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

Share on Facebook

In the last few weeks, Facebook has made some great new updates available to page admins. They are definitely making it easy for page admins to get the help and assistance they need, get their questions answered, and make their page as successful as can be. In the past, when a page owner was looking to advertise on Facebook, or install a certain app, it took a little bit of “hunting and pecking.”

Now, on the new admin panel interface, there are a number of extremely helpful links to help you develop your page.

Here is a screen shot of the back-end of the Inman News page:

Once you click on “resources,” you can see there are 11 links and resources available to page admins. Many of these were available to Facebook users – and were in various places on Facebook – but to have them in all one, organized list just makes sense!

Here are some of my favorite key hightlights out of the 11 links:

The 1st is the top link: “Best Practices Guides to Make Your Page Engaging” – which takes you to this page:

This is a page that I refer to often on Facebook to find out about the latest changes and updates to Facebook pages. This page is chock-full of awesome tips and tricks like the pages manual, the insights guide, bloggers guide, and so much more. If you are a real estate agent just building your Facebook page, or need to spruce it up, I can not recommend enough checking out these resources!

Additional links on the back-end of your Facebook page include a link to set your username, add a social plugin to your site (i.e. adding the “like” button and other options) and the ability to send an update to everyone who has “liked” your page. By the way – are you sending updates to the people who like your page? This is a quick and easy way to send a custom message to a select group of people who like your page (geographically) or to all of the people who like your page.

Overall, I love with the new interface of the admin panel. I can find what I am looking for quickly and easily.

Facebook is smart – I’m a lot more likely to engage and add on additional resources to my Facebook page if they make it easy for me! This is a great tip for real estate agents – make it easy for people to contact you, to navigate your site, etc. Keep it simple, right?

What admin tools do you use the most from Facebook? I’d love to hear your thoughts – please post a comment below!

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

Share on Facebook

I received a really exciting email in my inbox this week – there are some awesome new developments that just rolled out for HootSuite.

As you probably know by now, I am a huge HootSuite fan. In my opinion, it is the best product, hands down, for managing multiple social media streams, for managing your social strategy, for monitoring multiple conversations, and so much more!

Here are two of the cool new highlights HootSuite announced:

1. HootSuite Publisher

One of the best features of HootSuite has been the ability to post social updates to multiple streams with the click of a button. With one “copy and paste,” you can post a comment to Twitter, then re-work the verbiage a little to post it to Facebook, then re-work it again to post it back out to Twitter a second time the next day, and then post it to LinkedIn. Of course you could just post it once and have it go everywhere but to really be socially smart and savvy – you won’t be posting the exact same post to every social network!

According to the HootSuite blog you can now:

“Slice and dice the destination profiles for each message and drag-and-drop your updates into timeslots to match your editorial plans. While the whole power of daily/weekly/monthly calendar view is available with Pro and Enterprise plans, everyone can take the advanced scheduling functionality for a spin to see how calendar views can manage complex campaigns.

This publisher tool takes the place of the former Pending Tweets column – to get started, click the paper airplane in the Launch Bar and plan (and edit) your posts across networks.”

So instead of seeing all your pending tweets in separate streams, you can view them all at once; see how they overlap, and if you have any gaps anywhere. Great idea!

As a real estate pro you live and die by your calendar right? This new format makes it super easy for a real estate agent to view what posts they have scheduled, write additional posts, move things around as needed, and then move on to selling more houses and closing more deals. This new tool will definitely help you be more efficient with your social media planning and execution.

By the way, HootSuite does have a free plan, but I really recommend you look into their $5.99 a month plan – with extra tools and the analytics available are worth the extra expense. You can’t even go out to lunch for $5.99!

2. Limited Profiles

This new feature allows someone on your team to write social media updates and then save them in draft mode for you or an authorized team member to approve. I love this idea for real estate agents who want to hire an assistant to help with social media updates. This way, the assistant can write the posts and the real estate agent or Broker can review them before they go out to ensure they are in line with their brand, their voice and the message they want to get out. It also offers you an opportunity to give that assistant (or intern) guidance on what you’d like to see posted. I think this is a great new option for real estate agents.

What do you think of these new updates? Are you using HootSuite? I’d love to hear your feedback, post your comments below!

P.S. Shameless plug, but I am SO excited to see Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite onstage for Real Estate Connect SF next month. His company has changed the way companies manage social media and I can’t wait to hear his take on the future of social media. If you can make it down to the Bay Area (my stomping grounds!) – I’d love to see you! Tweet me up or leave a comment below!

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

Share on Facebook

Guest post by Maura Neill, CRS

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking at Inman’s Agent Reboot in Atlanta. The topic: Facebook Business Pages. The title of my presentation: Your Facebook Business Page is Worthless. It’s a little unnerving to take the stage and to start off by looking into all those eager faces in the audience and tell them that their Facebook Business Page is worthless. But it’s true – most of the time.

The majority of the agents I speak to express frustration with Facebook as a lead generation tool or as part of their marketing plan. But that’s because, to quote one of my favorite (terrible) movies of the 80s, Mr. Mom: “you’re doing it wrong.”

It’s not enough to log in to Facebook, create a business page, upload your photo or logo, and wait for the phone to ring. Like any piece of your business plan puzzle, your Facebook Business Page needs to be monitored, it needs your attention and – at the risk of sounding a little more touchy-feely than even I am comfortable with – a little TLC. In short, it needs your time* – and if you have time to give it, it may just end up being one of the best referral tools in your arsenal.

Here are a couple of tips to help you revitalize your Facebook Business Page and turn it from drab to fab:

1. If you work heavily in a particular area or neighborhood, create a Facebook Business Page for that market. This doesn’t mean create a page for every neighborhood in which you’ve ever sold a home (please refer to paragraph 3*).  REALTOR® Raziel Ungar started his Facebook Page BurlingameBuzz last spring and had an immediate following in the town of Burlingame, CA. According to Raziel, since starting the page just over a year ago, the page has “impacted my business in a huge way.” Though it’s not a huge lead-generator, it has validated Raziel to his clients and potential clients and given him a huge competitive advantage over other agents. The City of Burlingame has even linked to BurlingameBuzz.com, which they would not have done with RazielUngar.com.

2. Consider making your Facebook Business Page be about something not someone (i.e., not you). Do you have a hobby or an interest that you are passionate about? Bobbi Howe, a REALTOR® in St. Joseph, MO, started a page on Facebook to support a running group. Her small town didn’t have a running club, so she started her own – in under three months, she has already had two calls from members who want to work with her as their REALTOR®.

3. Think long and hard before you make your Facebook Business Page about YOU. Keep in mind that the average consumer is looking for information – not just a page that feeds your ego (I can’t tell you how happy I was to see the “Become a Fan” button disappear!). If you start a Facebook Business Page that is named for yourself or for your team, make sure that you still keep it consumer-centric. A great example of a group who does this well is The Corcoran Group in New York City. Their Facebook Business Page is a wealth of information: about New York, about real estate, about technology, about events…but very little about them. Feel free to post the occasional tidbit about an award you’ve received or other personal tidbit – it makes the page feel, well, more personal. But be cautious of posting those items too often.

4. Integrate your Facebook Business Page into your other social media and online marketing platforms. By itself, you will probably only attract people who already know you – and if you work purely by referral, this may not be a bad thing. However, most of us wouldn’t argue with a new client every now and then, so integration is key. Put the Facebook LIKE Button on your blog and/or website, so that people who discover you on the web can immediately like your page and enjoy your updates into their news feed. Post links to your blog posts as you publish them on your Facebook Business Page, so that they appear in the news feeds of those who like your page but may not be subscribed to your blog. Tweet about your page when you’ve posted something new. Post a link to your latest YouTube video on the page so it can be viewed directly from Facebook, without interested parties having to leave the site and go to YouTube. The possibilities are endless. Just remember to be polite and consider your readers: don’t post the same links over and over ad-nauseum – that’s a good way to get people to click the UNlike button. Post once and move on – if they’re interested, they will click.

5. Finally, remember to interact with those who want to interact with you. It’s a two-way street, after all. If someone takes the time to post a comment to one of your posts or links or to ask a question, by all means respond! It’s a great way to connect with your readers, you know, those people who took the time to click LIKE and are now taking the time to write something. Even if you’re just saying “thank you” to someone who wrote “great post!”, you’re still making a connection – and perhaps opening the door to a deeper connection down the road. If a person feels a connection to you, he or she will most likely be back…and they may turn into a client or a referral source down the road.

About the author: Maura Neill, CRS, is a REALTOR® in Atlanta, Georgia, and the creator of 365Atlanta.com, a hyper-local travel site for Atlanta newcomers and natives which has become a rich referral resource for her business. She is also musical theatre geek, dark chocolate aficionada, lover of dark beer, and shoe addict.

Share on Facebook

In the last few months I have done quite a bit of traveling with Inman News for our Agent Reboot “roadshow.” Every hotel has its perks, but the hotel we stayed at yesterday, The Westin Bayshore really impressed me with their social media savvy. It started a few weeks ago. I was tweeting for the event and I noticed that The Westin Bayshore was tweeting and promoting our event! They posted welcome messages and tweets about how excited they were that we were coming. I was blown away! At all of the hotels and convention centers we have been to for Inman events – this has never happened – not once!

If that wasn’t enough – when I checked into my room, there was a surprise waiting for me!

On my dresser in my room were three shortbread cookies – one with the Facebook logo, one with the Twitter logo and one with a QR code!

I was so excited to see the hotel engaging its guests in social media! I quickly scanned the QR code with my iPhone app and received a custom message to me personally welcoming me to the hotel and wishing me luck as a speaker at Agent Reboot.

I was impressed.

Not only that – but all the speakers were buzzing about it. Nicole Nicolay who has over 14,000 followers on Twitter mentioned from the stage (as emcee) how impressed she was with The Westin Bayshore. Then Stacey Harmon who has over 4,900 followers commented and re-tweeted it. Then Chris Smith, our new Chief Evangelist with 8,700 followers tweeted it out. Numbers aren’t everything – but in just minutes nearly 30,000 people on Twitter heard about what The Westin Bayshore was doing!

So what’s the lesson here? Honestly – it doesn’t take a lot to use social media in a fun and creative way. Because of this simple gesture – The Westin Bayshore had a dozen of the top people in real estate technology talking about their hotel and how great they were.

That’s why I know that social media is one of the best forms of word-of-mouth advertising. Imagine what The Westin Bayshore would have had to paid to get that type of buzz at one event?

So what’s the lesson for real estate professionals? Don’t miss the boat with Facebook and Twitter. It’s not enough to just throw a page up and post something here or there. Be committed to building your sphere online as much as you have in the past face to face.  Be creative with social media! How about handing out Facebook cookies at your next open house to promote your page? How about making it a point to comment on 5 of your friends/fans posts every day? How about tweeting your local chamber or downtown association to build a relationship with them?

The possibilities are endless – and the opportunities are there because so few people are really doing this.

The real estate industry is ripe for this type of out-of-the-box thinking!

Thank you Westin Bayshore for a great experience, fantastic room, welcoming staff and for the awesome social media welcome.

I’m impressed.

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

Share on Facebook

There are tons of great little tips and tricks to making the most of your Facebook page. Throughout the next couple weeks I will be sharing quick and easy tips that you may or may not know about to enhance your Facebook page.

One of my favorite tricks that surprisingly a lot of people don’t know about is the ability to send custom status updates on your Facebook page. This is an awesome opportunity for a real estate agent. You can send a custom status update to the people who like your page. (Note, I am not talking about your personal profile, I am referring to your business Facebook page.) You can customize your updates based on country, state, city, and language.

For a real estate agent, it is a great opportunity to send a custom update to a specific city – like an event, a listing, a specific neighborhood update, etc. Also, if you are working with multilingual clients, you can customize your posts into different languages.

Here are 2 screen shots that show you how easy this is:

Step 1: Go to your page (facebook.com/pages) and click on your page. Type your custom status update. Click the arrow underneath the status update box and click “customize”

Step 2: Once you click ‘customize,’ this box will pop up where you can choose you country, state, city, and language. You can even choose multiple cities if you’d like.

Once you click “Okay” then your status update will go live. You will see it on your page BUT the people who like your page who are not part of your custom filter will not see it. So you could literally post 5 similar updates but edit them to be custom for a specific city. You will see all five updates on your page, but the people who like your page will only see the updates that pertain to them.

This is a quick and easy opportunity to post custom updates which usually results in higher engagement from your audience.

Have you done this with your page or is this news to you? I’d love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

Share on Facebook

Did you check-in today on Foursquare? How about Facebook Places? Gowalla?

For me, “checking in” is a part of pretty much my daily routine. I love seeing where my friends and colleagues are checking into, I love all the “badges” and gaming aspect of it, and of course I love the specials that may places are now (finally) offering for those of us who check-in.

Checking in is becoming more and more popular. The latest ComScore report, released a few days ago revealed that nearly 1 in 5 smartphone owners access check-in services via their mobile device.

I was pretty amazed by that statistic. I remember just a little over a year ago – January 2010, sitting backstage at Real Estate Connect NYC and hearing Dennis Crowley explain Foursquare. At the time I had heard of it, had even downloaded the app onto my phone, but really didn’t “get it.” Fast-forward 14 months later, and now I’m a bit “check-in obsessed!”

Here are a few interesting facts from the report:

• 70 percent of mobile users are “checking-in” from an Android or Apple phone
• 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based “check-in” services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the entire mobile population. 1
• 2.7 million check-in users did so on a smartphone, representing 17.6 percent of the smartphone population.

“Although still in their relative infancy, location-based mobile check-in services are seeing rather impressive adoption among smartphone users,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “The ability to interact with consumers on this micro-local level through special offers, deals and other incentives provides brands with the real-time opportunity to engage consumers through their mobile device.”

So who exactly is checking in? I sadly do not fall into this demographic anymore , but according to the report, 18-34 year-olds account for nearly 60% of check-in service user.

So how exactly does this affect real estate? Well, we are starting to see brokerages adopting creative social media strategies, like the ‘Race for the Home’ event that Prudential Georgia Realty is doing. They are a real estate brokerage based in metro Atlanta, and have teamed up with property search site HomeFinder.com and mobile gaming platform SCVNGR to offer some 500 prospective homebuyers the chance to compete for a $15,000 down payment on a home purchase. We’ve also see The Corcoran Group embrace Foursquare and is now a major brand on Foursquare. Foursquare fits beautifully into Corcoran’s core brand ideas in that the process of searching for a home is just as much about what’s outside of the 4 walls than it is inside.

Beyond checking in – I think there is a greater lesson here: mobile check-in service users display strong propensity for mobile media usage.

According to the report, more than 95 percent of check-in service users used their mobile browser or applications. Nearly 62 percent accessed news. Check-in user behavior was also consistent with that of traditional early adopters, with 40.3 percent of users accessing tech news and 28.2 percent owning a media tablet, both significantly higher than average.

Still wondering where I am going with this? Here’s my point – if 1 in 5 people who have a smartphone are “checking in” around town AND 60% of 18-34 year olds are checking in – then that means a huge portion of your clientele (or perhaps your clientele’s adult children who are also potential clients) are using mobile devices when searching for property.

Contrary to popular belief, a mobile version of your site is not just a smaller version of your site on a tiny screen! A mobile optimized version of your site is a site that displays information accurately and in an easy to read format on a smartphone. If your website is not mobile optimized – you are missing a HUGE portion of your audience. Do you get clients who talk to you about listings they saw on Realtor.com, Zillow or Trulia instead of your site or your broker site? Why do you think that is? This could be a whole other blog post in and of itself – but a possible reason is all of those sites are mobile optimized AND they all have awesome apps that make searching for homes for sale super easy.

What is really exciting is that optimizing your site for mobile is probably easier than most people would think. There are tons of qualified web designers out there that can do this for you and/or create an app for your site. Not sure where to start? Ask your colleagues? Post a note on Facebook that you are looking for local recomendations.

Creating a real estate app with MLS data is also easier than you think. Boopsie and Smarter Agent are two excellent real estate choices I would recommend.

What do you think is the future of the check-in and location based marketing? Is your site mobile optimized or do you have an app your clients can use to search for homes? I would really like to have a discussion about this and get your thoughts – please leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

Share on Facebook

One of the best parts about Facebook business pages are the ability to add custom tabs. For a while, real estate agents were somewhat limited to what type of tabs and apps were available specifically to them and their needs. Recently, we are seeing more and more companies come out with options and tabs specifically for Realtors’ Facebook pages. Just announced yesterday on their blog, Zillow has expanded its free package of Web tools and is now offering Facebook Tabs.

According to their blog,

“Zillow’s Facebook Tabs are a powerful informational and social-networking tool that can help you reach and connect with more clients and potential prospects on the largest social media network in the world.”

The New Zillow Facebook Tabs Include:

• Listings Tab
• Local Information Tab
• Contact Form Tab
• Ratings and Reviews Tab

What I really like about these tabs is that it allows a real estate professional to integrate their listings into their Facebook page in a very non-aggressive (and non-annoying) way. Now, agents can promote to their clients that their listings will be featured on Facebook (along with other online marketing portals) but the agent won’t have to spam him or her news feed with listings! I also love the Ratings and Reviews tab – great testimonials from clients used to just live on Zillow, can now be featured right on your Facebook page.

All of these tabs are FREE!

Here are two examples of two of the tabs available:

Listing Tab

Ratings and Reviews Tab

How to Install:

To install the tabs, just go to http://Zillow.com/Webtools and click on Facebook Apps.  Select the tab(s) you wish to display on your page, then follow the simple installation instructions. Zillow’s Facebook Tabs will only work on business and community pages — they will not work on personal Facebook profile pages.

What do you think? Have you installed any of these yet or plan to? I’d love your feedback, post a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

Share on Facebook

Guest blog post by Daniel Weisman

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be great tools to cost-effectively increase your vacation rental bookings. These services are free to use but difficult to use effectively, so many people give up before they give social networks enough time to yield results.

Yet investing time and effort in developing a “social presence” can be extremely rewarding because you can use these channels to advertise for free to a highly targeted audience. Facebook boasts 500,000,000+ users, and your guests – past, present and future – are among them. Here are some tips for reaching the right audience and converting “fans” and “followers” into bookings.

1. Your guests already like you… you just have to remind them

Word-of-mouth has long been the best marketing tool for vacation rentals. If I loved my cottage rental on Martha’s Vineyard last summer, then I would be happy to recommend that cottage to my friends who are going there next summer.

Social media makes it easy to interact with a network of supporters who will promote your rental on their networks. If you haven’t already done so, start by creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account for your rental.  Next, invite your past guests to “like” your Facebook page and “follow” you on Twitter. Make it easy for your friends and customers to “like” you by including links to your social profiles in emails and on your website.

Once you build up your fan base, you will have the chance to engage with your customers regularly. Every time they see your content, they will remember the great time they had in your rental.

A great example of a property owner with an awesome word of mouth network is La Casetta del Borgo (@CasettaDelBorgo). This Tuscan villa has nearly 2,000 Twitter followers and receives new bookings constantly.

2. Be more than a landlord… be an expert and a person

Once you’ve started to build your network, you should make yourself a valuable friend. Don’t spam your followers with advertisements – focus on providing value instead. For example, you’re probably a local expert on great things to do, restaurants, and hidden gems in your destination so why not share those on your Facebook & Twitter pages?

Creating valuable content that your audience not only reads, but passes on to their friends increases your credibility. Ruth Shipley, of Social Media Examiner explains,

“if [your audience] gets to know you, like you and trust you, they might just become your customer for life.”

Let people in on local secrets like the best place to buy lobsters in Maine or the location of an amazing hidden beach, and your customers will think of you before looking anywhere else to find a rental.

Check out Cottage Guru Heather Bayer (@cottageguru) for her expert advice on property management, travel and marketing. Her 4,000 followers keep up with her and share her advice, and she rarely advertises her properties directly.

3. Sharing is caring… show that you care

Social media experts will tell you that these marketing channels are all about engagement. So how do you engage your network? Ask them to participate. The easiest way to get someone to share a message or Tweet is to ask explicitly: “share this” or “leave your thoughts in the comments.”

Participation is where you get real value from your social networks. Direct value comes from the network itself: when one of your Facebook friends comments on your wall or shares your content, that action will appear in their friends’ news feeds. Similarly, when someone replies to one of your Tweets, that response is visible to all of their followers. In other words, your shared posts reach your audience plus all of the sharers’ audiences – that’s pretty good reach for free advertising.

Indirectly, shared content can impact your search engine rankings. A recent blog post by the experts at seomoz.org showed significant correlation between Facebook shares and high Google search rankings. Getting fans to share your content could help you move up in the Search engine results!

4. Network… it’s also a verb

It’s often easy to get carried away by the “social” aspect of social networks and forget about networking. In addition to reaching out to past guests and friends, you should also be using Facebook and Twitter to connect with your peers. You can learn a lot from keeping up with folks in related businesses, and you can even engage these compatriots in productive discussion.

How do you find your peers? Start with simple searches. If you rent an apartment in Chicago, then you’re definitely going to have to make restaurant recommendations. Search Facebook and Twitter for “Chicago Restaurants,” then start making friends. Now, if you recommend one of the restaurants that follows you to a guest, that restaurant will know… they’ll also know what vacation rental to recommend when a patron from out of town asks about a great place to stay.

If you want to get more advanced in your networking, then I recommend checking out Twibes. This site helps form twitter groups based on common interests. It’s a quick way to search Twitter for like-minded friends.

Facebook and Twitter are not going to replace conventional online vacation rental marketing. You should also list your rental property on leading vacation rental sites like FlipKey.com to attract new guests. However, with an increasing number of travelers taking advice from friends online, and with search engines using social information to generate results, Facebook and Twitter are great channels to develop relationships and find new guests through word-of-mouth. Most importantly, it’s completely free to start using social media, so you will get nothing but positive returns once you get online and spend some time getting social.

About the author: Daniel Weisman is a Social Media Specialist at FlipKey.com, which features more than 100,000 vacation rental properties around the world.  You can read more of his writing on The FlipKey Blog and connect with him on Twitter @flipkey.

Share on Facebook

We asked this question on our Inman News Facebook page this week and we received a lot of great feedback, comments and advice. Check out the list below – what pearls of wisdom could you add to this list?

Can you imagine if you were starting out today as a Realtor? Or, maybe you are new to the business – I’d love to hear what you’ve learned!

What Tips Would You Share With New Realtors Just Starting Out in the Business?

Please leave us your thoughts and comments below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

Share on Facebook