Could Facebook be turned into a series of mini property portals?
The question comes from Ian Jones, a vendor and businessman who happens to have a property to sell and which is listed with hybrid agency Purplebricks. He said that if products and services are promoted for sale on Facebook, why not property. He recently put his theory to the test.
He set up https://www.facebook.com/propertyvideostv and uploaded a video he had shot of the property in Dorset and text-linked it to the listing on Purplebricks.
He then paid £5 to use Facebook’s “Boost Post” feature and selected an age group and area he wanted his video pushed to. The result was over 2,000 video views and 18 click-throughs to the property listing within 48 hours. Each click cost less than 30p.
Jones said: “I am not suggesting that Facebook is going to rock the boat for Rightmove, Zoopla or OnTheMarket any time soon, but over the course of time I do think that Facebook could become a cost-effective and powerful means of additional promotion.
“Facebook is a cheap way of marketing a property with video.
“I think there is nothing stopping a given Facebook account or accounts becoming mini-portals, broken down by, say, location – for example, homesforsaleinhampshire.
“The key things is that estate agents need to think out of the box and not just rely on two of the three major portals.
“Social networking is king and agents need to think of new ways of exploiting it.”
Jones, who acknowledged some agents are already using Facebook effectively, said that for most people, Facebook is their favourite and most visited site – “so Facebook has to be a great additional space for property promotion”.
He said that using videos on Facebook was key.
“With the advent of affordably priced gyro stabilised video cameras such as the DJI Osmo and 360-degree video/still cameras such as the Nikon KeyMission 360 (coming soon), it is going to become much easier for agents to shoot eye-catching video. “Furthermore, FaceBook now supports 360-degree videos in conjunction with mobiles fitted with 3-D sensors – providing viewers with an immersive experience as they pan their mobile around to view a given area.”
References: http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/home-seller-used-facebook-to-generate-over-2000-video-views-of-property-in-48-hours/