Facebook’s New Like Button for Websites: Great Feature for Real Estate

Have you added the Facebook “like” button to your website yet? I just added it to the REVATS site, and it was pretty painless.

Of course, our REVATS website is a WordPress site and after some searching and trial and error, I found the plugin that simply adds it to each page.

To find this plugin, log in to your WordPress site, and click “Plugins”—“Add New” on your dashboard sidebar. Search for FBLike and this plugin should appear.

Click on the Install button and then go take a look at your page. Hit refresh, if needed, and your Like button should appear!

What is really cool about this plugin is that someone can like specific pages. So let’s say a new visitor to your site likes a blog post you wrote (like this one!), they can click the Like button and it says they like that post. If they go to another page on your site, they can click the Like button again.

Here is a screen shot of what showed up on my Facebook wall after I clicked “Like” on two different pages of the REVATS site and a post on Online Dominance’s blog. (They have some really great stuff by the way!)

So what benefit can this have for your real estate business? How about this…you can create a WordPress blog post for each of your new listings and people can actually “Like” every single listing. How cool will it be for Mary Smith’s friends to see that she likes the house for sale at 123 Main Street! Talk about word-of-mouth marketing!

Not only that, but the Like feature also shows people if any of their friends are Liking the page. Which Realtor would you want to go with? The one that 5 of your close friends “Like” or the one that is apparently not liked?

Now if you don’t have a WordPress site, it’s a bit more complicated to add the Like feature. You can do it the simple way and get just a general “Like” button, or you can break it down to add a separate one to each page on your site—with similar results to the WordPress plugin.

If you are unable to use a simple plugin, go to the Facebook developers’ page http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like, fill in the details and your code will be generated for you. Simply take that code and plop it into the code for your website. Now anyone viewing your page can click “Like” and it will appear on their wall for all their Facebook friends to see.

Want to learn more about utilizing Facebook for your real estate business? Check out this great webinar that I attended last night. (It’s why I finally took the time to pay attention to this Like feature!) It features Brad and Bobby Carroll of Dakno Marketing speaking about real-estate specific Facebook changes and how to use them. Great webinar! Thanks Mr. Internet! Click here for the recorded Webinar.

Oh, and don’t forget to click our “Like” button!!

–Kim Scott, Virtual Assistant

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Want to take your business to the next level with Facebook marketing, but don’t have the time? The virtual assistants at REVATS specialize in Social Media marketing, especially all things Facebook related. Email us today to let us know what we can do for you. Or give us a call at 417-310-9827.

How Does Facebook Work for Your Real Estate Business?

Facebook is incredibly popular. Everyone has heard of it. Many people have a Facebook page. And many of them are even active on it! Now that you can update it from a variety of sources, including your cell phone, the activity on Facebook is tremendous. In fact, Christmas day set a record for Facebook—it was the most visited website on the net! It even beat out Google!

What do people do on Facebook? Well, they keep up with their friends, they make new friends, they play games, they promote political and social causes, and they expand their business connections. Just about anything. Facebook is a place that people “live”.

Businesses are finding that the free advertising they get on Facebook is more effective than thousands of dollars of television or print advertising. We have long known that word-of-mouth is an effective way of getting business. Facebook is, in large part, word-of-mouth (err…hand?) marketing at its best.

Here is how it can work. Shelley goes on Facebook to knock out a few more “Mafia enemies,” and while she is there she thinks about her upcoming house hunt. She has browsed houses online quite often, but she wonders if there is a local Realtor on Facebook. So she searches for one. And sure enough, she finds one! Let’s say the Realtor’s name is Jim. Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business page and begins to get great updates about real estate in her area. When Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business, every one of her friends sees a nifty little update about her, it says something like “Shelley became a fan of Jim’s Real Estate.” Shelley’s friend Mark is also thinking of buying a house in the future. He sees Shelley’s update, and clicks on the link to Jim’s page. Mark likes what he sees, so he also becomes a fan of Jim’s page. Mark’s status is updated to reflect this, and his friend Peter sees it and clicks….well you get the idea. Once the first fans have been found, a business page can spread like wildfire!

Who are the people in your area finding when they search for Facebook business pages? If you aren’t on Facebook, then someone else is getting fans—and customers—that could be yours!

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Looking for some help getting started? The virtual assistants at REVATS are experienced “Facebookers” and enjoy setting up business pages, managing fans, posts, etc. We would love to have you become a Facebook fan of ours!