Suckface With Facebook Today or Tomorrow, You’ll Just Plain Suck. True or False?

Is Facebook A Toad Or A Prince?

Everywhere I go, I hear earfuls of Facebook yadder.  It’s a time suck.  It’s a tool.  It’s the future.  It’s a fad.  I don’t get it.  Who cares.  Get a life.  I’m an addict.  Don’t you work?  Etc.  You hear it too, right?

Here’s the deal.

In 2010 and beyond, Facebook will be the most important conversation channel, persona differentiator and relationship builder in the history of humans.

Facebook will also render the unimaginative as irrelevant and invisible.

I could be wrong, but I believe Facebook is…

The Most Important Tool Of Our Future

Here’s why:

1. Given a choice, people choose to engage/hire an agent they know, like and trust. Studies and experience confirm this.
2. People remember the names of people/agents they know, like and trust.  Common sense and  experience confirm this.
3. People recommend, refer and hire agents they remember.  Observation and experience confirm this.

If 1, 2, and 3 are true, then creating Top Of Mind Awareness as  a person who is liked, known and trusted and happens to be a kick-ass real estate agent, is the Golden Key to success.  It has always been so.

How do we create Top Of Mind Awareness you might ask? Creating Top Of Mind Awareness requires 3 R things.  Repetition, Relevance and Remarkability. Simple to grasp, harder to do.  Yesterday we muscled and monologued our Top Of Mind Awareness with direct mail, door knocking,  billboarding,  TV commercials, telephone calls, print ads and social butterflying at networked gathering like Chamber Of Commerce, Drunko, PTO, etc..  Most of flexing was rude, crude and demeaning.

Today, pointing Facebook properly engages, entertains, enlightens, informs, attracts and nurtures relationships — with permission.

When we comment and engage with FB friends about what they’re sharing, our relevant comments and conversation can be viewed by all their FB Friends.  Exponential amplification is possible.   Where else is this relevant and exponential engagement and conversation possible?

Of course if you give bad Facebook, it’ll detonate exponentially and turn your Facebook into a hot-mess Faceplant.

The Three R’s and Facebook

Repetition

In the real world, you can’t be everywhere all the time…duh.  In the real world unless you’re physically talking to someone, you have no idea what’s going on in their life (exception = gossip).

On planet Facebook  you can be in front of your friends/suspects/prospects wherever they are, at their convenience.  We can engage with our Facebook tribe daily.   Done properly, with respect and consideration, it’s not spam, awkward, inconvenient, random or demeaning.  It’s permission based conversation.

I recommend to my friends that they review the status updates of their FB friends daily – comment, share, encourage, engage and click the “Like” link often.  Update your status and share  your stuff once or twice daily.

Let’s remember, nobody posts their updates to Facebook hoping that nobody will notice.  Human nature screams for attention and an sense of significance. How are we satisfying our friends basic human needs?  By commenting, sharing and conversing with others, not focusing on ourselves and sell, sell, selling.

Relevance

By engaging with my FB friends about things that are happening in their lives, everything we say or share is relevant to them specifically.  Our engagement isn’t random it’s relevant and memorable.

Remarkability

According to TechCrunch.com, there are over 250,000,000 million active registered users of Facebook.  How many of the 250,000,000 are  Realtors?  The opportunity to create Top Of Mind Awarness is monstrous.  Commenting, sharing and engaging others, specifically about what’s going on their lives, will absolutely make you remarkable.  Especially if you’re not shouting and foaming at the mouth about you!  Instead, focus all your fizz on smartly smiling, liking, winking, laughing, sharing and hugging the most important person on the planet — them.  This behavior is remarkable.

But, let’s beware, just like the real world, if you’re a knuckle-head , this digital mojo can backfire.

Avoid Facebook Faceplants

The Universal Law Of Duality demands disaster equal to opportuninty.  Here’s a few tips on avoiding Facebook faceplants.

1. Don’t close your mind, scoff, make excuses or ignore the buzz.  Do embrace and suckface with Facebook.
2. Don’t talk about yourself too much, pretend you’re someone you’re not or Sell, Sell, Sell.   Do engage and comment on what others are sharing and share what others are sharing.  Oddly, when you make it not about you, and all about them, it becomes all about you.
3. Don’t update, comment or drive when you’re drunk or high.  Do be respectful, polite, funny, candid and real.
4. Don’t Facebook focus on your Realtor friends.  Do shower civilians with affection and attention.
5. “Use the tool, don’t be a tool.” ~ Sarah Bonert
6. Don’t lurk, watch and wallflower.  Do share links, photos and videos.  Do give credit to others. Do be cool and kind.
7. Don’t spend all your time banging around Facebook.  Do get offline, out and about. Do use Facebook as the bridge to face-to-face, the most important engagement of all.

Are You Filling Your Facebook Lake Or A Piddling Puddle?

Tomorrow, prospective employers will use the depth and breadth of our Facebook persona and engagement to help them figure out who to choose, refer and recommend.  The days of printed personal brochures and previously traditional forms of personal promotion will be history.  With Facebook we can fashion our own personal lake of information, engagement, experience and entertainment.  The question is, will our lake be deep, wide and fizzy or a piddling puddle of insignificance and boredom?

I say, let’s get started.  Fill your lake with fizz, fun, personality and professionalism.  What do you say?

That’s My “Suckface With Facebook Today or You’ll  Just Plain Suck Tomorrow” story.

And I’m sticking to it.

Get started.  Watch. Learn.  Open eyes and open ears.  Be curious.  Share.  Conversate. Engage.

Suckface with Facebook today or ignore and invisible your way to nowhere.

Have comments?  Suggestions?  Tips? Think it’s all poppy-cock?  Let’s hear it.

Cheers.

PS.  Wanna keep your finger on the Facebook pulse?  Read these:  AllFacebook.com and InsideFacebook.com

Photo Credit

PS.  Derek Overbey shared this cool video titled, “Social Media Revolution”