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'Like' & 'Share' Your Listings for Greater Exposure and Increased Brand Awareness
By Rachel Bjork and John Bosch, Friday, June 11th, 2010

Even if you’re not one to constantly update your ‘status’ on your social networking pages—or to even regularly check your
pages—it’s probably still pretty likely that you’ve heard of the benefits of using social media to your networking advantage
when selling real estate.    The more you use it, the more you’re probably going to get from it.  But it doesn’t have to be as
time consuming as you may think.  A couple of very simple and easy features to use are the ‘Share this’ and the ‘Like’
buttons to get your listings out in front of more people.

‘Sharing’ your listing
The “Share this” button allows agents or any consumers to “share” the content (page, viewer, link, photos, etc) to numerous
social networking and blogging sites, as well as emailing and texting of the page. 

‘Liking’ your listing
The “Like” button is specifically for Facebook and allows an agent or consumer to “like” the specific content (page, viewer,
link, etc) and therefore this will show up on their profile/news feed on Facebook.  This will then be shared with all of that
user’s friends.  It’s the same as when you hit the “like” button on Facebook for any other content.

Here is what 'Sharing' and 'Liking' look like in the news feed of a Facebook account:



Benefits to ‘Sharing’ and ‘Liking’ your listings
Possible benefits of using the “Share this” and “Like” buttons:

  • Build relationships and your brand with an easy way to apply new, fresh content on your social networking sites
  • Due to the viral nature of social networking sites, the listing can potentially be viewed by hundreds, possibly thousands,
    of consumers with one single post.
  • You can put your listings in front of your fellow real estate professionals quickly, maybe even before they see it on the
    MLS—which will of course then expose your listings to potential buyers faster.


How do you ‘Share’ or ‘Like’ a listing?
Good real estate marketing companies will include the “Share this” and “Like” buttons with your property tours.  VHT, for
example, applies the buttons to the VHT viewer at the brokerage level at no additional cost (with broker approval).  Then you
simply hit the button to apply it to your social networking sites—very fast, and very easy.

Here is an example of what the 'Share' and 'Like' Buttons would look like on a VHT Viewer:


But if you are taking your own photography or creating your own tours, you can also manually apply the photographs or the
link to your listing (located on your Web site or broker’s Web site), while in your social networking site.  Once you’ve posted
the content you can then hit ‘share’ or ‘like'. The below screen shots give you a basic view of where you can add a link while
in your Facebook account. If adding a photograph, you would select the first graphic next to 'attach' (the graphic that looks
like a polaroid), instead of selecting 'link' as shown in the first example below.  

If you have any questions regarding the ‘share this’ or ‘like’ buttons, please feel free to contact us at support@vht.com