A HUGE Reason To KEEP Your Facebook Page … It’s Not About You!

It’s a typical topic: why agents should rid of their business page and market through personal profile only. It’s common for people to try to rationalize why they should ditch their Facebook page and simply go with their personal page. The reasons are always the same, just in different listed orders:

• Organic reach — you get much better reach with a personal page than with a business page.
• Acquiring fans or likes — asking people to like your page to turn them into fans isn’t as easy as asking them to be your friend.
• Time to work two pages for the most amount of reach — you’re a real estate agent, you’re supposed to be working away from the computer, not on it all day.
• Having to PAY to be seen — crazy concept, right?

I’ve heard many (and more) of these reasons why agents shouldn’t keep two pages. Besides being completely against Facebook’s policy and should they decide to enforce it, you risk being shut down and losing all your “friends,” there is a much more simple reason: because it’s not about you.

Think about it from your fan’s/friend’s perspective:

What YOU post on your personal page is completely up to you, right? You could decide to NOT post personal updates or anything else but real estate. Cool. But once you’re “friends” with a client or a prospect (aka fan), you can see THEIR personal information — and they might not friend you for that very reason. Do you want people to see what you post and be able to have access to your information, pictures, status updates, and any time you’re tagged? Even if you said yes, it’s highly doubtful that the answer is the same for the masses. You can now access their information. Although you might say, “trust me,” will they? You’re invading their privacy. End of story.

I have had been asked to friend people who I have never met IRL (In Real Life) and I won’t. It’s not that I have anything against them or to fear from my posts — for you should ALWAYS only post things you are willing to make public. But I also wouldn’t give out most of my personal information to anyone I haven’t met IRL.

There are more reasons than NOT to have both a business page and a personal page. Social media marketing is just that — MARKETING where people are. If you don’t want to have both pages because it takes too much time or another reason, that’s fine. But you’re risking when people won’t friend you due to privacy issues. Or your business doesn’t seem to be as professional as another’s because you won’t take the extra time. Or they unfriend you because of the amount of real estate posts you’re posting only. It’s a call only you can make, but consider ALL the reasons from not your perspective, but your target market’s.

Remember, you are branding yourself in everything thing you do, say, or ask of them — whether you’re on social media or driving.

For more of those reasons to have a FB business page that I mention, check out my blog post Facebook Marketing: The Importance of a Facebook Real Estate Business Page