Over in our Facebook for Real Estate Agents group, we get a lot of questions about Facebook.  How to use it, what to do, etc.

Recently one of our group members asked the following question:

“How should we divide our business and personal Facebook presence – and if we are in multiple MLS Associations – what suggestions do you have – more than 1 Facebook and Google+ account? (Of course Facebook and Google+ will change their rules and make even a good solution now something that will need to be changed later.)”

I left the question in it’s originally written wording (it was a comment on a thread in the group) so you could get a feel for the thought process of the agent asking the question.

Ok, let’s address the business vs. personal part of the question first.

First of all, everyone should have a personal profile.  Second of all, real estate agents should have their own business page.  There will always be overlap and it’s ok to have that overlap.

When it comes to the areas you serve (the multiple MLS Associations), how many you serve does not matter (unless of course you are member of one right by you and a member of one several states away.  IF this is your situation, you can do several things: either brand your business as “the combined area” (for example, there are several REALTORS® in our home market who are licensed both in Idaho and in California and they brand themselves – for them, it’s advantageous since the area of Idaho that is our home base has an extremely high percentage of relocations from several California counties.)  Or, you can brand both businesses separately, because that is what you have, two different businesses.

However, if you are in neighboring associations, perhaps ones that serve the same general geographic area, I would recommend choosing your dominate MLS, the area you work the most in, and brand and build that business.  You muddy up the waters when you don’t target down and niche.

Now, what do I mean by branding?  I mean you’ll always only have one Facebook personal profile and one Google+ personal profile.  That’s it.  However, you could potentially have an unlimited number of Facebook business pages and Google + business pages.  Now, yet again, I strongly recommend picking one, focusing on one, building one (area).

And yes, you are absolutely correct, Facebook and Google+ will make changes, that is to be expected.  It becomes frustrating because as real estate agents, we prefer creating something and setting something into motion and never having to revisit the work we’ve done.  With social media, it’s a constantly changing process.

Which is why we do what we do.  We stay on top of Facebook, changes to their algorithms, changes to their ads manager, changes to the process.  We also stay on top of the real estate industry, remaining fully immeshed.