Once upon a time there were print real estate advertisements only, newspapers, flyers and so on. Then the MLS computer systems came along with sharing listing information among real estate members. In the early 2000s, IDX was the next big thing with letting the listing information reach the public through other brokers' and agents' websites, providing additional exposure to properties by aggregating home buyer traffic on 3rd party websites. Listing syndication, single property websites with SEO and listing widgets followed and property information reached new destinations - places where home buyers were gathering and searching on: classified sites, Google and other search engines and blogs.
And now we have something new and fresh and powerful emerging from the horizon ! Ready?
Introducing the Facebook Listing Pages for your RealBird Single Property Websites
Facebook recently launched their new Facebook Platform including the "Like" button for the web. The "Like" button is a small widget that website and blog owners can add to their sites. Visitors with a Facebook account (~400 million of them) can like and recommend the content on their network. However, most implementations are "simple" sharing solutions only and do not utilize the full Facebook Open Graph platform.
The RealBird solution that we released last Friday takes this concept one step further. It is a full Facebook Open Graph implementation. Best of all, it's really, really simple for both you and your users.
How does it work?
The Facebook Open Graph platform enables real world objects (people, books, landmarks, places, products etc.) that are presented on the Web to become part of the Facebook social graph. At its basic level, the social graph is the set of 1) nodes or objects (You, a landmark, a place, a business, a real estate listing) and 2) their relationships or connections (connection between You and your friends, You and a business, You and a real estate listing etc.). Messages such as status updates travel between the 1) nodes via these 2) connections.
The RealBird implementation of the Facebook Open Graph platform enables you, the RealBird member to create a Facebook Listing Page attached to the social graph. With a single click, you can create a Facebook Listing Page for your RealBird single property website and invite friends, sellers and potential buyers to create a connection between their Facebook account and your listing by clicking the "Like" button themselves. Once they do, they establish a relationship to your Facebook Listing Page. All the status updates that you post on these Facebook Listing Pages in the future will show up in those people's News Feed who liked your property.
Sounds complicated? It's not !
Below are the simple steps you have to do to enable this feature on your RealBird account and to create a Facebook Listing Page for your listing. Takes literally less then a minute.
- Login to RealBird or register here for free (free for up to 2 listings and only $99/year for unlimited listings).
- Connect your Facebook account with RealBird (takes only 5 seconds)
- Visit your own RealBird single property websites and click "Like" (takes 1 second)
- An "Admin Page" link will appear next to the Like widget at the footer area of your RealBird website, above the translation tools. Clicking that will take you to the automatically created Facebook Listing Page. It is also auto-populated with your main property photo, listing info and link to your property website on RealBird
That's it. It is this simple. From here on, you will be able to manage your Facebook Listing Page just like any other Facebook Pages and post updates, such as price reductions, new photos, open home dates etc. and every Facebook user who liked your property will be automatically notified about these events.
Connecting your Facebook account to RealBird (it's secure, we do not see your Facebook credentials)
"Like" your RealBird property website
There is a small "Like" button above the fold, on the top of your RealBird property websites and a full "Like" widget at the bottom. The bottom one also has an "Admin Page" link as shown below (assuming you connected Facebook to RealBird in Step 1). The Admin Page link is only visible for you, the listing website owner.
Listing courtesy of Mike Conner of City Realty inc in Olympia, WA
Manage your status updates via the Facebook Listing Page
The arrows show the auto-populated photos, description, the status update entries and Facebook Page tabs.
How to build a fan base for your listing?
The most important step is to invite your seller, the current owner of the property, and ask him/her to "Like" your RealBird listing website. When they do, their Facebook friends will be notified via their News Feed. You may also want to aks the seller to invite their own friends and family to "Like" the property, and when those people do, all the friends of the friend of the seller will be notified as well. The more people like the property, the more of them will be notified via their News Feed, and the more likely it will be that your Facebook Listing Page becomes a viral marketing hub.
What updates should I post on the Facebook Listing Pages?
Pretty much anything that is relevant to the sales cycle. For example:
- Price reductions
- Open home dates
- New pictures
- Neighborhood events and info
Only the imagination is the limit. Just make sure, that it's related to the property in some ways. And just like with any other Facebook Page, make sure that you are approachable, that you include some call for actions every now and then and also make sure that you do not overload your "fans" with too frequent updates. Probably one update per day is enough, in most cases it will be even less.
If you are not a RealBird member yet, you can register here for free (free for up to 2 listings and only $99/year for unlimited listing marketing). Otherwise just login to RealBird and follow the simple steps above to get started.
-- Zoltan
Zoltan, I am looking for the like button, LOL. This is very cool, thank you! Now to go and get more listings, I sold them all.
Seriously, Realbird has gone above and beyond, I am always amazed at your product, your level of customer service and the price. I have told everyone that will listen to sign up, and if they couldn't spend 99 bucks on their business they didn't deserve to be in business. Realbird could be the best investment I have ever made. Thank you!
Thanks Andrea ! Very kind of you to recommend us to your real estate friends.
Make sure that first you connect your Facebook account to RealBird in the member area. That's a quick, one time setup.
Thanks again
-- Zoltan
Hi Zoltan, as your above commenter who incidentally told us all about RealBird we like the "like" button. We have followed your instructions and hope we have done it right.
The part about posting daily, maybe we don't have all that straight yet. (still new to all this).
Thanks,
Al and Peggy (one of your first Canadian members to RealBird)
Nice ! Thanks Al & Peggy ( one of our first Canadian members to RealBird :)
With the Facebook Listing Pages, by the very nature of them, updates are much less frequent than with regular community pages. What I tried to say is to do not post more than 1 a day on on average as a general rule, but less frequent should be fine.
In phase 1, we kept this really simple and added the core Facebook Platform to RealBird, we will make it more advanced and powerful in the upcoming weeks with features that will build on this foundation.
Thanks
Z it is amazing how Facebook is changing how things operate on the net. I just added the Like tool to my Wp blog yesterday. No surprise you guys already have it up and operational!
B - Nice ! I thought you had it on your blog already :)
Our RealBird implementation is a full Open Graph implementation vs. the iframe version, which acts more or less as a share link only. The full Open Graph implementation creates an actual social graph object (Page) for the property which can then participate in social network interactions. Thanks
Definitely one of the most exciting additions to the already amazing RealBird services! So many sellers want to participate in marketing their home and this really gives them an easy way to do so. One thing that I think is important to note is that when the link shows up in your friends news feed saying "Mike likes 123 Main St.", if they click the link to see what that is they will be taken to your single property website NOT the dedicated Facebook admin page. Very cool RealBird. Very cool.
Thanks Mike and good points. Once we establish these social graph connections, there are so many things we can do. More to come....
-- Zoltan
Neat, neat neat. Now I have to go do this. Cannot wait. I like this feature.
Hi, My blogging buddies and real life buddies Al and Peggy have told me how great Real Bird is so I am signing up today and will try it out with a new listing I'm getting tomorrow. Like fellow Canadians Al and Peggy, this is a great way to have an edge over our competitors.
Jenny - Hi. We noticed that you signed up to RealBird PRO. Thanks !!! Should you need help, please do not hesitate to contact us
I do not see the admin link.
Is the "default syndicated web link" not the same as the "property website?"
Barbara - Yes the two are the same. Sometimes, you have to refresh the whole page to see the admin link. When you click the "Like" button, that FB widget posts the action to Facebook and FB refreshes that widget automatically with the count and the admin link. But sometimes, the FB code (not ours) needs a full refresh. So having the property page reloaded after "Like" should always reveal the Admin link. This of course does not effect regular users, but may be needed for you as an Admin. I hope this help. If you still have issues, please let me know
Thanks
-- Zoltan
I just bookmarked this to come back and read. I just got three new listings in MLS and will run them all through Real Bird over the next few days.
Cheryl - Congrats on the new listings. Setting up this new Facebook channel is easy. Only a few clicks. Make sure that your sellers also "like" their property websites you set up for them :)
-- Zoltan
I have bookmarked this to come back to tomorrow when I'm more up to going through these steps and then calling my sellers.
Christine - Sounds good. Let us know if we can help.
This looks really cool. I will be checking it out.
This looks really cool. Thank you. And congrats on your featured blog.
I LIKE it! and so do my sellers! They are so amazed that their listing has it's own facebook page! And with Facebook's amazingly targeted ad ability (and affordable) you can target facebook users with a nice ad for your page on a budget directly to those most likely to be interested in your listing. GREAT resource for us THANKS!
Very cool. Thanks for the update. I will try this for sure!
Zoltan - I have to tell you, I think this is an incredibly interesting product. Congrats! It opens up all kinds of crazy thoughts for things it could trigger. Very interested to see how it goes.
Doug - Thanks. Let us know how it worked out for you.
John - Thanks. It's a sponsored post. We always wanted to see how it goes if a post is at the top one spot on the AR homepage. So far so good. Plus, this is a very important post in our opinion, not just because it promotes our services but as a general observation of how online real estate marketing evolved in the last 10 or so years. Thanks for checking in
Janie - That's cool. I.e. creating the FB listing page via RealBird, then using FB targeted ads to drive traffic to it. Let us know how that worked out. One of the things that I really like about this is utilizing your seller's network to reach more people. With other methods it can be weird to ask your seller to help you with promotion (agent is hired to do that among other tasks) but with the FB Listing Page, all it takes is a single click by your seller to utilize their network to promote their own property. Your goals are aligned and you ask them a small "favor" of help and it most likely be fun for them to watch how the number of Likes grow on their ad. Thanks for reblog, as always !
Alex - Thanks for commenting. I am glad you find it interesting :) I agree, there are really cool things that can be built upon this. We are already working on the Phase 2 implementation based on the Facebook Open Graph. We'll share it here on AR and our corporate blog, once it is out. Thanks
-- Zoltan
Looks great! I recently noticed pages like this and assumed they were just built by hand. We handle listings for our clients and are constantly looking for ways to help them stay on top of the marketing game. Do you have an affiliate program for virtual real estate assistants by any chance?
--Kim
Hi Kim - Yes, we have an affiliate program. Please email us at support @t realbird.com for more on this. We'll touch base as well
Thanks
-- Zoltan
This is really interesting, definitely planning on checking it out.
Here I go to check this out. Hmmm
Marcy - Thanks. Let us know how it worked out for you
Marian - Thanks
Zoltan,
I want to introduce myself. I am not familiar with Realbird but will be soon. I am about to sign up for the class with Katerina in a few weeks. I am in the process of putting together a website, idx, blog and will see how to incorporate realbird too.
Thanks,
Betsy
This looks like what we've been searching for !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great idea getting the seller to participate in the marketing of their property. If only more of my landowners had access to the internet, that'd be great! I'll give it a look. Thanks for sharing.
Zoltan - I will check it out - Realbird must be doing well - your customer service certainly rocks.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking of signing up for the annual package, Katerina Gasset speaks highly of Realbird and she would know.
I got on the site, then sent in a question to Realbird customer service - Gabe Gross replied, almost immediately. I was afraid that it would be frustrating to learn, didn't want a complicated program and I told him that I would have my daughter look into it for me - she is my virtual assistant.
Instead, Gabe walked me through the listing app right then on the phone. It was easy, and quick to do - with an excellent 'virtual tour'. I was so impressed with the Google results, and quality of the presentation, I added Realbird to my website for searches - it is so much more comprehensive than our IDX..
Excellent product. I could go on and on ..... but I am getting tired of listening to myself.
Still amazed that Gabe spent all that time with me on a Saturday night.
Thank you so much for this! Great content!
Betsy - Thanks. Let us know if we can help
Michael - Great. Glad that you like it
Jonathan - Thanks
Virginia - Thanks for the kind words and for your business !
Hi Zoltan,
I just created my first listing page on Facebook using RealBird - it was so simple! This post is long and detailed - don't let it scare you a way! Two steps and you're done! Off to do my other listings! Great stuff Gabe!
Pratibha - Thanks for your inquiry. We do not currently have such API, but we are getting more and more requests, so we are considering it. Please email us at info @realbird.com to elaborate.
Hi Debbie - Thanks. What's the RealBird listing website. Let us "Like" it :) It's a long post indeed, but the feature is as simple as it gets. We are working on new additions to this feature. We'll share it here once it is released.
Thanks
so this is awesome. I have an act created but I can't figure out where it is on my facebook and how to get others to be able to see it. YIKES.
www.facebook.com/lisaludlowarcher.realtor can you help me?
Lisa- Gabe just emailed you. Just call us and we are here to help.
In short, once you connect your Facebook account with RealBird (secure, we do not see your Facebook login info) the Facebook "Like" button will appear on your RealBird single property websites for you and for your visitors to click on. When they do, it will share this action with their friends (100s of them on an average) with a link back to your RealBird single property websites. When you click "Like" it will also create the Facebook Listing Page that you - as the admin of the Page - can use to send out updates via Facebook on important property events. And all this with only a few clicks per listing.
wow I am just so impressed and will begin creating my listing pages now!
Thanks MaryBeth. Let us know how it goes.
-- Zoltan
Hey Agents: I want to thank REAL BIRD for giving so much and asking for so little. There widgets are awesome, there classes are easy to understand and extremely useful. Take a look at my BlogSpot since I am using ALL of the WIDGETs offered.
http://snowbirdrealestate.blogspot.com/
AND now take a look at one of my favorite LISTING widgets: http://bit.ly/d4HQlG
Signing up with REALBIRD should be a NO-Brainer.
I highly recommend RB and love the way it works with Active Rain, Facebook, Blogger.com (from Google), Google maps, Twitter, Oodle, Ping.fm--REAL BIRD has done ALL of the work for you. Get on it today!
It seems so overwhelming! I'll have to read this again and try to follow each step carefully.
Jane - Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your blog
Chris & Maria - The concept (Facebook Open Graph) is pretty cutting-edge, but using it with RealBird is very, very easy. There are only two quick steps: 1) Connect your Facebook account to RealBird in the RealBird member area (secure, we don't see your FB info) 2) Click the "Like" button on your RealBird single property website. That's it, your listing is now attached to the Facebook social graph. It takes less then a minute to perform these steps. You can call us anytime and we'll walk you through.
-- Zoltan
Zoltan~ I just tried this on two of my listings, but I don't think I did it right???
Hi Vickie - It all looks fine. I checked your latest listing and the Facebook Like button is there (which means you connected your Facebook account correctly to RealBird) and you also clicked the Like button yourself (which means that Facebook Listing Page is created). It's all good. Now make sure you let your seller know and that they click the "Like" button on the website too, so that their own network is notified. It takes only a second "work" on your seller's end
Thanks
-- Zoltan
I will be back to re-read this as soon as I sign up for Real Bird.
I tried it and it is AWESOME!