Facebook and Twitter seem to be the two most popular social media sites on the internet these days, so why not take advantage of them to market your real estate investing business?
They are both great ways for you to improve your business through:
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Building credibility
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Extending the reach of people who know about your properties
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Educating your buyers, sellers and renters about their best options (i.e. – your stuff)
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Stand out in a crowd of competition in your area
Today we will focus on Facebook. We’ll save Twitter for another lesson.
It’s ‘All About Me’
Like many forms of advertising, Facebook’s popularity has a lot to do with people’s desire to let the world know about themselves. When they read other people’s posts and ads on Facebook, they want to know what’s in it for them.
Your job is to give the people what they want. Start by setting up Facebook pages specifically for your business. Don’t put all your rentals or wholesale deals on your own personal page. It just doesn’t look professional.
Oh, and make sure you clean up your personal page before you start creating a professional page. Your prospective customers may do some research on you. They don’t want to see that your page is full of pictures of you doing keg stands for your fraternity.
You can have multiple pages if you’d like, depending on the type of investing you do:
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A wholesaler might want to have one page for buyers and one for sellers
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Rental property owners might want to have one for potential renters and one for property sellers
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Note buyers might just want one for note sellers
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Mobile home investors may use one for sellers of mobile homes, one for sellers of mobile home parks, and one for financing mobile home notes
You know your business better than we do. We suggest you have one for each type of customer you target.
I Have My Page – Now What?
Don’t just throw all your wholesale properties on your page and forget it. This is where you want to show you care about your customers. Here are some tips for making your page shine and putting the word out in a way that will bring in more customers…
Start with your picture. Make it look professional. People want to deal with people who have all their ducks in a row. That starts with a nice, clean, professional picture of yourself.
Use the 80/20 rule as a guide for the mix of general information you put on your page compared to the amount of direct advertising you do. That means 80% of your page should be information a prospective buyer or seller could use to make himself or herself more successful.
For sellers, you want to deal with the motivated ones. The sellers who just had a death in the family, a divorce, got in over their heads financially, or need to move right away, for example. Think about what is going through their mind and how you can help solve their problem. Helpful posts might include:
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What they can do with some quick cash
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Testimonials of other sellers you have helped in the past
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Reviews of good moving companies in their area
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The costs of fixing up a house to get it into saleable condition
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Links to good contractors you have used
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Explanations of how to improve people’s credit
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Tips for helping the kids manage a parent’s divorce
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Tax consequences of foreclosure and how to help mitigate them
For buyers, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to buy. Think about all the roadblocks other investors might have to purchasing property. Then provide articles on how they can remove those roadblocks:
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Recommendations of hard-money lenders
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Articles on how to analyze a property as a potential investment
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Tips on staging a property to help get the highest sale price
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Paperwork that protects the investor when dealing with contractors
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Tax consequences of flipping
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Asset protection strategies
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Affiliate links to Real Estate Mogul
No matter what kind of investor you are, it also pays to put information on your page about the area where you invest. People in your target market will be interested in what is going on in your area. Those people may not be the motivated seller or cash buyer you want, but they may know motivated sellers or cash buyers.
Putting items of interest for your area on your Facebook page helps by:
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Showing people you’re a local guy or gal who’d be easy to reach
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Highlighting why the area is a good spot to own property
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Giving prospective buyers a great idea of demographics, crime rates and school district to see if it is where they would like to be
I Have A Page – Now What?
Once you have your page up and looking professional, don’t stop there. There are a bunch of features that you can use to extend your marketing reach. Here are a few of the ones we recommend:
Post Regularly – Just like a blog, your Facebook page should be updated on a regular basis. Whether you have a virtual assistant do it, or update it yourself, your readers will want to see fresh content. Not to mention, your page will rank higher when people are searching for your information.
Add Friends – The more Facebook friends you have, the more exposure your page will have. Reach out to other investors on forums, REIA events, or other networking you do, and invite them to become a Facebook friend. You can add new friends every day. But don’t add more than about 30 a day – Facebook will ban users who jack this way up.
Use Your Timeline – This area used to be called the ‘Profile’ or ‘Wall’ but is now the Timeline. It’s where information from your ‘Friends’ shows up. This is a good place to comment on their posts, but do so in a helpful manner that will have their friends notice you.
Market Your Events – Maybe you want to have a seminar on how to earn better (and safer) than market rate returns on money in real estate? In other words, you want to attract private lenders. You can set up a Facebook event to bring people in for an educational seminar. Here is a tutorial on how to set up an Event.
Set Up Fan Pages – Fan pages are visible to everyone on the internet, rather than your Profile page that is just for Facebook users. You can use Fan pages almost like another website, where you can showcase deals to your buyers, provide useful information or interact with other investors. Here is how to set one up.
In this lesson, we have just scratched the surface of what you can do with Facebook to help your real estate business. By Googling ‘Marketing with Facebook,’ ‘Facebook for real estate’ or other similar search terms, you can gain a ton more information.
One thing is for sure…
Social media is here to stay and TONS of people are on it. Among those tons of people are future prospective buyers and sellers. Isn’t it time you went after them?
Put Yourself Out There – Motivated sellers won’t just knock on your door and give you the keys. Go find them. Whether it’s online or offline.
Link – Don’t do one form of marketing in a vacuum. If you have a blog, let people know about every post in social media. Promote your events on Craigslist, social media and through word of mouth. You never know where your next lead will come from.
Help People – Your prospects want to know you care about them. Spend a lot of your time giving away information. Help them be successful. You want people who will come back to you again and again. Or refer their friends to you.
Stay At It – Don’t stop your marketing just because you found a good deal. Keep the pipeline full.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.