Transform Transform March 2014 | Page 7

The 900-Pound Marketing Gorilla It goes without saying that if you haven’t already created a Facebook account, now is the time. We will touch on whether you should create a personal account and a business account later. The first thing you need to do after you create your Facebook account is to connect with your existing clients, potential clients and friends, which can be contacted instantly from your email account in one click as you sign up. Some agents say they find approaching people this way is less aggressive and more socially acceptable than contacting them by email or by phone. No one can argue that it is easier, but whether this method is more effective than direct contact remains to be seen. Personal or Business Page? Some agents prefer creating a personal and a separate business page on Facebook. It’s free and some feel by launching a second business page they can more effectively target their particular real estate niche. Or course, the downside to this strategy is that you must develop a fan base in order to generate any traffic to such pages. This means you will have to invite all of your contacts to become a fan at least twice a year. Some agents make such invitations quarterly. In addition, it takes more time to run two pages. If you find that the majority of material you post to Facebook is business related then it might make more sense to create a business page and spend most of your time using it to promote your real estate business. But if you discover that most of your sales are generated by your friends or relatives -- then you might forget about creating a business page altogether and simply concentrate on marketing via your personal page.   Agents’ Actual Usage by Network 29% LinkedIn 79% Facebook 48% Twitter 7