Erin's Tech Space

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Facebook is a great place to maintain existing relationships and make connections. Facebook will alert you to when your sphere of influence experiences major life changes such as engagement, marriage, birth of a child, etc. Facebook also provides a forum to join groups or fan pages based upon your personal and professional interests and also increase your presence in the community.

Who Shouldn’t Use Facebook

• People who are easily annoyed/offended by the opinions of others. Facebook is a “friendly” forum, which means people will share personal information about their lives, religion, political persuasion, etc. This can be helpful to you – so don’t be too quick to run from it. However, if will be unable to have productive relationships with people whose opinion is different than your own, this may not be the forum for you.
• People who are unwilling to share personal information about themselves. Friends will wonder why you visit their page to learn more about them but are not providing information about yourself. This is your place to put your personality out there!
• People who are only going to post about real estate or post all of their listings – this will have a negative impact on your relationships with others and perception in the marketplace. Facebook is not your own personal MLS page.

Who Should Use Facebook

• People who enjoy interacting with family, friends and others in a community setting.
• People who enjoy sharing pictures, videos and interesting news with friends.
• People who will log in at least once per day and update their status as well as check up on how their friends are doing.
• People looking to build lasting relationships.

Getting Started

If you are a Realty World NCA member, you can log on to the Realty World website and click on the Training tab at the top. From there, click the Online Training tab and then click Social Media/Blog. Here you will find a series of videos that will walk you through:

• Account Creation
• Account Security
• Finding Additional Friends
• Homepage Overview
• Uploading Photos
• Applications
• Events
• Group and Fan Pages
• Adding Outside Content

If you are not a Realty World NCA member, the login steps on the Facebook home page will instruct you with account and profile setup as well as some basics. You may also call the Realty World NCA office to learn more about access to our training tools.

Facebook Dos

• Use a recent picture of your face as your profile picture. Save the pictures of kids and kittens for elsewhere on the site – we want to make sure people recognize you when they search
• Put your real information out there. You don’t have to give your home address but there is no harm in adding your phone number, email and real interests to the profile information section. People can find the same contact info on your business cards, bus benches and Google!
• Make sure you know people before accepting them as friends. This will ensure your page is not inundated with miscellaneous stuff and will give you peace of mind about who can see your profile.
• Be courteous and only friend people that you know. Inviting all of your friend’s friends will only turn people off if you try to pitch them real estate as soon as they accept.

Facebook Don’ts

• Post all of your listings to Facebook – that’s what your website is for! Just like you wouldn’t go to a dinner party with friends and hand them a stack of listings flyers, you shouldn’t send them all via Facebook either.
• Only talk about real estate. – People want to get to know you. It is how you build trust and rapport. You’d be surprised what you can bond with people over (running, knitting, sports, etc.) if you talk about it!
• Make a fan page for yourself your first week on Facebook. – People will be turned off at the presumption that they want to be a fan of you when you haven’t been contributing to the community or their pages/lives regularly.
• Make your first comment to people, “Hey, I saw you’re getting divorced, can I help you find a condo?” Treat people like friends first. Enough said.

Facebook Extras

• Get a Username – A username (also known as “vanity URL”) will be your own URL on Facebook that is “branded” with your name. (ex. www.facebook.com/erinnrobbins) This will help when you include your Facebook page on business cards (which I recommend!) in your email signature and when people search for you. You can get your own Facebook username here.
• Share links, photos, events and videos – Be sure to use the icons below the “What’s on your mind” box to ensure these items are uploaded in an appealing way that draws friends to them.
• Lists – Whenever adding a new friend be sure to add them to an appropriate list. This helps you sort contacts, send material to relevant people and organize your online life.
• Neighborhoods – This Facebook application has thousands of neighborhoods and lots of members in specific geographic locations. This will give you access to people that live down the street interested in what’s happening in their community. The newly released Real Estate Listings function will put your listings in front of the right people. Check out Neighborhoods here. You will be prompted to “Allow” the application. (This application is safe.)

*** The information found in this blog post can also be downloaded as a PDF for later use. Click here to download.