With Facebook stock still tumbling since IPO is marketing on the social giant still worth while for real estate investors?

In its second week since going public the value of the world’s largest social network continued to crash, falling almost 10% yesterday and over $35 billion in value in the last couple weeks. Announcement of a new acquisition of Face.com by the social network for $100 million may pose some marketing benefits from more detailed data in the long run. However, the addition of the facial recognition software could also pose a major threat in terms of privacy and more privacy lawsuits.

The blogosphere has also been buzzing with debate on how long Facebook will continue to remain intact, maintain its dominance and be a profitable marketing channel.

Big news was made out of GM’s pulling its $10 million Facebook ad budget just before the IPO. Though we also know the auto maker is still spending tens of millions on its Facebook pages and managing its profiles. So what does this all mean for real estate investors?

The truth is that while social and PPC advertising may not be perfect for industry they are both highly effective and extremely profitable for real estate investing when done right. Of course social is now also a major factor for and critical to SEO. It doesn’t matter what other tactics real estate investors use, if they aren’t using Facebook in a big way their chances of getting to and staying at the top of the search engines is slim.

So for now investors flipping houses and attempting to generate more leads and build better brands Facebook marketing is an absolute must. However, this doesn’t mean just having a presence is going to bring a tsunami of buyer and seller leads nor keep you in 1st place on Google and Bing. Winning the business via social means and having a quality presence which is visually appealing, managed daily with plenty of posting and conversation going on and with all the tools for maximizing lead capture. Not sure what a great presence should look like? Perhaps it is wise for investors to check out just how much others are doing with their pages. Some are turning their Facebook profiles into complete websites.

Facebook may be around forever or it could get crushed by lawsuits in a year from now. In order for real estate investors to maximize ROI and revenues while minimizing the threat of any interruptions in income or leads it is essential to have a diverse marketing mix. This means using multiple social networks, developing mobile campaigns, keeping on top of trends, not keeping all eggs in one basket and perhaps engaging in offline marketing too while holding a reserve to jump on emerging marketing trends.

Despite the Facebook IPO flop many real estate investors are certainly wishing they were in Mark Zuckerberg’s shoes right now or at least have a dozen Silicon Valley properties to flip to the company’s founders and key staff. Who couldn’t find a use for a few extra billion right now?

So what lessons should real estate investors be taking away from Facebook’s legendary IPO if they want to build incredibly valuable businesses and make a few billion of their own? There are good and bad lessons to takeaway here for building a company that is salable and watching out for some major pitfalls.

Those investors who dream of this type of wealth have to recognize the need to go big in their businesses. If you want a billion dollar company you need billion dollar revenues. If you don’t plan for this build scalable systems and set those goals from the beginning it is unlikely this type of value will ever be reached.

Be careful about making enemies. You may enjoy snubbing others when you show up in your hoodie for business meetings but it may bite you in the butt later. Too much hype and attacks on larger and better funded competitors can also bite back at the worst possible moment – like IPO day.

On clearly fatal flaw made by Facebook has been its neglect of those who really turn in the revenues. Treat your advertisers, affiliates, buyers and sellers right and deliver great returns for investors. Help them win and they will be loyal when it counts.

Perhaps the biggest nail in the coffin of the Facebook IPO was a revision of documents warning about future potential revenue issues stemming from consumer trends towards mobile. This means real estate investors should not only be using social and maintaining their Facebook pages but get serious about mobile apps, local SEO and mobile marketing.

Obviously the opening stock price for Facebook was hugely inflated and way out of whack with earnings. Going big fast may be important but net profit and sustainable revenues are critical too. Real estate investors should be taking a serious look at outsourcing, cloud computing and VOIP as well as transactional funding for flipping houses to reduce debt and overhead in order to maximize the bottom line.

Lastly, don’t fall into the pit many other investors do every day and neglect branding. Results based marketing which delivers instant business is crucial but a monthly budget should be created for consistent brand building too.

Summer is coming and bringing with it 2012’s peak home buying season. Real estate investors cannot afford to underestimate the importance of cranking up their marketing to capitalize on the demand and the need to add a little extra sizzle to their campaign over the next few weeks.

Summer is hot for real estate investors flipping houses. Between homeowners needing to sell and find new housing before the new school year starts and vacationers getting swept up in the emotion of the moment and staking their claims to second homes it’s all go.

This year will likely even be hotter than ever before between the looming deadline for the best benefits of completing short sales before August and low mortgage interest rates. Investors who haven’t crafted a special set of marketing campaigns to kick off and position themselves as the top source for great properties this summer are going to be suffering and lagging behind well into next year.

Real estate investors need to establish dominance in their area quickly. The competition will be turning up the heat on their advertising campaigns that’s for sure. So why not blow them out of the water with a big splash to sweep up the summer home sales rush in your region? Think press releases broadcast across the web, getting featured in the local newspaper and community newsletters, cranking up PPC ad volume and swarming the streets with new signs.

Remember that the pressure is also on all types of other local organizations right now too. Your city probably has a sizable budget for attracting extra visitors in the summer months, while travel related companies and websites are pumping up their efforts too. Look for opportunities to collaborate, put together events, share lists and exchange guest blogs.

Property prices are incredibly low and interest rates never better so there should be no reason the majority of home shoppers out there can’t get a deal. Have homes to flip and having trouble selling because of potential buyer’s lack of down payment and money for closing costs? Well, the good news is that the Fed recently reported American banks loosening credit standards for all types of consumer loans and credit cards since the beginning of 2012. Could some of these lending channels work for funding down payments and closing costs? What about state and local down payment assistance programs?

With easy access to ‘all-you-can-eat’ cash in the form of transactional funding for investors the only thing holding you back from flipping an incredible amount of homes over the next few months is your marketing..

Getting your real estate website on the first page of Google and keeping it there is about more than just bragging rights. It is about gaining the most traffic, enabling prospects to find you, dominating your market and doing more deals with a higher ROI.

So how can you get your real estate investing website and blog to appear higher up in Google searches?

Google is on a constant mission to crackdown on poor quality, copied and highly spun content. Keep it fresh, unique, less keyword stuffed and more locally focused.

Video has been called one of the hottest marketing trends of the year and the search engines say they love it too. So where possible upload your videos to YouTube and syndicate your videos to your website, blog and social media. For real estate investors this can be a mix of property tours, tips, customer testimonials and slide show presentations.

However, with the news of Instagram’s sale to Facebook for a cool $1 billion and the growing popularity and buzz around Pinterest it is clear that photos and images may be just as important as video for investors promoting themselves and their properties on the web. Pus, of course they are a lot less expensive to generate than video.

Social media’s effect on search engine rankings is perhaps the most underestimated by real estate investors today. Some investors have believed that they could get away without social because they just don’t get it or recognize the immediate benefits. However, social is becoming increasingly critical to your search engine rankings according to executives from Bing. If you are not marketing on the major social networks, getting conversations going and optimizing with keywords and links you are missing out on the ability to boost your rankings.

Google feels so strongly about the current abuses of link exchanging and the junk links which are being exchanged it actually took the time to send out warning emails to webmasters that their sites could be de-indexed for engaging in excessive black hat practices and featuring poor quality links. A perfect example is the down fall of BMR.

Link building is important for good SEO and rankings, just be more selective about who you link to. Look for quality, related affiliate marketing programs to join and reserve your advertising for below the fold in the page.

There will be more changes to come and real estate investors must keep on top of them if they wish to maintain good rankings. However, Google assures us that those who focus on quality and interesting content will be rewarded.

Now is the time for real estate investors turn up the heat on their marketing before the holiday season really kicks in and people get too distracted with shopping, cooking and travel plans. So try out some of these hot ideas for picking up more buyers and flipping more homes this month...

1. International MLS
The International MLS couldn’t have been released at a better time. Foreign buyers now make up over 60% of buyers in some US markets, with as many as 90% paying cash, so what better way to reach them than the IMLS? It is free to list on for those of you who are Realtors, while others may consider the benefits of using open listing agreements to get access.

2. Thanksgiving Networking
Thanksgiving offers a ton of networking opportunities for real estate investors. Go along to luncheons and dinners being thrown by local associations or corporations or host your own. Or consider doing something for charity to make sure others can have a great Thanksgiving day meal, while boosting your brand image.

3. Home Buyer Webinars
Now is that time to make a push for home buyers and get them in the pipeline. Webinars are the perfect way to accomplish this even if they are busy. Think about capitalizing on getting homeowners in your funnel who may be eligible for compensation from the new foreclosure reviews, or even ahead of tax refund time.

4. Twitter
While there are lots of complicated marketing channels and tools available for real estate investors to meet buyers today, Twitter remains a fast and effective means of reaching new customers without a big budget or complex systems.

5. Mobile Sites
There is a good chance that the few people out there who still don’t have smartphones will get them for Christmas so now is the time to launch your mobile site or at least optimize your current site for the mobile web so that you are poised to reach buyers ahead of your competition.

6. The ‘New Home For Xmas’ Campaign
Don’t let your prospects get distracted by TV ads and other holiday shopping ideas. Now is the time to launch your own ‘New Home for Xmas’ campaign. What better present could there be?