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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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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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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