Hi, I’m Jeremiah Miller. I’m the Director of Production with American Pacific Mortgage. We’re a mortgage bank with branches across the Western U.S., including a branch in ABQ. Everett Dossey and Steve Cecco with Ameristar Financial Group are one of our branches. I spend much of my time with our 150 branches, helping them improve their business. In the last year, one of the most in-demand help was on getting up and running with social media and how to use it to generate more business. Today, we are going to step through the basics of Facebook, and look at how you can use it to augment your Real Estate Business.
So where does Facebook fit in with everything going on with social media? Facebook is how you connect with people and how you have conversations and get to know them better. LinkedIn is how you connect and network in the professional space. Twitter is how you stay in touch with regular short messages. Blogging is your platform to show what you know and to create content to share with others.
In this class, we will focus on Facebook.
How many of you have a personal facebook page? How many of you are currently using facebook primarily for business? How many of you have a facebook fan page for your business? Who can give us a definition of facebook?
If you already have an account go ahead and log-in. If you don’t have an account, go to www.facebook.com. You will need to be able to check your email in order to complete your registration.
Let’s complete our profile. Click on the Profile button at the top right, that will bring up some categories of information for you to fill in. Go ahead and do that now. If you are still missing a couple of fields go ahead and fill them in. Remember, facebook is a networking tool, we want to get to know people and build relationships.
Account Page – here is where you change your account settings like username and password, email address, security question. You also set your notifications. Choose when you want Facebook to alert you. I like the birthday alerts.
Before we move ahead, lets update your privacy settings. Facebook makes a lot of stuff public by default, so unless you want people you don’t know poking around your personal facebook page, go ahead and update your privacy settings now.
Clicking the big “facebook” button at the upper left will bring you back to your home page. This is where your news feed is. This is where the magic happens. Anytime one of your friends updates their page with status changes, pictures, articles, links, videos, it will show up on your news feed. You can comment on what they post.
Clicking on profile, or “view my profile” will bring you to your “Wall”. The wall is where you will do your posting. You can update your status, share a link, pics, video, etc. Anything you post on your wall will be visible to your friends via their news feeds. Your friends will also see when you become friends with somebody, or become a fan of a page.
From your home page, on the navigation bar on the left side of the screen, click the “Groups” button. This is where you can search and add groups to follow. You can also create your own group. Next Click on “Ads and Pages”
Click on the “pages” button. This is where you come to set up a fan page. A fan page is a separate page from your personal page. Fan pages are usually used to represent businesses or other organizations. When should you set up a fan page?
The games and applications buttons show you the games and applications that you have used recently and that your friends are using. Ever wonder what Farmville or Mafia Wars is all about, sign up and start today, but please don’t publish all of your missions and achievements.
They really made it hard to find didn’t they. Facebook moved the logout button from the navigation bar to the account drop down menu. If you ever use facebook on a public or shared computer, remember to log out.
So, why should Realtors use Facebook as a business tool? Much of lead generating is about building relationships and building credibility. Facebook let’s you do that with dozens or hundreds, or thousands of people.
Here are 2 Realtors to check out. They have built large followings for their fan pages.
Take a look at these Realtors who have built quite a following for their fan pages. When in doubt, take a look at what other successful Realtors are doing. The cool thing about Facebook is you can just reach out and ask them how they did it.
Six Facebook Applications every Realtor needs…or at least needs to look at. http://agentgenius.com/g-rants-insanity-more/real-estate/six-facebook-apps-every-realtor-needs/
automatically puts links to your blog posts on your Facebook wall or on your page ( click here to learn the difference between a page and a group) and it shows up on your friends’ pages when they open their Facebook.
in Power Point, create a listing presentation, five page ad for your brokerage services or a neighborhood you’re farming, upload to slideshare.com and this application automatically posts your slideshare presentations to your Facebook. Can you say instant, shareable ad?
embeds your calendar (made by creating a calendar on Google ) on your page or profile. So, host a free weekly seminar over coffee for first time buyers and a monthly community social and put it on your page so people can see what you’re doing and how they can get involved.
links your contacts from LinkedIn with your Facebook presence but it’s only compatible with pages. This helps for making sure you’re connected with your network on LinkedIn AND Facebook.
“ leverages your Facebook friends into business connections by consolidating professional information into one place.” I haven’t tried this one out but it seems pretty self explanatory.
much like LinkedIn recommendations- you can ask for clients or coworkers to write a note about how you operate and it becomes part of your profile.
Here is the number 1 group every Realtor should join
Search for this group now and add it, click on the discussions tab…great resource.
And that is Facebook for Realtors 101. Any questions?