If more of your friends, family members, and former customers & clients would simply remember that you are a REALTOR® then you would probably earn significantly more money through referrals, right? You might feel bombarded at times when you read so much harping on the same message: Reach out to your sphere of influence (SOI), contact your database, and don't let people forget about you.

The simple reason is that ALL selling these days is relationship-based selling. People like to buy or sell through people they know or who are known by a friend or family member who can attest to the salesperson's effectiveness and professionalism. Period. Stay in touch with more people in a genuine way, and you will earn more money. That is the "secret sauce" to big earnings in real estate: staying connected with your sphere on influence (SOI).

Remaining in touch with people you know allows you to remain aware about what's going on in their lives, but it's impossible to personally call everyone on your SOI every week or two to catch up. This is where Facebook can help you remain both front of mind and connected with your people.

Facebook is constantly evaluating and reconfiguring their algorithms to determine which posts from which of your Facebook friends will appear first in your news feed. It basically comes down to the people who you most often interact with on Facebook will appear most often in your newsfeed. Since many of you have hundreds or thousands of friends, there are posts from friends you will never see. The question becomes, "How can I see news feeds from a select group of my Facebook Friends on demand?"

Enter Facebook friend lists. 

This tool allows you to select people you're friends with and add them to named lists. When you select to view these named lists, only recent posts from the particular friends in that named list will appear.

It is amazingly easy to do. Let's assume you want to create a list of your family friends who you've added on Facebook:

• Open your Facebook to the front page.
• On the left side of the screen, under the column heading "Explore," click on "Friend List."
• The box that will appear will display any Friend Lists you have created. Click the button at the top Labeled "Create List."
• This brings up a box prompting you to name your list and it asks you for the "List Name," so in this example, you'd type in "Family Friends."
• The next (and only) section is where it asks for you to enter the Facebook friends who you want to include in this list. If you simply begin to type in the first letters of the friend's first name it will show a list of your matching friends whose names begin with those letters, then just click on that friend's name to include them in your list.
• Once you have added all the names then look to the lower right of the box and click on the blue button labeled "Create".
• BOOM! Your list is created!

By doing this, what have we accomplished, why is this useful, and how can we use this to our business advantage? 

Friend lists allows you to quickly catch up on events and interests of the people who you know. You can have a friend list for prospects, family members, former clients & customers, Mardi Gras organization and high school classmates. Used effectively, this will allow you to re-establish regular contact with people who you have not communicated with in a while by:

• liking, commenting or sharing their posts
• Looking for opportunities to send a personal written note: child's graduation, births of grandchildren, birthdays, deaths, new job, etc.
• Looking for reasons to place a personal call

Be yourself. Be authentic. We can all smell salesmanship and commission breath a mile away! Don't be gratuitous in liking too many posts, or commenting too often. Don't flaunt that you're a REALTOR®, but work on developing very subtle references and use them carefully and effectively.

More people are on Facebook right now than ever before, so you should be connecting with them in a helpful, friendly and compassionate way. Check on your friends. Do it because you care and are concerned. Your compassion will be rewarded through your friends referring you to their friends for help with their real estate needs.

Best of all, social media is free!