Do you have a Facebook profile? More than 2 billion people would answer with YES. Do you own a business? Are you advertising your business on your private profile? Well, you can do better than that. No, you SHOULD do better than that! You need to separate your private and professional life – online and offline. Legally, you can’t do business from your private profile. Facebook took care of that. If you are a Realtor who wants to use Facebook for business purposes, stick around.
Having a Facebook page is like having another website, on a social platform, but the process of making it is so much easier, faster, cheaper and the best part is that it can reach thousands of people daily.
Did you know that there are more than 65 million local businesses using its free Pages product to connect with customers? You can be one of them.
As a Realtor in Canada, you have to be aware of the Facebook Audience that could turn into your potential clients, who are active on this Social Network as we speak. For example, these are the statistic for Canadian Facebook users, based on their age/gender (Image 1) and location (Image 2).
Image 1
Image 2
You can also track your audience using statistic information based on their lifestyle, relationship status, education level, job title, frequency of usage, even the devices they choose when using Facebook.
All these statistics have to be taken into consideration when creating a business page and deciding what content will you publish and when.
There are so many Facebook pages and among them so many Real Estate ones. Are all of them good ones? Not so sure? Do most of them look alike? Pretty much. If you are a Realtor who is about to create a Facebook page, you will probably check out what others have been doing. Well, that might not be the smartest move. Even though it can give you a wide picture, it doesn’t mean that everything you see and come across, is necessarily a good example.
Creating a Page
Let`s start from the beginning. Let`s create a Facebook page – not a profile, but page. Note: Anyone can create a Page, but only official representatives can create a Page for an organization, business, brand or public figure. Take time for this step, don’t rush it. You want to make it as attractive as possible, just like you would with one of your real estate that you are selling. ?
You need good, memorable profile picture and a cover photo to follow. It`s always smart to use your logo in one of these, but you don’t have to use it for both, you might want to consider using a photo, so your potential clients can see who will they be working with. If you have more profiles, you should use the same profile picture on each of them so your followers can easily find you on all of them.
Your cover photo can give you more freedom. You can put a beautiful house there, or a nice neighborhood photo, or even a landscape of a town you work in. If you have more members in your team, you can use this to show who is behind the logo you represent. People are always glad to see the face behind the business. Make you and your team familiar.
Second, very important step is to fill out the “ABOUT” section. This is the ID of your Real Estate business. You want to put your contact information there, location, working hours, short and/or long description of your work and most importantly, link to your website. You can also add a price range for your listings. If your Real Estate agency has years of experience you would want to add how many years you have been within the industry here.
Realtors, just like any other business owners have to make their Facebook page accessible, containing all necessary information so that visitors want to like and follow it. You can have the best content, but if they can’t find enough information in “about” section, they can easily leave the page and look for another.
Last, but not least step is to create a custom URL address for your Real Estate Facebook page. You want to promote your Business as a Realtor, so you will use as many opportunities to share the link to your website. Why not add a link to your new Facebook page? Once you crate your page this URL will be a very long, messy link with bunch of numbers, signs and letters with no order or sense. This is why you need to customize it. You can create your own URL, you only need to have 25 followers and you can start. Here is a simple guide on how to set this up.
You don’t need to bust your brain and think on new name to use for your Facebook URL. You should simply stick with the company name. You have it on your website, you should have it on this page also. So whatever URL you use for your website, should appear on your Facebook URL as well. You want to optimize your business page, so this is the way to do it. When someone googles your business, both your website and your Facebook page will be pulled out by google smart tolls that you have to take and advantage of.
What to post?
Let`s face it, the main reason you made this page is to show what you are offering. Real Estate agencies will need quality photos and useful content describing it. Use Facebook to show the attractive side of your listings by showing beautiful homes people would want to live in. Don`t make a routine out of it. Work on each and every photo you will post, because that is the trigger for your future buyer.
If you connect your Facebook page with Instagram profile, your listings will hit the jack-pot. If you don’t have Instagram profile yet, you can learn more about it from our recent Blog Instagram Best Practices for Real Estate.
The aim is to attract more followers, but not just any followers. You want leads that will go from Facebook to your website and will eventually choose your as their realtor, otherwise, they are just numbers. That is why you have to put a lot of effort in this page.
Let`s make it as a list of DO`s and DON’T`s when posting on Facebook:
You DO want to post continuously and you DO want to be present and active.
You DON’T want to overcrowd your followers with posts of all your listings all the time. You have a website for that.
You DO want to share useful tips, inspirational quotes, funny images related to real-estate business, seasonal posts, etc. You have to use these to keep your page flowing. This way you will always have something to post and you want overwhelm users with countless photos of just houses and apartments. Yes, you want to show and sell those, but leave some room for other content that your followers might like. If they like your page and see that this Realtor is interesting, outgoing, versatile, they will look for more. They will visit your website (you DO want this) and that is the place where you want them to check all your offers in details.
You DON’T want to share private photos, vacation selfies, or lunch you just had. Use your private profile for that.
However, if you came across some nice architecture on your vacation, or a nice house in the mountains where you spent your long weekend, you DO want to share this with a short description. People love to see nice buildings, and you as a Realtor need to show your interest in it, as well. Show them your knowledge in history, architecture, design, they would want to know that.
DON’T be selfish by focusing only on your page and your content.
DO follow others, like their posts, share and comment. This way you will get likes, shares and comments back. You have to interact and show your presence. Show that you care and that you are interested in activities of all your followers.
There is no point in Marketing if you don`t get any Feedback.
You DON’T want to post non-stop, no matter the date and time.
You DO want to know when is the ideal time to post content on your page. There are lots of statistics that calculated what are the perfect times to post content in each social network. You DO want to explore on these.
DON`T worry if during working days you don’t see much improvement. Weekends will make it up to you. People don’t have enough time to search for the future home during the week, but on weekends they will devote much more time to this. Also, you DON`T want to take this as 100% true for all types of profiles and pages. In time you will learn and track the habits of your clients and adjust your content schedule to them.
DO share your Real Estate events and important activities (open house, giveaway, discounts, etc.) and feel free to share it frequently, as a weekly reminder, but not every day, or even worse several times daily. If your posts are all they can see when they go to Facebook, it will become boring and people will unfollow you.
If you have a Blog, you DO want to share it on your Facebook page with a link that will take the readers back to your website. Also, you DO want to share interesting articles, other people’s Blogs and other news related to Real Estate. Build up your content, boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and put your page on the top of the search lists.
Publishing tools, Insights, Tabs
When you create a page, you will choose who can post and edit the content on it. With publishing tools, you can create a post, schedule the date and time where you want to post it and you can erase and edit it in any time you want. You just need to be creative. Prepare a nice photo or a video of your next listing, add informative text above it and you are ready to post.
It will look like this:
You will always be in control of your posts. Whether you want to schedule them, save them as draft and continue working on them later, edit, erase or post it right away.
With Insights you can track the statistics for your page and everything that is happening on it. You can see how many people you reach, daily, weekly, monthly, who are your fans and followers, where are they from, etc. Track the progress your posts are making.
If it seems to confusing and complicated check out A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Analytics and Insights by Hootsuite. Use all these tools and information that Facebook provides for free, to work on your social media marketing strategy, don’t ignore it.
Facebook Advertising
I’m sure you have probably heard of using Social Media Advertising for your business but is it really that effective? This answer depends on how well you set up you’re account, your ads and your landing pages. Real Estate agents greatly benefit from Social Media Advertising everyday, especially considering that most of their target market is on Instagram or Facebook.
Using enticing high resolution photos is essential to creating a successful advertisement, along with several other strategies such as proper organization of advertisements and ads with the right length of titles and content. These advertisement’s can be catered to the exact people you want to target, are you looking to target a certain area? Or maybe you want to target an age group? You can do that. There are so many different opportunities when it comes to Social Media Advertising and as a realtor it is essential that you full take advantage of it.
We hope this will help some Realtors create a fantastic Facebook Page and if you already have one, maybe you learned something new and useful from this Blog. The important thing is that you work on your social media marketing. As the leading Social Network, Facebook should be the first, out of many, you need to explore and take advantage of.
Contact us at Siva Creative if this post made you think and you want to learn more. We are here to help you in creating your own Social Media Marketing Strategy.
