We interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you this NEWS story…
Can you believe Facebook killed The Official Real Estate Referral Group? Without warning, without notice on Wednesday July 14th, 2010 the page was shut down. If you didn’t know about the page, let me give you some quick stats:
- 47,000 + members
- 1,419 referrals provided
- 21 months old
As upset as I was I didn’t realize how this page had impacted the community. Luckily, Chris Smith from Tech Savvy Agent recognized this as a big story and did an interview with me to let our community know what happened.
What happened next?
By the next morning there were hundreds of Facebook shares and Tweets spreading the word.
The community had rallied behind us (THANKS!)
Facebook reinstated the page and allowed me to change the vanity URL from Facebook.com/SocialREALTORs to Facebook.com/RealEstateReferralGroup.
Lessons Learned
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If I only relied on Facebook for my business I would have been dead (more on that in a minute.)
When you add value to your network, they will add value to you. If it wasn’t for my network we would have never gotten the page back.
Most importantly: Before buying a domain or naming a page, do your research so you can avoid these types of hassles.
What can you do to protect yourself?
Don’t rely on just one network. If you have influence on Facebook, move over to other networks (like You Tube & Twitter) to see if some of your community members are there.
Interact with your community wherever they are so if you lose one network, you’ve still got the others.
Build REAL Relationships: The number are meaningless if you don’t make a real connection, luckily, I had real relationships with some people in my community who helped me spread the word when things went wrong.
Social Media is just a tool to help us meet more people and actually connect.
Facebook is great, but sometimes we forget that even “our pages” really belong to Facebook.
The idea is to leverage the interactions and connections to move people off the page and onto your list where YOU HAVE CONTROL.
Ready to take control of your marketing?
Then you need to start building your email list right now.
So if ever Facebook pulls the plug, you’ll have a backup plan.
I’ve put together “List Building Report”
It’s a 6 page report that’ll take you by the hand and show you exactly how to use social media along with your website to build a list a prospects who want to hear from you often.
These are the folk who are most likely to pay for your services,
But the only thing is, you can’t buy it, because it’s not for sale.
The only way to get it is to buy the “Landing Page Strategy Guide”
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