Guinness World Record for Fans in a Day

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. Read more..

Marry Your Facebook Page to Your Blog

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.

Get Creative With Facebook’s New Photo Strip

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.  Read more..

Your Post or Comment on Facebook May Never Be Seen By Your Friends

 

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! Read more..

Why Facebook is a No-Brainer for Real Estate Professionals?

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. Read more..

Real Estate Video Marketing on Facebook

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. Read more..

HootSuite – My Favorite Real Estate Social Media Tool

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! Read more..

Create a Facebook Fan Page to Sell a Home

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. Read more..

Facebook Adds the Like Button

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.

MetCalfe’s Law and Real Estate Social Media Marketing

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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