Facebook doesn’t make many big changes quickly. Since it’s launch in 2004, with each new change comes a wave of people complaining or asking for it to go back to “the old way.” It looks like it may be that time again.

According to VentureBeat, Facebook’s developers are currently in the process of testing a new change that is probably going ruffle some feathers!

What is it?

Facebook’s new site design will prominently feature advertisements.

Who likes ads? Not too many people except for advertisers and Facebook!

However, check out these two key parts of the redesign:

• Static elements. The new redesign would keep the placement of advertisements and the menu navigation window static. As the user scrolls down the page, scanning their News Feed and checking in on friends, these elements would follow them. The navigation bar at the top of the screen and even the site’s footer would also remain static.
• Limit the number of ads. The other interesting change is that it will only allow Facebook to display a certain number of advertisements on each page.

I think this could be a huge game-changer for real estate agents and brokers who invest in Facebook ads. Why? Facebook ads already rock because of the laser focus you can choose when creating them, but this new redesign offers agents better ad positioning, an ad that is more likely to convert, and an ad which could turn more likes into leads.

Imagine an ad that you see (on YOUR page) that is targeted to you, and your likes and interests. Instead of seeing it once as you scroll by it, it follows you where you go throughout Facebook. If it’s done in a non-annoying way, this could be a great way to get your ad in front of the same people but for longer periods of time. Most people when they see an ad don’t react to it – they have to see it over and over and perhaps this new redesign will breathe new life into ads and give real estate agents one more reason to invest time and money into a Facebook marketing strategy.

What do you think? Hate it? Love it? I’d love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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One of my favorite sessions at Real Estate Connect SF was a panel answering the question: “Is Facebook bigger than Google?”

What do you think? With Facebook approaching 500 million fans – they are certainly in the right position!

The panelists who spoke during this session were:

• Drew Burks, Broker, Web Real Estate Tools, @sdrealtors
• Nicole Nicolay, Founder & CCO, Agent Evolution, @nik_nik
• Dale Chumbley, Realtor with Prudential NW Properties, @DaleChumbley

Drew Burks spoke about recent changes in Facebook and their new ‘open graph’ platform.

He emphasized that everyone should add the ‘like’ plugin to their blog (something I need to do ASAP!)  It’s one of the easiest ways for people to share you info on Facebook. Also ‘liking’ a post or page helps to index you in the world of search. This stat was staggering:

“Facebook indexes 25 BILLION pieces of information a month!”

Drew’s shirt says it best: “Google Me” – this is his business card. I love it!

Nicole talked about Facebook ads and gave some excellent advice:

• Set your goals. What do you want to accomplish?
• Establish your target criteria. There is a tremendous amount of targeting you can do when creating your ads – including demographic, gender, age, likes, interests, and so much more.
• Have compelling content. She spoke a lot about the ‘nature of the network’ – we aren’t likely to click on ads unless they are eye-catching, interesting, funny, or are very relevant to us.

Also, Nicole said to make sure that the link on your ad is the your most productive link – whether that is a link back to your page or back to your website. Historically the links that work best are link back to your Facebook page. It’s easier for someone to ‘like’ a page and then get to know you and your brand before they transact with you.

Dale Chumbley, famous for his 365 Things to Do in Vancouver page (which now has over 11K fans), spoke about Facebook pages – do/don’t and the tremendous opportunity.

One of the biggest opportunities agents have is that they know their communities and the ins and outs of neighborhoods better than anyone. On Dale’s page there is no mention of him as a real estate agent. All of his content resides on his blog – so he will always ‘own’ the content – in case anything happens to Facebook. He blogs everyday and links to his blog posts once daily. He said he started his blog 146 days ago and his Facebook page is now #4 on Google when someone searches for his county and #2 on Google when someone searches for his city.

He does caution about starting a ‘365′ page – it’s a lot of work and a big commitment! But whether your community is large or small, any community could benefit from having a community page created from someone who knows it best – a real estate agent!

Overall I thought this was an excellent panel because they talked about each facet of Facebook and how a real estate agent can maximize this huge opportunity. Thanks Drew, Nicole and Dale for doing a fantastic job!

Would you love your opinions on this – leave me your feedback and comments below!

By they way, a video of this session, (along with all conference videos) will be available soon to Inman Premium Members. Sign up now for only $99 and get a 1 year Inman Premium Membership which includes ALL post-conference video.

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

@inmannews @katielance

Facebook – Inman News | Facebook – FOREM

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…or One Week with Facebook Social Ads

The recent Facebook Beacon controversy aside (see Mark Zuckerberg’s Mea Culpa) – Facebook’s Social Ads are one of the most fascinating advertising platforms that has been introduced to the Web over the last little while.

When the platform launched, I posited that it could be a very precise way to target real estate advertising (see Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers) to specific members of the network, especially if you grouped members through their physical location (neighborhood) or their employer.

Rather than just talking the talk however, I set out over the last week to really walk the walk. I created a handful of specifically targeted ads to promote my FOREM fan page (see Advertising Your Real Estate Business on Facebook) using creative I developed specifically for this campaign – the “I’m a FOREM fan” badge that you can see on the top of the right column of this blog.

The results so far… not too bad.

Baseline for my campaign.

• I set myself a $50 a day budget. Might sound expensive, but remember, Social Ads are Cost-Per-Click so you only pay for the clicks and I never even hit that daily limit.
• I set a $1 per click bid (the minimum is $0.10) so that I would sit higher in the rotation and get more impressions. Again, you only pay for when people click through, so set a bid that you are comfortable paying for but remember if it’s too low you’ll get very few impressions.

Here are my results:

When I created the ads I deliberately targeted people who had identified themselves as working for some of the larger real estate brokerages (I also threw in folks who worked at Zillow, Redfin and Move.com) and targeted the message specifically for each. I made sure that the title of the ad identified the specific company they worked for – the idea being that that would pique their curiosity.

If you review the chart, you’ll see I had the best response from Realtors who work at Keller Williams. Here’s what my ad for KW looked like.

Since I had a pretty high CPC bid, I got a decent amount of daily impressions. My best day was Wednesday, where I got nearly 1500 impressions of the ad across my campaign.

As an advertiser, I benefit somewhat from some residual brand recognition that these impressions generate but since I was trying to promote my Facebook Page, I was really hoping for people to click through the ad and visit the page.

My best day resulted in 7 clicks – not a stellar result, but again I’m only paying for these clicks, so it did help keep the overall cost down.

So, results.

I did see a steady increase over the week in the number of people who identified themselves as “fans” of my FOREM page.

As an aside, Facebook also gives you a nice demographic breakdown of your fans too.

My theory going into this experiment is that people who were curious enough about the ad to click through to see the Facebook page would then probably be compelled to click through and visit the blog itself.

Sure enough, Facebook helped send a trickle of traffic through to FOREM.

Bottom line, if you have a product or service you are trying to reach Realtors with – following a strategy similar to mine might be a good way to put yourself in front of your target market.

Now, if you’re a Realtor, and are trying to reach consumers, you might try experimenting with targeting a message to large employers in your area. Or reaching people in your city who have identified one of their interests as “real estate”.

Remember – the beautiful thing about this platform is that you can be very precise with who you’re targeting, so make sure you take the time to personalize the message to them.

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