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But you do have an altenative and it’s much cheaper. Enter social media and in particular Facebook. With over 350 million accounts, Facebook offers you an ever increasing audience to market your business in. On average, a Facebook user spends 21 minutes per visit on Facebook; triple the time spent on Google search.

Knowing this it’s imperitive that you start getting yourself in front of as many Facebook users as possible. The fastest way to do this is to start your own Facebook Fan Page. With over 8 million Facebook Fan pages starting daily there’s no time to waste.

Facebook Fan pages are the way of the future and here’s why:

1. A Blog On Heat

Blogs are great but their environment is a little closed. There’s no great viral effect without effective marketing. The average Facebook user has 100+ friends. When you add content via your Facebook page it appears on your friends pages as well. Once they share your information, your message goes viral.

Simply add the Facebook Connect widget to your blog and you’ll soon be giving your traffic a boost. Facebook also has a tool called Facebook Fanbox which you can also add to your blog.

So if people are logging into their facebook account a couple of times a day they get to see your content. It’s difficult to get people logging into your blog more than once a day.

2. Getting Recommended

You know that the best sale is one that’s referred to you. Having a fan page can make this easier. Your recommendations go out to your friends and they can accept or ignore without the obligation felt via direct email. Fan pages offer a less obtrusive approach to getting recommended.

3. Don’t Market, Engage

Don’t fill your fan page with marketing hype. This is the quickest way to have people unsubcribe from you. Build a relationship first. Engage with them. On average it takes people 7 interactions before they buy from you. Keep your page social and watch your list grow.

4. The Money Is In The List

Most blogs have a capture form on their front page so the owner can build a list. Facebook Fan pages has the same feature. Now when people log into your page a few times a day, you also have the opportunity to add them to your personal email list.

Now the future of email marketing is always under the spotlight so it’s important to build your list within Facebook at the same time. A bit of a protective plan just in case email marketing goes pear shaped ove the next 10 years or so. And remember our Gen X & Y friends are not big email marketing users and prefer the instant messaging features of Facebook and other social media forums.

5. Taking it Away

Facebook fan pages also give you the option of creating time scarcity through your updates. This is not possible or less effective on blogs because of the long time delays.

But with your fan page you can create urgency by including a time countdown in your updates for an upcoming launch or display limited seating for a webinar etc.

This keeps your friends engaging with you as well as building excitement via your page.

I think you’d have to agree, having a Facebook Fan page is a great tool in building your profile using cost effective (cheap!) viral marketing.

Grab your today and stay ahead of the pack. You’ll be way ahead of the rest of the online community.

Want to know who’s talking about buying real estate? Place the keyword term into the Facebook search and you can not only see groups that are interested in that keyword but all your friends and everybody elses posts on the subject in REAL TIME. Awesome!

This is going to change the way you build your real estate business in Facebook because you can now target people in real time.

Twitter will need to watch out.

YOU are your biggest asset. It’s imperitive that the public knows you, respects you and perceives you as an expert in your field. How do you establish that?

Put up more signs, advertise on bus shelters, run ads in the community newspaper and tell everybody that you’re ‘No.1 in the office…No.1 advertiser in the XYZ newspaper…etc etc”  NO! The buying and selling public don’t give a dam about you. They are not sitting in the wings waiting for the day they can do business with you. They don’t care about you.

They’ve got a problem. To buy a house at a bargain basement price or sell a home for top dollar in the shortest possible time. Simple. That’s it. And they are looking for the agent who can solve this problem.

So the agent who markets themselves as the person who can solve other people’s problems will win the business. How does an agent attract people with problems (buyers and sellers) to him/her. They need to establish YOU.Inc.

YOU.Inc is a hub where leads are feed into. The best way to establish a hub is to start your own blog.

Blogs

Blogs are simple to establish but difficult to sustain. They require real comittment. Free services provided by Blogger and WordPress are the best but if you are going to be selling products and services from your blog (and I recommend you do adopt a multi income approach), then I’d suggest you get an account at WordPress.org. It’s also free but you will require your own hosting. Bluehost run my blog and I’ve found them to be very good. There are a ton of templates to choose from when setting up your blog; most of which are free. Check out WordPress templates or google ‘free wordpress templates for more suggestions.

Your blog needs to be infomative and ideally updated daily with content rich articles or videos. Do not attempt to sell properties on your blog. This is a vehicle where you can build trust worthy relationships with your reading public; some of whom may buy or sell a property through you. In furure posts I also show you how to monetize your blog so you can create additional funds from those who never buy or sell a property with you. It’s part of what I call the funded proposal concept.

Feeding Your Blog

Establishing YOU.Inc as the real estate expert needs regular feeding of targetted, fresh leads. This can be done through both offline and online marketing using free or paid strategies.

Free Online Marketing Strategies

1. Email Signature.

Every email you send out should include a signature. eg

Regards
Greg Reed
For great tips, ideas and articles on real estate marketing, please visit my blog http://www.magneticrealestateleads.com

2. Video Marketing

Youtube is the No.3 most visited traffic site. You MUST have a channel. Grab an inexpensive video recorder  like a Flip video camera or webcam (I like Logitech) and start recording your own videos. Check out my channel.

3. Facebook, Twitter and Myspace

With over 355 million accounts Facebook is the 5th ranked most visited site. Twitter is the fastest growing social media site in the world today virtually doubling every 90 days. By year end, Twitter will have approx 50 million users. Myspace is also another great medium but has a few more restrictions (it’s a Murdoch owned product)

4. Linked In

Grab an account and set up your profile. Many sellers are now scouting this site to discover more about their potential agents as well as prospective recruitment companies are finding LinkedIn as an invaluable source for heading top agents.

5. Article Marketing

Writing content rich articles is a great way to build relationships with buyers and seller. Ezine Articles is the grand daddy of directories to have your articles published on but there are a number of other outlets as well. I use iSnare to upload my articles to 40,000 directories.

6. Forums/Discussion Boards

There are a ton of real estate discussion forums on the internet. Google ‘real estate forums’ to get an extensive list. Join a few, create a signature back to your blog, and post regularly. Jump in for about 15 minutes a day and answer questions to other people’s problems and in no time you’ll be building solid relationships with buyers and sellers.

If you adopt the above strategy with consistency, your funnel of fresh, targetted leads to your blog will flourish and you’r quickly establish YOU.Inc as a leader in the real estate industry.

These cutting edge strategies will brand you as a real estate leader.

But like all social network sites, Facebook is a place to mix with other people, develop relationships and potentially engage in business. It is not a place to advertise products or services UNLESS you adopt a very unique approach. We address this approach in future posts but for now let’s look at setting up a Facebook account correctly so as to capitalise on a solid foundation when business opportunities arise.

Step 1

Open an account at http://www.facebook.com This will only take a few minutes. Complete your details, click the sign up button and you’ll be sent a confirmation email that your account is ready for activation. Do this and you’re away.

Step 2

Create and polish your profile. Make sure you let people know who you are and what you are about. This is a critical step and should not be hurried. Here you can also link your other interests, websites and blogs. If you need to add or delete any information here, you simply click on the edit button.

Visits some of the great Facebook sites like Mari Smith, the Queen of Facebook, and get a feel of how the professionals put this area together. Remember success leaves clues. Learn from the best.

Step 3

Join a Network. If you indicate your location when you register you’ll be automatically connected to a network. However if you are targetting people in other areas or even countries you can nominate your preferred network.

Step 4

Join Groups. Once again depending on who you are trying to connect with, search for Groups where like minded individuals hang out. Facebook allows you to join around 200 groups; so you’ve got plenty of scope. Enter the specific tye of group you are looking for into the search bar and you’ll be presented with a list of groups you can join.

Step 5

Participate in Discussion Groups. The more you are active within your chosen groups; the more people will be attracted to you. Make sure you post relevant, valuable content and skip the cheesey sales pitch. If you are perceived as a person who can help; then your relationships and ultimately your database will continue to grow.

At the end of each post make sure you are using a signature file that includes your website or blog url. If people like what they read, they’ll click onto your site.

Get these basic steps right and you’ll lay a solid foundation to creating a strong following on Facebook which will ultimately lead to more business for you. Get started now. And once you’ve got your account established, please add me as a friend by visiting http://www.facebook.com/whoisgregreed