3 Ways To Use Opt-Ins and Lead Generation in Facebook
The demise (and rebirth) of our friend, Jonathan Rivera’s “The Official Real Estate Referral Group” Fan Page last week was a HUGE eye opener not only for him, but for everyone. Or at least I hope it was! When Facebook shut down his real estate business page with 47,000 plus members, not only did he lose his mind, but he also lost the majority of those 47,000+ contacts!
He may have had a huge following, but he didn’t have any way to contact them now that his Fan Page was gone – all those tens of thousands of people were simply following his page – most hadn’t provided anyway for him to reach out to them other than writing a post on his Fan Page wall – and now his wall was gone!
Hey, this isn’t a post to tear down Jon and/or his short-fallings. Not at all. Anyone could have had this happen to them. But, this massive hit to his business was not only a huge learning curve for him, but for everyone who is using Fan Pages as a means of gaining more real estate business earnings. This post is about utilizing Facebook and your Fan Page in the most “tech savvy agent” way you can, and should be!
Gaining leads through opt-ins via Facebook, or any online resource, may not be on the forefront of your mind when you’re posting your blogs or adding an update to your Fan Page wall, but it MUST be! Below we’re going to give you a list of three ways you can obtain contact information from your social networking sites, both for future use and in case you get hit by Facebook’s dreaded hand of death!
1. Contact Forms
Obvious? Yes. But other than on your main real estate website, do you have them prominently available for your potential client’s to provide you with their information? 9 out of 10 agents will say “no” to this question. We wrote a great post that many of you may have already put into place on your Fan Page about how to add a great, customizable Fan Page contact form. If you haven’t done it yet, go do it now!
2. RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are an awesome way to not only gain prospective leads contact info, but also to automatically set them up to receive updates from you without you having to do ANYTHING. When adding your RSS feed to your blog and then your Fan Page, you have obtained your lead’s contact name and email address, and every time you add a blog post to your blog site (like this one), they will receive your information within an hour or so. You can learn more about this within our “Have Blog, Will Read?” post.
3. Deliverables
Giveaways have always been a proven way to get people to hand over to you what you want from them – and in this case – give them something of value and they will give you something of value in return. How many times have you been to a conference where you have the opportunity to win something that you really have wanted and all you have had to do is give your contact information? Ok, sometimes you haven’t really wanted what they have to offer, but if you won something or even gained something from it, it maybe worth your while to leave your contact information, right?
Think about what kind of deliverables you can offer your potential clients: Whether it is free reports on market conditions, free dinner for two at Benihana’s for the person that gives you the most referrals this month, or a gift for helping you name your new blog site competition… the ideas are endless, and each idea will attract a different contact and new prospective leads.
Speaking of which, we’re going to be having a webinar next week to give you some great insight and tools you can use within Search Engine Optimization that is open for any and all to join – if you would like to be notified of when it will be and have an exclusive invitation be mailed to you, please enter your email address at the very top of this blogsite (“Become A Savvy Agent”) and we’ll be happy to send it along!
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Wow, I have a feedburner account and I had no idea that I could access the info of those who have signed up. And I will also be adding that contact form on my FB page. Thanks for the great info.
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I have found that contests and free stuff help in opt-in lead generation. Love the other ideas in this post too!