If you’re not one of the 200 million people already “on Facebook,” there’s a good chance you’ve at least heard of the social networking phenomenon. There’s also good reason to find out more. The tech-savvy but easy-to-use Internet forum not only makes it a snap to connect with past friends and acquaintances, it also makes it easy to effectively improve the reach of your real estate business. If you’re a real estate agent, keep reading – you’re going to want to know the following five things to love about Facebook.

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking website privately owned and operated by a company called Facebook Inc. It’s completely free to use and allows users to interact electronically with other users.

When somebody says he or she is “on” Facebook, it means they have joined the social-networking online club. More specifically, it means he or she has created a Facebook Profile.

Within your Facebook profile, you can make statements about your interests, affiliations, and backgrounds. You can add pictures of yourself and others and you can tap other users to be your “friends.” 

Once you are friends with someone on Facebook, you can see his or her profile, list of friends, and status updates. Status updates are short blurbs users can input at any time that relay their activities or thoughts at the moment. These blurbs are similar to the popular “tweets” found on the social networking site Twitter.

Individuals can join networks organized around different areas such as cities, workplaces, and schools. They can also post links on their pages to causes they support, activities they enjoy, or businesses they use. This last point is where the advantage comes in for real estate agents.

Start by creating a Facebook page

If you want to launch your real estate business toward greater popularity and success, you need to start by creating a Facebook page. This is different from the individual-centered Facebook profile. A Facebook page is used by businesses, brands, charities, and service professionals.

Once you get your Facebook page set up, your goal is to accumulate “fans.”  This is slightly different from accumulating “friends” through an individual Facebook profile. Once somebody is listed as your Facebook fan, you can keep that person updated on information relevant to your real estate business. Ideally, the information you share will be helpful to the fan so that he or she recommends you to other friends so they too become your fans.

5 Things real estate agents love about Facebook

As if expanding your business network exponentially weren’t incentive enough, here are an additional top five reasons to get in on the social networking action you can find through Facebook:

1. Easy contact with your target audience. You can update your Facebook page from the comfort of your home, requiring only minutes of your time each day. Facebook makes it simple for users to post notes, links, pictures, videos, and status updates. Every time you enter an update, that update will appear in the “news” feed on the homepage of your fans, making it simple for them to follow your advice and activities.
2. Viral networking at its best. The charm of social networking is that it takes only a few keystrokes for individuals to get introduced – meaning you get to forego the painful chatter about the weather at traditional networking events. On Facebook, any time one of your fans comments on one of your news feeds, all the friends of that fan see his or her comment and in turn see your news feed. Those friends are thus “introduced” to your Facebook page, and with a few easy clicks can become your fans. This means you can get in front of prospects quicker and more effectively than through regular networking avenues.
3. Simple, one-way connection. Because you’ll have a Facebook page to promote your business (instead of a Facebook profile), you can enjoy the luxury of a one-way connection. This means you can make posts to your fans as frequently as you want without being inundated by their own posts about their activities.
4. Permission-based activity. Other Facebook users have to choose to follow you as fans, meaning they are essentially granting you permission to share your newsfeeds with them. This allows you to entirely sidestep the problem of being viewed as a spammer. Your updates only go out to those who wish to receive them.
5. It’s early enough to get in the game. The great thing about Facebook is that not a lot of real estate agents are using it. It’s not yet a tired networking tool that consumers are wary of. If you can step up to the social networking plate, chances are good that you’ll establish yourself as one of the dominant real estate voices on Facebook for your community – meaning better exposure, more prospects, and a thriving real estate business.