Facebook Pages Roundtable
“People don’t wake up and go to your company website every day.” This is one of my favorite quotes about the growing number of businesses using Facebook to connect with clients. At AAR’s Broker/Manager Conference in May, I had a chance to moderate two roundtable sessions on Facebook for real estate firms. Here are my notes and a few thoughts.
Separate pages and profiles in your mind.
Profile = Person, Page = Business. Profile = Person, Page = Business. A person creates a profile to interact within Facebook. Through your profile, you can create a business page. Your profile becomes the default administrator of the business pages you create. Administrators can edit/delete the page and post updates, links, pictures and videos as the page.
Profiles have friends; pages have likes.
Your personal profile can be friends with other personal profiles. Two actions are required to accomplish this: friend request and then acceptance. A personal profile cannot be friends with someone who does not accept the friend request.
Profiles can like business pages. One action is required; click the Like button. There is no acceptance that needs to happen on the business’s side.
Remember that once the Like button is clicked, it will no longer be visible on that page.
What happens when I like a page?
Liking a page means you have subscribed to that page’s updates. You have just told Facebook that it’s okay to allow the page’s updates to show in your general news feed. This is the main feed that is displayed when you first log in to Facebook. It shows all the happenings of your friends, family and other pages you like.
How do I get people to like my page?
The million-dollar question! You’ll start with the low-hanging fruit: ask the friends of your personal profile. Then the creative, strategic, consistent work comes into play. It is not an automatic fountain of business. Bottom-line: You want to continuously create content that engages your fans. Do not use Facebook as a megaphone to broadcast your corporate message.
Keep in mind this is social media. You want to be personable with your likers. Ask them questions, help each other out, post pictures and videos. If you have fun with it, people will like it.
Should I post my listings to my page?
Broad-stroke answer: Don’t do it. Are there exceptions? Yes.
There are a lot of vendors out there that will auto-post your listings to Facebook. This is using it as a megaphone and is not recommended. It’s okay to celebrate successes. It’s okay to be excited about a feature/picture/amenity of a listing.
Golden Facebook Rule
Treat your likers and/or friends the way you want to be treated. Be the company you want to like. Be the person you want to friend. If you’re not sure what I mean, then use Facebook for a few more months before creating a page for your business.
Other notes from the session:
- Create Facebook friend lists to easily share information with certain groups of people.
- Google how to do things you see other people doing. (There are lots of tutorials out there!)
- Tag friends and pages in status updates.
- Facebook.com/help is a great resource.