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I see it all the time: Real estate agents baffled about why their lead generation efforts on Facebook lead aren’t bringing any of the promised rewards.
Namely, leads. Closings.
But here’s the kicker: They haven’t set up their presence on Facebook to generate leads.
For the most part (and this isn’t even their fault), they’ve done what they know and that’s not much because there is no one is showing agents what they need to do to get targeted, valuable leads from Facebook.
We’ve been fed a load of blather about exposure, branding, conversations, reach, engagement and absolutely nothing tangible — nothing that leads us anywhere except going around in circles.
Of course some vendors have popped up that provide “automated resources” for us that fill in the gaps of all that blather I mentioned above.
But guess what? All the gibberish these vendors are providing are a colossal waste of our money.
I hate to call these mistakes but they’re something I see happen all the time because the agents committing them simply don’t know any better,.
Here are the seven that I see the most often:
Pick The Correct Category
First, when it comes to our Facebook page setup, we default to the “local business” category on Facebook.
Did you know there is another option? An option that actually gives you more avenues to drive and capture leads?
There is. It’s called “service.” It’s actually under the “Brand/Product” category with a sub-category of “Product/Service.”
Now, why would you want to categorize your page like this? Because you are a service!
Seriously. Your bricks and mortar brokerage is the local business but you are the service.
Now, there is something you lose when you categorize yourself as a service. You lose the space that the map takes up on the business page. You also lose the space dedicated to your location address.
However, you gain something important. You gain the map space you just lost. Space that you can use for a short description that includes a valuable call to action.
You also gain an above-the-fold push for your videos, which means people see your call to action and videos rather than a map.
These are infinitely more valuable.
Naming Your Business Page
Second, most agents name their business page using either their name, their brokerage name or their franchise name.
I’m specifically talking about the display name of your page, not the URL name. Why is this a problem? Well, for many reasons.
- What happens when you change your brokerage?
- What happens if you start or stop a team?
- What happens when your brokerage merges with another brokerage?
- What happens when your brokerage goes bankrupt?
- What happens when your brokerage owner changes franchises and thus brokerage names?
- What happens if you get married or divorced or change your name for any reason?
- Why are these questions a big deal? Because you get one opportunity to change the name of your page.
- And if you have more than 200 page likes, that opportunity is at the discretion of Facebook, period.
In other words, if you spend the time, energy and money building your presence on Facebook and one of these things happen, you’ve just thrown away all of your efforts.
Another big reason real estate agents shouldn’t use their own, brokerage or franchise name is because the customer doesn’t like you — they like themselves.
That means they aren’t likely to connect with your name; they are likely to connect with what you can offer them.
So think about naming your page something different. Something local. Something with a lifestyle focus. Something they would consider valuable.Something that interests your customer.
What Should I Share On My Facebook Business Page?
Third, one of the most-asked questions I get from real estate agents is: “What should I share on my Facebook business page?”
What you share on your Facebook business page should be what your customer needs and it needs to be relevant to their lifestyle.
It needs to solve their problems. It needs to be focused on walking them through their journey, including buying a home, selling a home, living in the community and repeating the process.
Remember, their journey is about 10 to 12 years long (that is the average length of time people own their homes), so you need to go on that journey with them through the content you share.
Don’t focus on a random calendar of events because you aren’t their activities director.
What are their problems?
Did they get married? Adopt? Give birth?
Bring another generation into their home?
Get divorced?
Experience a death?
Change jobs?
Be meaningful, not meaningless, on Facebook. Yes, it matters.
Each one of these experiences can (and most are likely to) happen in the lives of your customers.
What do these mean for their lifestyle?
Their home?
That is what you want to share on your business page.
Here’s a clue: run away from national statistics which completely bore consumers. They’ll scroll on past.
Why?
Because national statistics are meaningless to them.
Most real estate agents don’t even understand how national statistics drill down and relate to their home so how can a customer who is outside of the real estate industry be able to connect those dots?
Be very careful with local statistics. If all you are doing is pushing out stats and saying “now’s the time to buy” that is not helping your customer. Not one iota. It’s pushing your agenda which is to have more closings.
Don’t kid yourself that it’s for your customer.
If you want local statistics to be for your customer, share a single statistic and drill it down to explain exactly how that statistic affects them or their home, personally.
If you can’t explain it to a 15-year-old so they understand it, you don’t understand it yourself — and neither will your customer.
Stop Chasing The Algorithm
Fourth, stop chasing the algorithm.
There’s two things. Number one, it’s really, really, really hard to chase the algorithm. In fact, it’s impossible to chase the algorithm.
Here’s the thing. There will always be anomalies. You’re always gonna have things that just don’t seem to make any sense based on what had been happening on your page, right? There will always be anomalies and Facebook will always have random “what the heck” times. “What the heck” moments. It’s crazy posts. You’re just like, “What’s going on?”
Over the years I’ve seen the algorithm shift all over the place from heavily pushing text-only posts out to heavily pushing photo-only posts out, to heavily pushing video posts out to whatever. They just go back and forth.
What I watch and what I see are agents constantly trying to chase that algorithm. You’ll go to a conference and they’ll say, “Oh, it’s all about memes now. It’s all about memes now.” You start pushing out these memes and it works for a week or two. Then all of a sudden, boom, your page goes down again. You’re like, “What the heck? I can’t figure this out. What’s going on?”
There has always been a disconnect between what they heavily push out and what page fans actually engage with. There’s always been a disconnect with that. Which is surprising because why would they push something out that people are not interested in?
It’s been really interesting to watch. I’ve said this before, that I have content posts on my page. Things like blog articles, how-tos, etc., that you, as my page fans, really like. I know you like them because you click on them. You click through to them.
If it’s a blog, you’ll click through to go read it. If it’s a video, you’ll click through to watch it. I know that. The analytics show me what you actually like, right? Facebook just doesn’t push those out nearly as much as photo quotes or viral posts.
Now, the exception of that is a live video. They will push those out. They’ll push those out more than other posts because here’s why.
Even though those valuable posts that people are liking, that your people are really liking, even though they’re getting more clicks and more people actually looking at the posts, not just reach, but actually looking at the posts, even though they consistently get more clicks than the ones that they do push out, they’re not gonna push them out because most of them lead people off Facebook.
That’s the first thing. Number one.
Does that mean you should stop putting them on there? No. Let’s keep going.
Now the question can be, “Why don’t they push them out”, and the answer is pretty obvious. They lead people off of Facebook. I gave you that answer.
Then the next question is, “Do I give Facebook more of what Facebook wants?” Yes and no. Here’s the thing. You always want to have a nice, healthy balance of about 6 posts a day spread out over a full 24-hour period, alright? A nice healthy balance of six posts a day.
What does healthy balance mean? A balance between what Facebook is currently pushing out. That’s where you have to watch your analytics on your page.
Analytics can be a scary word, but that’s why you just kind of have to watch the insights on your page to see what’s being pushed out over the last 7 to 10 days and make sure to give them more like that.
But you need to have a balance between what they’re currently pushing out, what your page fans like and you know that because not just the reach, but what they respond to, what they engage with, not, “Oh, I see a comment over here”, but literally looking at the analytics on your page and what Facebook has previously pushed out.
You need a balance between what they’re currently pushing out, a balance between what your page fans like, and a balance between what they previously pushed out.
The Facebook Provided Unique URL
Fifth, we worry too much about our Facebook provided unique URL.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about the www.Facebook.com/YourPageName URL that Facebook lets us have.
We can’t figure out what to put there.
Should it be the same as our website?
Should it be the same as our Facebook business page name?
Should it be local keywords?
Here’s the thing. In general, no one really looks at it, so my suggestion is to align it locally. In other words, use your local town or city name and another descriptive word.
For example, www.Facebook.com/ChicagoLiving (at the time of writing this, there isn’t a page that is published using this unique URL — this is only an example).
Although no one really looks at it, if you want to use it on any print pieces and drive traffic to the page you’ll want something short and easy for your customers to use and connect with.
And yes, you should be driving traffic to your Facebook business page, especially really cold offline traffic. That connection is a way to start warming your traffic up to you and to get them into a space that allows you to keep re-targeting them everywhere they go.
But always remember, you don’t own the real estate, so your goal is always to be driving that same traffic to your website and your database.
Don’t Succumb To Facebook’s Pressure Tactics
Sixth, don’t succumb to Facebook’s pressure tactics to get page likes when you first start your page.
Highlight
Don’t ask your colleagues.
Only gather targeted page likes.
Why would you do this? For many reasons.
Think of your Facebook business page likes as another database of sorts. That database is the beginning of building your tribe. People you want to work with, and people who want to work with you.
When you have a highly targeted tribe, you get the benefits. You get an engaged audience. You get energy on your page. You get freshness. All of those things affect your page’s health in the Facebook News Feed. In other words, they affect your results in the algorithm.
Although I advocate not chasing the algorithm, I also advocate not sabotaging your presence in the algorithm. Untargeted (detrimental) page likes will sabotage your page.
Don’t Create Multiple Pages
Seventh, don’t create multiple pages.
For some reason, this one is a struggle for agents and quite frankly, I can totally relate. I struggled with it. Heck, at one time I had a Facebook business page for every subdivision I targeted in my area. What a colossal waste of time and energy!
Don’t create a different page for each town in your area. Don’t create a different page for each neighborhood. Focus on your most important, main area for your page.
Want to master Facebook lead generation? Don’t create multiple pages.
Why? Because creating and maintaining multiple pages divides your assets.
On Facebook, you’ll get better traction with one page. There is a snowball effect. The more traffic you have on a page, the more it’s rolled into the algorithm, the more it’s pushed out in your tribe’s news feed.
When you have multiple pages, you divide your focus.
In an age when we are already overwhelmed by shiny objects and squirrels and the book “The One Thing” is a novelty (it’s a powerful book — I suggest you get your hands on it and read it over and over again), we need to take a step back and stop trying to create niches in every single thing we do.
You can not maintain multiple pages.
You might think you can, but if you aren’t getting a steady flow of closings from the page you already have, what makes you think that dividing your focus will give you different results? In reality, you’ll get even less than you are already getting.
When you have multiple pages, it will monopolize your time, and you’ll be on the constant hunt trying to figure out how to make multiple pages work for you.
There is a reason that canned content doesn’t work to bring in closings — the same thing goes for multiple pages. Your customer knows when your focus is divided and you are pumping out robotic content. They know when you are just in it for the lead and not for them.
You’ll be a jack of all trades and a master of none. You’ll be less effective in your Facebook lead generation efforts.
OK, now my questions for you are:
Are you doing any of these things and, what are you going to do to change it?
What are you going to do to stop sabotaging your Facebook lead generation efforts?
Get The Facebook Page Setup Checklist
Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.
