The Power of Prejuicing Your Facebook Page Posts

I’m going to show you 4 steps to getting more clients from your Facebook page posts… read on 🙂

I’m sure you’ve noticed that reach is declining yet again, for Facebook pages.

Let’s face it, unless you are an expert at creating posts that Facebook loves and your target audience loves, you’re going to struggle with posting on your page and getting people to actually see those posts without paying for them.

Even if you’re boosting, it’s likely that you are spending $20-$30 or more per post, just to get some reach, and that’s only for a day or two.

What if you could get more reach and engagement on your Facebook page posts, extending their life for several weeks, for the same cost (or less)?

What if you could get more comments and conversations going on your posts?

What if you could join the ranks of those who’ve created and enjoyed the results of a viral post?

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little known secret that successful viral post creators use… it’s called “prejuicing.”

What the heck is prejuicing?

Prejuicing is when you schedule a page post to go live on your Facebook business page, and before it goes live, you boost it out to your audience to get likes, comments and shares. To essentially “get traction” before you post it on your page.

Why prejuice?

When a prejuiced post has engagement (likes & shares especially) when it goes live, Facebook pushes it out 4-10x more (organically) than an “ordinary” post published on your page. You get a huge bump in the first few days of your live post.

You are able to leverage the power of prejuicing to get a much greater organic reach. Facebook sees the post as something people already love, and therefore, it’s “worthy” of being pushed out more.

Additionally, Facebook has your targeted audience from the prejuice as a roadmap to know who is most likely to respond to your post. They have a direction on who to push it out to when it goes live.

4 Steps to prejuicing your posts

Step 1. Set up highly targeted audiences inside audiences.

I suggest starting with one zip code + homeowner (demographic not interest) and then drill down from there, depending upon the interests of the post you want juiced.

For example, let’s say you want to profile a new golf neighborhood you’ve created a neighborhood page for on your website. Your targeting would look like this: one zip code + homeowner (demographic) + golf (interests) or golf channel or golf digest or golf magazine or pga tour or pga championship or … you get the picture.

You’d set up your detailed targeting (under ad set) to include the demographic of homeowners and narrow the audience to “must also match at least one of the following” and include the golf interests under this section.

Step 2. Schedule a post to go live 7 days from now on your Facebook business page.

Make sure you use Facebook’s manual scheduler for this post. You can go to your page – then to publishing tools – then to +Create (blue button on the upper right for most FB page layouts). Pop the post in and schedule it for 7 days from now.

Step 3. Hop over to Power Editor and set up your campaign.

Here are the parameters:
Campaign Objective: Post Engagement
Ad Set: Choose the audience you created in audiences
Ad: Choose the “use existing post” option and select your scheduled post

Step 4. Run this ad for 14 days.

This will give you 7 days of pre-juicing and 7 days of riding the wave of the prejuicing (which means your per action on the ad will be less because FB will be pushing your post out organically and simultaneously pushing it out via your ad account.

You want to run this ad for 14 days at $2 per day. Don’t mess with the budget. Just set it for $2 per day and let it ride the wave.

A couple of closing tips…

When people like the post, make sure to invite them to like your Facebook page (not to become friends with you).
When people share the post, acknowledge the share by “liking” or “loving” their share.
When people comment on the post, respond to them. Engage with them.

Ready for more?

Then check out the Ultimate Guide to Boosting Your Facebook Posts & Getting Leads I created for you. You’ll go more in-depth on the why’s, what’s and how’s of leveraging your posts to get leads.

by Christina Ethridge 4 Comments

Do you struggle with creating engagement on your Facebook business page? Then do this…

Do you struggle with creating engagement on your Facebook business page? Let me just say… you are not alone.

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist. The step-by-step guide you need to get your Facebook page up and running and bringing in real estate leads. (Download Now)

Real estate agents are always telling me that they struggle with creating engagement on their Facebook businesses pages and they are looking for help.

I host a Facebook for Real Estate agents group and I asked members what they would like to see me train on… and the most requested training was creating engagement on my Facebook business page.

This was both a surprise and not a surprise to me.

A surprise because I thought agents would want to learn more about lead generation and not a surprise because I realized that real estate agents think that creating engagement will result in leads.

In other words, it seems as though it is believed that stirring up engagement on our Facebook business pages will result in capturing more leads.

The truth is, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Focusing on creating engagement on our business pages does not mean we capture more leads. In fact, it often means the opposite.

A highly “engaged” Facebook business page is all-too-often the front to a very busy, stressed-out, and poor, Facebook business page admin.

If your real goal is to build a better business… to create a consistent flow of real estate leads… then here are a few things you need to keep in mind when it comes to using your Facebook business page to generate business.

1) Your page is a conduit, not a destination

Here’s where the paradigm shift begins. We need to pivot from “trying to create engagement” on our business pages to realizing that our page is a conduit between people we’ve never met and our database.

Your Facebook business page is not a destination. It is not a community. It is a funnel. A conduit. It’s the slide between the masses on Facebook and your database.

In other words, stop trying to create a “community” on your page and focus instead on creating a valuable conduit between Facebook and your database.

In reality, you want to create your community within your database, not on a “rented” platform.

2) Stop trying to create engagement and start focusing on providing value

What does that look like? It looks like giving the answers to your prospects problems.

When you try to only give them home searches or CMA’s, you are seen as a salesman, irrelevant to them, and someone who doesn’t understand their journey.

Stop being self-serving and start actually serving. Consumers don’t care why they shouldn’t sell FSBO. They dismiss articles and such that promote using real estate agents. In other words, don’t fall for the industry thought on “teaching the public how valuable real estate agents are” because you will get no where, fast.

Instead, show them how valuable you are. Show them they mean something beyond the transaction. And if they don’t actually mean something beyond the transaction to you – take your smarmy salesman tactics to the local used car dealership and push your wares there.

Remember, you need to help them, with their real problems… not what you perceive their problems to be.

Our industry is never short of advice on what the they think the consumer wants or needs. Unfortunately, we’re wrong. Pretty much all the time. Just look at the offerings that are out there for consumers… “get your home value instantly” and “check out these homes for sale” and “get this home buyers guide” etc. etc. etc.

Find out what their real problems are… problems and challenges they face along their entire homeownership journey. Then, give them solutions. And no, “use a real estate agent” is not a solution.

Let’s face it. Problems aren’t solved simply because a consumer uses a real estate agent. In fact, problems are often created when another person gets involved, so don’t resort to sales tactics that the consumer sees right through.

Start solving their real problems along their home ownership journey without attaching a “sale” to it.

3) Ignore the “engagement numbers” and focus on the “audience” numbers

Always remember, that 99% of your tribe are simply going to lurk. They will not engage and trying to change their behavior is virtually impossible.

There is actually a 1% rule when it comes to Internet culture. Rather than fight the rule, leverage the rule.

Know that engagement is not the goal, but acquirement is. You want to acquire audiences that are highly targeted and you want to nurture them so that when you do “ask for the sale” they respond to you. Your audiences include targeted page likes, website visitors, your email database and your snail mail database.

Your offline audiences must be included in this as well. Add your offline audiences into your email database as quickly as possible. Your goal is to bring all audiences into your email database.

In truth, there is nothing wrong with engagement, it’s just that we need to stop focusing on it. Stop looking at that metric. Focus on your audience numbers rather than your engagement numbers.

Your Facebook business page must be setup as a lead generating conduit, a funnel, and that’s why I’m giving you access to my Facebook Page Setup Checklist… it’s free and it’s yours, just click here.

by Christina Ethridge 8 Comments

Want to generate real estate leads on Facebook? Here are 6 things to make that happen…

Do you have a strategy for using Facebook? A strategy that brings in business?

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist. The step-by-step guide you need to get your Facebook page up and running and bringing in real estate leads. (Download Now)

So, you are setting up your Facebook business page for your real estate business — awesome!

I do have a question for you, though…

“Do you know why you are setting up a Facebook business page?”

What? Why on earth would I ask you why? Isn’t the “why” obvious? You want a Facebook presence. You want to be everywhere and give your real estate business legitimacy.

But again, I ask you why. What is your end goal?

“Duh, my end goal is real estate transactions,” you might be thinking. “Besides, everyone else is there; I guess I need to be there, too.”

All too often, if not most of the time, we jump into things without understanding what we are jumping into.

What’s your strategy for using it? What’s your plan for generating leads from it? Is it a place you should be versus a place you think you need to be?

Will your time and energy spent on this produce viable fruit? In other words, will it result in closings?

And no, “hope marketing” is not a viable reason for being somewhere or doing something.

What’s that? What’s hope marketing?

It’s the place we go in our minds when we think, “Well, doing this can’t hurt” or, “If I can get my name out there, the hope is that the right person, in the right frame of mind, will see my name and remember it when they are ready to buy or sell real estate.”

Guys, that is a ridiculous reason for doing anything. We must have clear, precise, distinct goals when using Facebook.

We need to understand how Facebook works. We need to have a plan, and that plan needs to include how we set up our Facebook business page from the very beginning. Our foundation.

Here’s the deal — Facebook business pages exist so that you can connect with your “unmets.” You know, people you’ve never met before.

It’s called lead generation. Bringing in leads that you don’t know yet. Bringing them into your sphere (also known as your database) and then nurturing those leads into clients and closings.

To that end, you definitely need to set up your Facebook business page in a way that nurtures that strategy and that produces the end result and connects you with people you’ve never met before. And it’s to that end that I give you these best practices for setting up your business page.

1. Ignore what you see everyone else doing because they are doing it wrong.

Remember, your goal is to use Facebook for funneling your unmets into your database.

The kicker is, most real estate agents are not using their Facebook business pages to connect with their unmets. They are using their pages as yet another online brochure about themselves.

They ask all of their friends and family to “like” their page. They treat it like a second personal profile, and then they’re confused and wonder why they should even have a Facebook business page if they’ve got a personal profile.

If you want clients and closings, don’t follow the crowd. Ignore them and proceed to do the opposite.

2. Your Facebook business page isn’t about branding or exposure or presence — it’s about lead capture

Now, before you get all up in arms and fight this concept, consider this: When you focus on branding and exposure, that’s all you get.

It takes a whole lot of time and money to get to a point where people think only and always of your brand. In fact, it’s a lot of money down the toilet.

But when you have a strategy in place — when you have a plan focused on lead generation — you not only reap the results of that focus but also you get the benefits of presence.

In other words, focusing on lead generation will get your name in front of multitudes of people. You’ll get the exposure you desire while simultaneously putting food on your table because you’ve got closings.

3. No, you don’t want to put your IDX on your Facebook business page.

Did I just say that out loud? I’m positioning myself to be dismissed by vendors and real estate agents alike here.

You see, vendors have a product to sell you, and they like that you are thinking in terms of your business page as just another Web presence. They can sell you something!

Something that doesn’t work. Something we think works, but it doesn’t. Something that is actually a shiny object or billed as the next silver bullet.

And still, your colleagues will insist putting IDX on their Facebook business page changed their businesses overnight. OK, maybe not that extreme — but they will tell you that they’ve gotten leads from it.

But when you dig deeper and ask how many, how often, who, what, when, where, why — they don’t have a factual answer for you. That’s because they didn’t track it. So what they tell you is anecdotal at best.

You don’t want IDX on your Facebook business page for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, it’s a waste of time and money.

Our business pages are actually viewed by less than 2 percent of our audience. That means out of 100 people who come in contact with our actual page (not just a NewsFeed post), fewer than two of them actually visit our page (and, quite frankly, those two are probably our competitors or a vendor who wants to sell us something).

The second reason? You want to leverage Facebook.

If you don’t drive visitors who are interested in seeing homes to a page that you can pixel (your IDX on your website, as an example), you are wasting a whole lot of time and money.

And, if you aren’t taking advantage of required registration, stop running ads on Facebook immediately. You must be focused on capturing leads, not on pushing crap out to the random masses.

4. Your Facebook business page isn’t about you.

This one is the biggest one.

We think that since we are putting “our business” onto Facebook, we need to share as much as possible about our business. But we treat our pages like an online brochure.

Quite frankly, no one is interested in you. They are interested in what you can give or do for them. We filter out the sales crap and seek out resources. Give them resources.

Your Facebook business page is about your future client. It’s about them. It’s about their wants, desires, hopes, needs, problems, dreams — it’s about them.

Don’t treat your page like a brochure. Treat it like a dynamic resource funnel that your future clients are accessing.

Have your contact information there. Learn how to drive traffic to resources. Learn how to sell without selling.

Let your future client discover just how awesome you are through your actions and deeds. These hold much more power than your words.

5. You aren’t a local business.

Most agents hop on the local business category for their Facebook business page, and this is usually their first mistake in the actual hands-on creation process.

You aren’t a local business. You are a real estate agent.

Think about it. Who or what is your business?

Your business is you. You are selling your services. You aren’t selling retail products. You aren’t looking for walk-ins (in fact, if you are a busy agent, you are rarely even in the office), so why on earth do you want to waste valuable space on Facebook with a massive “map and address?”

Instead, choose the Brand/Product category and the Service/Real Estate Agent subcategory and utilize the space now available for calls-to-action and lead-capture links rather than a map of your brokerage.

6. Do not make Facebook your home base.

You need to have an online home base — your own website.

By your own, I mean yours, not your broker’s. You need your own domain that you bought and registered yourself. You need your own website that you built or had built yourself, and it should allow you to embed Facebook pixels.

As agents, we like when things are done for us, but the problem is, most things done for you aren’t in your best interest. So you’ve got to understand the why and then outsource appropriately.

With Facebook now promoting a form of blogging on its platform, many people will spend the time and energy just using Facebook as their home base, and when something happens (like Facebook shuts down your account or changes the rules), you lose out. You threw out every moment of time and penny spent.

Own your home base and leverage Facebook as a resource to drive traffic to your home base.