"Opportunities multiply as they are seized" – Sun TzuStarting with another Sun Tzu quote? What is he thinking?I believe that Facebook (and social media in general) offers you the opportunity to engage with people who you wouldn’t normally be able to engage with while giving you a free and easy medium to build your brand. You must seize the opportunities available to you on Facebook or face being left behind in a cloud of smoke as your competitors latch on to the Facebook frenzy!This blog is all about your Facebook Page – what it is, why you need one, and how to get the most of it.
Uh, what is a Facebook Page and why do I need one?
To refresh your memories, a Facebook Page is a page you can create on Facebook about anything you want – for your purposes, you will either want a Page for your agency or yourself as an agent representing an agency.Most people, after "Liking" your page won't ever come back to it – So what is the point of having one?Having a Facebook Page is important, because it will allow you to interact with potential, existing and past clients on a medium they are comfortable with. While your fans and followers may never go back to your page again, they can still engage with the content you post from your Page as it appears in their News Feed.Another reason why having a Facebook Page is important, is that unlike personal profiles on Facebook, Pages can be indexed and ranked by search engines (like Google) which is important for something called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – a topic that I will cover in depth later in this series. Basically having a Page on Facebook that ranks highly and points to your agency’s domain name is good for you when someone does a search for "Real estate agents in [suburb]".
Setting up a Facebook Page
Take a look at the video tutorial in last week's blog to understand the basics of setting up your Facebook Page.I also recommend you take a look at this page and go through the processes it explains on setting up some more advanced features of your Page.
Setting up a Landing Page
A landing page is the page a user will "land" on before being able to see the content of your Facebook Page. A landing page serves multiple purposes including:
- Introducing yourself/your agency to the person looking at your Page
- Explains the benefit of liking your page to the person
- Helps with your branding
The reason you want to encourage people to like your page isn't to have more likes than any other agent/agency in your area (though that will give you a warm fuzzy feeling).
You want people to like your page because it then gives you access to their information. It also gives you the ability to share your content with them - helping you to build your brand and profile.
Red Bull have a very cool landing page on their Facebook Page, that very clearly encourages people to like their page:
Setting up a Landing Page will require some technical skill, so if you're not very tech savvy, talk to your web developer about setting up a Facebook Landing Page for your Page or take a look at this page to learn how to do it yourself.
Using Facebook as your Page
Before you can start posting content to your page, you need to know how to log in to your Facebook Page from your Facebook Profile and how to switch back to your profile when you are done. There are two ways you can do this:If you are curently on your page, you can click the link that says "Use Facebook as [Page Name]" to the right of the page.
And you can switch back to your own profile by clicking the link that says "Use Facebook as [Your Name]"
The second way to use Facebook as your page is to click on the "Account" tab in the main navigation bar of Facebook, then clicking on "Use Facebook as Page", then pressing the "Switch" button for the right page on the dialog that pops up.
Switching back to your profile can also be done through the "Account" tab by clicking the "Switch back to [Your Name]" link.
Nice and easy!
Getting “Likes”
The best and easiest way to get likes (aka fans and followers) on your Facebook Page is to suggest your page to your Facebook Friends. You just have to click on the "Invite friends" link in your Page's navigation menu on the right hand side and select the friends you want to invite.
It's probably a good idea to tell your friends to expect a Page Suggestion, otherwise they will probably pass it off as "just another page to like" and ignore it.This great article gives you 50 ways to get more Likes on your Facebook Page.
Setting up your Vanity URL
By default, all Pages created on Facebook get an assigned URL that contains a randomly assigned number (facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness/123456789). Once you have 25 or more people who have Liked your page, you can get what is commonly called a "Vanity URL" – (facebook.com/yourbusiness).Having the Vanity URL gives you a shorter Facebook URL that is easier to remember and it also gives your page an extra level of professionalism.This article explains how to set up your Vanity URL for your Facebook Page.Up next...In the next post, I'll be delving into the different content types you can post onto your Facebook Page...
