The key to creating you picture gallery is to us a large photo. I created my picture on Power Pont and then used a screen capture tool called Snagit.

Here’re a couple more cool pictures:

How about this one that also uses a video box so that people get a personal message from you when they view your profile?

Or how about this photo strip that Liz Landry of Keller Williams used to promote the GEEKY campaign.

Take as much time as you need to customize your profile picture and photo strip. It’s free premium real estate that you can use as a billboard for your brand and your business.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is completely bald, a huge fan of real estate social media and the Social Media Advocate.

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One of the simplest tasks that you can perform on Facebook is to post a status update on your wall or your page and post a comment on another person’s wall or page.

It sounds simple but what happens to your post is anything but simple because you post or comment may never be seen by your friends.

The complicated part is all the rules and policies that Facebook uses to determine who can see the post and how it is distributed and published.

Facebook calls this EdgeRank. It’s their secret algorithm to determine how people see (or don’t see) your posts. A high EdgeRank makes your posts visible while a low EdgeRank can make your posts disappear. This means you may post something that Facebook decides is not interesting to your friends and hides it from their view.

Ouch! Facebook deciding what’s interesting!

The three main factors that Facebook considers are Relationship, Relevance and Time Elapsed. So make sure you consistently post interesting and relevant content that your friends like and add comments.

(Now that was a really simple explanation of EdgeRank).

Unfortunately this is something you absolutely need to know because you want to make sure people actually see and read your posts. It’s no good writing a post that no one will ever read. But if you know how the system works you can spend your time doing the things that get the best return on your time.

You need to think about optimizing your wall posts (Wall Post Optimization – give me a break).

Now before you over think the issue you need to know that posting and commenting is good and you should do it on a consistent and ongoing basis.

If you stick to the basics and post consistently you will attract new friends and clients and people will see your posts.

Important Note – One of the reasons that I focus on “getting an email address” is because if you get a person’s contact details you can email that person whenever you want outside of Facebook – and you don’t need to understand or play by Facebook’s secret rules. That’s good for you and Facebook.

About Ross Hair

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

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My real estate professional colleagues ask me all the time “Why Facebook?”

Here’s my answer (plus the answer you need to give to impress clients at a listing presentation).

Facebook has become the new standard for the internet. People now start their day by going online to Facebook. The internet has become a social experience and Facebook won the social race.

But here’s the short but sweet answer – because your clients are on Facebook – and if your clients are on Facebook you need to be on Facebook.

Here’s a few stats that demonstrate the unbelievable reach of Facebook. You can use these stats when you sit down at the table with a potential client and want to prove that you’re socially savvy and a social media marketing genius.

Facebook is one of the world’s most popular online brands and over 54% of the world’s online population has visited Facebook.

 Facebook is used by 62% of internet users in the United State.

Now here’s the stat I find particularly revealing and most significant.

 It tracks how much people trust advertising and clearly demonstrates something we already know – people trust recommendations from people they know. That’s where social media comes into its own as social network friends actively seek recommendations from one another; provide unsolicited reviews about products and service providers and blog about their experience.

Social network friends will blog things like “Can anyone recommend a Realtor?” Their social network friends will reply with recommendations of Realtors. You need to make sure that they’re talking about you!

Still not sure about “doing the Facebook thing?”

About Ross Hair

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

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Facebook offers an instant real estate video marketing platform for every real estate professional.

Just think about!

You can instantly upload a video to your Facebook account and share it with your friends and fans. Then you can leverage Facebook’s great SEO benefits to attract new prospects by making your video searchable by the general public.

And you can do it absolutely for free on the world’s most popular website.

That’s a pretty good deal!

Register for SMMCamp 7 Video Marketing for Real Estate on Thursday January 20 at 12 Noon Eastern – online and free!

I use video extensively on the community page that I set up for my hometown of Niwot, Colorado.

The best part is that most of the video is shot and uploaded by people in our town. I no longer need to do any work to grow the fan base as most of the content is user generated and new fans invite their friends to join the fan page.

I created the page so now I have the ability to send an instant message to around 50% of my town’s adult population. That’s a very powerful (and free) marketing channel.

To upload a video you need to click on the video tab on your home page. Then click on the upload tab to upload your video.

The next step is to browse your computer or camera and upload the video. The only limitation is that the video needs to be less than 20 minutes and 1024 MB.

It doesn’t get any easier than Facebook. It takes just a few minutes to upload just about any video, like the one of my local high school during a parade.

You can take your marketing to the next level by creating a fan page (like I did for my town of Niwot, Colorado) and then customizing the page by adding your own design and custom pages.

The key tool is an application called Static FBML that you can find it in Facebook’s Application Directory.

You can then customize your fan page to create a video squeeze page that captures your visitor’s contact details. This turns your fan page into a very powerful marketing tool as it helps you build your contact list and create an email list for your long term marketing plan. Email marketing is the holy-grail for internet marketers and something you must add to your marketing plan.

You can add video to your fan page so it looks like an internet marketing page (see below).

You can customize your page to add real estate specific content (see below).

Another tactic that you can use is to create a Single Property Fan Page.

A single property fan page is just like a single property website. The main difference is that the fan page sits on Facebook. Set up the fan page, add the property details, photos and videos and then invite all the neighbors to become a fan of the site and post a comment about the neighborhood. You will be amazed by how much positive feedback you get from the local homeowners.

Creating a single property fan page has its pros and cons.

The pros are that your fan page is free, it sits on the world’s most popular site and it is easy to get Facebook traffic to the page.

The cons are that you don’t own the site (Facebook does) and you are limited by the fan page’s functionality and Facebook’s terms of service.

Another tactic is to create a live video stream and publish it on your fan page. You can use an application like UStream or vBroadcaster to add a live video stream to your Facebook fan page or blog.

You could broadcast an open house or do a weekly webinar for new home buyers etc.

Now you have no excuse to not use video as part of your real estate marketing plan. Facebook gives you the platform, the tools and all the traffic you will ever need to close more real estate deals using video marketing.

About Ross Hair

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

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Here’s the cheap and easy way to add real estate search to your Facebook Fan Page – and you don’t need to hire a developer.

This technique needs zero technical skills. It’s not quite as good as a full blow real estate search box application but it works almost as well and it has the advantage of getting the visitor to your website and not a general listing site.

I created a short report to give you a step-by-step guide - download the report here! (Please post a comment below if you like the report)

First let me tell you that there are a number of good search apps that you can use to show listings on your Facebook Fan page. Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Roost, Altos Research and a number of other large listing sites all have a Facebook app. The problem is that they take your visitor to their site and then poach your business by showing advertising from your competitors.

You could avoid this problem by building your own Facebook App but who has that kind of budget?

Using my cheap and simple guerrilla marketing approach you can create a page with the image of a search box so that when anyone clicks on the search box it will link directly back to your IDX search site.

You can take it a step further by using a free application like PageModo to build a professional looking page, just like the Owlio Fan Page.

Ross Hair

P.S. – Here’s the link to download the Facebook Fan Page Real Estate Search Guide

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