What an incredible site for learning; it couldn’t happen without all the veteran agents and brokers who generously give time to advise new agents. Thank you!!!

I have dreamed of being a real estate agent for years. Love homes, I go to every Parade of Homes within a half a days drive and call them “mom’s superbowls”. I have designed and built three homes of my own. I have a communications & design degree, worked in old-school publishing before staying at home with little ones. The reason I have not pursued this dream is because my husband’s career forced us to uproot several times.

We are now in a city, Duluth MN, we hope to stay in. That brings me to my facebook problem. This area of about 85,000 is one in which the majority of residents (and realtors) were born-and-bred. Local realtors have hundreds of local “friends” on their personal profile pages which they often use to showcase listings. My problem is I only have a tiny handful of local friends.

My husband says the engineers he works with loathe facebook and doesn’t want me to try and “friend” co-workers. I have begun to “mock-up” a website, study books (the class begins Sept.), design promotional material, and become skilled with a professional wide-angle camera - but I’m not sure all the traditional methods of marketing still matter in the wake of facebook and it’s power to connect? Without a large, local facebook sphere do I have the ability to succeed?

I do get out in the community, coach basketball, like to volunteer etc. However, in this strongly provincial area most residents hang with relatives and long-time friends. I’m also older, 42, (but I take care of myself and pass for 30s). I’m afraid facebook has changed the game and not sure if without a local facebook sphere I can compete using traditional marketing tools? What are your thoughts?

Sure you can. You can do well with targeted internet marketing for one thing. Facebook is just one tool at your disposal. Your best bet is to get a good website and start blogging to drive traffic to your site. It will take some time, but you can do it. Find the best/busiest broker in your area, and see how they are with training new agents - go with a brokerage that is successful and offers good training. And do your own research online to find out how to succeed.

Very good tip. Also you can see what agents in your area are or aren't doing as far as marketing themselves. Example would be with sports. If you notice that there are not realtors that get involved with baseketball or other sports the your child might play. Then maybe you might think about sponsoring your childs team or putting a small workshop/training on for the whole team. This puts you in the minds of the parents and people that attend and might benefit from your sponsorship. Or perhaps you can add to your blog site some youtube video's with things that you think might help your friends or attract more people to your site. Also just plain word of mouth can go a long way. When you meet people or friends remind them that you are in Real Estate and there to help. You would be amazed how many relatives or friends forget that their friends/family members are even in Real Estate.

Thank you for the advice. DelCidsRealty comment, "you'd be amazed at how many relatives/friends forget that their friends/family members are even in realestate," is the heart of my problem. Facebook walls and newfeeds are a constant reminder that you are in realestate. A new agent, new to town, without relatives near, and few local freinds hooked to their profile page lacks that connection.

I'm a hardworker with high motivation and a strong graphics art background, so a website and mailing material would come natural to me. I also am a willing volunteer, and I coach and enjoy kids. But I'm wondering if it will be enough to compentsate for my lack of any local sphere on my facebook profile these days competeing alongside born-and-bred realtors in a strongly provincal town who are constantly able to remind their freinds and extended family they are in realestate and willing to help them on their facebook page?

I'm nervous in this day and age that disadvantage of being new to an area without a local facebook sphere to remind everyone I'm in realestate with, may be too hard for me to overcome and all the time and money spent on websites, mailing material etc. will just be money down the drain. Because I'm older with less time to develop, 42, I need to generate enough listings to at least pay for my realtor expenses within two years. I don't need it to live on however.

I can't think of anything that sounds more exciting and fun, and spend hours every day reasearching and learning about all the different aspects from marketing to loans etc. It totally consumes me in a positive way that no other career does. But I have kids I'd like to send to college and want to be realistic - if facebook has changed the rules and I can't play without that base, I need to move on and get real. Do you think the old-school methods of marketing, ie.websites, mailings, door-knocking will still work, or will they be going the way of the newspaper ad?

Websites are not old school! You can't easily display listings on Facebook which is what people want. Facebook is just ONE tool in the arsenal, and I venture to say that while it's important it is not THE most important thing. Definitely do not ignore facebook but it is not the only thing!

You can search out local people on Twitter and follow them and that could build a relationship that could spill over into Facebook. Create a facebook page (different from a profile).

Start a blog but blog SENSIBLY - blog with your target audience in mind, not just a bunch of random real estate factoids or handyman tips.

One place to get good tips and plenty of free info is on the realestatetomato.com website. http://realestatetomato.com/

Also go to activerain.com and sign up for the FREE membership. Then do a LOT of searching for "Blogging for Business" and "SEO for Blogging" and that kind of stuff. Then start your OWN blog (I prefer Wordpress over ActiveRain for blogging) using what you learn.

People on this board poohpooh blogging (and ActiveRain) but that's what helped me sell almost 5 million in closed transactions during my 3rd year in the business. Sure I grew up here but I never was much of a socially connected person. My parents were all but hermits and I am really not a gregarious out in the community type person. And yet, I've done well. You can too if you try hard and WORK SMART.

Perky Realtor thank you for the advice. I have read many of your posts and they are helpful. It's an honor to get personal, heartfelt advice directly from you.

I like the idea about Twitter a lot, I like knowing it's not just one type of personality that can be successful, and I plan on looking into a blog and how I could connect it to a website. I'm not sure I've seen an actual blog on any of the local websites I've visited. There is one guy who puts youtube videos of himself talking about realestate on his facebook page which is pretty clever and interesting, but a little weird at the same time - I couldn't do that. There are several wetsites that add articles or links to articles regarding realestate topics on their site but the realtor is not the author themselves. I need to figure out what the "blog" part is first and then look into incoporating that. What is your blog site called? I'd love to look at it for an idea.

At this point in your successful career perhaps a large part of your current success is becoming referral and familiarity. If you had to move to a new state in a month where you know no one and have no local facebook connnections, and all the local realtors from the area are busy reminding there hundreds of local connections via facebook they are realtors, would you still go for it and start over in the same manner?

Facebook is just a tool as was pointed out. It should not be your main advertiser. I had a friend on facebook that only used it to advertise. I dropped that friend on facebook. People don't want to constantly be hounded on facebook.

I'm friends with Perkey on Facebook. She may feature two properties per month on facebook. 95% of her posts are not real estate related, and when it is, it is very subtle. She does not cram real estate down our throats via facebook. If she did, she likely would loose alot of her friends.

REODayton I agree, some business people obnoxiously abuse facebook profiles. For those who do it right with an occasional mention, or listing, it’s a strong subliminal reminder that you’re a realtor and a “friend”.

I have a hypothetical situation: say your were not a realtor, but in the market for one. You mention on your facebook wall you need to sell your home. One of your 350 facebook friends, a casual acquaintance you see rarely or not at all, is a realtor who posts she’d be happy to help. Would you feel uncomrtable shunning that person and using a realtor that’s not a facebook friend knowing she’d be watching your wall activity about your selling experience?

Or inadvertently, would you be more comfortable using a facebook friend (albeit mild acquaintance level) vs. someone that is a complete stranger, but whose ads you’ve seen or you find kind of appealing.

That’s the scenario I’m concerned about starting in a new town where everyone has been here forever. The city is big enough at 85,000 that pre-facebook it was easy to loose track of mild acquaintence or distant cousins, but facebook rebuilds those old, loose connections. I don’t have that local base; it will take time to build. Time at my age I’m not sure I have enough of. Ultimately, how important do you think knowing a realtor loosely on your facebook page in making the choice? I could make a business facebook page, but I think people are more interested in the juicy personal pages – mixing a little business with voyeuristic pleasure.

I get some referral work. But most of my customers come from my website and/or blog. Which comes first, chicken or egg, blog or website - I dunno. I know some are reading both. Another fraction of my business comes from office floor time (which is why it's important, IMHO, for a new agent to start out at one of the more successful offices in the area that ALSO offers training.) Our office IS one of the most successful ones and that's why we all get quite a bit of leads from floor time.

My blog is http://www.pikewaynepablog.com . Feel free to look. It's pretty bland and boring to many but not to customers.
They read, they tell me about it, and they call me. That's the most important feedback you can get. Who cares if you get comments - I don't. I rarely get comments. But my website gets hits and my phone gets calls and my email gets leads. That's what is important.

Perky Realtor, thanks for your time, I don't want to keep taking it as you are a busy professional, but wanted to mention I visited your website and blog...initially I didn't connect-the-dots that a blog is a feature on a website and thought they were separate web entities of some kind. I haven't discovered a local realtor in my neck of the woods with a blog on their website; it's a nice feature, and I plan on attempting to incorporate one. I also visited your facebook professional page and really liked how you did that. Great ideas. I learned so much. It's very exciting. Thank you for your time and advice.

right now my blog is sep. from my website but i'm working to merge the two. you won't find too many realtors with blogs in spit of the gazillion members of activerain. LOL Or they have one and say they're blogging but all it is turns out to be a few jokes, some recipes, a listing or two and then they give up because they don't understand how it works. :-/ that's fine with me. LOL

It appeared like your blog was connected to the website because initially I went to your website and connected to the blog from there. I did notice I couldn't get back to the home page on the website once I was on the blog, but thought it just a computer glich. Later, I opened up just the blog minus the website. I kinda like it attached to the website, makes for some added interest on the site and a one-stop-shop approach. I'll be watching to see if that can work down the road.

that's the ideal way to go about it (all on one site) and what I'm working on right now. I should have done it that way to begin with but I was operating on a different theory then. LOL

I haven't used FaceBook for much. Most of my business comes from my websites and my natural search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing. I really haven seen a great marketing plan for Facebook. If you can point me to a great FaceBook plan, I'd love to see it.

I stay away from posting to much on facebook much real estate. Maybe a new listing or so get's put on there. Or maybe a blog or so every so often. Facebook friends get tired of a person doing only one kind of status no matter what kind of business it is. I unfriended a friend because she was promoting her life coaching business several times a day. And even know my friends wife who just became an agent in another states is starting to do the same thing.

Like the others a good website is way better then facebook for getting leads. For now anyways. Maybe someday facebook will let us do more real estate marketing in less annoying ways. Don't count it out. Less then 3 years ago I didn't know facebook existed. What is going to be out there in the next 3 years?

Word

I really think that the only people who see FB as a "marketing platform" are the people who have something to sell you - FB marketing coaching, custom FB page building, etc.

The vast majority of users on FB are using it for FUN and to connect with friends. I have gotten business thru FB but it was because these people were either a) former clients whom I kept in touch with on FB, or friends already.

I do put more real estate content than I should on FB but most of the time I am posting new pictures I took, sharing a funny YouTube video (sometimes it's a real estate silly video or it's something really goofy like Lawrence Welk or something to make people laugh.) Sometimes it's about my kids or my dog or it's a question asking for responses. It's a complaint about the weather or a hurray for the weekend.

Most importantly though, I am commenting on the stuff OTHER people are posting. I go to their walls and give them a "like" or make a comment on their status/picture/video.

FB is a virtual way of hanging out at the local diner or neighborhood bar. If you are always only about YOU and what YOU want, then everyone is gonna avoid you. It's about conversing. When business happens, it's almost accidental. (but not really...my sphere knows I do real estate, because I do talk about it, but it's not what I'm ALL about.)

Thank you for all the responses! It appears a website is still a good tool for generating leads and hasn’t been replaced by facebook altogether, and using a facebook profile for business is tacky, but can be done discreetly.

This brings me to the facebook scenario causing me to waiver in my decision to move forward. I posted the scenario earlier, but no one responded directly to it. I reposted it hoping to hear thoughts from realtors.

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DelCidsRealty comment, "you'd be amazed at how many relatives/friends forget that their friends/family members are even in real-estate," is the heart of my problem. Even the occasional facebook mention of something real-estate is a subliminal reminder “hello, I’m a realtor”.

I have a hypothetical situation: imagine you’re not a realtor, but in the market for one. You mention on your facebook wall you need to sell your home. One of your 350 facebook friends, a casual acquaintance you see rarely or not at all, is a realtor who posts she’d be happy to help. Would you feel uncomfortable shunning that person and using a realtor that’s not a facebook friend knowing she’d be watching your wall activity about your selling experience?

Or inadvertently, would you be more comfortable using a facebook friend (albeit mild acquaintance level) vs. someone that is a complete stranger, but whose website you find appealing and use.

That’s the scenario I’m concerned about starting in a new town where everyone has been here forever. The city is big enough at 85,000 that pre-facebook it was easy to loose track of a mild acquaintance or distant cousin, but facebook rebuilds those old, loose connections. I don’t have that local base; it will take time to build. Time at my age I’m not sure I have enough of.

Is a good website strong enough to win over a client who has a facebook "friend" reminding them they are a realtor and would like to help?

"Replaced by facebook altogether" ??!! Are you serious? First of all, forget facebook, and don't worry about people or their friends. I think you are drunk on facebook kool aid. As are many agents who have been sold a bill of goods by seminar salesmen. The amount of time I am seeing agents waste on social networking instead of professional excellence would be amusing if it weren't so utterly stupid. Social networking is an adjunct, an extra, not a core function. Yes, have good profiles set up on all the sites, don't ignore any option to pick up extra business. But implying that facebook can even remotely compete with a proper dedicated website that solves problems and sells your expertise is lunacy. We have several agents in our office who are absolutely obsessed with leveraging social networking to gain fabulous amounts of new business. The only problem, for them, is none of them do any business.

Navarac, I’m hoping I am just excessively paranoid about facebook.

I’m guessing from your post, you believe a good website from a stranger is strong enough to win over a client who has a mild aquaintence type “friend” on facebook offering to help sell their home. And you don’t believe they’d feel too sheepish shunning the (rarely see type) “friend’s” services and comfortable enough to use a stranger whose website they like or use?

annmary, I think you are putting way too much importance on Facebook. Facebook is certainly important, and I have to concur w/ navarac in part re: social networking. It is an additional tool in the arsenal. The idea of Facebook (at least in its current incarnation) replacing a real estate website is really far fetched. You can get a few good leads from FB to be sure. Absolutely. You may get several. But I highly doubt that you will get anywhere near enough to make a living on it.

I think a lot of the "heavy hitters" in social media for real estate are actually good at social media and not real estate.

They have built up a great following of realtors and agents. I really wonder how they have time for all of their online networking if they are truly as busy as they say they are...just sayin'.

I read something that applies here:
"The internet has brought us closer together while at the same time moving us further apart."

While we "connect" much more quickly with social network sites and blogs, we don't have the personal interaction that comes from connections in person or by phone.

Facebook helps me keep in touch with friends, potential clients, and past clients I already have. It's one of many tools I use to foster my EXISTING relationships. I like it because I can easily keep tabs on what's going on in people's lives. It cannot and will not replace genuine personal attention (longer emails, lunch/dinner get-togethers, parties and other social events).

If you are entirely reliant on Facebook for your business, you're either a magical, mythical genius or you're just not very busy. I have NEVER gotten a "fresh" lead from Facebook--i.e., nobody has ever discovered my Facebook page (either my personal one or my business one) and then proceeded to ask me to help them buy/sell their house. But neither my intent nor expectation has been to drive in new business.

Thank you for all the great comments. The one question skirted around, perhaps to spare me, is the specific scenario I will face because the enormous facebook spheres of the realtors from the area that didn’t exist three years ago, and my lack of any new in town.

I know everyone has said a good website generates leads, but everyone here had a website up and running pre-facebook and has a local “sphere”.

The scenario:
Imagine you are not a realtor and mention you will be selling or buying a home on facebook. A rarely scene acquaintance on your profile is a realtor and offers assistance. Could you turn that person down knowing she’d be watching your selling experience via facebook?

Inadvertently, would you be more comfortable using a very mild acquaintance from the facebook grapeline vs. a complete stranger whose website you like/use.

The ultimate question is a good website strong enough to win over a client who has a mild facebook acquaintance offering their services?

I will take a risk and make the best professional website I can, if success is a possibility in my situation.

Mary you need to get off the Facebook obsession. Yes, many of those realtors have spheres, and they are on Facebook...but they had those spheres BEFORE facebook too!

LOL I feel like we are the parents being told by our teenage kid that we "don't understand" because things are "different" now.

I guarantee you most of those realtors are on facebook playing farmville, or posting incessantly about their listings, posting regurgitated inspirational tripe, posting pictures of their kids, getting viruses and sending them out, or griping about their client or doing NOTHING.

I don't know who is feeding you this line about FB but I'll bet it's a savvy agent who doesn't want you to compete. LOL

RE; sphere: to to http://www.sellwithsoul.com and buy Sell With Soul. It's an inexpensive yet powerful book about working with your sphere (even if you don't have one yet.) Jennifer Allan is the author and she is also a member here (though she doesn't post much these days.)

It will be the best under $20 investment you can make.

(I do not work for Jennifer nor do I receive any kind of royalty or kickback. I just believe in her approach to real estate BIG time.)

Then you need to look up and learn how BLOG. Forget Facebook for NOW - learn to BLOG and LEARN TO BUILD YOUR SPHERE. AND here's a new tip - from Borino, another coach/teacher whom I think has good stuff to share:



Borino's Blog: http://activerain.com/borino

Lastly, join ActiveRain.com and look up Nestor and Katerina Gassett and look for everything she (Katerina) wrote about SEO and blogging. And then, after you hit the ground running, have a website for people to come to, have a blog for people to find and learn about you, THEN worry about Facebook!

Annmary,

Repeat after me: "I don't need The Facebook account at all to be the best and most successful real estate agent in my office". Keep repeating it until you believe it, because it is true.

The Facebook is a toy, despite what you learned in the "Leveraging Social Media" seminar that you overpaid for. Nobody cares if you are on it or not. And nobody will select you because you are on it or not. Even Jesse Eisenberg will not look for his next real estate agent on The Facebook. I promise.

So target some expireds, target some FSBO's, send out some newsletters, place some advertising, and just do the job well. The rest will come to you. Without the Facebook, or the Twitter, or the Pipio, or the Myspace, or the Snabbo, or the Brightkite, or the Jaiku, or the Plurk, or the Diaspora. In fact, the necessarily informal nature of social networking is counterproductive to being taken seriously as a problem-solving business-minded agent. The kind of agent that people really want. So aside from LinkedIn, I wouldn't bother with any of it except to use it for what it was designed for, social networking. I know it's blasphemy. How dare I even say it. With all the coaches and seminarians taking $149/hour to tell you that social networking is THE big thing that will make you a fabulous success. They must be right, right? They charged, didn't they? They absolutely MUST know something. They dress well. They stand behind lecterns. Perfect teeth. They even use the expensive green laser pointers for crissakes. Can they be making it all up? Unthinkable.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's a real estate agent born every minute.

For me the biggest value in Facebook is that it's just a great way to keep in touch with people I know and like and some of my past buyers. I can network with other agents and hopefully cultivate healthy referral relationships as well as learn things (I belong to a couple of networking groups on FB that share ideas, etc). It's a definite marketing strategy but it's very passive IMHO and sales/referrals are icing on the cake but not the entire meal...it's having fun w/ a benefit of possibly making money. ;0)

I do have a business page, and people DO read it but the sad truth is, I think 70% of the 150+ fans are just other real estate agents who helped me get my vanity URL by "liking" the page for me. A very very few of the fans of that page are potential customers.

I have used FB to connect with semi-local realtors - ones just slightly out of my market area, or ones in areas where my potential buyers may be coming from. As a result, I have a referral from one of them. That is after a year of playing around together commenting on each other's stuff and building a friendship.

Not only did the comments to my quesion make me laugh, they gave me hope - better than hope - hope with a plan!!! A plan of sound stratagies from the think tank of successful agents, so awesome. Thank you so much everyone, and especially Perky, for all the insighful, interesting, funny, heartfelt, and useful information. I will put it to work.

The fact that I knew you on facebook could make me contact you if I needed help in your area, only because I know you from facebook.

As I said before, I am friends with Perky on FB. If I found myself looking for property in her area, I would call her. If I then needed a contractor in that area, I would call her for get her husband involved. Why? Because Perky does not use FB account to force her friends to buy or sell Real Estate. Her posts involve snapshots of her life, pics, life, not I NEED A CLIENT. I have Realtor friends that do that, I'm not their friend on facebook.

I have many Realtor friends on Facebook. They use Facebook the way it was intended, fun networking. Your professional life will and should blend together and it does, but, its intent should not be only business and to see how many "friends" you have.

You need to create a sphere. FB is only one way to do it. I have 130 friend on FB. Of them I constanly talk via FB to maybe 30. Of that 30, I only know 20 personally (family, friends).

Basically, nobody wants to be sold to on Facebook.

Awww, REO, thank you. And if I were in Dayton looking for stuff, you know who I'd call.

Im showing up with my beer in hand and we can sit down and do a Little House On The Prarie marathon. We don't have to go anywhere, Im cheap entertainment!

Sounds like a plan to me!!! LOL

I recently read where all the ex-photograhers around where I live turn to real estate when photography isn't cutting it. Now on the FBook issue, I see it as a catch-22. I feel we can become overexposed to people. I recently gutted my FB friends list, 85 of them were probably area agents that I did not know, may not ever talk to, and really had nothing in common, so I axed them, and I haven't been missed at all, LoL...

But I have read some good tips on here, and I have throttling back in my use of Fbook for awhile. But I have to admit most of my biz come from internet websites I peruse...

I friended a fellow agent in town since I knew he might have a certain type of property a client was looking for. It was a rental so FB was a better way to go than the MLS.

He has well over 3000 FB friends. Around 6 times a day I get a status update about how busy he is and which meetings he is going to and what contract he is getting signatures on and what home inspection item he is negotiating. It is pretty annoying.

And he pimps his daughter. By that I mean this. From what I gather he and the girls mom are split. I guess he has some type of shared custody. So arrivals and departures are well covered and their activities are plastered all over. It seems very over done.

I think the FB Hype will fade for sure. It may grow more first, but it will ebb eventually.

You can use it now and benefit from it. But you can survive w/out it.

I still do not have a website. I do have a blog, but no personal website.

It's a relief to hear from other agents, who are doing well in the industry, that facebook is not the end-all-be-all for generating clients the facebook mania-hype would have you believe...and that other realtors get sick of realtor friends posting constant realestate rhetoric type status updates.

I rarely use FB for marketing. I do have a website and blog but facebook is hardly ever used. Perhaps I should incorporate it more into my marketing plan but I just want people to see me for myself on there and not as a salesman.

You asked:


I think the answer to that is no. People will use the person that they feel is most qualified to handle their house and facebook, friendly or family connections will have virtually nothing to do with it. A strong recommendation of competency from a friend or family member will carry some weight.

When you are new in the business you have to face the fact that frequently friends won't use you. Making friendship contingent on people using you is pretty shallow. Initially they don't think you have the skills yet, and later they could have a whole host of reasons. Privacy about their finances, fear of losing a friend if they had to fire you, rules about mixing business w/pleasure, or perceptions that another agent is the neighborhood expert, are all reasons why they might not want to do business with you.

Hey Karen,

I saw that you said you had your blog and website separate, but that you were changing it to combine the two. I have a friend in Southern CA that has multiple websites and blogs, all separate and therefor backlinking to his main site. He gets quite a few closings this way. What are your thoughts on that? Also, he likes to post lots NOD's on Zillow and Trulia, that he gets from REAList or Foreclosure radar, and gets quite a few closed sales that way. Do you know anything about that?

Facebook should be just one piece of the puzzle. Many other web marketing strategies should be done as well.