In my last blog about Facebook - http://askozzie.com/facebooking, I covered the basics and my philosophy behind Facebook marketing. In thi Blog I will take it to the next level, beyond relationship marketing on Facebook and into the realm of strictly business.

Enter: THE FAN PAGE!!!!

Fan pages or Group/Business pages can be set up easily and linked directly to your personal Facebook page(meaning that you only have to enter in one password and you get notifications to the same e-mail address).

Creating the fan page is easy. It's the exact same process that you went through for your personal page, but you will have to make sure to use the same e-mail address and password and it will link the two for you.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can begin the marketing aspect.

From day 1 you have to begin loading your page with content. Pictures, events, status updates, links, notes, discussions, etc..... Think about the word Fan. What does that mean? Fan is short for Fanatic. People are fanatics because they have a huge like for something. You have to get them to like your fan page. Think outside the box when doing so. On top of loading your page with helpful content you can think outside the box and begin trying to reach celebrity status. You can have affirmations that inspire people, link to very interesting articles, link to youtube videos, have a trivia question and offer gift certificates for the correct answer, you can promote a tailgate party and Toy/Food drive to get people interested(People love a party, they love football, and they feel guilty if they do not at least try to get involved in good causes). Do something that will really draw good attention and get people talking about your Fan Page. Having tons of fans means you have a huge audience, once you have the audience, then you can grow your brand.

Let's take a step back and work on physically gathering fans.

1) Take all of your personal friends and invite them to be friends of your fan page.

2) Once you have invited all of your friends and many of them have become fans, then you can use the @ symbol to post to multiple walls and reach all of their friends. It's pretty simple. In your status update box type the symbol @, then type in the name of one of your friends/fans. It will automatically bring up that person's pic and name below the box. Click on that box and it will tag them in your status update. Within that ststus update, invite them to invite friends to join your fan page and give them a benefit to becoming a fan(like also posting a link to a youtube video you did for the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit). By using the @ symbol you have posted on their wall for all of their friends and your friends to see with one message.

3) Use external sites to gather fans. You can use many different types of widgets suchas badges, fan boxes, or share buttons to post a link on your blog or web site that will invite people ot become fans on facebook. Whe you are logged in on your fan page look to your left and you will see in blue lettering the words "Promote with a Fan Box". Click on that link. This will take you to a screen of choices. Here is what you have to choose from:

FAN BOX: Below is a fanbox. It has a link where people can click and become a fan, it will show your last status update, and it will show the people that are currently fans. Pretty cool, huh?

SHARE BUTTON: You can also choose a share button. A share button is small, and less intrusive. 

Share 

PAGE BADGE:  Just like the share button, it is just a glorified link. 

If you need help on how to place these widgets on your blog or web page, I am available any time to walk you through these proccesses. If you learned how to use Excel or Word, then you can do this.

Before I go off on a huge rant and keep typing until my fingers bleed I am gonna go ahead and end this blog post. Once I have organized another set of thoughts I will write another post and hopefully have helped at least one person grow their business.

About the Blogger:

Ozzie Ramirez has been in real estate for more since April of 2005 and has won awards based on his character and his production from the Houston Association of REALTORS®. He has served on numerous boards for the Houston Association of REALTORS® and is extremely excited about the future and how Social Media is changing the wayreal estate marketing is done. He loves the way it evens the playing field and give the smaller company a fighting chance to compete with the huge monsters companies in this industry, no matter how big their budgets are.

If you are ever in Pearland, stop by our new office located @ 2506 Francis Dr.  Pearland, TX  77581 or give us a call (281) 648-4440.