The following infographic from MoonToast shows how data flows through Facebook. What’s especially helpful is how the different types of fan engagement work to surface page content.

Presented by Emily White, Senior Director Local, Facebook.

Real estate agents are the original social networkers. Facebook just takes that online.

Local is social. We find out about what’s going on in our community through social.

People want to go to great places. Local is conversational. Businesses are affected by recommendations through local conversations.

Find a way to continue offline relationships online. Discovery is happening both on and off-line.

When someone sees that a friend is at a restaurant they’re more likely to do business with that place.

Word-of-mouth at scale. It’s WoM magnified through an online network.

Deals that are shared with friends are three times more likely to be taken up.

Pages product is the real meat of the local experience. Five best practice:

Create a page. Keep it interesting.
Connect the virtual and physical. Put your website and Facebook page on your card.
Engage with fans. Welcome them. Think about Facebook as a party. That takes effort. Keep them updated. Engage with them.
Acquire new fans. Give people the option to Like your page quickly.
Get them back to your store. Take something that’s action oriented and ask your fans to do something.

Research shows that Facebook fans want latest news, contests, discounts.

Facebook has found a sweet spot at around 3 updates per week.

The best place to promote a fan page is through a Facebook personal profile. It’s a place where you can transition people to a place where they can read real estate related information.

People focus too much on customizing their page and not enough on creating content.

Use Facebook advertising to build your fan numbers. Use a QR code as the ad image. When people use the QR code you don’t pay for a click.

Customizations are wasted when people view the page on a mobile device.

Don’t post more than once per day. It takes away comments on Likes on other posts and knocks them out of Top News.

Tweet as much as you want.

Facebook has just released the Send button. It’s designed for people who want to share a page privately or with selected friends in a group.

Whereas clicking the Like button sends a notification to all friends’ news-feeds, the Send button is a social plugin that allows people to share and comment on a web page via via email, Facebook Messages, or to a Facebook group.

Although it’s designed to sit alongside the current Like button a standalone version is also available.

The button has the potential to increase quality web traffic by allowing visitors to send a link to their friends that’s relevant to their needs and interests. Improving the quality of traffic typically leads to more leads and higher conversion rates.

And it’s easy too.

There’s no need to copy and paste a URL and no need to look up email addresses as friends auto-populate within the sharing dialogue box.

If you found this article helpful use the Send button above to share this article with some of your friends.[tweetmeme]

Are the interaction levels on your Facebook Page dismally low? If so a new feature available only to Facebook Page admins will help you turn things around.[tweetmeme]

Facebook have just rolled out a new facility that allows Page admins to access their Page notifications using their personal profile. Previously notifications were only available when using Facebook as a page. And that extra step meant that pages weren’t being monitored and Page fans were being left disappointed.

Notifications are now available from the View Notifications link  in the right sidebar of the Page you administer.  These notifications show the interactions on your page and include a link to the relevant story.

Admins can dramatically improve the experience of their fans by responding to fan posts and comments quickly. Doing so improves page interaction levels significantly and increases the likelihood of a story appearing in the all-important Top News tab.

If you found this story helpful please click the Facebook Like button below or leave a comment.

On The Australian the Queensland Police Service outlines how they used Facebook to proactively deliver news during the recent Queensland floods.[tweetmeme]

What stands out is the way the usually conservative QPS embedded social media into their daily processes. Social media was no longer an afterthought to keep Gen-Y’s entertained but a part of their core news delivery strategy. From these processes came faster delivery of news in a rapidly evolving crisis.

Managing Facebook and Twitter didn’t cause a spike in the media unit’s workload, but changed its responsibilities to include monitoring user-generated comments. “We’ve integrated social media into our ordinary (daily) 24-hour processes,” Charlton says.

And that’s something I’m yet to see agents achieve. All too often Facebook and Twitter is left to the whims of sales people or the receptionist when it could be used as a way to create efficiencies and improve customer service.

Have you seen an agency using social media for more than just pimping out listings? If so please share the story in the comments below.

Photo: martinhoward

Facebook has just released Facebook Studio highlighting best practice in all forms of Facebook marketing.[tweetmeme]

Studio brings together case studies of successful Facebook marketing campaigns in the one place. Just browsing them provides instant inspiration for new ideas.

A mention on Facebook Studio could provide an advertising agency with significant kudos leading to new business. That’s why Facebook have provided a link so that marketers can submit their success stories.

Submissions that receive lots of Likes are featured in the Spotlight section and thus become eligible for a Facebook Award. Awards are made by a Facebook judging panel. At this stage award categories and criteria haven’t been finalised.

Other campaigns can be found using a series of filters including Most Liked, Most Shared and by region.

Facebook Studio also provides a blog and a marketing resources centre containing informative videos and PDF tutorials. The video below explains how Sponsored Stories work as both advertising and social recommendation.

Not surprisingly there’s a self-serving and self-congratulatory overtone in the Facebook Studio initiative. There’s no ‘mistakes to avoid’ section and nowhere for people to outline initiatives that went wrong. And as much as success stories provide inspiration it’s also helpful to be able to learn from other peoples’ mistakes.

An online survey, conducted by Postling, of more than 500 real estate professionals in the USA has found:[tweetmeme]

• 84% of real estate agents use social media.
• 79% use Facebook and 48% use Twitter.
• Most (55%) feel comfortable using social media, while 26% are only somewhat comfortable.
• Agents are missing opportunities by not using video for property marketing.
• 29% of internet searches result in a prospect contacting an agent.
• 45% of searches lead to a prospect walking through an open for inspection.
• Real estate agents are ahead of other industries in the use of Facebook but they’re behind in the use of Twitter and WordPress.

These stats demand agents rethink their web and video strategies.

It’s a rhetorical question. Most marketers know the importance of owning a brand presence. A brand web site gives a brand complete control over message and method; and that’s important. While ‘leasing’ space off Facebook is quick and easy that ease comes at the cost of a loss of control.[tweetmeme]

Still, maintaining web traffic when Facebook is gobbling up so much online attention, is difficult. And often traffic to a Facebook. That’s why Jeff Bullas says.

While Facebook is becoming the biggest relationship marketing tool for brands, it seems like that instead of increasing traffic to the company website, Facebook is actually absorbing it. Marketers across the globe are wondering whether their brand websites will disappear and if there will still be a need for an official website in five years. Will the users still visit the company websites or will they only use Facebook and apps to check the news and offers?

Using iFrames, Pages can now include many features that were previously difficult to achieve.

Bullas goes on to say that there are a number of ways marketers can develop synergies between a Facebook Page and a brand web site. These include:

1. Providing links back to the brand web site from tabs and pages
2. Using blog excerpts containing a “Read More” link to build traffic to the brand blog
3. Displaying links to other social media platforms
4. Giving people a reason to leave their email address on the landing page
5. Creating a Facebook competition which requires finding information on your website or blog. Announce the winner will be published on the brand web site (I love this idea).
6. Create a special Fans Only offer that is available from the web site.
7. Offer Fans Only specials available only from the web site
8. Re-think a brand web presence as a social media destination.

What are you doing to build your web traffic with a Facebook Page?

I manage two almost identical WordPress blogs. Both use a StudioPress (affiliate link) theme, both almost identical plugins, and both are hosted at Page.ly.

One posts to Facebook perfectly delivering a choice of thumbnails, and the correct Title and Description meta tag information. The other posts a plain URL (not using information in the Title tag), no description and no thumbnails.

I posted much of this post on the StudioPress support forum. A senior tech support manager suggested I add the Add Facebook Share Thumbnail + Meta but that skirts solves nothing in the long run. Introducing another plugin adds to the complexity of a WordPress installation and increases the chances of conflicts between plugins.

Then there’s what to do if the plugin creator stops developing the plugin. It’s a shortcut I’m not willing to take. I’d rather get to the bottom of the problem.

To troubleshoot the problem I started with deactivating the W3 Total Cache plugin then sharing on Facebook using the copy and paste method. The problem persisted. I then reactivated W3 Total Cache and deactivated the AddToAny plugin. Same thing. I then added the SocioFluid plugin. Still no luck.

I then shared the post using the SocioFluid Facebook button. Success. A choice of thumbnails was provided and the correct Title and Description came across.

As the Facebook sharing worked using SocioFluid the problem appears not to be with Facebook. That only leaves the theme and plugins as the cause.

I suspect the problem is with w3 Total Cache. Here’s what the senior tech support observed.

One thing I notice as a difference between the two sites is that one is minifying the HTML output with the w3 total cache plugin.

As both sites use W3 Total Cache (that’s the plugin responsible for minification) with exactly the same settings – and I’ve double and triple checked – I don’t understand why one site is minifying output and the other isn’t.

To narrow that down a little more I went back to w3 Total Cache, emptied all caches then went to plugins and deactivated the plugin. That ‘broke’ the site! The latest post no longer featured on the home page and the links to the Categories from the Featured Tabs widget were empty.

One problem had now become two.

I then closed my browser. When I attempted to login again I was met with an error message to say I didn’t have permission to visit that page. This was the URL.

http://[sitename].com.au/wp-admin/admin.php?page=w3tc_pgcache&w3tc_note=flush_pgcache

I tried again and was able to login. Happy thoughts returned, but the home page was still not ‘right’.

So I went back to sharing on Facebook. This time I picked another post and that shared perfectly. Thinking that the problem might be solved I tried sharing the original post again. No luck. I then tried it in a different browser. Still no luck.

I then re-tried the SocioFlow share button and it worked again (I want to share the post on a Page and in a group) which is why I’m being so dogged.

[tweetmeme]Since posting this on the forum I’ve also sent a support ticket to w3 Total Cache and reached out to Chad Johnson from AgentEvolution. Chad and his team specialise in StudioPress sites. They may yet become my white knights.

Have you had a similar problem? If so did you solve it? What was the solution?

Edit: When I posted this article to Facebook it failed to bring across a thumbnail. There’s a picture on the post. I’m not sure what’s going on.

Edit: I then added the AddToAny social sharing plugin. That’s the one I used to share this post on Facebook. The Title and Description tags worked fine. Disappointingly, no thumbnail. Why?