The following quote found within a Wall Street Journal article on Facebook advertising really jumped out at me:
“I haven’t heard of anyone purchasing something off an ad on Facebook,” says Angie Tulgetske, vice president of RE/MAX Preferred Choice Properties, which resells timeshares and spends thousands of dollars a month on search ads but avoids social-networking sites. “I wouldn’t think any of my marketing dollars would be spent advantageously there.”
Rather than relying on anecdotal evidence and hunches, why not test it? It’s pretty clear that a ton of people who own or can afford to buy homes are spending a significant part of their day on Facebook.
It would have been nice to see a quote in the WSJ from someone who is seeing success with their Facebook ad spend (they do mention that FOX is spending a ton of money and they’re not stupid) but it’s clearly going to be tough to find someone willing to go on the record in front of all of their competition.
This reminds me of earlier resistance to pay per click advertising. People would say, “I never click on ads,” which somehow translated into, “no one clicks on ads” which clearly isn’t the case based on Google’s revenues.
With ad networks like this, early adopters tend to see amazing returns because the competition among advertisers is so much lower. Can you imagine how amazing it must have been for real estate agents back when they could pay ten cents a click rather than a couple dollars?
That’s where Facebook is today.
In real estate, some of the easiest business to win is generally from your own network: your family, your friends, and friends of theirs.
After that, you’re generally prospecting against other agents who have their own networks, so you’re essentially in the position of stealing business away from their networks.
So what happens when sites like Facebook help people keep in better touch with their networks? It certainly seems possible that real estate agents engaged in sites like Facebook will have an easier time closing business with a larger percentage of their network.
I searched for “real estate” within Facebook after logging into my account just now. After doing that, I clicked the “people” tab and found out that I’m currently friends with 20 real estate agents. Among those agents, I have between zero and 21 mutual friends. Some I know fairly well and some I went to high school or college with. To me, this is a reminder that real estate agents advertising to me have virtually no shot at winning my business away from one of the 20 agents I’m connected with on Facebook. And, of course, there are other agents I know well who aren’t on Facebook yet.
(This isn’t to say that all 20 of those agents have equal levels of experience, skills, or work the same geographies.)
My 21st friend in real estate. The one who knows what she’s doing but isn’t on Facebook yet, is missing out on a big opportunity. She’s no longer getting her name in front of me at the same degree 20 other friends are. And I’m just one of hundreds of people in her network that she’s not touching, virtually, on a regular basis, for free.
Going outside of my friend network doesn’t disappoint either. I can still find out way more about prospective agents when I research them within Facebook than I can on their own websites. Why? Because they share so much more about themselves, such as where they went to school, who their friends are, what other jobs they’ve had, where they like to travel, their tastes in movies and music, and dozens to thousands of photos of themselves and their friends. None of this can’t be done on their main business sites, but they don’t seem to realize that they should.
If you’re not engaging with your current network through online tools like Facebook, you’re opening up the door for all of the other real estate agents they know.
If you’re not sharing information about yourself online through Facebook and on your business site, you’re making things easy for your competitors who do.
Real Estate Agents are in an interesting breed of business where there is often a large crossover between business and personal relationships. Because of this, tapping into the power of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be a very smart marketing strategy, but only if done with some tact.
An effective strategy for this is to use Twitter, the status update within Facebook (or both) to shed some light into your business day.
Here are some example Twitter message / Facebook status updates worth considering:
1. Heading to my open house at 1355 Main Street East http://tinyurl.com/5omyz7
2. Just wrote up an offer for a client. Wish em luck!
3. 312 Franklin Ave has an incredible view of downtown.
4. Just listed 1234 Oak Lawn Dr. Create backyard for kids and dogs.
5. Trying to get in touch with seller’s agent but he won’t return my calls. Aaaargh!
Messages like this remind your friends and family that you’re out there working on behalf of clients every day. You’re not selling but reminding them that you work in real estate so when it comes time for them to make their next real estate transaction you’ll come to mind. And, of course, it has the potential to lead to more referrals from your friends and family members.
Show some emotion. Show that you care. Show that you work hard for your clients.
Of course, few friends will want to hear about your work life 24-7 so try to figure out an appropriate balance of work and non-work related updates and a post volume that your network will find reasonable.
Good luck!
You can follow me on Twitter here.
Last week, I was on panel discussing the use of social networking sites for lawyers and mentioned that Facebook is most popular among recent college graduates. Taking that one step further, I ran the numbers on my high school’s use of Facebook (St Paul Central High School) by graduation year from 2008 back to 1920.
Here is how it breaks down. Click on the image to view larger, more readable versions:
1999 appears to be the first graduating class that was hardcore on Facebook. Of course, it may be a bit earlier among Harvard students, but looking at the HS level, that’s where I see the jump.
Back on April 1st, I decided to “unfriend” Facebook friends of mine who didn’t use their real names or include a photo of themselves with their profiles.
One of my Facebook friends I unfriended (only in the world of Facebook) was Greg Swan, who happened to notice over the weekend that I’ve refriended him.
Did Greg change? No. I did. I’m a Facebook flip-flopper.
What’s changed is how I use Facebook. I’ve come to realize that the two primary functions of Facebook that I find valuable are: 1. being able to communicate to other people, and 2. using the invitation system. In both cases, how others present themselves has little bearing on how I’m using the service.
By the way, I said “being able to communicate to other people” rather than “with” other people. My “with” conversations have not moved into Facebook. They still take place over email, IM, Twitter, and now occasionally Friendfeed. I don’t foresee moving conversations other than an occasional short note like a birthday wish into Facebook. The interface is too clunky, I can’t export my own thoughts, and they’re locked behind Facebook’s wall.
Facebook’s new Lexicon feature (free Facebook membership required) graphs the popularity of terms used by Facebook members over time. For example, a search for the term “hangover” shows an unsurprising spike on January 1st:
Looks like there is a recurring weekly hangover problem as well. And additional spikes for the days after St Patrick’s Day and Halloween.
So, what is this Scrabulous vs Fired graph telling us:
Is the popular online Scrabble game hurting the economy?
And are bachelor parties doing more to break people up than bring them together?
I’ll try to investigate further once I’ve played a few games to Scrabulous to help me recover from a hangover. 
Facebook, for those who haven’t signed up yet, may seem like a childish networking site where people waste time doing stupid stuff.
If that’s what you believe, this video should help reinforce your notions:
One of the things that separates Facebook from the zillions of other social networking sites on the web today is the honesty. Not that everyone is completely honest in their personal profiles, but at least they use their real names and real photos of themselves rather than handles and cartoons.
That is, for the most part. There are still plenty of people who play by their own rules and prefer to use fake names or not load a photo of themselves.
I don’t have a problem with that, but I’ve decided that the way I want to use Facebook is to interact with real humans who present themselves as real humans within Facebook.
Because of this, I’m plan to unfriend Facebook friends of mine who either don’t use their real names or don’t have a personal photo loaded (or a real photo). I’ll take care of this on April 1st, and no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.
It’s become clear to me how I’d like to use Facebook. This doesn’t mean that anyone else will use the service the same way I do, which is fine with me. However, I would like to see Facebook hold onto its position as a place where people really are who they say they are.
Have you ever noticed that everyone looks good on Facebook? Is it just me, or do people on Facebook look better than the people on a typical dating site?
My theory is that people look better on Facebook because they’re actually who they say they are. If they’re pushing content under their own name they’ll work harder to make sure they look good. Compare that to dating sites where half the users are pretending to be someone other than themselves.
Along these lines, Geek Sugar has a post up on how to look good in online photos.
Tips include trying the over the shoulder look that many celebrities seem to prefer.
One other that I’d suggest trying is the high angle photo. As most people know, taking a photo where you’re looking down at the lens can be dreadful since it makes it look like you have 17 chins. Instead, lift your camera way above you for a shot to make those chins go away.
But be careful. If you get too good at this your friends won’t recognize you when the see you in the real world.
Scrabulous, as the New York Times reported this weekend, is spreading like wildfire within Facebook. People who were logging into their Facebook accounts once a week are suddenly keeping a tab open all day so they can check to see if their opponents have played their turn.
While this could be a productivity sucker for employees who become addicted to the game, I think there are some productivity lessons that can be learned from this as well.
The Power of Asynchronous Work
Improved speed. Imagine sitting in a large room with 12 of your friends who are each playing 12 games of Scrabble one on one with each other. If my calculations are correct, you’d need 66 Scrabble boards and spend half your time running around looking for tables where you could play your next move. It would end up taking a long long time for all 12 people to complete games against their 11 competitors. However, if each person can play their turns at a time that’s convenient for them, the total time committed to each game goes down significantly.
Improved quality. Quality improves because people can work on their puzzles at a time when they’re in the right mindset to take on the task. They pick a time when they’ll be able to focus on the task at hand without interruptions.
True Multitasking. Finish one task that’s part of a larger project, move onto the next. Return to the first.
However, I believe the reason this works so well within Scrabulous while less so in many work environments is the quality of the task definition. Every involved party is dealing with a clearly defined task, and in the vast majority of cases, a task they’re familiar with from previous projects.
In fact, the task is so well defined in Scrabulous that you never need to interact with your fellow project partners. You may know their name, but you don’t need to talk, know where each other live, how old you are, etc. You’re both their to work on a known task.
I think efficient businesses are most capable of achieving a Scrabulous level of efficiency where employees can login to work from anywhere at any time, immediately understand what needs to be accomplished, and get right to work.
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