I’m having GREAT success using Facebook pages coupled with “old fashioned” neighborhood farming… getting to meet so many people in our neighborhood, and providing lots of cool stuff for them.
Here’s what I’ve done:
- Created a neighborhood page on our website. I include photos, videos, listings, neighbor testimonials, etc.
- Created a neighborhood Facebook page with lots of photos.
- I went door-to-door (yep, I know this is where I lost almost all of you) – using clear door hanger bags and a 5×8 postcard with two pieces of candy – promoting the Facebook page for the neighborhood. I didn’t knock or bug people, I just hang them on the door handles. My kids did that while I drove with the supplies.
- I did this 4-6 times over the course of a 3 month period.
- I watched my page numbers grow.
- Started interacting with neighbors/residents – from yard sales, lost pet notices, HOA info, etc. and including photos, videos, etc.
- I throw little contests – I did a drawing for a $25 gift certificate for a local restaurant. All they had to do was ‘like’ the post and share a comment on what they love about the neighborhood. I drew a winner – did it on video, met the winner in person, gave all of the other participants ‘consolation prizes’ (candy bars) everything of which I delivered IN PERSON.
- As I deliver things in person, I ask them to do video testimonials of what they love about living in the neighborhood. I put those testimonials up on our web page and push a couple through to the Facebook page.
- I ran another contest – this one was simply a promo on who loved a particular yogurt store in our neighborhood. This gave me another 14 people I got to meet in person (I gave everyone a $2 gift certificate) and the owner of the store saw it and gave me 50 excellent coupons to give out in future promo’s.
- I’m starting to do direct mail to our neighborhood to capitalize on the door-to-door and Facebook pages. I’ll keep promoting the Facebook page – then use the Facebook page as our way to meet people IRL and build relationships with them.
Our goal is to become THE neighborhood realtor – the one everyone knows – the one that loves the neighborhood. I have lots of other plans for the next 12 months. AND, most recently I just added Jimmy Mackin’s leadconversionapp.com to my pages, oh my heaven, I haven’t even put a video up yet and I’ve got people’s names and emails from them signing in!
I’m building trust relationships with people – so that when I have something real estate related, it’ll be looked at and considered, not just thrown away.
In all my years of farming, I’ve never had this much contact this quickly with home owners (this inexpensively!!).
Catch Christina live at Agent Reboot Boise where she will be on a panel about Social Media Insights – Making the Smartest Investment of Your Time.
Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert and close Facebook leads.
