Any start-up founded in 2008 or after would be remiss without plotting an online social media marketing course that included Facebook. But in practical implementation terms, are Facebook or Twitter legitimate and earnest ways to drive exposure to your brand? With significant search engine results page (SERP) related penalties being paid in the past by firms who went online and did what all their peers were doing, trying to drive content creation and links, but doing it in an unnatural and manipulative way, any firm has to ask themselves whether they’re poking and tweeting for the right reasons.
What’s the true value of social media in real estate for buyers and sellers, the real essence of it? For instance, as a seller, am I getting any real value out of having an Agent tweet about my listing, or if my Broker has a Facebook page, are they going to sell my house faster? If Brokers are out there trying to do the right things for the right reasons, are social media websites and real estate a value producing combination, or are they just a necessary evil for Brokers who are trying to get ahead in SERPs?
While worth considering, perhaps these are deeper and more thought provoking questions than what we want to cover in this particular article. But currently with more than 800 million active users and more than 50% of those users logging on in any given day, Facebook is a formidable reality that, rather than being taken advantage of for the benefit of SERPs or the like, a firm must make part of their standard operating procedures. And for that reason, we recently implemented Facebook login at Stuart St James.
Stuart St James (http://stuartstjames.com) is a growing Boston real estate brokerage and Facebook login is a feature function that we recently incorporated into our flagship website. Facebook login was developed by our real estate web design & search partner, Displet, and the feature allows users to register or login to our site using their Facebook credentials. Centered on the principal that when real estate buyers and sellers are online, there’s a good chance that they are logged on to Facebook, the Facebook login feature is a technology advancement that makes the home search process more seamless, simple, and efficient by allowing users to leverage their already known and memorized Facebook credentials to setup an account on our site.
At this moment, as far as we know, we’re the only Boston real estate brokerage that offers this convenient Facebook login technology. That badge of honor is surely not going to last. Much like in 2006 when a site like Boston Condo Guy was the forerunner in bringing Google map-based search to the Boston market, the feature function was soon replicated by other brokerages and is now commonplace across real estate related websites.
So rather than focusing on SERPs and how to leverage social media, even with shielding yourself from those “wrong reasons”, we’re trying to keep it simple, focusing on rolling out simple and intuitive technology that ultimately drives a better real estate experience for buyers, sellers, renters, and developers.
Keith Munsell 
