As of the writing of this post, I had already upgraded to the new profile, so I can’t show you what my profile used to look like. (How did I get the new profile, well  went to this URL :  http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/)
This is what my profile looks like now and here’s an example of a page without photos:

Notice that in my profile across the top-you can see where I work, where I studied, who I am attached to, languages I speak and where I am from. That is new-that used to be buried deep in the profile before. Ok-so maybe it’s a good thing that that is front and center. It will give people a more 3D view of who you are, immediately-in a day where attention spans are ever diminishing ,its all front and center. The profile on the left, you don’t see the photos.

Next new thing-there are five snapshots directly below that. DANGER WILL ROBINSON .These are photos that you are tagged in, the five most recent ones. What’s the problem here ? Many people rarely tag themselves in photos they upload, but others often tend to tag you (if you have that setting set-there is also a way, so that you are tagged in photos, but no one else can see them). Here’s an example of a profile, with none of the photos up top. If we can ever figure out how KH did this, I promise to write a follow up post!

Another new thing : like Facebook Places, when you update your interests and activities-be forewarned. When you list something as an activity, you have the option to tag someone. Which means someone else can very well tag you in an activity and it will appear on your profile ! (Be proactive and diligent about knowing what you are doing and what others are saying or doing on your behalf)

Now, before you freak out over all of this information and who is going to see your photos, there’s a pretty simple solution, which you should be employing in your use of Facebook regardless. Lists! Lists make privacy settings OH so much easier to manage, not to mention, great for time management (especially important if you ever use Facebook chat, you can appear offline to say, your chatty cousins ! ) How useful would it be to say create a list of current clients ? Past clients ? Friends ? Family ? Colleagues ? My list categories (which I need to work on reorganizing again) correlate to the categories in my contact database. Why ? Why not- make your life as simple as possible. (And looking over my lists, I need to go in and merge and create some new ones again-always meeting new people, and they need to be categorized appropriately on Facebook, as they are in my contacts database!)

Go to Account settings  privacy settings, and you end up at the screen below. The area you want to look at is “Things Others Share” . You can edit everything from who can see photos and videos that you are tagged in (and changing this will impact how your photos appear on profiles overall and to whom). Additionally, you can edit whether people can tag you when they check in somewhere using Facebook Places, as well as who can see your wall posts.

And here is a screen shot, of how you can use your newly created lists to make things available to only certain groups of people-hypothetically below I am posting something that I only want my “Realtors” list to see.

Someone suggested, in a thread discussion on Tech Savvy Agent’s Facebook page that having two accounts is useful, so you can see how your profile TRULY appears to others. Ok,there is one HUGE problem with that. It is against the terms of service-when you signed up for Facebook,you agreed to commit to certain rules, one of them is having only one personal account. The screen below, is within privacy settings,where you can see this what my profile (after locking down various settings to only me/friends) looks like to someone who has just found me ,and on the right is what a friend would see.

Now, if you have any questions,I’m always willing to help ,and if I don’t know the answer,I will either research it or point you to someone who does. Remember-be in control of your information and your identity !

Nikki Beauchamp is an agent at Warburg Realty in New York City  and blogs on the Warburg Realty blog and as well as her personal blog,the newly revamped YourNYCRealEstateResource.com. She has also recently helped organize and presented at REBC Rye .And of course can be found on Facebook and Twitter !

So what are all the other companies doing at this time of year?  The exact same thing!  They are bringing their Black Friday’s to the social media platforms and providing an additional opportunity for their loyal fans/customers/clients to thank them (and in doing so, gain more business).

Take a look at a few of the Black Friday offers some of the big name brands are offering this year and think about how you can not only put something like these together for your own Real Estate Facebook Business Page this Black Friday, but any day of the year:

Remember, the more “Likes” you get the more eyeballs you receive!  Numbers is still huge player in gaining more business, so the larger the number of “Likes” you get the better the opportunity there is to gain business.

Here’s an opportunity to use two of your social media platforms to save some cash – check in with Foursquare, post your check in on Twitter and listen for your name to win!  All the while, Sports Authority is getting mad eyeballs!

Another multiple social media extravaganza in the making!  Let’s see how long it takes for Toys R Us to get 3,000 check ins after 9:30 pm tomorrow!  I’ll give it 7 minutes!

At the very least, I hope that this will give you some ideas for your own use of promoting the opportunity for your potential clients to thank you and at the same time gain more exposure to you and your offerings, and to save a buck or two on Friday!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone From The Tech Savvy Agent Crew!

Alright, so we’ve figured out what the difference is between your profile and your fan page, and that you access your fan page by going through your profile.   We’ve added some customizations to it, like a picture (other than yourself!) and some killer apps to make your page user friendly.  We’ve sent out our initial “Suggest to Friends” invitation for our sphere on our Facebook profile to also like our new Fan Page.  Then we sit back and wait.  And wait.  And… wait.

Then after a day or two we wonder, “Why don’t I have hundreds of fans yet?”  I mean, if there are 500 million people on Facebook, surely more than 21 people can find my new fan page and click that like button!

Well, just like anything online, if you don’t market it they won’t find it.  So here’s our Top 3 tips on how to get more fans (or likes) on your Facebook Fan Page:

1.   Influence the Influential
Think about who you know in your sphere or industry that have some major pull and/or a larger sphere than you do.  Send a note asking them to invite their friends (and fans) to become a fan of yours too – you could even make it into a competition with the one who brings the most new fans to the table wins a gift certificate… Everyone knows someone influential – especially in this business – so make good use of it!

2.  Take Full Advantage
…of what you’ve already got.   Don’t forget that a large percentage of your contacts in your contact management system may not be a friend of yours on Facebook.   Set up an email campaign with deliberate calls to action toward your new fan page – just make sure you have some kind of relavent content on there for them to see before doing this!

Add a link to your Fan Page in your email signature(s) – if you’re like me, you probably have more than two!  Add it to your offline marketing pieces (maybe a QR Code directing people to your Fan Page?)… wherever you are advertising your website, add your Fan Page url too.

3.  Keep It Fresh
There’s nothing that will stunt your fan page growth than a stale wall.  Keep adding fresh, relevant, hyper-local information that people want to know about – NOT just real estate by the way – and also not just by using an app like NetworkedBlogs to pull your new blog posts in.  Physically log in to your Facebook account and make an update manually a couple of times a day and watch your page grow.  NetworkedBlogs won’t make relationships for you – only you will!

Of course, there are many others ways to get your Fan Page growing, but these will definitely make a significant impact on your numbers and eyeballs seeing your information – and certainly get you to the point of taking advantage of creating your custom facebook url (after you hit 25 fans).   Let us know of some of the unique ways that you have increased your fan page like numbers too!

A couple of days ago was no different, when we gave out a free “Quick Tip“:

Within 21 hours we’ve had 20 “likes” and 34 comments made to this post. While that is awesome and shows that our fans are really interested in our posts, what was really evident was how the “Quick Tip” was misunderstood by most!  This led to a conversation between Chris and I, which in turn led to this post being written!

Our tip suggested a way to gain more traffic, better SEO ranking, and more links pointing back to your own website/blog from someone elses.  However, in the following hours, we received not two or three people misconstruing this concept, but a good majority of them misunderstanding – made obvious by them leaving their direct link within the Fan Page comment section!

This was an awesome learning experience for us to find out that this was something we needed to dive deeper into, so that you could use the tip to your advantage!

So, without further ado, what exactly is Backlinking and why should you be doing it?

Backlinks, as defined by Wikipedia, are “incoming links to a website or web page (such as a blog, like this one).  They go on to say, “Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website” or web page and therefore will bring your page higher up on the search engine rankings.

It is also worthwhile knowing, that the higher the ranking of the page you are backlinking from is on the search engines, the better it will make your website or blog look to those same search engines – makes sense, right?

So for instance, if you were to leave a comment on ActiveRain, which is well ranked on the search engines, it will be seen as more reputable to the search engines than leaving your backlink on a “no-name brand” site.  However, with that said, I am all for supporting the less renowned sites out there (I mean, we’ve all got to make it to the top somehow, right?)

Ok, so here’s the important part.  How do you backlink correctly?

Oh yes, it’s both political AND scientific!  Political because there is a right way and a wrong way of backlinking, and scientific because you want to make sure you’re not leaving your backlink in places that don’t count!

Adding a backlink within a comment  should take just a minute or two of your time and more often than not is part of the initial set up as shown in the example below:The political nature of backlinking is all about relevancy.  The last thing you want to do is leave a backlink comment such as “Great post!“  That is obviously not participating in the discussion of the article you have just (supposedly) read.  Once again, this is about relationship building, getting your name (and product/services) out there, become familiar and seen as a contributor, and NOT a spammer!

Above is how the comment is posted after hitting the Submit button – My name has been linked to the url of our website address I gave in the comment form.    This is the most invasive way to add a backlink, however, if it is appropriate, you could add your name and website address within the comment description box.

Now onto the scientific part of it.  Two things you must know about are “dofollow” and “nofollow”.   If you leave a comment (and a backlink) on another person’s site,  it will count as a backlink only if it is a “dofollow” site.

You can find this out simply by clicking on the “View” and then “Page Source” links on the top of your browser menu bar:

Then, on the new window that pops up, you can search for ”nofollow” in the page source by clicking “Edit” and then “Find” and typing “nofollow” into the search bar:

If you find a “nofollow” within the page source code, then you know that that site doesn’t support backlinks and you should move onto one that does.

SIDENOTE:  This is important to know about your own blog too.   Do you know if your site is a Nofollow or Dofollow?  If it is (or you want it to be) a dofollow site, you will have to make sure that you moderate your comments regularly.  Why?  Because otherwise you may have thousands of spam comments added to your site for moderation within just a few days!  There are also several different spam comment filters and plugins that are available – we like Akismet for spam comment filtering.

If you would like to have your site set up as a dofollow blog, you can download the plugin for your wordpress blog here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sem-dofollow/

I hope this was helpful in understanding a) the importance of relevant commenting both for name recognition and seo, and b) how adding backlinks on a blog differs from adding comments on Facebook.   Facebook comments are great for name recognition and socialization within your market and niche communities, but when it comes to backlinks, stick to the dofollow blog sites.

In Part II of our interview “The Most Innovative Interview“ with Broker/Owner, Krisstina Wise, and Chief Technology Officer, Jack Miller, they spoke with Chris on  how Brokers need to lead by example, and where single agents must start their marathon of social networking endeavors – At Mile Zero!

How many times have you heard your broker dictate that YOU should “go to ABC seminar and learn about XYZ“, or tell you about how “we’re having Bobby Jones from Jones Marketing come in and give a presentation about how to market online – YOU should attend!“…  That’s all well and good, but are they leading by example?  Are they innovative, and at the top of their game?   The term, ‘do as I say, not as I do’, does NOT come into play here!  The Good Life Team are constantly learning new tricks of the trade, new tools to try out, and putting innovative strategies into place – THEY are walking the talk!

But what if you’re a single agent with no true Broker to help you succeed?   Being a tech savvy agent can be achieved going solo too.  Jack suggested to, “start with your database – it’s your lowest cost business generator“.

“Get them wired up – add them to your Facebook Fan Page, put them on an email campaign.”  By choosing just one platform at a time and getting connected (or even reconnected), following and learning from the people around you, you will both grow yourself and your business.  LinkedIn has a great platform now, Facebook, even us here at Tech Savvy Agent could and would be a great place to tap into on a regular basis.

There’s so much to learn and put into place, (believe me, I know!) it’s often difficult to just simply start.  But by taking on just a single social networking or learning environment and using that information to connect with your database, will set the stage for a snowball effect in months and years to come.

We hope you enjoyed these interviews with Krisstina and Jack as much as we enjoyed putting them together for you!  Please feel free to promote and share with your team or fellow agents.  Content is king and we love providing it for you, for free!  We are living in a “Thank You Economy“, and we love it when you thank us by sharing our content with others.  Thank you!