The simple answer is for their traffic driving power.

Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.
This trend is shifting the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps to move into the social-media world.
Some experts say social media could become the Internet’s next search engine.

Astoundingly, Facebook not Google is the largest driver of traffic to major websites. This reminds us in a way of AOL, back in the early days of all this. AOL attempted to control the users online experience, from dialing up to the internet, (remember that?), to checking email, to surfing the web all within the AOL “experience”.

Stickiness.

Another great achievement of Facebook is the time people spend there. It has been said that currently people spend more time at Facebook than all other sites combined. This too is astounding.

If you have been putting this off today’s the day!

Facebook/Real Estate Action Plan

1. Get a facebook personal page.
2. Get a facebook business page. (Read our How to create a Facebook Business Page here).
3. Customize your Facebook business FBML. (Read See how a customized Facebook Business Page FBML looks here).
4. Get Leads

Facebook business pages are a great tool to use in offering real estate agents another avenue to generate leads. Here’s how to create a Facebook business page for your real estate business.

Open your personal facebook page, then go to the following url: www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

From there click the “Create a Page” green button:

On the Create New Facebook Page window, select Real Estate:

Then choose the name of the page you will ultimately want to use. This will become your facebook url, or domain name, eg: www.facebook.com/limeyboy. Ideally, this should match the keywords that are within your domain name or the ones that you website is designed around. Once you choose your page name, you can’t change it, (you can delete it, or create another, but you can edit one that you have created).

Then click, “Create Page”, which will bring you to your Facebook business page:

This page will come with an initial facebook business page url such as the one below. It’s somewhat conveluted at this point…

It is this address that you need to share with your personal/professional facebook friends. Send out an email to suggest that your friends ‘fan’ your facebook page. Once you get 25 ‘fan’s’ of your page, Facebook will trim that down to the shortened version.

How To Add a Photo To Your Facebook Business Page

From your business page, homepage, roll over the words Change Picture on the large ?, and choose, Upload a Picture…

Navigate to your photo:

Wait a moment….

Then see the results: Cute!

Below your photo, click where it says, Write Something, and, well, write something about your business…

And your done!

How to Get to Your Business Page from Your Personal Page

Sign into your facebook account.  Click Pages & Ads, from the left navigation window:

This will take you a summary window, where you can click on your page: