Google is busy serving up real-time updates from Twitter, Myspace, blogs and so on for hot search topics or trends.  It just added Facebook Fan Page updates to this mix and here is why it’s important to you.

The world of search results and relevancy is going more real-time (you can largely thank Twitter for that).  Since Google is all about providing relevant search results for a particular search, it is now striving to provide these real-time yet ephemeral results right at the top of the non-sponsored results of each search.  If you have an active Facebook Fan page focusing say on your primary neighborhoods, and fans are actively posting comments, then you are going to see more search engine traffic.  First to your Fan Page, then (by extension) to your site.  This also means that your Fan Page is likely to rank higher in the search results over all as a result.

For this to work in your favor however, two things need to be in place regarding your Facebook Fan page:

1. Its focus needs to be relevant – a Fan page is NOT about you (at least not if you want to succeed)!  For most real estate sales professionals this means it needs to be about your particular niche and/or neighborhoods you service.
2. Fans need to be active – this means you must keep the content fresh and worthy of comment.

I truly believe that appropriately maintained social media will be the new “Google Juice” for driving Web traffic and hence most online business.  Static content, even if comprehensive, is no longer enough.  So if you are not connecting with clients and prospects this way (i.e. via an active Facebook Fan page), now is a good time to start!
* Special thanks to Brad Carroll of Dakno Marketing for this tip :0)