Facebook Thoughts With Caruso!

Is a facebook page really worth all the effort you put into it? These days all the social media experts are telling you you have to have a Facebook page for your business. To most it sounds like a good idea. But then theres a catch. They tell you to invest time and resources into customizing said Facebook page. They tell you to brand it with your colors and add listing data. They even tell you to direct your non-Facebook Web traffic to your Facebook page via some badge on your Web site, or mention it in your marketing material.

Sure, most of this advice will produce some success, but some are not convinced it's worth the return on investment.

Branding and Customization of a Facebook Page:

There's two big reasons why some don't see this as a priority. One, very few people will ever think to visit your page. They will see the content you post in their own news stream, and they can comment or like it right from that stream. They don't need to go to your page and probably don't want to as they didn't log in to Facebook with you in mind.

Even if they do end up on your page, people who are surfing Facebook are expecting a Facebook user experience. A non-customized page looks like the rest of Facebook. That's often a superior user experience to customizing Facebook to sort of look like your brand. The quality of a Facebook page is in its content, not the fancy colors. Nobody cares about your custom Facebook page.

Also some think the idea of publishing your listings on a Facebook page is overrated. If you get someone on Facebook who really does want to look at homes, your first goal should be to get them off of Facebook and onto a platform where you make the rules and can properly ask for the sale. This is most usually an independent Web site.

Finally, the part that seems to get the most negative opinions is: promoting your Facebook page through other mediums. This might work for Coke, or Toyota, or even the National Association of REALTORS, but you are selling real estate. Your sales cycle is far too great to be directing traffic off of your real Web site and onto Facebook. You make the rules on your site. You can ask for the sale there. You have the most control over moderating user content and delivering a proper real estate search. Why on Earth would you want to throw that away be sending this traffic off to Facebook?

People feel that if you want a successful Facebook strategy for real estate and not have to waste a lot of time to just deliver lots of interesting content to the wall of your Facebook page and encourage those reading that content to visit your Web site.

But my question to you is do you agree or disagree??

And thank you for making me Your Orange County Real Estate Connection

http://www.michaelcarusorealestate.com/

Best regards,

Michael Caruso, Broker ABR ABRM CRB CRS GREEN GRI
2007 President, Orange County Association of Realtors (949) 753-7900