Walking A Fine Line With Facebook

Let's face it - we all need to get better at social media marketing. The old methods of sending out rate sheets, putting an ad in the paper, or getting a ghost-written newsletter sent out to your clients just doesn't work as well as it used to.

Social media marketing is intimidating for us geezers of the business. How do we start? Where do we start? What do I say?

Let's start with Facebook. If you are unfamiliar with Facebook, it is a place for friends to get together to share. They can share thoughts, pictures, video, websites of interest, etc. It is a great way to re-connect with old friends (it is really easy to find high school and college classmates).

If we are going to use Facebook to generate business, how do we accomplish this?

On a Facebook page, the first thing you will notice is the box that says "what's on your mind? Here is where we have to walk a fine line. As a mortgage originator you want to announce to the world "Rates are at all time lows, call me right away". Don't make this mistake!

Think of Facebook as a social capital piggy bank. Every time you contribute something, you are either making a social capital deposit or a social capital withdrawal. Obviously, you want to maximize your deposits and minimize your withdrawals. The larger your social capital deposit balance becomes, the more business you will get because people do business with people they know, like, and trust.

The people you interact with on Facebook obviously know you. How do you get them to like you, and trust you more? By adding value. Tell them about a neat website. Share a video with them. Tell them about important events on the calendar in the financial market.

I recently made a prediction on Facebook that mortgage rates would go down after the Fed announced their policy decision. I then followed up with what actually happened. I did this as a subtle way of letting my friends know that I am involved in the mortgage business. Being subtle is key.

Yesterday I listened to a webinar about incorporating Facebook into my business. Reggie and Nicole Nicolay of Cyberhomes presented this webinar. If you would like to learn more about Facebook click here to go to their website to watch the video of the webinar and other information they have presented. Here is my Facebook page if you are interested>. If we aren't Facebook friends yet, let's become friends so we can see how we are using this tool to generate business!

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