After attending the awesome VREBC last week, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite speakers from it, Michael Russer. When I first started out as a Real Estate Virtual Assistant over 5 years ago, I was introduced through the REVA Network to Michael Russer and his fantastic classes and webinars. Also known as “Mr. Internet”, Michael has been speaking and coaching real estate pros for years on using the internet for their real estate business. He is also one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Virtual Assistant industry, which is another reason why I am a big fan of his.
Michael’s extensive list of accomplishments and books written can be found right here. His latest program, Online Dominance, includes a fantastic Mentoring program for agents that contains his high-energy group coaching calls, as well as the highly valuable CLICKS to CLOSES™ and ePRODUCTIVITY™ courses. This is one program where a few of my real estate friends are participants, and they all are raving fans.
The main reason I am posting this is to highlight a fantastic lead follow up resource that he shares and how he goes about sharing it with the use of his Facbook fan page. The resource Michael shares is the ingenious “Critical First Response Email Script”. It is a simple email sent to internet consumers after their initial inquiry. It is crafted in a way that is no pressure, “non-salesy”, and invites consumers to open a dialogue when they are ready to.
How do you get this fantastic email script? Well, you must become a fan of the Online Dominance Facebook page in order to get to the download link. This Facebook tactic demonstrates a great way to generate new fans (or leads) to your Facbook fan page by enticing users to get something of value from you that they want or need. This simple trick is something you can do with your own fan page by creating a tab that only fans can access and use that tab to share valuable links, or special downloads for your fans. Then just watch your fan numbers grow.
I highly recommend that you check out Michael Russer
Looking to spruce up your own Facebook fan page and add valuable links and information for your fans? Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant can help you! Contact us today for an assessment of your real estate and social media support needs. and if your not already, come on over to Facebook and be a fan!
There seems to be a theme here with all this talk about Facebook lately. But her I go again. They’ve got a whole new look on their homepage now. Greater emphasis on search. Easier to instant message. I’m liking it so far.
Many agents are catching on and joining in on the Facebook fun. The talk of social media and using it for real estate business have been quite the buzz around all the conferences and webinars in the past year. You will find no bigger cheerleader for this that than me, since I have been encouraging this for what seems forever now. Now that I see numerous agents embracing and using Facebook, I have been making some observations. Some that make me pull my hair out. So now I feel the need to give out some guidance on some pitfalls to avoid when using Facebook. It’s time to stop the madness.
1. Don’t incessantly use your status updates to do nothing but post your listings over and over again. Sometimes I wonder if some agents think that consumers log on to Facebook just to look for real estate. Newsflash… They don’t. Posting listings on there once in awhile is fine, as long as you also post relevant and interesting information that people may want to know. Using it to constantly post listings looks fake, inauthentic (and in my generation despise that) and will easily get you ignored by the simple push of the “Hide” button. There are subtle ways to put your listings on your profile. Here is one way I suggest to do it.
2.Keep the drunken bachelor/bachelorette party photos and the like, off of Facebook… or at least make them private. Even though you are a professional, you are probably not all business all of the time and want to project that on Facebook. Even so, be mindful of current and potential clients that may be connected to you and that certain things can turn them off and not give you their business. Yes, your friends might find that picture where you were passed out on the floor or making out with some random person funny, but your prospective clients might be downright offended and cause them to look down upon you. Get to know your privacy settings. They are your friend.
3. Try not to trash people, cities or things on your status updates, links, fan pages, etc. You never know who may be looking at your profile. Things get around, and though you may think you are safe to post how much you hate a certain person, place or thing, no matter how justified you are, it may come back to bite you. This story is a great example of this. And though that story happened through Twitter, with 350 million active Facebook users it is bound to happen there too.
4. Don’t air your dirty laundry for all to see on Facebook. There is such thing a too much information. And really, people don’t really need to know all of your personal drama, marital problems, etc. As the above points mentioned, be mindful of who is looking at your profile. It looks unprofessional. And really, does the public really need to know your very private personal drama? Your clients may look at you differently, or stop returning your calls.
5. Stop constantly posting your Farmville, Mafia Wars, CafeWorld, Fishville, etc, in your status updates. Now in fairness, I do play and participate in some of above mentioned games. They’re fun but must played in moderation Really, do you want your colleagues, prospects and clients to think you do nothing but play with a virtual farm all day? It starts to make your clients wonder if you are really spending the time marketing their home or plowing imaginary land. There are ways to play and not share every single detail of what you have done in your games. So if you’re tempted to share it, don’t. It’s annoying. And people will tend to ignore or unfriend you.
So real estate pros, please heed my above advice. Facebook is a great opportunity to engage with your clients, market yourself, your properties (subtly), and show a bit of your personality, please be mindful of everything you do on there. You never know who is looking and how it may help or hurt your business.
Social media is fast becoming a huge component to an agent’s online marketing strategy, and using Facebook is a major part of that strategy. If you STILL haven’t taken the Facebook plunge and started enjoying the additional reach and marketing opportunities, then it is time. Time to just suck it up and embrace the Facebook.
Facebook is not just another place for you to market, but a place to share and ENGAGE with your clients and prospects. It is another opportunity to become a trusted expert in your local market or among your friends and colleagues. Facebook claims to have 250 million active users, so think of how many of those users may be within your reach. What are you waiting for?
You better not be using lack of time as an excuse. Being active on Facebook doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time. So if that is the excuse you are still using, drop it. With a few applications and tools you can automate much of your Facebook updates and such that it will really only take you a few minutes a day to communicate, comment and engage with your Facebook friends.
In case you didn’t know already here are a few things that you can be doing in Facebook to help increase your online presence:
Advertise your listings and use Postlets which can help you syndicate to Facebook as well as dozens of other places (DO NOT do nothing but promote your listings. Nothing is more annoying than a friend that does nothing but advertise)
Add an RSS feed from your blog. It will automatically update when you have a new blog post.
Connect your status updates with Twitter or Ping.fm. Make all your status updates in one place that will update Facebook automatically
Talk about the latest open house or how excited you are about your first time buyers new home find.
Converse directly with clients, friends and prospects and add a personality to the “brand”. Become someone they know and trust. (you don’t have to be all business all the time)
Create a Business page that can include all of your business happenings, blog postings, newsletter sign up, and so much more. Then invite everyone to become fans so you can easily broadcast your important info to them.
There is a lot you can be doing in Facebook and you are running out of excused to not be on there. So if you are still a stranger to Facebook, stop what you are doing right now (I really mean it!) and get started by doing the following:
From the Facebook Insider – www.thefacebookinsider.com – here is an awesome post that instructs you how to change some of your settings. No need to put ALL of your Facebook activities out there. And I’m sure you also want to declutter all the rubbish that can come in the live news feed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t necessarily care who became friends with who.
Today Facebook released their new homepage design and while it can be beneficial for those just wanting updates from close friends and family, it is not so friendly for those who have a large number of regularly updating friends.
One major beef that many are having already is the automatic posting onto your news feed of almost everything you do – that now ALSO appears in the news feed of all your friends.
I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need to know who became friends with who, and other people definitely do not need to know who I suddenly became friends with!
If you are want to stop these updates from posting to everyone’s news feed, follow these few simple steps:
Select the Privacy Settings link from your Settings Menu
Select The News Feed & Wall link
Uncheck each of the boxes that automatically post to your news feed, wall and your friends news feed.
You may have also noticed that you have “Live Feed” and “News Feed” links at the top of your homepage. The difference between the two at this point is all jumbled.
However, your Live Feed may be blocking much of want you actually WANT to see. Scroll down to the bottom of your Live Feed page and click on Edit Options:
NOTE: If you have never put a friend or application on HIDE, you will NOT see the Edit Options link at the bottom of your page. Simply pick someone, click on the HIDE button that will appear in the top right corner of their update, then unhide by clicking the “x” beside their name in the steps below.
Make note of the line “Live Feed automatically determines which friends to include based on who Facebook thinks you want to hear from most.” I am a little unsure as to how Facebook thinks they know me and my friends and family so well, but….
Also, if you have more than 250 friends and family, you will see that Facebook either selectively, or randomly (we are not sure which yet), cuts them off at 250. You will want to change this number to accommodate your friends total, as shown below. We recommend putting it up to 5000.
Following the above steps will help reduce the amount of mumbo jumbo appearing everywhere. I am sure Facebook felt the split feed was a step in the right direction of reducing clutter for some, but it may have slightly backfired on them at this point…
UPDATE: Some people seem to be experiencing a problem seeing the correct Edit Options pop up when they are trying to change the number of friends shown on their Live Feed. We have found a solution, albeit a goofy one, but it works.
If you do not see the correct pop up as shown above, follow these steps:
1. Make sure you are on the Live Feed tab.
2. If the pop up is only a list of friends, close it.
3. Switch to News Feed.
4. Click the Edit Options link at the bottom of the News Feed, then close it.
5. Switch back to Live Feed
6. Now when you click the Edit Options link again, it should be the correct window.
UPDATE #2
We would appreciate everyone sharing this page with their Facebook friends to help spread the solution around. Thanks guys!!
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To see how to edit your Group, Fan and Application Privacy: Facebook: How To Edit Your Application Privacy
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What do you see here? I’m using video now? That is right, I have started some video blogging. Right now I’m playing around with video and incorporating it into my business. I’ve decided to use every tool I can in my social media marketing arsenal, and video was next on my list. So here it is, my first video.
Video blogging, or vlogging, is a fantastic tool that real estate pros should seriously consider incorporating into their real estate marketing plans. They are super simple to make with a webcam, or small camcorder (My favorite is the Flip), and can be uploaded numerous places like YouTube, Facebook, etc., to gain you more online exposure.
From being a "talking head" giving informative advice, to showing off your newest listings or favorite local businesses, incorporating real estate video on your websites or real estate blogs is a great real estate business tool. And of course, video a task your Real Estate Virtual Assistant can help you get started with and maintain.
More tips and tricks are to come in the future. For now, I invite you to come along on this video blogging journey with me. I want to see YOUR videos too!
This great articlefrom SitePro news popped up in my inbox today and it got me thinking…
Over the last year I’ve wondered what was the value of LinkedIn or Facebook for my business. Why was it generating all this buzz in my industry and others? I joined both networks ages ago, but just wasn’t sure what the point of it was, other than to connect socially with friends and family on Facebook, or connect with my peers in my industry on LinkedIn. I understood the value of social networking to a degree, but these sites seemed to limited to me, not quite as valuable as something like Active Rain where I can blog and market directly to my audience (REALTORS).
Well it looks like I underestimated them. I am finding with more participation and more activity, I am actually getting noticed and have received viable leads from both places. Goes to show me that I should never rule out the power of these social networking sites and the possibilities they can bring.
Real Estate professionals especially should not underestimate the value of places such as LinkedIn and Facebook. ANYONE can potentially be your client, and what a way to reach consumers, market to them, and show them your knowledge & experience. Places like Facebook are no longer just for the kids anymore. Business and marketing is making up a big chunk of what is going on Facebook now.
Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.
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Social media is fast becoming a huge component to an agent’s online marketing strategy, and using Facebook is a major part of that strategy. If you STILL haven’t taken the Facebook plunge and started enjoying the additional reach and marketing opportunities, then it is time. Time to just suck it up and embrace the Facebook.
