Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Every single Realtor and real estate investor should be on Facebook, right? Every real estate brokerage and agent should have a Fan Page or business page, isn’t it? The moment you have your presence and your have setup up your page you are ready to gather new business by the truck loads. This is at least what some the new born Internet “marketing gurus” tell us.

Facebook can kill your Realtor business.

As a matter of fact, Facebook can drain a lot of your resources and can jeopardize your business entirely because you will be basing your major marketing efforts on a platform that you don’t control, that keeps changing and that could eventually kick you out if they deem that your activity is contrary to their policies. This is the warning we get from street-smart Facebook marketers.

So, do your really need to be on Facebook? Well, first of all you need to decide if you want to have a personal face to your business because Facebook is first and foremost about personal information and experience. It’s about sharing amongst individuals independent of their business.

And you definitely should not use your personal profile to pitch your properties and to look for business. You would be most likely in violation of Facebook’s term of service and even if you build your own Fan Page then you need to drive traffic and people to it and there will be a lot of exploration and testing on your part to establish how to make it work well for you. And in the end you will have increased the power of Facebook but you will have no intimate and real control on what you have built.

There is no clear and defined path on how to market successfully on Facebook, since the platform is still evolving continuously. Stay clear of gurus offering you a “system” that will work every time. I would definitely advise you to have your own personal profile on Facebook just to secure your name and expand your personal Web presence, but when when it comes to allocating your time to market your business online, I would start from building a basic presence you can control, either with your own blog or your own page on a general platform offered to you by your broker; by your Realtor association or some of the many online services for investors.

Secure a spot you can fully control and then make it known in places that have already a robust traffic of buyers: Craigslist, somebody else’s blog, on your business card, anywhere you can capture some meaningful traffic. Then, you can also add some Facebook marketing when the time is right and when you have already a platform you can control and you can drive people to. Remember, the first objective is to build a list of customer. Your own list. A list you can truly own and control.

Roberto Mazzoni