Facebook business pages are different from your personal profile. Your profile should have a picture of you and information about you. Your real estate business cannot have a personal profile. In order to be on Facebook your business must have an ‘Official Page’ and can list and present everything that relates to your real estate business.

Also Read: Facebook: Profiles, Fan Pages, and Groups… Oh My!

On your Real Estate Business page, you should include (at minimum) the following information:

- Overview of your real estate business
- Website address and contact info
- Videos (listings and or/rentals)
- Blog RSS and your Blog URL
- Updated news and status

You can use up to 6 tabs (you can use more, but they won’t be readily displayed without clicking on the ‘>>’ tab). Your six tabs should consist of:

Wall Tab:
This is where you interact with your ‘fans’ and keep them up to days with current news and information.

Info Tab:
Fill this in with as much information as you can about you, your business, and what makes you different from other agents.

Welcome Tab:
A customized page that is very similar to your website, but within Facebook. This can be a single static page, a page with information and videos, or a fully customized mini-website. You should have at least one video embedded on this tab. If you don’t know HTML or FBML you can get a free real estate welcome page by ‘liking’ Social Networking for Real Estate Agents on Facebook. (Just click on the tab that says ‘FREE’.)

Real Estate Tab:
I recommend using Roost for this tab. It is very simple to configure and has a lot of features built-in.

Offer Tab:
Whether you use Market Snapshot, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp or any other form of keeping in touch with potential clients, this tab helps you collect information from potential clients so that you can keep in touch.

RSS/Blog Tab:
I recommend using Social RSS. You should keep you blog updated at least 2-3 times a week. Using the Socail RSS application, your blog will automatically update your Facebook business page.
So, what are the 7 reasons your Facebook real estate page needs an IMMEDIATE face-lift?

Reason # 1. Traffic

The Facebook statistics speak for themselves. Facebook now has over 2.6 billion monthly visitors and growing… with your real estate business page you can leverage the power of Facebook and drive more traffic to you site.

Reason # 2. There is NO COST

If you setup your business page yourself, you don’t have to spend a dime for this POWERFUL lead generator.  If you don’t know HTML or FBML, you can get a free custom page just by ‘liking’ Social Networking for Real Estate Agents on Facebook.

Reason # 3. Viral Marketing

There are many ways you can use a Facebook business page as a viral marketing tool! Suggest your business page to all of your friends. Grow both your friend and ‘fan’ base and then give your ‘fans’ something to share. They will!

Reason # 4. SEO Power

Unlike a personal profile, business pages ARE completely public (there are some exceptions but that is beyond the scope of this post) and indexed by search engines. You will want to name your page something SEO friendly, keeping in mind that once you name your page you cannot change the name. Once you have 25 ‘fans’ you will want to customize your Facebook URL to something SEO friendly and you can also use anchor text linking (this is a huge secret, but I am revealing it anyway) to drive not only TRAFFIC but also relevant backlinks.

Reason # 5. Updates

You can update your ‘fans’ in multiple ways! You can post to your wall, share on your personal profile to attract new fans or send a mass update to all of your ‘fans’ through your administrator controls on ‘edit page’ (lower right hand side). You can also TARGET your updates to specific fans based on demographics.

Reason # 6. Unlimited ‘Fans’

Unlike a personal profile which restricts you to 5,000 connections (business pages and friends combined), your business page can have an unlimiteded amount of ‘fans’.

Reason # 7. Connects with Nearly EVERYTHING

Facebook business pages can be connected with twitter, linkedin, youtube and countless other social networking sites. You can also use the ‘like’ feature on your self-hosted WordPress blog using Simple Facebook Connect. (Simple Twitter Connect is another powerful plugin for your self-hosted WordPress blog)

Pretty soon, if not argumentatively already, Facebook business pages will become as important as having a website. If you want to stay ahead of your competition you will need to set up your page correctly now and secure your keywords in your Facebook URL!

-Cheryl

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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Recently, Facebook made changes to Fan pages which affect the way that people, brands, public figures, topics, etc. are connected as it relates to pages on Facebook. With these changes comes the introduction of Community pages and new restrictions set forth on what are now ‘Official Pages’.

(Yes, I know I wasn’t sure in my last post on the subject of ‘Official Pages’ however it’s now… well… ‘Official’)

What used to be ‘Fan Pages’ have now become ‘Official Pages’ or ‘Community pages’. ‘Official Pages’ are now restricted to being created by authorized representatives of an entity, while ‘Community Pages’ now have more of a ‘Community’ feel (and are controlled by Facebook).

Both types of pages have changed the ‘become a fan’ language to simply ‘like’. Facebook states that this particular change offers a more ‘light-weight’ way for people to connect with entities.

According to Facebook:

“Only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band may create a Facebook Page. The Page creator can then add other representatives to help them manage the Page. Each Page admin will be able to update and edit their Pages from their own accounts.”

Community pages on the other hand are designed to allow people to connect and discuss topics, experiences and causes. These new Community Pages will beconnected with Wikipedia under the creative commons license and will display logo and profile information based on the Wikipedia article for that community’s topic. Facebook will also be displaying related posts in real time on Community Pages.

So what is the difference?

According to Facebook:

“Community Pages are built around topics, causes or experiences. Official Pages are maintained by authorized representatives of a business, brand, celebrity, or organization, and they can create and share content about the entities that they represent. Community Pages, on the other hand, won’t generate stories in your News Feed, and won’t be maintained by a single author.”

What this means to you..

You can still create an ‘Official Page’ for your business or brand, however if you would like to create a generic page to discuss ‘all things real estate’ or ‘all things foreclosure’, then you would do best to start a community page on the subject. When people like your business or brand, they simply click ‘like’ to connect with you and/or your business/brand. People can ‘like’ up to 500 pages and that comes out of their 5,000 connection total for people and entities combined.

What’s my takeaway on this change?

I personally like the change.

For one, the change of the terminology ‘become a fan’ to ‘like’ offers a more ‘non-committal’ way for people to connect with your business. To me, ‘become a fan’ seems more of a commitment than someone simply clicking ‘like’. I think this gives businesses more of a reach in the long run. People are making the same connection to your business, but to the consumer it is less of a commitment to ‘like’ something than it is to become an all-out fan.

Also in my opinion, what the ‘Official’ and ‘Community’ page change does is clean up the mess.

For example, this eliminates the annoying… “Become a fan of”…

‘Can this page get more fans than [fill in the blank]’

‘How many [fill in the blank] does it take to [fill in the blank]‘

‘I hate my [enter brand here] cell phone because_____’

‘Farmville fanatics fan page #99,999,999′

‘Mafia Wars fanatics fan page #99,999,999’

You get the picture. Pretty much, now you will either have to have a company, brand, or be a public figure in order to set up a page. If you really feel compelled to talk about Mafia wars or Farmville, you can visit the one (1) community page designated for that topic.

What do you think about the change?

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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This post was requested by AR member Melissa Zavala. In her comment on my blog post Facebook: Profiles, Fan Pages, and Groups… Oh My!

She asks “…Can you write a blog post about how to embed youtube video into a fan page? I know how to insert it into an fb personal page, but cannot figure out how to add it to a fan page…”

No problem Melissa!

With Facebook custom business pages you are most likely going to be using the static FBML app. If you are not sure how to add or use it, just check out the videoHow to Create Your Own Facebook Custom Fan Page

In order to add YouTube, Facebook or swf videos to your custom fan page, you are going to have to get a little bit ‘techy’. It’s actually pretty simple, but if you have never even worked with HTML, then FBML may be a bit intimidating. Fear not though because I am going to make this as simple as possible for you.

When you are editing your custom business page using the static FBML application you will see an empty box.

In that box you will need to paste your CSS, HTML and FBML. Let’s say for the sake of argument right now that we want to just add a youtube video with a headline, a subheading, and a little anchor text below the video linking to our website. What we are going to need first is a little HTML to get this started.

Let’s start with the headline. I am just going to be using the H1 tag here because there are a lot of HTML tags that will not work with the static FBML application. Most of them include font color, sizes and positioning. All of that NEEDS to be controlled with CSS, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

<h1>This is My Awesome Headline</h1>

That will give you a nice large, bold headline that will be left aligned. Now lets add a break so that the subheading starts on the next line and add our subheading.

<h1>This is My Awesome Headline</h1><br >

<h2>This is My Cool Subheading</h2>

Ok great, now we have both our headline and subheading. Let’s get to the fun part. Adding the video in FBML. Now I will let you know here that there are different versions of FBML, but as long as you are using the most current FBML version, then you do not need to specify FBML with tags. <FBML></FBML>

For our video we are going to be using <fb:swf>. Now there are many variables and controls that we can add here, but we are going to keep this nice and simple.

<h1>This is My Awesome Headline</h1><br >

<h2>This is My Cool Subheading</h2><br>

<fb:swf

swfbgcolor=”000000″

imgstyle=”border-width:3px; border-color:white;”

swfsrc=’http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxx’

imgsrc=’http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/1.jpg’

width=’340′ height=’270′ />

Ok cool now all we have to do is get our video ID from youtube and replace the xxxxxxx above for both. Don’t change anything else unless you are certain that you know what you are doing.

Ok now we are going to add another break and some anchor text underneath the video that leads to our website.

<h1>This is My Awesome Headline</h1><br >

<h2>This is My Cool Subheading</h2><br>

<fb:swf

swfbgcolor=”000000″

imgstyle=”border-width:3px; border-color:white;”

swfsrc=’http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxx’

imgsrc=’http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/1.jpg’

width=’340′ height=’270′ /><br>

Please visit <a href=http://www.MyCoolWebsite.com>My Cool Website</a><br>

Copy and paste all of your code into the FMBL box, choose the title of your tab and that’s it. You have successfully added a heading, subheading, video and anchor text to your custom business fan page. When you are done it should look like this:

Have another request for a tutorial? Leave a comment and let me know.

If you like what you read here, please ‘Like’ Custom Fan Pages so I can send you updates when new tutorials come out.

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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Maybe you are new to Facebook and maybe you are not, but maybe you still wonder whether you should add a Fan page, start a group or even bother with any of it at all. I mean what’s the difference anyway? Right?

Actually… Quite a bit.

Let’s start with personal profiles

First and foremost; if you are currently using your personal profile to promote your business by using a business name and/or logo on your personal profile…. STOP! Personal profiles are for individuals, not businesses. Not only is it against Facebook terms of service, it also detracts from the whole idea of being ‘social’. Guys, really? It’s not called ‘Logobook’ or ‘Brandbook’. Personal profiles need to have a picture of you. No and ifs or buts… use your college photo if you want, that’s fine…

Your personal profile is the first profile you set up on Facebook. (In very rare instances there is a business management account, but I will not go into that with this post)With your personal profile you post an image of yourself, post information about you and share pics, links, information etc with other friends in your network. Personal profiles are only allowed up to 5,000 friends and pages combined.  So that means if you are a fan of 100 pages, your friend limit is 4,900. Become a fan  (now this has been changed to ‘like’ a page) of 200 pages and your friend limit is 4,800. You get the idea. Basically, you can only have ‘connections’ to 5,000 people, entities or brands COMBINED on a personal profile.

Why would you want 5,000 friends? Ok, this is where the lines get a little burred between business and personal. You can also get your account deleted by Facebook if you go about it the wrong way or try to do it too quickly. Having 5,000 friends in the same industry as you is a quite powerful business tool. I won’t get much into it in this post, but start seeking out 10-20 people inside and outside your industry each day and send a friend request with an introduction. Try to make as many professional connections as you can. Believe me 5,000 people that play Farmville is NOT going to help you in the long run.

That’s about as far as I am going with personal profiles for this post. Right now, if you are currently using a business logo, brand, trademark or emblem on your personal page, I highly suggest you jump over to FaceBook right now to upload a personal  photo and make sure that you are using your real name and not your business name …then come back to read the rest of this post.

See Also How to Avoid Being Scammed on Facebook | Verifying Applications

Fan Pages

Fan pages are for real businesses, brands, artists or public figures and essentially are their own identity. You must be an official representative of that entity in order to create a page.  Once a page is created it essentially IS its own person. Pages cannot be publically tracked back to the creator of the page or the admins unless you choose to reveal that on your page. Pages allow you to update fans by demographic, which is really useful for target marketing. Fans can interact with your brand and have discussions, leave reviews, watch videos etc. etc.

Using an application called static FBML, you can add a custom tab to your fan page which is essentially a mini-website within Facebook. You can create your own custom fan page or have a custom fan page professional designed and uploaded for you. You can then set the default landing page for new fans to be sent directly to your custom Facebook business page. Current fans will always be taken directly to your fan page wall.

Also see Video: How to Create Your Own Facebook Custom Fan Page

And How to Add Your ActiveRain Blog to Your Facebook Fan Page in 10 Mins

There is no limit to the amount of fans you can have for a fan page and you can mass update all of your fans via email and on your fans walls via the fan page wall. Fan page updates are also integrated into Google real-time search results, whereas personal profile wall updates are not. Fan page content is publically visible (and searchable by search engines) regardless of a visitor’s status as a fan. (This is controllable using FBML, however that is beyond the scope of this post)

Groups

Groups are different from fan pages in a couple of ways. While they also have no limit to the number of members within the group, you will not be able to email update the members of your group once its size reaches 5,000 members. Groups also give you control over membership to the group. With a fan page, fans just click to become a fan and that’s it. Presto. They are a fan of your page. With groups, you can control who can become a member. You can choose to make it a private group, open to the public or limited to a certain network of people. If you choose you can also require an admin of the group to approve each group member before they are allowed access to the group. You can change these settings at any time and also choose to block specific people from joining at all. The only setting that cannot be changed is a network-specific group. Once a group is network specific, it cannot become global.

Membership types in a group

Members of a group can see content of that group based on the privacy settings set by the admins of the group. The number of groups a person joins does not affect their friend/pages limit but each person is limited to joining 300 groups in total. Group officers are listed on the group’s page and are essentially the same as any other member, besides being listed as an officer. Only group admins can make changes, send updates, set privacy or appoint other admins to the group.

So there you have it. There is a quick overview of the difference between personal profiles, fan pages, and groups. Keep your personal profile personal, your fans (potential clients and customers) updated and your members (current customers and clients) connected to your business through the use of these powerful business tools!

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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Looking to create a custom Fan page on Facebook? Well I have two videos for you! The first one is shameless advertising for my custom Facebook Fan page service, but please watch it as I had a lot of fun making it and would love your feedback on the video.

The second video is a short video that shows you how to create your own custom fan page. Now, don’t yell at me here, you will need a good understanding of HTML and some FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to get your custom fan page working correctly and I do not go over that in this video. However, if you have a basic understanding of HTML, know a little about FBML, and you have a good HTML editor, this video will show you how to create your own custom fan page. Pay attention to the video as I give you a few tips on how to get HTML to work within Facebook by leaving out some common tags.

Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com

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