Established in 2006 as a social site for college students to mingle, Facebook has since gone to on attract millions upon millions of users of all ages worldwide, making it one the most popular sites ever in Internet history.
Facebook users flock to the site for a variety of reasons, such as online games, photo sharing, catching up, planning events, and more. However, a good majority of users have found that Facebook provides a convenient way to make informed buying decisions, keep up with their favorite brands, discover new products, and find new companies and businesses.
In fact, Facebook now has more than 1 BILLION users. This, of course, is beneficial to all businesses (including real estate agents) as it gives a business the potential to draw in customers from all over the globe and to connect locally as well.
- Facebook gives your community insight into your personality. Since Facebook is all about engaging with others and sharing information, it’s the perfect platform for you to humanize yourself through one-on-one conversations, community messages, contests, Q&A sessions, and more. Agents that actively communicate with clients and followers have better chances of obtaining new customers and retaining current ones. Moreover, real-time customer service allows consumers to have a sense of trust, which ultimately will lead to more business.
- Facebook is currently visited more than any other social media site. Although it’s always a good idea to have a presence on all the major social networking sites, (If that’s where YOUR clients are) Facebook is extremely important as it brings in millions of daily regular users worldwide. In addition, a good number of Facebook users use the site to learn about new products and trends, get service recommendations, and help others make informed buying decisions.
- Facebook offers all companies and professionals their own free business page. In a matter of minutes, you can easily create your own page, complete with company information, pictures, events, listings, and more. Additionally, your followers and clients will have a convenient way to engage with other like-minded people and share recommendations
- You can track the effectiveness of your company’s online social media presence. Facebook’s integrated tools and applications on business pages allows you to determine the makeup of your client base, their shopping habits, and how likely they are to purchase from your business. Moreover, Facebook offers an “Insights” feature on all business accounts. The “Insights” feature allows you to see what kind of reach and impact each of your posts have had. It also can determine the age group, gender, and locations of the people that have read your posts.
- Your business page is public and searchable by millions of Facebook users. In addition, when people give your page a “Like,” it may become visible in their News Feed. This means that their own Facebook friends will could possibly see your name as long as they share the pages they are fans of. Furthermore, Facebook ranks high on major search engines. By incorporating the proper keywords and staying active on your account, not only will your Facebook business page move up in search engine results, but your company website and other social media accounts can potentially move up as well.
- Finally, Facebook ads are a proven and relatively inexpensive way to drive traffic. The traffic can be sent to your Facebook Business page, or to your website. The ads can by hyper targeted so that they are only shown to the people that you want to reach with your message.
When are you going to start using Facebook to grow your business?
If you’d like to learn more about how to use Facebook to grow your real estate business, get in touch. It’s one of the many services that I offer to real estate professionals!
