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Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Let’s dive into how YOU can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves are trying to build their business off your back.

How do you stay ahead in real estate when you feel like you have to keep everything you do a secret because the minute you do it, someone steals it?

Does it irk you when your stuff is stolen and people say “you should be flattered” when this happens?

Let’s dive into how YOU can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves are trying to build their business off your back.

Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Join me inside The Vault (and inside Leads and Leverage) as we kick start the rest of 2018 in the month of August…no more famine in the winter, this winter you’ll have LEADS!!!

How do you stay ahead in real estate when you feel like you have to keep everything you do a secret because the minute you do it, someone steals it?

Does it irk you when your stuff is stolen and people say “you should be flattered” when this happens? It irks me! So let’s dive into, today, right now, into how you can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves, because that’s what they are, unethical thieves steal off of your back!

Today we are going to dive into what to do, and why, why am I talking about this? Well, we are talking about this because this has happened to me, all the time, in multiple businesses, and even more so, with Leads and Leverage.

So what do you do? How do you deal with it, etc?

Do you feel that you have to keep everything you do a secret, because I know that we talk about growth mindset and abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset.

We talked about that, and not worrying so much about what people copy of yours, so we have kind of two things going on here.

On the one hand, yes, we feel like we have to keep everything we are doing a secret, because people do copy us. On the other hand, we don’t want to get into the scarcity mindset, and keep stuff super secret, because that’s a scarcity mindset.

We want to help people who want to be helped. So how do you help other people -pull them up with you- and how do you prevent that theft? How do you prevent those unethical hooligans from doing what they are doing?

Here’s the reality – when people say “oh, you should be flattered when people steal your stuff,” no, you shouldn’t be flattered because it’s not flattering, it’s theft.

First things first, there will always be copycats. Always. There is nothing you can do to stop the copycats. Okay? There is nothing you can do.

Unless, let me give you an example, thirty years ago, when we had our retail stores, I’m telling you, the minute we got something in the store, a similar store got it right away.

They would always be looking at us as competitors to figure out what to get in their stores. So, there was always copying. We were never truly unique in that sense, because of the products that we had. It happened in retail- it happens in our real estate business.

I don’t want to dwell on how that made me feel, but the truth is, this happens in the real estate business. Everytime we rent and lease, in fact, this is hilarious, in 2009, when we opened our own brokerage, we got our logo and our signs made, no other signs looked like ours and no other logos looked like ours.

Now, it’s nine years later, 2018, when I drive around, it blows my mind at how many signs look like ours and how many logos look like ours. It’s just interesting how people copy what other people are doing instead of doing their own stuff.

Everyone looks the same again. In real estate, when that does happen, you want your sign to stand out, you want people to see what’s going on. But again, there will always be copycats.

For Leads and Leverage, this happens all the time, and recently- it just blows me away that people still do this- there are people who not just harvest the idea, but we are going to talk about harvesting an idea and making it your own versus actually stealing it.

I’m talking about people who actually steal it, who follow me on Leads and Leverage, and they are literally taking all the notes that I give you guys, the downloads I give you, they are taking those, they are just repackaging them (and by that I mean putting them on a different colored document and different icons on there.)

They are using the same words, like exact same words, what I call my ads… words I created and invented, they are using those. The fact that they are trying to teach the process, the different processes that I’m teaching you, they are trying to do that too. So there is constantly copying, I have people doing that all the time, constantly, constantly.

Here’s the truth: they are going to fail. They are absolutely going to fail. Now why are they going to fail? They are going to fail because for a number of reasons, which I’m going to highlight down here, but they are going to fail because they are always looking for what someone else is doing, but they have no idea if what that someone else is doing is working.

They see the surface of success, but they don’t see what is getting you there. So they don’t see what is getting you there.

Number one- now you also are so far ahead of them, if they are copying you, then they are copying what you already did, what you already created.

You are so far ahead of them that they aren’t going to catch up. They are seriously not going to catch up. You need to keep moving forward and not look back.

That is the key.

You gotta keep moving forward and not look back. You need to not be reactionary, because what you focus on, expands. If you are focused on your frustration and your anger, and trying to go after them, they’ve won. You know why they have won?

Because you just put your time, and your energy, and possibly your money in chasing them down, instead of keeping on moving forward.

Also, they don’t understand YOU. You, your focus, your goals. So they have no idea how the pieces apply to your business. They might get the surface idea, but they don’t know how that applies to your business.

I’m going to give you examples from my business, in all of this.

Here’s the biggest one – they don’t have your superpower. What do I mean? Well, each one of us has a superpower. Each of us comes with something that is unique to us, that we are really good at.

And I’m not talking about “negotiating,” and “selling ice to an eskimo.” I’m talking about what are you really good at? Are you really good at hearing what people need and helping them with that? Are you really good at energizing people?

That tends to be my superpower, I tend to put energy into people, and I love doing that.

There are people who are great encouragers, there are people who are good at all kinds of different things.

So these copycats don’t have your superpowers- they can say your same message but it’s going to fall flat, which means they are going to fail, because they can’t replicate you.

That is why your unique selling proposition in real estate is not “I work in real estate, I help people do this and do that”- your unique selling proposition is YOU. So you have got to figure out what you bring to the table?

I know I bring energy, I bring encouragement, I bring passion, and I bring people to see the ability that yes, they do it. That’s my superpower. What’s yours? No one else can copy you. You have to wear blinders and you have to focus on your end goal.

Here’s the thing- when I was watching the videos that this person was sharing using my templates, my checklists, etc, I’m watching the videos and I’m going “they don’t even understand what they are teaching!

Like, they are reading through this, but they don’t understand it. They don’t get it, they don’t know.” So yeah, okay, they might get some business from it, and whatever, but they don’t actually understand what’s the writing behind it.

Here’s what I have found in real estate – when I was doing videos for real estate, we were getting a lot of “come list me” calls, and doing a lot of videos on how to list your property, and I’ll be frank, most of y’all don’t know how to price a piece of property. You gotta learn this!

A lot of times, we think it’s all about, you know, the comps, but the comps, once they have closed, are an additional thirty to sixty days older, because in closing price, that’s the price that the offer was made thirty, forty, sixty-five days before, sometimes longer.

And so we have to take that into effect, we have to take into effect how fast is the market is going up, and going down?

How many days is our market expanding? It may be by one or two days. All of these elements are “what’s the competition?” If everything’s going flat, and there is literally nothing in your price range, and it’s a popular price range, it’s a totally different story.

There are all kinds of different elements there for pricing, and that is what I focused on for teaching people, and why we dominated on expires. That’s why we got all of the expires that we ever pursued, because they knew that if they priced it the way we said to price it, then we are getting 99.8% of the list-to-sell price.

They weren’t having to reduce their prices, and they were making more money then the people who priced high, then had to go down.

We were able to show that through data, etc. We had other people try to copy it, but they didn’t understand it, and you could tell based on how they were presenting the ideas.

Everything I teach you, everything, is stuff that I know, use, and believe in intimately.

I do not go and curate information from other people and paired it back out to you. That is what your competitors are doing when they copy you, when they pull from your stuff and they try to pass it off as their own, they don’t know what they are doing.

They don’t understand! They are going to fail.

I have had people join our membership, and try to copy everything we do, and then sell it as their own- they failed.

I’ve had people try to use our stuff as lead magnets- they failed! They don’t have a long game in mind. They don’t have the passion, and the drive for it that I do, they want the money, they don’t understand why I’m doing this, and why I’m willing to push through the dirt, so they can’t copy me.

They don’t understand, they don’t have a passion for you guys. They don’t actually care if you are own your own brokerage business or not.

They don’t care if the pieces that you are using are autonomous and can be moved if something happens in your brokerage. They don’t actually understand how to build as business because they are not actually building one.

They are just trying to copy and make a quick buck!

That is the same thing with real estate agents when they try to copy you, when they see someone who they think is trying to have success, or they know that they are having success (this is why we got copied), but the funny thing was, no one fully copied it.

Direct mail- they would see on the surface that we had all of these transactions, and we were doing direct mail. They would get one, or two, of our pieces of direct mail, and try to duplicate it! Not realizing that those one or two pieces were just a few out of twenty-four that happened that year.

So they don’t get it, they don’t understand the strategy.

Here’s the thing – when people copy you like this, there is a couple of different things, when people copy you, you just need to ignore them. You have to ignore them, literally let them go.

Do what you can to ban and block them, from your page, from your email list, etc, but that’s it.

Let no more thought go into that. In fact, you should use it as fuel to go, “Ah! They are not going to make a business because they aren’t actually building a business.” They are just copying you!

So use that as fuel for you to keep going. Always remember… you are way ahead of them. You are so far ahead of them, that’s why they steal from you and don’t want to put in the work, they don’t want to put in all the years you have put into the business.

I watch people now, I started on July 30th of 2014, is when I started building up the domain of Leads and Leverage, and I didn’t actually start building up content and teaching until September of that year.

It’s been five years now since we bought the domain, four years since we actually launched the business, and it’s been really interesting to watch the people come and go, come and go, and copy my stuff, and then just go. There are other people that they copied, but for whatever reason, they have copied this.

So now, I know why some people copy me, because they like the energy, they like the stuff, they look and see “oh, I want that money!” But, again, they don’t have the passion.

They don’t have the understanding of where I’m coming from. And the “why” as to why I’m teaching what I’m teaching.

It’s the exact same thing with you. People who try to copy you when you have created something that you want to use for your prospects, for your clients, etc, you are doing it because you have had people ask that question and struggle with that problem, and you want to solve it.

So you have an intimate knowledge as to why you are using something.

Now what’s the difference between harvesting ideas and stealing?

Harvesting ideas, when you see someone posting an article or a video on pricing, we will just use pricing, and maybe you spend the time watching it – don’t spend a lot of time watching your competitors stuff.

I do not watch anyone’s stuff who may be possibly perceived as a competitor to me. I do not. I do not want to be influenced by them. I do not want their opinions.

Every once in a while, I will read a headline, or a couple of things, and I’ll either agree with it or disagree with it. If I disagree with it, then I read more so that I can come out with “no, this person is teaching you this and that is wrong.”

But as for everything else, I don’t want to know what they are doing. I don’t. Because I don’t want to be influenced by them.

I have MY reasons for doing Leads and Leverage, it’s MY business focus, and that is to empower YOU. To empower you as a business owner, as a business builder, so that you can have the life that you want AND build a business.

Create more time, make more money and LOVE the journey. That is why I’m doing this.

So when you are in real estate, why are you doing it?

Now my underlying reason, I LOVE this business, I love helping you guys, but my underlying reason is the flexibility, my most important thing is my husband and my kids. That is my most important thing. And then my sister, and her husband and my parents.

My family is most important to me and so every business that I have ever had, I have made sure that my priority is still my family. So that I could build my business around my family.

That’s what I want for you. So, what do you want? You don’t have to love all of the people that you are working with, but you do need to love the journey. So you need to figure out what that is.

For me, in real estate, I didn’t actually love real estate. What I loved about real estate was that I was getting people into what they enjoyed, like getting them into their house, because that’s exciting and people like that.

And I loved the fact that I could be at home and be with my kids, for the most part. I did the listings, Chuck did the buyers. If you have to do both, you can schedule it around your schedule, and have that flexibility.

But this is the key- when you are looking up people who are copying what you are doing, you have to actually wear blinders. You have to wear blinders and you have to keep moving forward.

You have to remind yourself “yes, they are going to fail.” People who are constantly trying to do what other people are doing instead of doing their path- they fail. They do!

They are one of the 86% that fails because they have never identified what is in it for them- except that “I want to copy that,” and “I want to have that” with money. That’s it.

There is no compelling passion behind it.

And it’s not necessarily finding your “why,” but you do need to understand your motivations. It’s really, really important that you put blinders on and ignore those people.

When we had our photos stolen, we actually had an attorney because a lot of agents think that they can just “borrow” somebody’s photos. We set it up with our attorney whenever there was a copyright theft, etc.

Now with me, and this national business and stuff, at this point, I have it set up, but I haven’t enacted it. So we will see what happens with that. It depends on how far it goes, before I’m actually going to put real energy to it, because, again, I want to keep moving forward. They will never be where I’m at, they will never have the passion for what I’m doing, or the why.

It’s the exact same with you. People will try to copy our email campaigns, people will try to copy our expire campaigns, people will try to copy our fiscal campaigns, people will try to copy our investor campaigns.

They will try to copy all this stuff but they will never get it. They don’t understand our goal, they don’t understand our passion, they didn’t have the knowledge.

So as far as working with investors, or 1-4 unit properties, we had a lot of knowledge in that. And we had a team that had a lot of knowledge in that. And so when people were trying to copy it, they couldn’t answer the questions that investors ultimately had, so they would fail.

Just be aware, when people copy you, they are only copying what they see on the surface. They cannot be you! They don’t have your experience, they don’t have your knowledge, they don’t have your reputation, they just don’t.

They don’t have your education, they cannot be you.

So have I said it enough that it doesn’t matter, so long as people are copying you, that you need to just focus on your path, and the people that follow you, and put your energy towards them. You keep your energy on your path.

Keep your energy on what you are doing, and keep doing what you need to do.

So if you want to make sure that you stay ahead, that you are going to sneak past your colleagues, they are not going to know what happens, because, yes, you can sneak past them.

And you are going to end up dominating Facebook! If that’s what you want, then you need to join us in “The Vault.” You need to join us if you want to stay ahead of the game, so that you are always staying ahead.

Facebook is changing constantly- that’s why I am laughing at these people who are trying to teach what I taught six months ago…because Facebook has changed!

Some things are the same, but they don’t understand the overall strategy so they are just looking at the tactics.

If you have questions that you want me to answer, post them in the comments below,

Want to sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook? Join me inside The Vault (and inside Leads and Leverage) as we kick start the rest of 2018 in the month of August…no more famine in the winter, this winter you’ll have LEADS!!!

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Think Facebook Page Likes Don’t Matter? Think Again. The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Page Likes, Exclusively For Real Estate Agents

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

Are you making this major mistake?

As agents, we tend to think that if we like each other’s Facebook business pages, we will close more deals, but this is false.

Personal profiles should be used to cultivate relationships with people you have met and business pages should be used as funnels for unmet prospects

Did you know?

Disengaged or disinterested followers devalue your Facebook business page.

I see this all the time: real estate agents exchanging Facebook business page likes with one another.

Every time I see it, I just want to scream from the rooftops, “You’re killing your Facebook lead generation.”

I just want to scream from the rooftops,

You’re killing your Facebook lead generation

.
But alas, we have this theoretical idea that — somehow, some way, in some form or another — if we go around patting each other’s backs on Facebook, it will bring more closings to the closing table.

When I do say something, I always get responses that seem to make sense — at least on the surface — but if anyone digs just a tiny bit below the surface, they fall apart.

Those responses include:

More exposure is good for my business.

I want to be available for referrals.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page.

These are just a few of the plethora of reasons why real estate agents engage in “like” exchanges.

Let’s hit each response, shall we?

I want to be available for referrals

I have never understood why real estate agents spend more time focusing on staying connected with colleagues and hoping to get potential referrals than they do on consistently exposing their services to real prospects.

Why on earth are we spending 80 percent of our energy connecting with sources who will bring in less than 5 percent of our closings in any given year? Why, indeed.

I also question how adding a real estate agent to your real estate business page — a page that you are (hopefully) providing valuable, relevant content on, for your particular target market — is going to make you available for referrals from agents all over.

First of all, the page isn’t relevant to the agent in another market, so they aren’t going to stay involved in your page.

Their disengagement means anything you post won’t be showing up in their Facebook news feed, which ultimately defeats your intended purpose — referrals from said agent.

There are much better ways to stay connected with colleagues around the country — ways that will give you more referrals.

Here’s another thing: The more disengaged your page “likes” are, the more Facebook penalizes you and makes it even harder for you to get your content into the news feeds of your page fans who are real prospects. It’s all part of the algorithm.

FACT

The more disengaged your page likes are, the more Facebook penalizes you.

Last, but not least, when it comes time to “pay to play” — otherwise known as running ads — you are going to be wasting a whole lot of money putting ads in front of people who will never use your services.

Would you add colleagues from around the country to your snail-mail campaigns focused toward homebuyers or sellers in your local market?

If you would, you’re wasting copious amounts of money on something that will never give you a return (and if it does it’s a crazy, ridiculously small return) and need some serious targeting and marketing help.

More exposure is good for my business

Really? How so? Can you track this statement? Can you back it with statistical data?

In my over 20 years in real estate, I have yet to get actual, statistical data from a single agent on this. They’ll spout its truth, but they don’t have any evidence to prove it.

You see, it’s just the old way of thinking that’s always been theoretical because it sounds right on the surface.

But the problem is, the statement is ambiguous. What constitutes exposure? What is the content? Who is the audience? What does “good” mean?

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in, and we’ve translated to mean that more exposure equals more business.

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in — but is all exposure good?

Even if it is true — does that mean all exposure is good?

Here’s where most agents fall by the wayside and tend to be more stubborn than realistic. To get the exposure theory to work for you, you must be exposing the right content to the right audience.

If exposure is good, it must be the right exposure — and the right exposure is a prospect who want to buy or sell. A real estate agent in another market is not that prospect.

Let’s look at this from another perspective — that of Facebook. We’ve all heard that Facebook is now a pay-to-play platform. That means if you are a business and you want to make sales, you are going to have to invest in the platform — both in time and money.

You aren’t going to get a whole lot of focused, free exposure anymore. In other words, all this time you are spending getting your colleagues around the country to like your business page is not helping you at all in any way, shape or form. Period.

You’ve got to have your Facebook business page set up for real estate lead generation — not for exposure — and you’ve got to be engaging in lead generation-focused activities.

In fact, if you’ve been collecting likes that aren’t interested in your content, you’ve devalued your Facebook business page — drastically.

And you’ve locked yourself into a box — a box that you’ll be constantly working to get out of (which is futile), once you realize you could be getting actual leads if you understood how Facebook works.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page

This one kills me. Agents go to conferences and conventions and revere the agents who are on these panels. They revere them because they are making the big bucks doing a trillion and one transactions each year.

Although I firmly believe in doing what is working and not reinventing the wheel, you’ve got to make sure that what is being touted as working is truly working.

Without getting into specifics, my team has closed more transactions than 99 percent of the agents on these top agent panels.

One thing I excel at is lead generation and conversion, and I’m a tyrant when it comes to digging deep and doing what actually works. We look at statistical, empirical data — not anecdotal gut feelings.

These agents have no idea how to use Facebook. They don’t know how to generate real estate leads from their Facebook business pages, nor do they understand how to cultivate more referrals from colleagues around the country using Facebook.

If they did, they would know that their business pages are funnels for unmet prospects, and their personal profiles are cultivators for “met” relationships.

Business pages are funnels for unmet prospects; personal profiles are for met relationships.

In other words, connect with colleagues on your personal profile and use lists to keep them organized. Use your Facebook business page to drive leads into your capture points.

So what should you stop doing?

You must (I can’t emphasize must enough) stop exchanging Facebook business page likes with your colleagues.

If you want to grow your business, and you wish to take advantage of the No. 1 lead generation resource available to you today, then you’ve got to take the time to understand how Facebook works for real estate lead generation.

There is more to Facebook lead generation than just stopping this practice, but this is the biggest mistake I see agents making. And I thought it’s about time I started addressing it. I even go as far as to say that asking people to like your page is a big fat no-no.

As I was writing this article, I realized I was making one big assumption about you — that the reason you are using Facebook is because you want to close more transactions.

If that is your goal — then you need to think about and analyze what you are doing on Facebook. Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

My question for you is: Have you been out there exchanging page likes with other agents? Are you going to change that and do something that works to bring more closings to the table? Do you disagree?

If so, please share with me why — and as you now know, I like real data behind statements, not feel-good anecdotal sharing of gut beliefs.

Featured Download:

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

If you’ve been using a vendor to post real estate stuff to your personal profile it has been officially nixed by Facebook. Get the inside scoop NOW on what to do and how to get around that issue

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

[BREAKING NEWS]

As of TODAY you can no longer post to your personal profile using a 3rd party tool… so if you’ve been using a vendor to post real estate stuff to your personal profile… that has been officially nixed by Facebook.

So… what are you to do? How do you use that content to bring in real estate leads? Should you do something else? If so, what and most importantly, how?

I’m going to WALK YOU THROUGH how to GET AROUND this issue – right now in this post.

As of August 1st, 2018, you can no longer use a 3rd party tool to post to your personal profile.

So if you have been using something like any of the normal tools, like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Smarter Queue, Edgar, etc. and you’re posting to your personal profile, if you have been using real estate directory, Back At You Media, any of the real estate vendors and your posting to your personal profile, you can no longer do that as of today.

No more,so what do you do? What are we going to do? What are we going to change? How are we going to get around that thing that Facebook nixed?

If you can’t post to your personal profile with these automatic tools you’ve been using, you can’t drum up business from people you already know.

What are you going to do?

How are you going to use to Facebook?

That is what we’re going to talk about today.

So today starts off with a bang, because Facebook gave us a huge, wonderful thing for us to talk about and walk through today.

Let me start by explaining this real quick.

First of all there are two pieces where you can use tools or where you could use tools like Real Estate Directory or Back at You Media or I know there are other real estate specific vendor tools that let you put or post some pictures they have, etc. but also the non-real estate tools, like Edgar, Hootsuite, SmarterQueue, TweetDeck or whatever, of those tools you can no longer use to post to your personal profile.

Let me be very clear. PERSONAL PROFILE.

You can still use the tools to post to your business page.

These tools, however, are no longer available on your personal profile.

There two parts to this.

I am excited this is happening in one way because I got tired of seeing all of those real estate provided post on personal profiles because guys the rules and terms of service of using Facebook are really clear.

You are not allowed to use your personal profile for commercial gain. There are ways around it and you can tweak it, but using that automated content…hmm… not so much and quite frankly, it really wasn’t working.

I mean sometimes you would have a post that would work and sometimes you wouldn’t, but profiles can’t happen anymore, pages you’re good to go!

Those tools are meant to leverage your time for your business page. You personal profile quite frankly are supposed to be you, kind of in the moment.

It’s a virtual representation of you, so we’re going to talk a little bit today about how to separate the two and how to use those tools.

If you using Real Estate Directory or Back to You Media or your using Meet Edgar with the content we give inside of the Leads and Leverage membership, or using something else like HootSuite, Tweetdeck or Smarterqueue or any of those others for anything else you’re doing – when should you use them? How should you use them? Or how do you get your page to get the same amount of energy as your personal profile did?

If you want the Facebook page set-up checklist, download it here because what we’re going to talk about today is how to get your Facebook business page gap for you, how to take over where you can no longer use your personal profile to do this.

That checklist I have for you, that is for you to use to set up your page so that you get the same reactions, the same engagement so you get the same leverage you feel that you were getting on your profile.

So let’s go through all the questions!

Let me be really clear, you can no longer use these 3rd party tools, the tools that allow you to post out, schedule your post, like HootSuite, TweetDeck, SmarterQueue, Meet Edgar, all of those plus real estate specific ones like Real Estate Directory, Back At You Media and whatever ones that are specific, you can no longer use those tools on your personal profile. They are only to be used on your business page.

The first thing I know some of of you are like that’s the only way. I’ve been posting to my personal profile and I schedule it out.

I am to going to tell you, you’re going to actually have to post to your personal profile, but here is the beauty of you personal profile just like we all have time where we want to be with people or we don’t want to be with people, there are times we feel like sharing what we’re doing and there are times we don’t feel like sharing what we’re doing, your personal profile is perfect for that.

I am on Facebook with you all the time, so you guys aren’t going to believe this but I am an introvert.

I get my energy from being alone. I cannot tell you, like I go through a day like this looking forward to 7:00 pm.

Do you know why?

7:00 pm is when I go into my sanctuary, my space, when I get my time. There are nights I don’t get that, but here’s the thing if I give people a whole lot, the last thing I am going to want to do is post on social media, because it still feeling like having to be in engaged in that.

How do you get your personal profile to work for you?

Well you start sharing things, as real estate agent, I am willing to bet you go out to something, a lunch, a dinner, an open house, a brokers open, a title company training, a conference, etc. I am willing to bet at least once or twice a week you go somewhere out in the community, check in – check in on Facebook wherever you are.

Share with them, if you’re at local business check-in. Use your personal profile to check in, this will keep you in engaged with people.

Share memes or inspirational quotes that you see on Facebook with your person crowd. Let people know what you’re doing and where you’re going with your personal crowd.

If you’re at little league, take a picture and share it, if you’re at a park and rec thing take a picture and share it, at a local gym, take a picture, it doesn’t have to be of you or a person, just take a picture and share it.

Do that 2-4 times a week, so you can do that. If you notice on my personal profile, www.facebook.com/christina.ethridge, you can go follow it, I have a lot of public post, I will share things I am passionate about, interested in,

I share pictures of one of my cats, it’s an ongoing joke because all he does every single morning, at the same exact time, goes to the window and sits there so it’s funny because people think he is statue.

I share those kind of things because I don’t have to talk, so if you’re more of an introvert there are lots of things you can do on your personal profile that will still engage people.

If you’re at a closing, don’t be salsey or braggy, just share that you’re at a closing. There is a real estate agent in our market who does a great job of it, she was at a closing at a title company that has very limited parking for people, they have parking reserved and she just just took a picture of that sign and said “I wish they had this everywhere!” The sign had the title company’s name on it, so that was a subtle hint as to where she was and why and also a subtle reminder of what she does.

Your posts are not meant to be canned crapped as I call it, it’s supposed to be in the moment, flexible. Okay?

On your business page, you need to go through the checklist first of all, but it should not be focused on you. Your business page should not be focused on you.

Your business page needs to be focused on the consumer, what do they want? What are their needs? What are their passions? What are their desires? It’s not a billboard for you because quite frankly, nobody cares about your sales pitches, that’s why we don’t get activity on our business page.

You need to use that checklist.

Go through that check list, and I’m actually going to be doing a #Live workshop, a brand new Facebook page strategy workshop and I will tell you more about it as I am on over the next few days.

Remember I will be #Live every single business day in August on my page LeadsandLeveage with Christina Ethridge.

I will be going over the entire checklist but your strategy on your page, just to briefly go into this, the strategy on your page it’s about the consumer, not about you!

If you’re going to continue using the stuff from Real Estate Directory, Back to You Media, or stuff you have scheduled into HootSuite or anything like that you need to customize it to your consumer.

This is important that you do that, because it’s about them, about their lifestyle, about their desires, when you can show that you can relate to them that’s when they start trusting you.

That’s when they believe you when you tell them not to even look at the Zestimate from Zillow, because we all know they suck, the consumer may or may not know, but if you want them to listen to you and believe you and clearly implement or do what you say, then you have to give them a reason to trust you first.

That is the goal on your business page. The content you got, you can still use it for your business page, but please customize it. You need to, you need to invest time to do that.

Now, it is really important that you know if you just post stuff automatically to your business page and people are not reacting to it and you’re not getting the right people to engage with it Facebook won’t actually shut the page down, but if you’re filmlar with “ghosting” on Craigslist where you think something is published, but it’s not?

It’s a similar concept where they won’t push your page out organically, at all.

Additionally, if you run ads to promote your page and it’s a dud with people, with the consumer, Facebook is going to make it harder for you to get out, they will charge you more to get out into the algorithm, because people aren’t responding to your page.

You really, really need to make sure your page is really catered to engaging with the consumer.

Which is why you really want it to be about them, the lifestyle they like.

Does it include HootSuite?

Yes, it does include all 3rd party tools, it’s officially turned off.

You have seen email or notifications from the vendors you’re using. I believe it was turned off yesterday or the day before where you could no longer schedule anymore.

I use Meet Edgar, for all my business page stuff and I don’t actually use it for my personal profile, I never have, but I did see where that was all turned off.

How Do I Use My Personal Profile?

Here’s the thing, your personal profile is for you to be connected with people you already know.

If you’re on PTA or go to a lot of local businesses or a member of chamber of commerce, anything like that then you need to be connected with these people on your personal profile.

That is key.

These are people you know or you’ve met at least once in real life, IRL people, so you want to continue that relationship with them These people you know, who you’re already engaged with.

How Do I Use My Business Page?

Your business page is to reach people you’ve never met or you may never get to meet any other way, That’s what the business page is for.

The goal for your business page

The goal for your business page is to use it a conduit between people you do not know and your database. It’s a conduit. That’s what it is and it’s for people you do not know.

Some people may come over you already know, click on it and stuff so you may not need to post the same stuff in both places etc, but when you have something on your business page and you do want to share it on occasion, once a week, maybe to your personal profile no matter how many real estate agents I am connected with on my personal profile I have mine open so people can follow me.

I do it have it that whenever I want to post something private to my friends only, I can do that. No matter how many real estate agents follow me on my personal profile I hardly ever, maybe twice a year I actually share things from my business to my personal profile.

Even though, there are many people I could target on there, it is my personal page, it’s about me as a person.

And yeah, I am passionate about Leads and Leverage with Christina Ethridge and helping you create more time, make more money and enjoy the journey, but those are not the only pieces of me.

I am wife, I love my husband, I am a Mom, I love my kids, I am a daughter and sister, I have fur babies, I go to shows, I love to travel. All of those are all pieces of me as well.

When you are using your personal profile and it just looks like you have Realtor logo as your picture and your header, people know right away you’re using it only for business.

They aren’t interested, they want to know you. They want to connect with you.

There is a reason I connect with certain people on Facebook because I am curious about their life. I am curious what they’re doing. I am curious about their passions. I am curious about their interest.

Things like that, I do not want to be sold to and neither does anybody else for you guys, so be aware of that.

I’ve never used my personal for Real Estate.

There is a fine line and there are ways to do it. I shared different random things I have accomplished, for me usually Leads and Leverage members end up tagging my personal profile in that way, I get some business on my page. It’s all fun stuff, it’s the more relational stuff that’s on there.

Again there are ways to use your profile for content. They way Facebook has been acting lately I am actually surprised they haven’t done it sooner.

It was, and has been for awhile now, really annoying, I would not connect with real estate agents because all they pushed out on their personal profile was real estate agent directory stuff. I would see the same exact post, all over in my fed, so I would just stop.

What was the point in this? They think it’s a tool they pay for so it will get them business. It doesn’t always get you business.

If I Place Ads on my Business Page Do They Automatically Post on my Personal Profile?

It does not post on your personal profile. What you are seeing is your own ad in your newsfeed. Your newsfeed is a compilation of everything you’re clicking-thru,but if you put an ad, an actual ad on your business page, like you’re going into ads manager and creating an ad on your business page, and you’re seeing it in your newsfeed, it is not on your personal profile.

Just make sure you know personal profile vs.business page. You need different content for each one, if you want the page setup checklist, let me know below.

Stay on Top of the Facebook Algorithm Changes

If you want to be sure you do not get hit by one of these algorithm changes because quite frankly every single month for the last 6-8 months there have been multiple algorithm shifts and changes and you want to be sure that you do not get blindsided by these, you NEED to join us inside of Leads and Leverage.

If you want to ensure you are always ahead of the game, come on in! All videos and workshops that I do are available inside the membership for replay. There is a lot in there, how to set up your page, your posting content, content strategy, everything, it’s an entire process all in there.

Right now, you’ve got to put it all on your business page and if your business page isn’t set up correctly it’s just going to die so get the checklist. It will be a waste of your time and energy if it’s not set up right.

Featured Download:

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.