So what are some of these “unwritten rules” that you can guide your Facebook Page posts? Here are some good general rules that you may find you need to adjust for your audience:

• Post every day. That may seem excessive to you but as people make more friends and Like more pages, your posts may be missed. If you are only posting once or twice a week then it could be a long time between posts if your community misses one or two of them. There are studies that show posting between 3-5 times a day can be good amount for Pages (make sure you are varying your posts and also watch your statistics to see what works best for your community). You can decide that you might take the weekend off but also realize that the weekend is when many people are on Facebook.
• Focus on engagement. You are trying to connect and get response from your community. Ask questions, post helpful tips, links to articles that your audience will Like and Share. When you make the posts about your audience and what they need rather than selling, you will develop a richer and deeper relationship with your community. You will sell more as a byproduct of that deeper relationship. Set aside time to follow up on posts and respond to questions on your Wall.
• Have a call to action. Tell people to click the Like or comment on the post. Or have them watch your video or go to your website.
• Don’t oversell or undersell. No one likes a never-ending sales pitch. By the same token, make sure you do highlight your wares from time-to-time! Use the 80-20 rule for sales messages vs. content/connection posts. So if you decide to post five times a week, one of the posts should be a sales message and four posts will be other helpful or fun content for your community.
• Make it fun. Facebook is a social community. People are there to have fun. This is a place where you can let your corporate hair down a little. Stay true to your brand but think of ways to entertain your audience.

Click here to read the free HubSpot White Paper yourself!

Google explains the change best with:

“Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”

Read more: Official Google Blog: Search, plus Your World

While Social Network integration is still very much in it’s infancy, it is quickly becoming the future and we must all watch it unfold to stay ahead of the game. Here are some tips on what to look out for and how to build your Social Network data now:

1. Google+ will obviously align with Google’s search while Facebook results will be pushed farther down the rankings. The vice versa will occur with Microsoft’s Facebook-aligned search engine Bing. This will make it important for people to have multiple Social Network accounts so they can achieve high rankings on each search engine – and, in turn, reach the most amount of people possible.
2. Start posting relevant content now! It will take time for Social Search to mature and you’ll want to be on the frontlines when it does. Start thinking about how to make your Social Network postings and shares more relevant to the search results you’d like them associated with. Also, the greater amount of content on your Social Networks the better.
3. Social Search is going to level the playing field by allowing you to leapfrog SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Today, you must compete with highly paid and resourced SEO experts to rank high on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). In the near future, instead of writing articles that have to work their way up to the front page in traditional search, you can instead have your content displayed at the top of the SERP using your preferred Social Network. Keep writing great, focused and relevant content and sharing those articles and posts on Social Networks. The content you contribute will ultimately end up being displayed, allowing other people to find your content and connect with you.

As Social Search matures, Real Estate Rainmaker will keep you in the loop with the latest important updates. Stay tuned!

Introducing RAINMAKER SOCIAL, the one-of-a-kind collection of tools to enhance your RAINMAKER MEGA SITE and bring it into the Social Age. Social Media and “social search” have arrived. And, the future is now. Here’s why:

• “Inbound links are a good measure of authority, but they are slow. In a social media world, a relevant piece of content on a subject could become outdated in minutes.” – RAINMAKER SOCIAL users love the easy-to-use share tools in the new system compared to the out-dated (and slower) inbound links. With the share tools, you can constantly share content and stay relevant without the wait!
• “Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter are battling over the future of search. It is clear to all of these internet giants that social search is the future.” – These companies basically decide what user’s search. As they enhance Social Search, we all will be taken along for the ride too. That’s why it’s important for RAINMAKER SOCIAL users to hop on the bandwagon now so you get an early start on the future ahead of your competition.
• “Google+ is the fastest growing social network ever.” Google+ is not important – not yet — in the inherent contact database sense like Facebook. However, going forward Google will be using Google+ as its main source of social search data. Because Google is the #1 search engine in the world (no surprise there!) that makes Google+ an important tool in Google’s Social Search Rankings. Bottom line: Social search is coming on fast. Ride the wave…don’t get drowned by it.
• “Facebook’s current share of the search engine market is miniscule… why does Facebook not have at least a negligible portion of the search market? Simple: Private data. … The limitations of private data make Facebook a weak search engine and subsequently resulted in very little usage.” – This however has changed recently with the inclusion of the ability to select your own privacy settings with each individual post. RAINMAKER SOCIAL users are now sharing via the PUBLIC option that is now included. Use this public option as much as possible and you will build a pool of data and results that optimize your chances of being found through Facebook search.
• “Social search is really about more personalized search engine results.” – Search in the future will be personalized. That’s why RAINMAKER SOCIAL users are building their personal search network today.

Don’t miss out on the future. Check out www.RainmakerSocial.com for more information and order today to get a jump on your competition!

For more about integrating search and social marketing read this excellent, free whitepaper: www.hubspot.com/internet-marketing-whitepapers/

Jesse Hickman

Information you may want to include in your database could encompass personal information from birthdays, anniversaries, spouse/kid/pet names or ages/grades, interests/hobbies, special wants/needs for a home, etc. The information you add to your database deepens the knowledge you have of your customers and can allow you to personalize and customize long-term contact in the future.

The time is now to gather external information about your customers to invest in your business for the future. Personalized communication combined with relevant content, appropriate message and good design, can increase your market share easily. Gathering this additional information is dependent only on your ability to listen closely and record what you learn for future reference.

Let us know how you get the details and use those details to build your business.

If you’re holding an open house, you might want to put something fun (but something innocent and obvious) to encourage visitors: “Seats to view the home are going fast, don’t miss the limited-time engagement before it’s SOLD!”

You can likely incorporate some “fun” into special seminars you might hold for first-time home buyers or first-time home sellers — use the same limited-time engagement offer. When you offer free information, add a little zip to it by asking a short, fun question to the registration process.

When you add a little humor to what is normally a dry business communication, you’ll get a little more attention, perhaps a smile and engage a little more with the home buyer/seller.

Don’t be afraid to add a little fun to your marketing.

How do you incorporate humor into your marketing endeavors?

Now what?

Developing relationships is a goal and requires time and diligence.  You’re building not only clients, but many friends and acquaintances too.  The problem now is that you need to remember to include your marketing message even after you’ve successfully developed that relationship.

When you socialize with others who, at one time, may have been a client, you need to gently remind these people that you still can help them — or their contacts — buy or sell a home.

It’s something simple you need to remember to do when you see someone.   Don’t forget your marketing message.  You never know when you might find some new business!

Let us know how you incorporate your marketing message in your social network.

The key is, how are you promoting you blog?  Take a step back and think of all the ways your are promoting your blog — or the no-cost or low-cost ways you can promote your blog to generate more home buying and home selling readers.

Here’s a checklist to check how your blog promotion measures up:

• Regular emails focusing solely on your blog — targeted to your email lists’ needs and situation
• Mention your blog in phone conversations, emails and in-person meetings
• Include a pop-up on your main website announcing blog and inviting people to sign up for RSS feed/email list to auto receive new posts right when they’re posted.
• Include blog address on any reprinting of business cards and any marketing/paperwork
• Mention your blog in your printed and email newsletters
• Update contact info on your website to include blog address prominently
• If you have a resources site on your main website, be sure to list your blog address
• If you have an about section on your main website, mention that you blog regularly
• Consider adding a flyer or blurb about your blog in any direct mail piece that goes out if it doesn’t affect weight and/or message of original piece
• When someone posts to the blog, be sure to contact clients who might benefit the most — buyers about a buyer blog topic; sellers about a seller blog post
• Consider finding someone to guest blog on your site — a mortgage loan professional, local handyman, house stager, etc.
• Consider blog address and Twitter contact info important enough to include in all your contact info
• Comment on others’ related blog posts
• Respond promptly to all comments
• Research signing on to blog directories
• Think about where home buying and selling consumers visit and read (& comment) on those blogs

Let us know how you promote your blog to generate more traffic — and more business.  Share your ideas!

• “Average prices are like average temperatures…neither one is relevant to your local situation.  Average price in United States is no more useful than average temperature in North America.”
• “Do you want to price to sell or price to sit?” (Variation: “Do you want to sell or list?”)
• “Must be a compelling price, not just a competitive price.”
• “Should be a ‘worry price.’  When prospective buyer leaves driveway they must be worried someone else will buy it first.”
• “Reduce price until we get nibbles.  Keep reducing until we get low ball offers because then we will begin to get good offers.”
• “If no offers, then market is saying price is off 2%.  If no activity, then market is saying we’re 5% off.  If no nothing, then market is saying the price is 10% off or more.”
• No price in ad or flyer: “Due to rapidly changing market, call us to learn the current price.”

What have you found works to get sellers to ‘price right’ from the start?

Just last week, the California Association of Relators released its “2009 Survey of California Home Buyers”. In this survey, I took note of those home buyers surveyed who reported using the Internet as a tool in the home buying process.  They reported that the web sites they used were:

• Realtor.com (89%)
• Individual real estate company web sites (81%)
• Individual real estate agent web sites (66%)
• Zillow (55%)
• Yahoo! Real Estate (53%)

And…drumroll please:

• Craigslist (49%)

So those of you who haven’t started using craigslist as a tool in your marketing, what are you waiting for?  Sure, you can say craigslist only works in California (where the report data is from), but the Rainmakers Dan talks to are from all over the U.S. and not just California.

Perhaps what is holding you back is that you’ve never been on craigslist.  Go there right now – find the list for your city – and see what it’s all about.  You probably have something in your home (think attic, garage, basement, etc.)  that you need to sell.  Before you jump in putting one of your home listings on craigslist, go list an odd item for sale to get your feet wet with the free service.  Alternatively, you can browse the ads and you just might find something you just can’t live without.  Either way, go see what craigslist is all about and start putting it to work for you  to increase your business.

Let us know what your experience has been using craigslist.  And, if you don’t use craigslist in your marketing mix, let us know why you’ve chosen to leave it out.

How To Get More Mileage From Good Press

I suggested Jim forward the blog link to his local newspaper. News is Big Business in Columbia, Missouri, where I got my Masters in Journalism (1978) because the university town has two newspapers – the local Columbia Tribune and the J-school newspaper: the Columbia Missourian. We used to say, “Columbia has more reporters covering Columbia than the New York Times has covering the world.” Even truer today.

After sending a link to my blog post, a reporter called Jim from the Columbia Tribune to do a story on Student Housing. The story and photos – including a picture of Jim and his colleague Jody Calvin – appeared on July 11: “Home sweet home: Local Realtors from Prudential Vision Properties are promoting homeownership for college students and their parents.” Jim couldn’t buy better ink or pixels.

Even More Publicity To Come

Jim is now planning to mail photocopies of the printed article to his prospect database and also send it to investor/owners in the Columbia market. Advertising in local student housing publications is also in the future. I recommend Jim offer a “FREE Student Housing Hot List” of properties for sale from his local MLS to maximize lead generation.

Nice work, Jim. Great way to take that publicity ball and keep it rolling into business!