RISMEDIA, March 7, 2011—As social media entrenches itself across the real estate landscape, RISMedia’s official Facebook page has become a vibrant online community with more than 4,000 fans and a solid base of approximately 3,000 active monthly users. Are you getting the latest RISMedia FB updates?
“Inherently, real estate along with all the other industries out there is becoming more social,” explains Charlie Engel, Vice President of Sales – Real Estate, at Oodle. “People are not just relying on search engine results. People are relying on their trusted circle of friends. They are turning to their trusted advisers on Facebook to get feedback on real estate professionals as well as everybody else.”
The meteoric rise comes as no surprise especially given the tremendous amount of attention that Facebook has received in 2010, what with a box office blockbuster garnering Oscar nods and Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” accolades. But Engel believes one of the biggest factors—if not the biggest—bolstering Facebook’s stellar growth is its ubiquity in an increasingly mobile world.
Whereas users once turned to search engines such as Google for instantaneous information, they are now increasingly getting more valuable feedback just as quickly from trusted, familiar sources such as family and friends, and Engel believes greater mobile access to Facebook is largely contributing to the shift.
“That lag time is not so much an issue anymore,” the Oodle executive says. “You’re likely accessing Facebook just like you’re accessing emails … in real time.”
While difficult to gauge in the absence of firm statistics, Facebook believes its mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users. At last count, Facebook calculates it has 200 million active mobile users. There are currently more than 500 million active Facebook users.
RISMedia’s Facebook page provides the real estate industry and all its fans with a trusted source for relevant news and information as well as a vehicle to collaborate, share ideas, business practices and opinions. For example, anyone who was unable to attend NAR’s NARdiGras 2010 Annual Convention in New Orleans in November could have checked out highlights of the event on the page.
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In fact, a statistical analysis of Facebook’s Page Insight Tools shows activity picked up markedly in November when monthly active users jumped approximately threefold from an average of 500 monthly active users to more than 1,500 users. Coming predominantly from the U.S. and Canada (but also from regions as far away as Europe and Asia), the demographics of RISMedia’s fan page is relatively consistent in line with industry statistics compiled by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR). Of the total fan base, 59% are females compared with 39% males. More than half of all fans are between 35 and 54 years of age while roughly a quarter are 55 or over. Atlanta, New York, Tampa and Phoenix remain the top geographic regions for activity.
The page is available at: http://www.facebook.com/RISMedia. In addition, RISMedia recently added its first customized Facebook application, available at http://apps.facebook.com/rismedia/.
