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by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

How do you know where you should be investing your Facebook and lead generation budget for the rest of 2018? Avoid all those SHINY objects and discover the TOP 5 (and the BEST) places you should be spending it NOW!


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Do you know, or how do you know where you should be investing your lead generation budget for the rest of 2018? How do you know?

I’m going to be going through with you the top five places that you as a real estate agent should be putting your lead generation budget into and why.

They are the top five!!

This will allow you to completely ignore all of the shiny object vendors, all of the lead aggregators and everything else because you will know exactly where your money needs to go to get the biggest return and to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Today, I’m going to talk with you about the top five places that you should be investing your real estate budget, specifically your lead generation budget.

Now there are two different budget categories under “marketing.” One is actually lead generation and that’s what we are going to talk about today. But the other is the “branding,” or  “exposure” or the “name recognition.” Now I put quotes around all of those because, yeah, those are all kind of areas where we think we are spending money on marketing and we are not. We are actually throwing it away.

But, but, here’s the thing, that “branding, name recognition, exposure,” those are often things that you wouldn’t, like, almost like donations, where you raise money to support Little League or you would go and sponsor a humane society event or something like that.

Those are things that don’t really bring in lead generation. I categorize them as “good give-back.” And they do give you a little bit of community involvement recognition and those are things you should be doing anyways, absolutely, if you are involved in your community. You should be doing that. You absolutely should be doing that.

However, we are talking about lead generation today.

If you want, I actually have the download to all of the resources that I’m going to be talking about today, the checklist download, and the full training article that I had written for you and published for you on this so that you can go back and I will have that all sent over to you via Facebook Messenger.  

If you would just type in the comments of the video above, if you would just let me know if you want those resources and type in SEND ME THIS STUFF I will get it sent to you. It’ll be a link to that training video and there will actually be another link to the resources.

Now, let me be very, very clear about this. There are two subsets of your marketing budget.The first one is lead generation.

That’s the important one.

The second subset is, like I said, the branding, the name recognition, the exposure, etc. So yes, you need to be doing that. That’s your community involvement stuff, that is your name on the banners at baseball games, that’s your sponsoring park and rec, all that kind of stuff. And put that towards where your passions lie- if you have a passion for animals, if it’s for the homeless, put it towards homeless shelters, etc.

But that’s not what we are going to be talking about today, okay? That is separate. What I’m talking about today is lead generation, like, this is how you are going to grow it, how you will scale it, etc, so you can make more money and spend more time working on the passions you have.

I am assuming that that’s your goal, that your main goal, to make money for your family, clothe yourself, put a roof over your head? And you should be putting your money towards whatever passion you want to be, whether it’s for kids, for the arts. It doesn’t matter, but you have to make that money first!

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What Are The Five Areas For Your Lead Generation Budget?

So, let’s go over these five areas- when we are talking about lead generation we are actually talking about building your list, okay.

I’ve talked about this a lot and I’m actually going to be doing a video every single day in the month of August. I realize that today is July 31st so I’ve kind of already started this today.

But I’m going to be doing this everyday in August and it’s going to be all about these things that you need, about lead generation, about email marketing, about all kinds of stuff because I want you to go into the second half this year and so that you don’t start getting sick to your stomach because we know that the busyness of the summer is not going to extend and so we need to ramp this up now.

That’s what we are going to work on.

So there are five areas where you need to putting your lead generation budget and I’m going to tell you right now that not a single one of them will be going to a real estate specific vendor. You will not be sending money to Zillow or any other lead aggregators. That is not putting money into your lead generation budget.

Here’s what I have seen….I realize that there are people who are getting business from paying for things like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com.  I realize there are agents that do that.

However, this is what I’ve seen behind the scenes of individual sole-preneurs and big teams. They dump money into these sources but they don’t ever convert them into leads. Like, they don’t. They don’t actually contact the leads.

What they are dumping money into and hoping for is, “Oh, hey, some one random lead is actually just going to call them and want to buy or sell real estate.” Almost just like a sign call; you put a sign out there, you get a call, boom you got a lead.

No, that is not the way that online lead generation works. We want it to but that’s not the way it works.

So we are going to talk about the things that you need so that you can number one capture leads, number two convert leads, number three close leads. Capture, convert and close. Those are the three things that you need to be focusing on.

Alright, so let’s talk about the five areas, the five places where you need to be putting your lead generation budget.

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Facebook Budget

The very first place is a Facebook budget. I know, I know, you are probably like “what about Instagram? What about Pinterest? What about all this other stuff?” or “People say that I’m wasting time with Facebook. Other people say I should just pay a vendor to do Facebook stuff for me.”

No.

There are things about Facebook that you can outsource- but you have to understand how you are going to make it work for you because just running ads doesn’t work.

Not over the long haul.

You need to have a budget to put into Facebook. If that means you’ve got one dollar per day to put into Facebook, then guess what? You’ve got one dollar a day!

It is harder and takes longer to start out like that but you can do it. You need to have a budget for your Facebook ads and when I say a budget I mean like something consistent. Not like “oh, I just had a closing so I’ve got $500 now. Let’s spend it all this week!”  No. No. You need to have a budget going over time.

If your only source of income is your real estate business and you do not have enough transactions to continue budgeting to keep building your real estate business, you need to go get a side hustle so that you can continue building your real estate business.

I know, I’m one of those, I’m like the antithesis of all the other people in the real estate industry who are like “you need to be in this full time, and you need to do this or that.” But guys, if you can’t afford the marketing budget that you need to have in this then you need to go find a way to get a side hustle. Go drive for Uber, do something to get a side hustle to help grow this business for you.

You can bootstrap it but you have to have income coming in to bootstrap.

So Facebook budget- you gotta have a Facebook budget. If you want to generate high quality, action taking leads, you must absolutely have that in there. Period.

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Training

Number two, number two is training. You need to actually invest in training and I’m not talking about going to conferences that a whole bunch of “guru’s” or “top producers” get up there and  tell you fifty different things that you need to do for your business.

That just creates a big headache. It just creates confusion, it creates a nightmare. Let’s just face it.  Most of the teachers that are up there that haven’t been in real estate don’t understand the business, They’re just teaching based on I don’t know what, based on whatever their expertise is but it’s not being a real estate agent, living the life, growing their business that way.

Most of the teachers have never even had to start and launch or feed themselves from their own business.

They’re hired by training companies. So most of them that I know are on like platforms. This is not all…I know a lot of teachers are not like that but I just want to let you know that when you’ve got vendors that are teaching you stuff as far as like teaching you how to do stuff most of those people teaching it are teaching a pre-packaged stuff.

They aren’t teaching from experience. Just be aware of that.

I’m also not talking about the “top-producers,” and I put quotes around that because the definition of top producer is pretty loosy-goosy. So let me just say, that when top producers get up there and say “oh, I did this awesome, amazing, expired thing and you need to follow that,” and then someone else gets up there and says “I did this amazing open house thing” or “here’s what I did,” then another gets up there and says “here’s what I did for my customers, this awesome and amazing thing,” and pretty soon, you’ve got fifty of those.

And pretty soon you’ve got fifty different things you are doing, and let me tell you, you’ll fail because every single one of those top producers who got up there, they actually did one thing, focused on one thing really well and grew it and then added another layer and then grew that and then added another layer to it.

They did not go to a conference like this and try to implement every thing. No that is not the kind of training I am talking about.

I am talking about understanding the strategy behind everything that you are doing, the strategy behind the lead generation for your business, the strategy behind knowing the holes and the gaps in your business, and finding the pieces, not the band-aids, the pieces to plug in there.

It could be a person, a software, or just a task, it doesn’t matter what that is, you have got to understand all of that. Most of the time, in real estate, we are told that you need to spend time on money making activities and Facebook is not a money making activity or that email is not a money making activity.

And I will tell you right now, I will go head-to-head with any real estate “guru” who gets up there and NO..yes it is! Absolutely it is!  

That is how we did over four-thousand transactions in the less than eighteen years. I have the experience, I have the stuff  to prove it, and that’s why we were able to do hundreds of transactions while everyone else was dying in the recession.” Because I invested my time into our website, because I knew it was a money making activity, I invested my time in email marketing, because I knew it was a money making activity.

I did not outsource certain things, I learned the strategy, I learned how to leverage it. And then and only then, did I outsource the task of it.

If you are going to build know-like-trust relationships online you have to be involved. You can’t outsource it to a VA in the Philippines, in India or whatever, you have to do it. And absolutely understand the value of blogging, the value of email marketing, the value of Facebook, absolutely, because that’s literally how you build relationships online.

That’s how you literally, I’ve been saying “literally”  a lot because we are talking about the real meaning of that, and I’m around my kids who say it all the time, but the thing is…Oh and I just lost my train of thought with that. Boop!!

Sorry about that, you need to actually be understanding how to extend relationships and grow them, so that you get “come list me” calls! So that you are building relationships on a one to many scale, so that you are not constantly having to go door knocking for each sale- that’s the kind of training that I’m talking about.

Training on how to actually grow a business, not training on how to use a software, not training on how to use a vendor’s tool, not training on how to hire a lead aggregator not training on “here, I’m this girl, and I did this and that.” I’m talking about knowing and understanding how to grow a a real estate business, and how to move it forward online.  

Number three, so I am kind of a rant here too gosh because I’ve been hearing that a lot of people are outsourcing the health of their business, the growth of their business, the very essence of their business, and they wonder why they are failing. Like they are literally outsourcing it to somebody who they think knows how to do Facebook marketing because they think “oh, they are a millenial.

They are on Facebook and Instagram all the time, I’ve hired my twenty-four year old”, or whatever, to do my Facebook because they’re on it all the time.” Well, being on it and snapping and chit chatting with influencers is not the same thing as lead generating to sell a $500,000 house. Not the same thing. Not even close.

So if you are outsourcing your Facebook because you don’t want to learn it, you either need to get out of the business, or rethink your mindset and go, “okay, alright, this is the new world. I need to at least understand the strategy.” You don’t have to know all the tech, but you do need to understand the strategy of how it will be used, right? Okay, that’s number one and two.

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Landing Page Software

Number three, landing page software. You need to invest in landing page software, specifically, LeadPages. Specifically, LeadPages. No, there is not a real estate specific landing page software that does a better job that LeadPages, you need LeadPages, flat out. That’s what you need. You cannot drag people to your website, not for this, you are not going to capture leads and do your list building. You need to invest in landing page software.

Website

Number four, you need a website. However, you need a website that is mobile responsive, you need a website that is lead-capture optimized, you need a website that is content marketing focused, you need a website built on WordPress, not customized, you need a website that you own that is not on a proprietary software.

A lot of the real estate vendors they’re on proprietary softwares, you don’t want to do that, you want to be on WordPress and you want to be able to add, edit, etc whenever you need too, and you want to own as much of that website as you can on your own.

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Email Marketing Software

Number five, this is a specific one. You need email marketing software. I am not talking about Top Producer, Realvolve Contactually, Lion Desk, Followup Boss. I’m not talking about those, those are your database, those are your CRM’s.

I am talking about email marketing software like MailChimp, or Ontraport, very specifically, you can even use Active Campaign or Convertkit, or anyone one of those. Email specific software, email marketing software, or “EMS,”very specifically.

Their focus as a company is to make sure that your emails get into the user inbox. Statistically 30% of all email that is sent is not received by the end user.

30%!

That means that three out of every ten emails sent out is not received by the end user, for a number of reasons, like it could be on the send in. It could be after you send something it goes out through your gateway to get out but your gateway could be blocking it.

The other way their ISP could be blocking it. It could be Gmail blocking it. It could be Hotmail blocking it. It could just be random stuff that happens. 3 out of 10 emails do not reach the end user.

The whole way that you are going to grow your business is to have an email list that you can engage with, and if they can’t get your emails because you’re using something like Top Producer.

Top Producer actually has their standards, their specific standards unrelated to the CAN-SPAM Act unrelated to everything else.They have their standards that they apply. They only allow so many emails to go out. If your email has specific wording it in they won’t let it go out.

You do not want to use a company that is not an expert in email marketing. MailChimp is free, so I recommend you use MailChimp. It’s free for you to start. That’s where you want to go.

So you have to know, if you want a strong, consistent and stable real estate business, you have to be both capturing short term and nurturing long term leads. And that’s what all these things do, from your email, to your website, to your landing page software, to the training you need to have and your Facebook budget.

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All These Pieces Work Interchangeably

All of those pieces work together interchangeably. When you go door knocking, when you’re first starting out you are going to put people into your email software. You are going to send them stuff.  

When people are on Facebook you are going to drive them to your website. When people are in your email you are going to drive them to your website. From your website you’re going to drive them to your email. From your website you’re going to drive them to Facebook.

You are going to have this huge, circular chaotic, seemingly, web going on because you will want to catch them in your web.

These five places are very, very important that you are spending your money, and seriously, the most important of all of these is your training.

You need to get training that exposes the gaps, the real gaps in your business. Not training that tries to convince you to use a different CRM than you are already using or a different photo source than you are already using, or a different whatever.

You need training that fills in the gaps. So you are not wasting your time buying products from vendors for whatever reason because you think “yeah I need this lead” but instead of looking at it like “yeah I need leads” you are look at it and where are my gaps?”

That’s why it’s really easy for me to not even go to the expos or go to any of the vendors and stuff. I skip past all of them because I don’t have a gap outside of me in my activities, I don’t have a gap in my business currently.

I do know that there is a point, I’m sending out so many emails now, that there is a point where I am going to have to have my own private IP address. I know that’s my next step but I already know my solution for that.

So for you, if you are not sending out emails on a consistent basis, and you don’t have an email marketing software, that’s a gap in your business. So you only look at the places where you have gaps.

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So How Do you Know Where The Gaps In Your Business Are?

You know the gaps from the training you get. You know there are gaps when you know there’s a holdup. Are you holding something up because you aren’t doing a certain task? Can you hire someone to help you with that task? And I’m not talking about your relationships, I’m talking about tasks.

And what I mean by that is you need to be the voice on everything that you do. You need to be the voice on your Facebook posts, on your email marketing, etc. But someone else could put all of the pieces together for you and send it out as long as you are the voice that’s in it.

You are the one actually doing the writing of the post, but they could be putting all the stuff together for it. You don’t have to be the one putting all the links in it and all that stuff. You just show up and do your thing.

Does that make sense? Hopefully that makes sense for you guys.

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Recap of The Top Five

Alright, so the top five, Facebook budget, training, landing page software, LeadPages specifically, website and email marketing software, all five of those.

That’s what you will need if you are going use online lead generation and let’s face it, if you want to be a successful real estate agent in 2019, 2020 or 2021 or beyond you have to be running your business with online lead generation as a very strong foundational piece to your business.

Face-to-face, alone, not going to work anymore.

You have to have it combined with online lead generation, period. That’s how you are going to grow. Because that’s where people are getting in front of you, because of this.

So that’s the goal for this. That is the purpose of all the training videos I’m going to be doing this month. I really want you to dominate, so we’re going to work on this.

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What’s The First Step?

So what’s the first step? The very first step is join me inside #THEVAULT and Leads and Leverage. The link is inside the description of the video.

Come in and join us!

We are diving into lead generation this month inside of Leads and Leverage and we are going to go deep. We’ve got what’s working with members now who are bringing in leads like they are so overwhelmed with leads that they aren’t sure what to do!

So that’s what we’re working on that with them and helping them convert those leads, etc. We’ve got people now, they are just on the “come list me now” wagon, that’s all they can get, just “come list me” calls. We’ve got other people who spend just a dollar a day on their Facebook budget and they are getting a closing every single month from it.

That’s what we are doing inside of Leads and Leverage.

If you want in, come in and join me, the link is in the description, it’s to #THEVAULT. Lots of archived trainings that are available for you especially Facebook Lead Generator and The Art of Nurture; huge amounts and of course Leads and Leverage inside the membership.

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Q & A

Alright you guys got any questions?

Richard says 

What about Canva?

Well, it’s not one of my top five specifically but you could totally use Canva. People use it for images, etc. I happen to use PicMonkey and their new beta version, but yeah, it’s not one of the top five as far as lead generation.

It’s a tool you can use to enhance the different things you put out for your lead generation. But it didn’t make my top five because it wasn’t actually for lead generation. People use all sorts of things. You could just flat out take the picture and not use any editing software.

Okay, so awesome, you guys are awesome. Hi, hi! I am saying hi to everybody! So I’m going to come back, oh, someone asked “where’s the link?” The link should be right in the description of this video, if you click “see more.” Actually, here, I will also put it in the comments. If it will let me, hold on. Let’s see if it will let me put it in the comments…. Yes it will let me put it in the comments. There you go.

Okay, so come join me in #THEVAULT.  

Tomorrow we are going to be talking about something that is kind of hitting the fan right now.

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Guess what’s hitting the fan right now?

I don’t know. Most of you should have heard about this, as real estate agents if you use Back At You Media or Real Estate Agent Directory or any of those auto posting real estate information services and you have been posting to your personal profile, starting tomorrow, August 1st, you will not be able to use those services to post to your personal profile.

You will have to use them only for your Facebook business page,and I know there are a lot of disappointed agents out there because they feel like they only get business from their personal profile.

They don’t feel like they get any business from their business page. So we are going to talk about that new rule,because it is a feature that Facebook has turned off finally and I’m going to talk to you about how to get your Facebook page set up so that you can actually generate leads from it.

That’s the point right of it right to generate leads from this to get that Facebook page working because our profiles, people already know us, but our page, people don’t know us. So how do we get to people to know us, like us and trust us,and engage with us? That’s all on tomorrow.

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Send Me The Stuff

So if you want to be sure that you are getting notified of all these live trainings in August all you have to do is type SEND ME THE STUFF in the comments of the video. Then go over to your Messenger, talk to #RIBBIT. Like say “hi” to #RIBBIT. He is our Messenger bot. Say “hi” to him or whatever he says to tell you and get this because you have to opt in.  

So if you want me to tell you I’m going live every week day in August, around 10am Pacific Time; there may be one or two exceptions due to previously scheduled items that I couldn’t reschedule but typically it will be 10am Pacific Time, and I will talk from about fifteen to twenty minutes, and I am going to walk you through quick mini-trainings on what to do, how to do it, etc.

And so tomorrow we’re going to start with what do you do with you not being able to post that kind of stuff on your personal profile anymore. Like literally it is being  turned off on Facebook so what do you do? I’m going to show you.

Alright, you guys, I will see you inside #THEVAULT.

Come join us! You guys are awesome. I will see you in there and also I will be answering any questions you may have in the comments, I’m going to come back through in the next couple of minutes and answer as much as possible. If I can’t answer it fully, I will point  you to one of the trainings that will answer it.

You guys are awesome. I so enjoying doing this. You guys energize me beyond belief and I get fired up when I see people “mistreating” you, I guess and leading you astray. And I realize that everyone has businesses they need to run but I just don’t want you wrongly spending your money.

I really want you in control of your business. I don’t want a broker controlling you or a franchise controlling you or a vendor controlling you. I want you in control of your business.

This is your business. It’s no one else’s. Don’t let anybody else make you think that you have to have these things. Everything that I recommend is something that you need to own separate from your brokerage, separate from your franchise, so that you actually own it so that you can control it because this is your business, and you are building a business, and I don’t want you to be a part of the 87% who fail.


Sneak past your colleagues and dominate Facebook. Join me inside THE VAULT: CLICK HERE to join:


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Filed Under: News Tagged With: lead generation

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

The 4 Sneaky Tricks You Can Use to Dominate Facebook in Your Local Real Estate Market


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


Do you feel like you just can’t get Facebook right?

That once you have figured out something or you think you figured it out, like one thing out, something else comes along or everything changes?  As you know Facebook changes daily, but what do you actually have to pay attention to? And what can you just not worry about?

Today, I am going to walk you through the 4 sneaky tricks you can use to dominate Facebook in your local real estate market.  Sneaky tricks that have never changed, despite the algorithm shifts, they’ve never changed and now they’re backed by 43 million Facebook post of research.

Oh yes, I am going to show you the research, I am going to share the tricks, I am going to show what to do, that’s what we’re going to do today.

Thank you for joining me, I love that you’re joining me and welcome to another episode of The Ribbit show. And as always if your watching this in replay on Facebook, if you just comment in the video above, I am actually going to send you over my notes, resources and the 4 sneaky tricks I am going to teach you today.

I will send them over via messenger, just comment in the video.  

If you are watching this on YouTube, IGTV or Twitch, if you look in the description there will be a link to this original video and you’ll be able to get all of these resources as well.  So everyone who comments, you will get the stuff!

So we’re going to talk about the 4 sneaky tricks you can use to dominate your local real estate market and I did say that they’ve never changed.

These are tricks I have been teaching for the last 5 years on Facebook for real estate agents, for your local market.

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The Research

And just this week a research backed article they have used 43 million different Facebook posts from the top 20,000 brands to show you these things I’ve been teaching you, this is what works, this is what keeps working, and what will keep working for you and we’re going to go over that today.

Alright, here’s what happens every single day whether I am at a conference in person with you, in Facebook groups watching you talk and react, at local events and I am listening to realtors talk, etc.

Here’s the thing. I watch you panic, react or get so frustrated and upset or angry or just frustrated with Facebook because it’s constantly changing and this isn’t just Facebook.

This is like everything, not just upset  but constantly reacting, panic reacting instead of plowing through and just implementing.

I realize it’s coming from a place of wanting to do the best for your business for your clients, etc.

But the truth is, it’s actually from a panic action place. It is not from a place of strategy or a good path to follow so I am going to help you through this.

I don’t want you to jump from thing to thing. I don’t want you to jump from thought to thought because when you do that you don’t move forward and so we’re going to focus on what can get you moving forward with things that never change.

I am telling you 4 things today, the 4 things I am going to talk about, the research I am going to share with you.

These 4 things if you NEVER stop doing them, they’ve been working for the last 5 years. If you never stop doing them and don’t go chasing other stuff you will see success on Facebook.

You will. Absolutely.

So let’s talk a little bit about the research again.

If you say hello or comment in the video above, I am going to message you so after you comment, check you Facebook messenger.  I am going to message you with the link to this research with my notes from today and with the 4 sneaky tricks that I am going to teach you so definitely leave a comment in the video if you want these notes.

Alright so here’s the thing, I got this from Buffer. Buffer wrote this article but what they did, they analyzed 43 million Facebook posts. How could they analyze 43 million Facebook posts?

Because they are actually a posting tool. Buffer is a posting tool but not the one I recommend, They’re not my top one but they are able to look at all the posts and the different brands that are on Facebook from what goes through their system and they can give us 43 million Facebook posts from the top 20,000 brands and you know what they came up with?

It’s really, really interesting and I am going to go over the highlights for you real quick, it’s actually a really simple article to read and they give you access to the full data in a spreadsheet.

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What are the 4 Things?

Images receive the most engagement

Despite the video and links, you could put text up, you can put link post up, you put video post up, you can do live streams and images.

Images still receive the most engagement.  So images receive the most engagement.

That’s not a hard thing to figure out. People like pictures, they really like pictures. It’s even true over video. Now, live video is different, but this is true over video if you’re comparing uploaded videos, images and text and link post, link like when you share a post to your blog or something, images receive the most engagement. So if you’re looking for engagement you need to put images out there.

I am going to talk about the 4 things you can do here:  

Again thank you and if you want the notes and resources and the tricks, just comment in the video above.  

I am going to be asking you a question, so remember I always ask you this question because I need to know from you guys. I always ask you this so make sure, be prepared, if you’re listening today, to share with me: “What’s the most useful for you?”

Okay so images receive the most engagement. That’s the number one highlight from the article.

We’re going to be talking about what you should be posting here in a minute, the 4 sneaky tricks but I need to share the research with you to show you that this is all backed by research.

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How many times a day you should be posting

Okay number two, I have been teaching you how many time you should be posting every single day for the last 5 years. Does anybody know how many times you should be posting every single day to get the highest overall page reach?  

Do you know how many times that is? Take a wild guess how many times you should be posting, every single day to get the highest overall page reach.

How many times do you think a day?

I am just going to tell you it’s 5.  FIVE. Five times PER DAY.

 If you post 5 times a day, about every 4-6 hours, 4-6 times per day, 5 times a day, your page will receive the highest overall page reach. 

That means if you go more, if you post more than that your overall page reach actually declines. If you post less than that, your overall page reach does not get the highest it can get. You need to post 4-6 times a day, aka as research shows 5 times a day. 5 times a day. That is your best option.

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Your Page Category

Number three highlight from this research. Number three highlight is your page category is IMPORTANT! Because the way it lays out your page and how Facebook determines how much reach you should get based on your content, perceived content on the page

Page category is important.  

Pre-recorded videos

Number four highlight from the research is pre-recorded videos, I am not talking live streams, pre-recorded videos must be under 2 minutes. Yes, 30-90 seconds is the ideal, pre-recorded video length if you’re going to put videos on your page.

Now does saying all these things mean you shouldn’t put anything else out there?

No absolutely not but I want to show that these are the highlights from the article. These are things you need to take away from this research because they affect you on your page in your business.

Now what does this translate to for you as a real estate agent in your market? Here are the 4 sneaky tricks I’ve been teaching for the last 5 years on Facebook.

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What are the 4 sneaky tricks?

You need to post 4-6 times a day without fail

Number 1, you need to post 4-6 times a day without fail, never stopping, never ceasing, 4-6 times a day.

Period.

On your page. This is your business page. This is not your personal profile. You must focus on getting your content out 4-6 times a day without fail.

This is important.

That is why inside Leads and Leverage we have 102 pieces of content every single month with other content that can be reused for members to use on their pages and this content is customizable. I’ll show you how in just a minute here.

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You need to have access to that content

Number 2, if you need to post 4-6 times a day you need to have access to that content because you don’t have access to that content and you don’t have time time to going and researching it.  That’s why we do that inside Leads and Leverage.

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You need to be focusing on what your people want

Number 3, you need to be focusing on what your people want. Now here is what I mean.

If you’re just posting 4-6 times a day and you’re just throwing stuff out because it fulfills a check mark, meaning it’s one of the times a day you’re supposed to post, that’s not going to help you.  

You need to tap into your audiences top reasons for engaging online. There are 5 main things from this research that I am giving you the link to the 5 reasons people share online is

The 5 reasons people share online is:
Delight others with valuable & entertaining content
Identify and present ourselves to others
Foster relationships Self-fulfillment
Spreading the word about issues, products, and brands

You want to delight others with valuable and entertaining content.

To identify and present themselves to others. Basically we want to look smart, we want to look like we’re the first to know something. We want to share what we have, we want to influence others.

Those are my words for it that I’ve always been teaching you. Now the research says delight others with valuable and entertaining content and identify and present ourselves to others.

We want people to see us as we want them to see us, foster relationships.

Are we promoting something?
Engaging something?
A passion for something?

Self fulfillment is another reason and spreading the word about issues, products and brands. Now, it is no coincidence that most of the viral content on Facebook is related to food, animals, fashion, humor and beauty.

And do you know where real estate stands on this scale? When you look at this article you’ll see it, it’s like nothing, like nothing.

You want to know why?

Because of what we post about real estate. When we’re posting our listings or random articles or random data or random stats that’s not interesting to the consumer so you need to figure it out in ways that are more interesting.

Now here, let me tell you one of the top 4 things you can post average interaction by topic is DIY – Well guess what? You can move that real estate ranking up by posting things that are involving DIY in your house. Your remodeling, your landscaping, etc.

You change that content, you change that real estate content to not be about you and selling your crap and it’s not crap, it’s houses, but if you want people to engage in your page and get to know, like and trust you, you have to be posting things that they’re interested in. You have to and you’ve got to make it into that DIY category.

So you need to post 4-6 times per day, without fail and you need to focus on what they want and like.

They like pets. They like passions, passions like things they support and causes. They like DIY, they like food and you can actually connect food to kitchens and entertaining space. There are so many ways you can make this connect with things.  I

Those are 2 of the sneaky tricks, you need to focus on what they like and you need to post 4-6 times a day.

You need to make a whole heck of a lot of less than 2 minute videos.

And oh my gosh if you’re afraid of the video, let me just tell you two things:

Number 1, if you don’t want to get in front of the video because you don’t like how you look, I hope to heck that you are staying in your house every single day and not letting people see what you look like because guys and girls what you look like is what you look like.

If you’re afraid to get in front of the video, I am really hoping you’re afraid to be in front of people. It makes absolutely zero sense that you don’t like being on video and yet you’re okay with being in front of people.

Makes no sense to me. You are who you are. You talk like you talk, you look like what you look like. Get over it and get your little butt in front of the video, well actually your face in front of the video.

Yeah, that’s kind of a kick in the pants. I am so sick of hearing people say they don’t like the way they look and I’m like “do you go out in public and see people?”  Are you afraid to do that because it makes no sense that you would be afraid to be on video like this and yet still go see people?

It doesn’t make sense, the connection is like, it doesn’t make sense to me.

So you have to realize you look like what you look like, you sound like what you sound like, get over it and get on video.

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Make a whole lot of less than 2 minute videos

Now with that said, you need to make a whole lot of less than 2 minute videos and get them on your Facebook page and I’m not talking live streams. I’m talking videos.

You can do 2 different kinds that are both pretty powerful for you.

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The first one is a connection video.

That’s actually what my mentor calls videos where you share something that you’re passionate about that may be contrary to the industry or contrary to what’s going on.

For example maybe some of you have seen my You Be You video

Basically I am really sick of people telling us we have to be someone different, to act different, whatever else in real estate.

The other one I fully, firmly 100% believe is that our industry is out to make us fail. Why else do 87% of us fail out of the business in less than 5 years?

Because of how we glorify people who do real estate in a way that the consumer doesn’t like which is why do we all look like used car salesmen.

It’s not about relationships. They try to pretend like it’s about authenticity and transparency and relationships, but it’s not. Those are 2 of my big “stick it to the industry” things that I am like, “Yeah, I am going to take on the industry in this because it’s bad and detrimental for agents.”

What do you think is bad and detrimental for the consumer?

What do you think that they’re not getting empowered by or for?

What do you think, and let me tell you this, if you live in a lower cost of living area where homes are running under $200,000 or under $150,000, annual incomes are under $50,000 if you do your research I would be willing to bet that most of your buyers would not be able to take advantage of the mortgage interest write off on their taxes.  

So you could really take that topic and go with it. If they’re telling you “yeah, it’s mortgage write off, blah, blah, blah” and you’re not even itemizing your taxes which by the way those are the parameters I just gave you. A certain dollar amount, especially when the interest rate is so low and incomes are low and they can only write off a certain percent.  

If you do your research you might be in market where people are touting this but it’s only used by 5 or 10 or 15% of the people in the market that would be a connection video.

Educating the public that sounds contrary to what the masses are doing.

For example as a real estate agent, I am sorry but the NAR economist have been a laughing joke for as long as I can ever remember because they always spin things to make real estate look good or make buying or selling real estate look good like always.  

They always have, even during the recession they did. I have always called them out.

No I’m not an economist but I could compare them to the other economist or to what was actually going on in our market at the time like all the way down to an individual house.

What is happening in your market?
In your industry?

In your area that you can take a stand on that bugs you beyond belief?

Stand on that. Make a connection video. You need to take a stand. You can have people not like you, flat out you have to go for it. Go for getting those enemies. You’re like “WHHAATT are you talking about Christina?”

Here’s the thing. If you do not have people who completely disagree with you or can’t stand you or whatever then you don’t have people who absolutely love you and will like follow everything you do and say.

You have to have haters in order to have lovers.

Now make sure everything you’re doing and saying is factual. It’s actually going to help people.

Don’t just make crap up, like really. But you need to be a little bit, kindly divisive, if you will. You need to take a stand for something. That is a connection video.

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Do a whole boatload of sneak peaks videos

Number 2, type of video do a whole boatload of sneak peaks. I don’t mean sneak peaks of listings.

I mean give them sneak peaks of parks, of bike trails, of downtown, of neighborhoods, of business centers. Give them sneak peaks of all sorts of areas.

Talk about it, what you like about it, what you don’t like about it, what you wish they would change, what you know they’re doing.

Do stuff that is under 2 minutes. Quick little vignettes around your area. Be the source of the lifestyle of everything that’s happening in your area. They want to know. You know the area.

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You know the market so show them

You know the market so show them. You can’t tell them this, you have to show them this.

Number one is post 4-6 times a day without fail, just without fail, period. If you struggle with getting the content, well that’s what we give inside, one of the pieces we give inside Leads and Leverage. Content that you can take and customize it for your market, for your area.

Number two is focus on what your people want or like. You have to do that.

Number three is make a whole lot of less than 2 minute videos, you’ve got to do that.

Number four sneaky trick, right now inside of Leads and Leverage we’re doing our August challenge with all of our members. Right now, inside of Leads and Leverage we are doing a challenge with our members, an August challenge is a local photo vault challenge.

So basically, I am challenging members every single day for 21 days and everyday they are going out and taking pictures locally.

I am giving them the ideas of exactly what to take pictures of and what angles, what pieces etc, of each of those things.

And this vault we are creating all of these pictures. We are creating what is going to be in our content for the next 12 months so in 21 days we are gathering a whole plethora of local photo content that we can put out.

You need to be putting out a lot of local photos. People like local. They like photos. You can do all kinds of different things from doing like that was then, this is now stuff. You can give them updates on things that are changing or neighborhoods that are being built, streets that are changing.

There are so many things you could do but you need to be that source.

You need to be sharing and the beauty of Facebook is that you can so quickly become the expert, the source, the page and person that loves your area so much that you’re sharing it with the world and the community gathers around and collaborates with you.

This is huge.

So Number one, post 4-6 times a day without fail.

Number two, post what they like and want. They want food and cats and DIY and local.

Three, make lots of less than 2 minute videos, make connection videos and make sneak peaks, do everything.

Number four, post a whole lot of local photos and obviously, you’re going to need more than these things that’s why I said inside of Leads and Leverage, we have that.

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You’re welcome to join us

You’re welcome to join us inside Leads and Leverage, I will send you the link, just comment in the video above. That link is included inside the tricks, notes and resources that I am sending you, so just comment right inside the video. It’ll come over to you via messenger.

Alright, so I am going to recap this. While I am recapping this for those of you that have been watching the whole time, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to tell me, “What was most useful for you??” What was the most useful for you, today?

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Let’s recap

We talked about the research done from 43 Million Facebook blog posts by Buffer.

Images receive the most engagement. You need to post 5 times a day because that is your highest overall reach.

Your page category is important.
I am saying you do not want a local business category.
You are not a local business.
You are a service.
You as an agent are a service unless you’re a property management company or you are the brokerage.
You are not the local business.
You are a product or a service.
That is important.

Pre-recorded videos are to be under 2 minutes. Those are the main 4 highlights from that research

What does this translate for you? Or how does this translate for you? It means you need to post 4-6 times per day without fail.

It means you need to focus on what people want and like on your page, make it contextual, make it connect with real estate in some way.

Make lots of less than 2 minute videos, I walked you through connection videos, sneak peaks, etc. Okay? There’s that,

 You need to be putting up lots of local photos. It’s huge! 

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Questions & discussion during the live stream

Now Jerri said, “Much better than Facebook lives that are at least 5 minutes.” Two minutes videos, that’s what helped her the most

Yeah okay now  so there are 2 different realms here, okay? If you’re going to do pre-recorded videos, they need to be less than 2 minutes and you’re right, Jerri is absolutely right. Those can be easier than a Facebook live that’s 15 minutes.  

Now you need to understand, it’s hard to say what you need to say in less than 2 minutes. It’s not quite as easy as you think, however for Facebook lives it’s easy for me to keep going and sharing with you guys because I get ideas and you inspire me with questions.

Obviously two different things, but they did not actually talk about Facebook lives in the research so we’re just talking your other posts and not Facebook lives. But yes, if 2 minute videos are much easier for than a 15 minute Facebook live, flippin do those videos. Get them up there, they are in important.

And Pam, you’re right to have lovers you have to have haters. You have to have people who don’t like you. The trolls are going to come out of the woodwork like they’re going to come out of the woodwork and you’re going to be like what rock did you crawl out from? Literally, all you do is delete comment and ban them. Just get rid of them.

Bunny said, “I found posting 5 times a day and the photo vault very helpful” Yes, that is huge.

James said, “Make lots of less than 2 minute videos” Absolutely.

Learning about how many times to post. This is a big one Valerie.

Most people think one or two times a day, a couple of times a week.

A lot of the real estate vendors that sell you content that auto post on your page, a lot of them have not made it clear that you need to post on your page, not your profile. Although, now you can not post on your profile with those vendors.

Facebook turned it off, thank goodness but they also don’t make it clear how much content you actually need to post so you’re paying money and not even with a good strategy.

In many cases if you’re only posting once a day you’re actually losing reach rather than it helping you. Learning about how many times to post it has always been 4-6 times a day without fail for you as real estate agents for most pages in fact.  Not all pages but for most pages in most industries.

Pam says, “2 minute videos, sneak peaks.” Absolutely.

The other Pam says, “Learning to give lots of info in less than 2 minutes” You don’t have to give lots of info but have to give very focused and specific info and be consistent, do 2 or 3 of those a week, like create them and then pop 2 or 3 up a week.

Yeah, Julia says, “Having a library of post and videos will be a time saver!” IT IS HUGE! That is why inside Leads and Leverage, every single month we are now doing a challenge to help batch content, batch posts, batch leads, batch everything, our lead generation.

The goal is leverage so Leads and Leverage. The goal is leverage.  

Ok local town photos are useful.

Tate says,

I’m curious…10 years ago real estate agents had their own websites with their own branding and URL. I don’t see this today. Agents are hiding in the big pages, Zillow, dah dah dah and not protecting their identity. I’ve also noticed Google is not including Facebook, twitter activities in search results as they were just a few years ago. Is a Facebook page enough?

A Facebook page is not enough.

Tate asks “if a Facebook page is enough?” No. It’s not. A Facebook page is a conduit to your own hub. Now 10 years ago, the same number; well actually a higher number of real estate agents that have their own site. Well let me clarify this: She said 10 years ago real estate agents had their own sites with their own branding and own URL.

The same percent of agents still have that today because a lot of agents don’t believe you need your own branding or URL, you don’t need your own branding but you do need your own site and URL.

Using an agent site or a brokers site is not going to help you, no it’s not going to help you at all. You can’t track it, you can’t re-target to it and you can’t actually build a business based on it .

To get down to your question, a Facebook page IS NOT enough. A Facebook page is a conduit, it’s going to take this big multi-billion person platform and bring the right people into your sphere, into your email list, into your website, etc.

Your website, not your brokerage website, your website. So it is a leverage. It is a lever. You’re going to use it. It is a conduit.That’s what it is. You absolutely have to have it as conduit but it is not a destination.

Just remember your Facebook business page is a conduit not a destination which is why we don’t spend a lot of time in playing with the different templates for looks that Facebook has.

We only use what is actually going to get us better reach, better engagement and more leads. So that is what we focus on, not the other stuff. So it is a conduit to your hub and your hub is your very own website.

It’s not your brokerage site, it’s not a Placester site or any other vendor site, it is your site. Your own site built on WordPress, not Wix, not Squarespace, not built on anything else. It’s built on a really good robust backed platform you host.

That is why I recommend Mike Muller with areweconnected.com He is amazing and has been in the industry for, I don’t even know how many years, but he has been in industry for as long as me at least. We actually met on Active Rain in 2007 I think back when we were both blogging on that platform. He knows what he is doing, he doesn’t control it, he sets it up for you and you have the freedom to do what you want.

He is so amazingly affordable so Mike Muller at areweconnected.com. That name is not actually in the resources because I didn’t know I was going to be talking about him today, but you need have a page that serves as a conduit into your website.

Comment below and let me know what was most useful for you and if you’re willing, tell me what you’d like me to teach or share with you next!  Let me know what you need help with below.

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Want the notes, tricks and resources?

Again if you want these notes, tricks and resources just comment in the video above and I will send it to you via messenger.

If you’re watching this on IGTV or YouTube or Twitch if you click through to the link in the description it will bring you to this original video and you can get all of these resources.

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Featured Download:

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


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Filed Under: News Tagged With: facebook for real estate

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

A harsh, yet profound truth. You might be acting like a headless chicken.

“You either believe it’s going to work or it isn’t, whatever you believe is what the outcome will be.”

A harsh, yet profound truth.

When you’re struggling… when you are thinking “I have this to implement and this to do and that to implement and that to do”…

The truth is… you’re putting your energy in the wrong place. When you do that, you’re acting like a headless chicken.

When you have a path before you, but we decide the path isn’t clear, or we think the path isn’t clear, or we don’t want to do the work that the path requires… then we start thinking… “I need to do XYZ and I need to complete 123.”

But.

Here is the harsh truth. We KNOW the path. We know which path we should be taking, but we willingly allow distractions… other people, other things, anything that takes us off our path.

For example, as real estate agents, you need to lead generate. You have so many options. Cold calls. Door knocking. Farming.

So we “pick” social media… but therein still lies a problem…

I watch new members coming into Leads and Leverage. They come in and say they are using social media – all of it! They will let me know they have all their accounts set up everywhere, which is awesome, but it doesn’t help them.

We try to be “everywhere”, and we run around like a headless chicken instead of going, “Okay, what exactly should I be doing?” or “What platform should I be using?”

They just barely start getting setup on Facebook and they’re already spending time on Pinterest, YouTube, G+, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter… all because someone, somewhere said “you need to be everywhere” and that little gem of a lie gets us into “headless chicken” mode.

A headless chicken is literally everywhere in the chicken yard, which does them no good because they are still going to die. You don’t want to be like that. So don’t be a headless chicken!!

You want to be more like a frog, which is why the frog is my logo! A frog doesn’t do a lot of moving, but when he does, it’s big leaps. He is very targeted. He doesn’t reach out to get something unless he is pretty sure he will get it.

When we insist we don’t know what to do, and yet we are told “do this, this and this” our actions speak louder than our words… we don’t really want to do any of what we are supposed to do which is exactly why we get distracted.

Here’s the clincher… “You either believe it’s going to work or it isn’t, whatever you believe is what the outcome will be.”

So you either believe the path you’re taking will work and you take that path, you follow that path, and you don’t allow yourself to be distracted. Or you don’t actually believe it will work and you run around like a headless chicken trying a little bit of everything.  But regardless whatever you believe is what the outcome will be.

If you believe a path will work, you stick with it, you focus on it, you master it, you overcome it, and push though the doubts. Results take time! It is a process.

In fact one of the things I want to share with you is this, Stu McLaren the founder of Tribe, said,

There is this expectation that you should be able to instantly get those kind of results because you are implementing a methodology or a process laid out by someone else. You cannot instantly get the same result they have gotten. It’s unfair to you and unfair to them. Everyone’s business is different. Everyone is in a different market, has a different skill set, has a different set of experiences, but that doesn’t discount the value of the strategies that were shared.

In the early days of building your business, this season you’re in is the season to figure things out, and a part of that means you have to roll up your sleeves and realize there are going to be bumps in the road.

But the name of the game is to stay in the game for as long as it takes to win the game. So here is the thing, if you are running around like a headless chicken, a chicken with your head cut off, STOP IT! Reattach your head and stop running around!

Here’s the #LIVE stream I hosted on this:

Filed Under: News

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