Be careful when considering Facebook Pages as a marketing tool.  I know it’s tempting to tap Facebook’s immense community to grow your business, but be careful in how you approach it.

Social networks should be for networking, not your marketing plan

People don’t join associations, clubs, or real world groups and then go to the weekly or monthly meeting meetings with market updates. They go as themselves to develop relationships. Why do anything different just because it’s on the internet and not face to face?  Of course, your career is part of what makes you ‘you’ and part of some of your conversations will be about your job/business, but to have a marketing plan in a social network just seems counter-productive to the real value of building relationships.

Real Estate Agents do not need Facebook Pages

In my opinion, real estate agents should not use Facebook (or Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…) as marketing channels, but as networking opportunities. A chance to learn from others, make new contacts, grow their sphere of influence, grow existing relationships and add value to others in the network. Promote what others are doing, share what is happening in your communities, stand up for causes, raise awareness to issues of concern, be personable (it’s okay to be yourself, just don’t tell us everything you’re eating every day) and develop true relationships with past clients, old friends, future referral sources, new friends, etc…  I think it’s easier to do this as “Friends” of your Profile and not with “Fans” of your Page.

Real Estate Companies do need Facebook Pages

As for using ‘pages’ on Facebook, definitely go for it at the company level and perhaps start neighborhood pages for your local markets (because it’s hard to be ‘friends’ with a company or community). Keep your personal business as part of your profile, it is a part of who you are and a great chance to put personality into your personal service brand. Trying to separate business and personal in a social network would be like joining a softball team and never telling your teammates what happened at work that day or how the local market is doing. Furthermore, showing up at game time each week with planned market updates would just be silly, quickly ignored, and never asked to play again.

I know I’d rather have Friends than Fans and I sure know I’d rather not sign up for more marketing in my life.  I assume my Facebook Friends feel the same way.

But, what about those who aren’t my ‘friends’?  How will I reach them with my message?  Shouldn’t I market to Fans so their friends can see me too?  Short answers…  it takes time to build relationships, word of mouth, & no, that’s too close to spam.

You can start by attending REtechSouth.  REtechSouth was born out of the desire to host a conversation about the technological changes impacting the real estate industry. A place where agents, brokers, lenders, builders and many other real estate industry practitioners could join together to collaborate on how technology can improve business. What tools work best? What websites are best for networking? Which vendor has the best product? What are the best practices for growing my online presence? These are the types of questions REtechSouth hopes to answer every year. The goal is to get some of the best minds in the industry together in one room to share the knowledge.

REtechSouth 2009 will take place on Friday, March 20, 2009 at the Gwinnett Center in Atlanta, GA.  Attendees will learn and network more in one day than many conferences fail to accomplish in three days – at a fraction of the cost.

REtechSouth
Friday, March 20, 2009
Gwinnett Center
Atlanta, Georgia

Register now, sign up to be a volunteer, support the conference, or suggest a topic/speaker.