The Dirty Little Secret About Realtor Facebook Training

Written By: Frances Flynn Thorsen

The secret about REALTOR Facebook training in most quarters is pretty simple. Most real estate Facebook training sets the students up for failure if the students’ aim is to learn social media skills that will advance their business. Here is a checklist of topics REALTORS should cover in the course of their Facebook training.

1. Terms of Service. Facebook is built upon a solid educational culture. Business solicitation on personal profile pages is highly discouraged. Wonder why people lose their accounts? Behavior leading to account deactivation include massive friend hijacking, placing marketing links on other people’s profile pages, extensive advertising on the offender’s own page, and similar conduct. Understand that the culture of Facebook is best understood with a thorough examination of the Terms of Service.

2. Legal Compliance. Fully 99% of the REALTOR pages I survey regularly at Facebook are noncompliant with state licensing law. Brokerage name and contact information are not readily seen on agents’ and brokers’ profile pages. Many of these agents have completed “social media training” in many venues, in person and online. Most real estate offices still do not have a written social media policy.

3. Going Viral with Questionable Marketing Tactics. Real estate licensees pay less and less attention to serious risk management in the bricks-and-mortar world; they increase brokerage jeopardy when they play with those matches online. Internal saber rattling at Attorney General offices in many states makes think that predatory marketing of distressed homeowners will be the undoing of some brokerages in 2010.

4. Calling Social Media a Marketing Channel. Social media is NOT a marketing channel. Social media is a conversational medium. There are fundamental precepts about purely social engagement that eschews traditional marketing language and methods. ROI is less easily applied to social networking plans.

5. Lack of Strategy aka “ActiveRain syndrome”. Some bricks-and-mortar strategies apply to online engagement. In recent years, the ActiveRain blog community established a peer-to-peer social networking model replicated among licensees on other social platforms. Take the First Time Home Buyer Seminar bricks-and-mortar marketing device. Whom does a REALTOR invite? A lender? … home inspector? … and people who are renting! Does a Coldwell Banker REALTOR host invite all the RE/MAX agents in town? There are increasing numbers of qualified REALTOR groups where agents can gather and engage … Women’s Council of REALTORS has new groups, CRS and other specialty groups are pages where licensees can gather and share ideas.

6. Choose Friends Wisely/UNfriend Fellow REALTORS. Most REALTORS’ Facebook Friends lists are comprised of fellow REALTORS. Trainers can share good dialogue for declining Friend requests and UNfriending fellow REALTORS. I urge students to UNfriend their colleagues with words that acknowledge their plan of action. Example: “I am grateful for your friendship in real life and I look forward for ways that we can connect online to advance our business. I am designing a social media strategy that reserves my Facebook profile page for close friends and family. Thank you for your friendship … Let’s connect at the Women’s Council of REALTORS Region 4 page.”

7. Facebook Fan Page Titles are Written in Stone. Once you start a Fan Page, the title is a permanent part of the page. Do NOT use your company name in the title of the Fan Page unless (a) you have the broker’s permission to use the company name and (b) you expect to stay at that company for the duration of your real estate career.

8. A Teacher Is a Model. Be clear about strategy. Study the teacher’s Facebook presence. Does the teacher actively list and sell real estate? What is the ratio of consumers to licensees on the teacher’s pages? Can you see a strategy that you can emulate for dollar-productive results in your market?

Engage and Enjoy Success!

About Frances Flynn Thorsen

Thorsen got her real estate license and became a REALTOR® in 1985. She was an early adopter of real estate technology on the Internet. Frances was one of the first real estate bloggers to receive national attention early in 2005, with interviews in Investors’ Business Daily, BusinessWeek Online, Inman News, REALTOR® Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was founding editor of RealTown.com and worked as Community Manager of Trulia.com. She is CEO of Socialebb Strategies and Solutions and offers an ecumenical approach to blog and social media coaching and consulting services. She created “Social Media: Tips to Avoid A Risk Management Nightmare,” a continuing education class for real estate agents in Arizona. She appeared on the 2008 list of “50 Most Influential Women in Real Estate in the U.S.” and the 2009 Proxio list of “25 Most Connected Real Estate Professionals.” She was recently named one of the “100 Most Influential, Interesting, and Impressive People on Twitter” by national trendsetter Stefan Swanepoel.

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