A lot of people assume that "social media marketing" is a marketing strategy in and of itself, but this simply isn't true. We should be talking about social media as a smarter, more efficient channel for doing traditional marketing strategies, like direct marketing, remarketing, publicity, advertising, sales promotions, and market research. All of these strategies can be implemented via social media for a much lower cost than print, television, or radio, and the results can be tracked unlike any of these other channels. Many home builders are on social media today, but a smaller portion of them are actually using a real marketing strategy. Without setting goals, crafting campaigns, and defining target demographics, managing a social media page is largely a wasted effort. This is why we generally don't recommend managing your own Facebook page unless you have a marketing person on staff. The posts published to your business page should also have a strategy behind them in addition to your actual ads. A business page is a much more precious marketing tool than most people realize. If you've correctly targeted your page promotion ads, the majority of your page fans should be people who at least live in or around the areas where you sell homes. By "liking" your page, they have basically opted in to receiving communication from you via the posts in their newsfeed and have also indicated that they like your product. Step back and think for a minute where else you might be able to find this type of audience and keep track of them for future marketing efforts. One really old school way might be to include a sign-up sheet at your model homes or at open house events that would prompt people to write down their name, address, phone number, and email as a way to opt-in to receive updates from you. Another method might be to include the same opt-in form somewhere on your website. Perhaps some of you have even tried one or both of these methods in the past. Were you able to generate an email or mailing list of several thousand people? If so, how much time did it take, and what was the associated cost? The beauty of Facebook is that it allows you to collect this type of audience relatively quickly, easily, and for a low cost. But what are you doing with this audience? With a traditional mailing list, you probably handed it off to a local agency to design direct mail or email campaigns. Even though you have access to printers, envelopes, and email, you probably didn't do the work yourself, and it probably wasn't just because you don't have the time. Why, then, is a Facebook business page any different? Every post to the page is a form of direct advertising to your opt-in audience. The tricky part is that people expect you to be posting on social media every day, but they don't want to be advertised to every day. Just as getting an email or flyer from you daily would drive anyone nuts, so does seeing a self-promoting post from you every single day. Using social media as a platform for doing traditional marketing strategies along with customer service and PR requires a finesse that takes even professional digital marketers a long time to acquire. Hiring a marketing strategist to manage your business page is one of the smartest things you can do from a marketing standpoint. Your strategist will be able to determine the appropriate content cycle in addition to which products work best with your audience, the right messaging strategy, how to utilize the audience you have to grow awareness and visibility even further, and more. As we said, social media marketing is not a strategy unto itself, but rather a modern channel by which to implement traditional marketing strategies. If you're not versed in the best practices in direct marketing, publicity, or product promotion, by thinking of Facebook as a DIY activity you're inhibiting your business page's ability to provide any sort of value in marketing your business.