Facebook is a powerful tool for real estate agents, and many businesses are able to use its all-encompassing nature to their benefit. Are you fully taking advantage of Facebook as a marketing tool?
If you already have a Facebook business page but are looking for ways to improve your social media strategy and stand out from the crowd, these 6 big tips are for you!
- Always boost your Facebook posts.
Facebook is pay to play. Not only do you need to boost your Facebook posts to increase the chances they’ll be seen by people, but the more money you sponsor a post for, the more people that are likely to see it.
Many real estate agents want to know how much they should be boosting their Facebook posts for, and we recommend boosting each post for at least $10 as a start. There is no “magic” number, and ad spend vs. the success of the ad will fluctuate widely depending on your location, your type of business, the people in your network, etc. It will take some trial and error to figure out how much you should be spending to achieve the reach you want.
You’ll also want to keep in mind that there are several audience options, and each one will achieve different results. You can target people who already follow your page, people who follow you and their friends, or you can create a custom audience based on age, gender, location, and interests.
- Boost your Facebook posts to people who already follow you.
While you may want to expand your audience, you also don’t want to forget about the people who are already following you. You can nurture your current audience by boosting Facebook posts to people who are already aware of your business. Like we mentioned in #1, you can do this by boosting to people who already follow your Facebook page, but you can also target people on your email list, and you can target people who have visited your website. To do the latter, you will need to install a Facebook pixel on your website.
- Whenever you share a link on Facebook, be sure to add your own perspective.
Many real estate agents have a habit of sharing a link on Facebook without any comment or context. Unfortunately, this ensures they’ll blend in with what other agents are doing! It’s important to share your own thoughts and perspective about why someone should pay attention or care about what you’re sharing. This is also a great opportunity to demonstrate your own expertise, and engage others in conversation.
- Share your own original content.
Another excellent way to stand out from other agents is to share your own original material, whether it’s a link to an original blog post on your website, a photo you took, a video, etc. People already see enough “canned” content in their newsfeeds, so sharing your own original content is not only more interesting, but it will help people get to know you better!
- Be sure to respond to comments.
This one might sound obvious, but it’s actually something that many agents could greatly improve upon. Sometimes agents take the “set it and forget it” motto to heart a little too much, and we’ve seen many comments or questions on Facebook posts receive no response from the agent. Comments should always receive some type of response—even the negative comments! This is just another opportunity for you to connect with someone, andwhen someone comments on your post, it’s more likely to show up in their friends’ newsfeeds, too.
- Add closed captions to your videos.
If you are sharing your own original videos on Facebook, you’ll want to make sure you’re not just posting the Youtube link. You should directly upload your video to Facebook—this way, it will automatically play in people’s newsfeeds. But you’ll also want to make sure that if someone is talking in the video, you add closed captioning to it. Many people do not turn on the sound as they’re scrolling through Facebook, and making it as easy as possible for someone to watch your video increases the chances that they’ll stick around longer!
Facebook has an option to automatically generate captions, but sometimes there will be mistakes in this feature; it may be worth it to edit or just create the captions yourself. You can also use Youtube to create your own captions for your video and download them, and then upload the caption file to Facebook along with your video.
