facebook lead generation — Page 3

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Are you one of those real estate agents who sends out unsolicited canned crap? Find out why it is the #1 thing that is killing your email marketing.

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

I’m very feisty today and getting on my soapbox.

What am I feisty about? Email! Well actually, I’m feisty about real estate agents who are killing their opportunity to leverage email marketing.

They keep doing this one thing. In actuality, this has been going on for many, many years, nearly two decades in fact, and am doubtful if it’s ever going to stop!

Real estate agents are constantly emailing me their crap, unsolicited.

For whatever reason, I’m in their contacts list. I am there for any number of reasons, but the fact is, I’m in their list of contacts and no matter where they are in the world, they send me their email crap. Their open house announcements. Their holiday emails. Their monthly email newsletter. Their solicitations.

Why do I call it crap and why is it a problem?

It’s a problem because I didn’t ask them to email me. I didn’t opt-in to receive commercial emails from them. I didn’t sign up for their email list and yet, I get them. Someone is telling them to send emails to everyone in their contact list which is a big fat uh oh.

For every single unasked for email I get, I report it as spam.

I used to reply and let the agent know what they were doing was illegal, not to mention unwanted and ineffective. But after the umpteenth response of basically “I don’t care” I stopped being generous with my time and knowledge and just simply started reporting them as spam.

This was many years ago that I stopped. Agents simply don’t want to know. Now I’m stepping it up a notch and forwarding all spam right to the Federal Trade Commission (spam@uce.gov).

Sending an email to everyone in your contacts list is illegal

Here’s the reality, sending an email to everyone in your contacts list is illegal. It’s spam. Did I mention it’s illegal? Not to mention it’s just plain stupid. It ruins your reputation AND the reputation of the industry.

You might be wondering why it’s spam. Well, it’s unsolicited email. Simply having their email address in your contacts list, or having had an email exchange with them in the past does NOT give you permission to email commercial email. Don’t let someone tell you that it does… it doesn’t.

And, even though it’s already spam (because they didn’t opt-in to receive it), I’ll bet you don’t have an opt-out link and haven’t included your postal address. Even if you are adding email addresses to your email marketing system, it’s still spam, because they didn’t opt-in.

You added them in, without asking them if they wanted in. Now, if they gave you permission by signing up at an open house, keep those records. That’s your proof that you have permission.

And here’s the deal, when you DO send spam, and you get reported (which you will), it basically ends up putting your email deliverability out of commission.

What does this mean? It means that when your email address is reported as spam, you get blacklisted and your ability to get into people’s mailboxes reduces to exactly zero.

Zero chance you’ll be able to get an email from you to another person. This kind of stinks, especially if you use your email address for, say, business transactions.

How your entire domain can get blacklisted

The other issue is that if you are using your business email (and not being lame using an @gmail, @yahoo, @msn, @hotmail, @aol email for your business), your entire DOMAIN gets blacklisted… meaning every single email that ends in @yourdomain will suffer, because of your own irresponsibility.

Side note:

if you are sending business email using an @gmail, @yahoo, @msn, @hotmail, @aol, or any other free email provider, then you need to stop. This isn’t about branding. This is about deliverability.

Google, among many, is reducing, to elimination, the ability for your business emails to get in the inboxes of people… they are working on reducing spam and recently made the announcement that commercial email sent via a free email provider will be punished.

And, that blacklisting doesn’t just extend to email. It will extend to your website ranking in search engines. In other words, we need to stop being lazy, stop making excuses, and start understanding what we are using and using it properly (and legally).

Why do we do it?

I honestly have NO idea. Well, actually, I do have an idea.

We know we are supposed to “stay in contact” with people. Email is free and easy. We refuse to use any time and money in developing an actual email list, so we get a listing and decide that we need to email out to people, so we just “select all” for our entire email contacts and then hit the send button.

Or we are told to stay in contact with our email list, and we translate email list to mean every email in our contact list.

We do not have permission to send that email and there is no context for the email. Heck, it’s free so let’s just treat everyone’s email address as disrespectfully as possible. Let’s play “innocent” in all of this. Who cares if we should know something about what we are doing, we’ll just play dumb.

After all, we live the phrase “it’s better to ask forgiveness later, than to ask permission now and be told no.”

Or, we go to a conference and we sign up for a newsletter company that gives us an email newsletter that we can “brand” and send out to our email contacts. And so, we do. We just “select all” and start spamming.

Again… here’s why you don’t want to do this…

It’s spam!
It’s illegal!
It ruins your reputation
It ruins the industry reputation
It ruins your deliverability
It ruins your search engine ranking
and… it can cost you $11,000 PER OCCURRENCE (EMAIL)

You Will Lose Business.

You may not know you’re losing business because maybe you haven’t really converted any through email marketing, but I guarantee, you are losing business. When you spam people it pisses them off and they remember it.

Why don’t we take the time to understand what we are using?

We hang our mindset on the excuse that “I’m too busy real estating” and believe that is a legitimate reason not to understand email marketing (or anything else we refuse to understand).

In fact, we are told to leave the “tech stuff” and the “marketing stuff” in the hands of assistants and vendors, who, for the record, don’t know what in the heck they are doing either!

Be that as it may, it is up to YOU to understand what you are using in your business. It’s your business. It’s your reputation. Understand the strategy and then outsource the tasks. We have got to stop making excuses for our lack of knowledge.

So guess what, I’m here to help you get that knowledge, understand that strategy, and implement email marketing so that it works for you, AND, and you are staying in compliance!!

So what do you do if you want to leverage email marketing? What are you supposed to do so that you can stay in contact with people and actually stay “top of mind” with them?

Here are some email tips…

1) Do not email your contact list, ever.

Don’t even think about it. Your contact list is comprised of every single person you’ve ever received emails from or sent emails to.

And, if you’re like most real estate agents, you’ve mixed your personal email with your business email which means that if you ever sent an inquiry on a craigslist item, you’ve got that person’s email address in your contact list.

If you’ve ever emailed a family member, their email address is on your contact list. Get it? Every single email that has ever crossed your path, whether coming or going, is on your contact list. This is NOT permission or license to email them spam. Don’t even try to pretend it’s ok. It’s not.

2) Use an EMS, not your contact list (and not a CRM).

What??? An EMS is an email marketing service/system. This is not the same thing as your email contact list and it’s definitely not the same thing as your CRM database.

You must have an EMS (and MailChimp is a viable option for most agents as it’s very inexpensive and extremely simple to set up).

You need an EMS that focuses on deliverability (getting into people’s inboxes) and one that will keep you legally compliant. You do not want to mess with the CAN-SPAM act. It’s expensive.

You also want an EMS (and MailChimp is a viable option for most real estate agents) because it keeps you organized. You can set it up to let you know how someone came into your list. What interested them. Why are they there.

3) Do not add everyone you know (and don’t know) to your list.

You need to get permission. You want people on your list who WANT to be on your list.

Remember that Cheap Trick song “I want you to want me?'

I want you to want me

I need you to need me

I’d love you to love me

I’m begging you to beg me

THIS is what you want. You want people to want to be a part of your email community and yes, it’s a community, not a list.

To start building your list, you’ll want to have a reason they’ll want to join it. What are you going to send them? How often? What’s in it for them?

Then, you need to drive traffic to your opt-in page for your email list and make it easy for them to subscribe.

Now, there is a whole lot more depth to this than I’ve shared in this article… but do me a favor… ask me your questions. I’ve got 3-4 more training articles in the works to enhance this one. So tell me your questions in the comments below so I can help you leverage email marketing legally AND get results.

Oh, and if you want more people on your email list, then get your Facebook business page setup to drive traffic right into your list! Here’s my Facebook page setup checklist to help get you started.

Featured Download

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

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

What EXACTLY should you be posting and sharing on your Facebook business page that people are interested in seeing?

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

I’m really excited to be here with you today because I get to answer a question that I think every single one of you has asked.

Here’s the question. This is direct from one of the people that have joined one of our Facebook groups, the Facebook for Real Estate Agents Group.

The Best Post You Can Put on Your Page

The question is “What’s your number one struggle when it comes to Facebook lead generation?” They said, “I don’t really know what to do with Facebook even though I know it is a powerful tool to let people know what I do and about who I am. I don’t want to post things that people don’t care about like where I’m having coffee. I’m just not sure what to do.”

That’s what I’m going to talk about today. In fact, I’m going to give you three reasons why that post about where you’re having coffee is the best post you can put out, so there you have it.

Today, let’s talk about why this question was so good. This question was given to me by our community manager inside Lead and Leverage, and I was like, “This is a great one to do because this is where we all circle.” We really struggle.

Three reasons why that post about where you’re having coffee is the best post you can do.

Reason #1

All right. Reason number one, reason number one. People are voyeuristic. We’re voyeuristic. We like to know every little thing other people are doing. Why? Why do we like that? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, and so I went through my own self.

I was like, “Well, sometimes it’s FOMO, fear of missing out. Do they have access to something? Have they tasted something? Have they done something that I haven’t done yet or that I need to do?

Do they have something that I should have, or are there somewhere where I couldn’t stand it?” I’m going to make sure that they know there’s a better place out there, or all kinds of things. All kinds of different things. “What’s their life like compared to mine? What can I do to change my life? What should I add to my life? What am I missing?”

People are voyeuristic. We like to see inside of people’s lives, and ironically enough, that’s in the little things, in the little things. Okay? I’ll go further into that in a second.

Reason #2

Reason number two. People like coffee. They do. There’s a reason that coffee and wine memes, and jokes, and pages, and things do really, really well on Facebook.

You’re a real estate agent and you’re doing a real estate agent page, but here’s the thing. People want to know who you are. They want to know who you are. They want to know why you tick.

They want to know that you need coffee fed into your veins like they do. They want to know that you like to have wine every single night or whatever it is. They want to know somehow a connection with you on those realms. Okay?

They like coffee too. If you’re doing this locally, which most of you should be, you need to be sharing where you’re having coffee. As a real estate agent, a lot of you don’t actually like to work physically in the office. You’re either out showing properties, out taking listings, or sometimes a lot of you are working in coffee shops.

Well, guess what? You need to be sharing that. You need to be sharing your favorite coffee, your favorite baristas, your favorite drinks, your favorite locations, why you like to be there.

Show yourself living your life. Show yourself working your business without selling crap to people. Like seriously, you need to show that. You need to share that.

There is a reason behind that on the Leads and Leverage Facebook business page … This is an international business. There is a reason that I share my Stitch Fixes and my Amazon Wardrobe and Prime Wardrobes.

There’s a reason why because that is a piece of me that people are interested in. I realized it seems very weird to share these pieces out to the world, but those are the pieces that people connect with. Those are the pieces that help people build a relationship with you.

They think they understand you a little bit differently, a little bit better, a little bit … Everything is falling down. A little bit … Just on a different level. This is how people buy from people. If they see you, know you, like you, trust you as a person, they’re going to use your services.

People are voyeuristic. They have fear of missing out. They want to make sure they’re getting the best or if they’ve tried everything, or experimented, or etc. They like to to try new things, and they like coffee too. Like seriously, they like coffee too.

Reason #3

What’s reason number three? Reason number three is all about community involvement. You eat at restaurants in your community. You drink at coffee shops in your community. Maybe you go to wine tastings in your community.

Maybe you volunteer at the Humane Society, or Habitat for Humanity, or the Food Bank, or the like Ironman. We have Ironman here or any of those other things. Maybe you’re involved in that.

People are also involved in that, so you sharing not just, “Hey, I’m going to go do this,” but like actually sharing in the moment while you’re there and sharing this gives people a reason to know they can trust you.

It also opens up their eyes. People discover new businesses, new restaurants, new places, new things to volunteer for, new things to become passionate about. That’s a community involvement piece that you can’t pay any amount of money to create.

You have to physically do it and be involved in it, so you really, really need to make these connections, and so something as silly, seemingly silly as coffee is really important, but here’s why we tend to avoid these things and that we overthink it.

What we put on Facebook is all about the deep, meaningful, super big moment posts.

I hate to tell you, but our lives in general have 3, 4, 5, maybe 10 big, deep, meaningful events, and all of the rest of the days are filled with seemingly meaningless, daily chitter-chatter, normal life.

We only go on that 25th anniversary once, a trip, the big one, one time. We only do A lot of us only get married one time. Even people who get married multiple times, you don’t do it every single month, every single day.

It’s ALL about those minuscule connections

You can’t keep thinking that what you post on Facebook needs to be these big, deep, meaningful moments. They need to be the everyday humdrum, the mundane, the seemingly innocuous connections.

It’s about those minuscule connection, the seemingly uninteresting and unimportant. There is a whole thing on YouTube of people….of vloggers. People who basically blog their daily live on video.

There’s thousands upon thousands of people that have very successful YouTube channels just sharing their day like literally just sharing their day. “This is my morning routine. This is how I put my makeup on. This is how I do my hair. This is what I did today. This is the book I’m reading.”

Just all the stuff that seems seemingly boring and innocuous, right?

I’m going to be the first one to admit there are a few people that I follow on YouTube specifically to see what they’re doing in their days, and they have different days they profile because I am always wanting to improve myself. What does that mean?

Does that mean I need to read more books? Does it mean I need to do more yoga? Does it mean I need to drink less? All three of those are things that I need to do, and I’m working on doing. There’s other things too, but we’re all looking in some sense to be different, to be better, to be more connected, so even if we don’t consciously know that, so share the mundane.

Share the boring. Share the little things.

Like I said, that’s why I share the Wardrobe boxes that I get. I got one yesterday, and I just was absolutely not in the mood to be on camera yesterday. I was not. I’ve been stressed out. I was going to get a massage.

Yeah. I’ve had to actually put massages in my weekly regimen for right now to help keep my cortisol lower, to help lower my cortisol so that I just … because I’m not handling stress real well right now, and I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to let it like control me, so what can I do to fix that?”

Yesterday, I just did not want to be on camera, and it’s probably because we had like 50 to 60 people over here on Monday, at our house on Monday, and I was exhausted and didn’t even think about that, “Oh, I might be peopled out,” because I’m an introvert.

I didn’t think about that, but I didn’t want to be on camera, so I got a box yesterday, and I felt guilty for opening that box, and going through it, and trying this stuff on, and doing all these stuff because I had been sharing these things with everybody out there.

I felt a little guilty not sharing that, but then I realized, “You know what? I don’t have to share everything,” but the thing is, is that you should be sharing more, so you definitely should be sharing more pieces, bits and pieces. For each person, it’s going to be a little bit different.

A friend of mine who is amazing on engaging with people, she has a massive audience on Facebook, on Instagram, etc.

She had a big pool party on Monday, and she shared all the stuff, and I didn’t. I didn’t share it.

I felt like it was my time, and that was what I was going to do just for me. I like shared one thing, so it’s just we all have different aspects that we do, that we share, but we definitely need to share the silliness like having a cup of coffee.

I know people who share I think almost every day that they work. They go work at a coffee shop, different coffee shops. Sometimes, the same one, and they always show the little design that people make on their coffee drink that they get.

Here’s a little secret. I don’t drink coffee ever. I cannot stand the taste of coffee. I have four boys and a husband. They are coffee nuts. I cannot stand coffee.

Be that as i may, I certainly understand the allure of coffee because I watch it in the zombies that walk around my house before they have coffee and then what coffee does. It fuels them, but I also know that there’s really little cute designs that you get on your coffee.

You could share that.

Be Engaging!

There’s all kinds of things that you can do that just are amazing little pieces of your life that people will connect with, that show that you’re a part of the community, that show that you’re engaged.

People care about your coffee, or your tea, or your wine. They care about your green or your brown thumb. They care about your hot mess and your success. They care about your wins and your losses. They care about your activities, your life. Dull and boring though all of these things may be to you, so you just have to realize that whatever it is, you may think it’s boring, you may think it’s dull, you need to start sharing it..

This is one of the things that I was doing before we opened our pool. We bought our house last August, and it’s the first time we ever owned an in-ground pool, and we’re in an area that pools are not really … I mean, I joke and I say this like all of like five pools in the whole area. There’s more than that, but we’re way up north.

There’s not a lot of pools like in-ground pools in the area, and so I joke about that, and it’s not a new experience for us. My husband Chuck worked for Endless Pools for almost four years. He’s very familiar with pools, and the pool chemistry, and things like that, so it wasn’t a like scary burden for us to get the pool.

That wasn’t an issue, but what was exciting was I started InstaStorying every day starting … sometime in April like asking people, “When do you think we’re going to open the pool?” and I’d show pictures of the snow on the ground and things like that, and it was just a random stuff because I was excited.

I wanted to open the pool right away. I wasn’t sure with the weather so I kept doing that, and the engagement that I got from that was just crazy. I was like, “Wow, people are interested in this?”

Yeah, they were interested in the journey. It was funny, and they were making bets on…well not really making bets, but like voting on the poll on when they thought the pool would open.

Here’s the thing. How does that get business? It’s not a direct way. They’re not going to go, “Ooh, I voted on your pool poll, so now, let me go sign up for Leads and Leverage,” or, “I voted on your coffee, so now, let me go buy a house from you.” That’s not how it works.

You build audiences…You build relationships

You’re building relationships with people, and over time, they get involved with you. They get involved in your life. They help create things with you, and that’s how they get to know they can trust you, and then when they have a need that you can fulfill, that you can serve for them, that’s when they are tied to you because they already know they can trust you.

That’s how it works. You build audiences. You build relationships. You nurture them, and then when they’re ready, they use you. That’s how it works.

When you’re doing this, here’s a few other things. I mean, I talked about the pool story. What are other things that you can share?

Share Videos

A friend of mine, same friend, Jennifer, she bought a house super fast like we did. However, she’s got like 18 or 20 years in the remodeling and construction industry. They literally bought their house and moved in . Everything was still in storage, but they were living in the house, and tore the entire house apart. A 6,000-cent-square-foot house, tore it apart, and so like she’s doing everything fast, and they’re still remodeling, and this was back in February.

She’s been sharing all of this, all of this on Insta Stories, on Facebook, etc. It is not related to her business. It’s not related to her business, except that she likes to help creatives make money like the whole starving artist thing.

She’s like, “No, that doesn’t exist.” Creatives, so people who are faux painters, or maybe they make jewelry, or they make reefs or things like that. That’s what her business is. She helps them learn how to make money, and she has been sharing her entire remodeling process.

It’s crazy. She gets tons of people that pop in on these videos and stuff like that.

The key is she’s sharing stuff. She’s not showing how to do a business, so in a sense, it’s unrelated to what her business is, but it’s a connection point.

As realtors, if you’re going through remodels or if you’re going through anything related to your living at all, you should be sharing it. Absolutely. One of the things I like about InstaStories is that it’s 15-second increments. I could literally share little bleeps, little moments. I love that. Whereas a Facebook live, you need to be on for at least 15 minutes, so it’s a little bit of a different ball of wax there, but you need to be sharing that.

Share Pictures

If you don’t want to share a video, share pictures. Share pictures. Engage people. Ask people. Even if you’ve like picked something out or you know what you’re going to do.

You need to be doing that kind of stuff. Share that coffee. Share that tea. Share your favorite drink. Share random stuff. That’s what people like. That’s what people want to know. They want to know how to find things. They want to know how to do things. All that kind of stuff. How do you think they’re going to get to know about you?

If you’re like a golf-themed, you love to golf, are you checking in at your page at golf courses when you’re golfing? Are you getting in 9 or 18 rounds of golf in the morning before you go out and work? Are you sharing that, or have you felt like you’ve had to keep that as your little like little secret? Things like that. Hey, Stas. How are you? Stas is my son. The one that … Like I said, very far away. Good to see you.

Anyway, are you sharing things like that? Are you afraid to show that you go golfing in the morning before you work? Are you afraid to share … I don’t know, anything about that kind of stuff? Don’t be afraid.

If there are parts of your life that you definitely don’t want to share, don’t share them. Don’t put them out there. Jennifer puts a lot of her kids out there. I rarely put my kids out there. Very rarely. They really don’t like to be shared like that, so I don’t. It’s just not what they want to do.

I also don’t like to share new big purchases. I just don’t. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t want to. If we were to get a car, I’m not going to share it that we got it. I don’t really share a lot about that

Yeah, we’ve shared the pool because it’s part of our house, but I just … That’s just not me. I’m not going to do it, but things like that, just things like, what is it that you put your boundary, set your boundary up?

That cup of coffee, that is the perfect thing that people are interested in, and I know it seems weird, but they are. They’re interested in that.

Post Local Stuff

The more local stuff you have, you want to put it out. Absolutely, you want to put it out. Spring, and summer, and fall are like the best times because we’re out of our houses doing local stuff, doing local events and stuff, so we’re out there doing things. Absolutely, we need to put them out there.

Do you need help with some ideas, some inspiration on what … What’s the boring mundane stuff that you can put on your page? I mean, some of the things that I may be doing.

I have some really interesting questions, and I’ve been really toying with this for me through Leads and Leverage.

I’ve had people asking me, “Okay. If you don’t drink coffee, how do you stay energized? You’re eating keto? What are you doing? How are you dealing with …” I’m 48 or I will be 48 in November. I will be 48. “How are you dealing with perimenopause?” I know that’s not interesting … Men aren’t interested in that, but how are you dealing with the changes in life? Do you exercise? What’s a routine you do? How do you keep your stress levels down? What’s your day look like?

All these interesting things like, “Do you take a supplement?” Just all these interesting stuff that is totally unrelated to Facebook or real estate agents. However, it’s questions that you might have because what your underlying thing is, is, “How can I change me? Does she know something or have a resource that I could use that would help me become who I want to become?” That’s really what you’re asking and what you’re looking for, so it’s really interesting. I’ll be sharing a lot more. I’ll be revealing a lot more, just who I am and what I do.

Find Out What People Want and Need

What I want you to focus on is start finding out what people want, what they need and don’t necessarily ask them. Watch them. Observe them. Listen between the lines, and then give them what you’re seeing and hearing that they need.

Does that make sense? It’s never you as their real estate agent. That is never the surface problem. That is never it. It’s always about, “What are they seeing? What are they needing? What resources are they needing?”

I know I keep using this as a resource, but one of the things that we’re struggling is, is we’re not DIY people. We know a lot of construction people. However, most contractors are not interested in the small stuff, the honeydew list stuff, and so we’re really trying, struggling finding someone to be our honeydew person, and so we actually finally found one. It’s actually a friend who’s going to come over and help us with a couple things.

It’s not easy to find some of these stuff. If people are buying in your area like we bought a house that’s 57 years old and most houses around here aren’t that old, they don’t have trees … They’re not on an acre with 30 or 40 different trees that are a hundred feet tall.

They don’t know what kind of tree care they need to have. Could you partner with a tree service and educate people? Not partner-partner, but on video. Could you educate people about what’s going on? What do they need in the spring? What do they need in the fall? Is it worth it to DIY it on different things? Things like that.

I’m just thinking about this going, “Okay. There is some stuff we’ve outsourced. There’s other things that we’ve done ourselves.” It just depends. Everybody has different needs, so that’s what your key is. Your key is always them, not you.

The goal in anything that you do is not to take them from someone who does not know you to a contract in one fell swoop. That is not your goal. You do not meet someone and suddenly, you’re 80 rocking … holding hands, rocking chairs, and married, and have 10 grandkids. It doesn’t work like that.

The entire process is a journey, and you need to be thinking that way, and giving value, and teaching, and engaging, and sharing you, and sharing your resources, and … Yeah, all the little crazy stuff that’s in your life. You are going to see a lot more of that coming out on Leads and Leverage, definitely, as I share more of that.

Here’s The Warning

Here’s the warning though. It does set you up for more obnoxious people coming at you. There is going to be an order for you to have people who love you and resonate with you. You will have to have people who are just idiot trolls. That’s basically what I call them. They’re just idiot trolls.

They have nothing going on in their life, except to watch videos, and vetch, and put down. It’s because they’re jealous. It’s flat out because they’re jealous. 100% of the time, they are jealous. They see you as someone who has something that they don’t. They see you as doing something that they want.

It doesn’t matter if you’re Tony Robbins or if you’re me. Nobody knows me. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you have people who love you, you’re going to have those troll people that come out, and I just call them troll people. Troll people. They have no lives. Pray for them. They are full of anger, full of bitterness.

They have no life, but they’re going to come out, and here’s what I suggest. Don’t engage them. Ban and block them. That’s all you have to do. Don’t engage. Just ban and block.

It’s about the … Get ‘er done. Get ‘er done and serve people.

If there’s anything you would like me to help you with when it comes to Facebook for real estate agents, or anything that you’ve seen on my page, or anything you’ve heard me say, or anything you’re getting mixed messages on.

You go to a conference, and they say one thing, I say another. You go to a training. They say one thing, I say another. For most of the part, I say the opposite of most everybody or most everybody says the opposite of me because they don’t understand how Facebook actually works. They don’t understand how social media actually works.

Focus on Helping People, Not Just Talking to People

There’s two schools or camp. There’s a “just get leads” camp, and then there’s a “just talk to people” camp. It’s neither one of these camps. See, the end result of getting leads over here does not start with just talk to people.

The end result of getting leads over here starts with you developing relationships, and it’s not just random talk crap. You actually have to have a strategy. You actually have to be focused on helping people, not just talking to people. You got to help them, and you got to reveal who you are in a way that they are like, “Yeah, I agree with,” or, “I like that.”

Make a Connection With People

A couple of other things. We’ve adopted, and what’s great about the way we’ve adopted … is we’ve adopted both domestically and internationally. Can you believe there’s actually a divide? There are people who adopts domestically or who don’t adopt.

It’s usually people who don’t adopt that just lambast people who adopt internationally because they’re like, “There are domestic children to adopt.” Yeah. Instead of saying, “Thank you for taking two orphans in this world and giving them a family,” they criticize just like that.

But then, there’s the other side, same thing, who would like never even consider adopting domestically. Right, but we’ve done both, so we connect to both of those elements. We have traveled for 15 months in our RV with four boys, four cats, a dog, and us parents in a 30-foot motorhome. We did that for 15 months.

That’s another connection point, right? We love Disney. We go to Disney all the time. That’s another connection point. We love performing arts. We love New York City. We go to shows all the time. That’s another connection point.

These things that you share. My husband loves coffee. We love wine. We actually have a wine business, and we’re developing a bigger one, so we have that. That’s a passion for us. That’s my passion. It is not my business focus, but it’s a passion.

There’s that, so there’s all kinds of different things that you can have connections with with people. Reveal them, both positive and negative, good and bad. Don’t let people tell you what you should like and shouldn’t like, but definitely put your likes out there and what your dislikes are so that you can connect with people who’s similar as you.

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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.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

How do you find “real” real estate leads on Facebook, keep their attention in the news feed and convert them to closings?

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Featured Download: Access the perfect Facebook posting schedule for real estate agents. It’s the perfect schedule, a single one page calendar of exactly what kind of post to put out on your page. Download it here.

Today I’m going to be walking through all of the struggles, all the main struggles you as real estate agent have using Facebook for your real estate business.

Struggles like, let’s see here:

How do you find “real” real estate leads on Facebook?

How do you get in front of the right people at the right time?

What should you be posting that people actually like and are interested in?

How do you turn pages likes into closings?

How do you get more reach and engagement on your post, without having to pay more money? How do you follow up the leads you are getting so they don’t end up in the non-interested pile? How do you do all of this when you don’t have enough time? You don’t have the extra money? And you’re not techie?”

What I am going to do today, is I want to talk about your post, your content, the stuff you post on the page to get people to engage with you.

In the first series, we talked about your page set up and the essence of your page and why most of your pages aren’t doing anything for you, aren’t getting any results, etc.

And as a gift, I have the Facebook page posting schedule, it’s a calendar. We’re going to walk through that today.

Guess what? I am asking that again today, so if you’re new with me and just happened to find this article in for the first time please, do me a favor and share with me in the comments what your struggles are when it comes to using Facebook for your real estate business

If it’s one of the struggles mentioned above, go ahead and list it again, so I know that there is more than just a few people who have the same struggle. I know a lot of you have the same struggles, but if you have a new struggle or something specific please put it in the comments so I can help you.

What Do You Put On Your Page?

So today like I said I want to talk about your posting and your content and I think this is one of the ones that surprised me how many agents struggle with this one.

Why did it surprise me? I don’t know, I guess I was really trying to figure out why this surprised me, I figured it was pretty simple to figure out what people liked in general, what they like to see.

Then I realized we forget, we have like this disconnect between people we are with in real life and different things like that related to real estate vs. virtual. It’s like we have a roadblock or a barrier and so we start throwing out what I call “canned crap.”

We will do something like national statistics, even local statistics, forgetting that our audience that’s on Facebook, there’s only very few of them that maybe in that six month window of actually buying or selling at any given moment.

So what do you put on your page to be able to engage them over time, over years, when they’re not actively buying and selling? How do we keep their attention in this entire newsfeed, in all of this stuff they’re getting thrown at them? How do we keep their attention so they want to stay connected to our page? Stay connected to us, so they will refer people to us. How do we do that?

We’re going to talk about this today. My question for you is, do you struggle with what to put on your page? Like what to post, what to put on there, and then do you struggle with hearing about the Facebook algorithm changes and all the things they say you should be doing, or you shouldn’t be doing?

Do you feel this labyrinth, this game you have to constantly play, let me know in the comments below if that’s a struggle for you, because I know it is even for my Leads and Leverage members.

We give them information, we give them things to do and it is still a struggle. We feel like we play games with the algorithm,or we must stay ahead of the algorithm, and I am here to show you today, you don’t have to game anything.

In fact, here is the best part, if you are consistent and you use the posting schedule that I’m giving you in the link below, and if you never fail to put anything up, that is 80% of the game. You have to make sure it’s stuff people are interested in. I give you a posting schedule, I give you ideas on there.

Featured Download: Access the perfect Facebook posting schedule for real estate agents. It’s the perfect schedule, a single one page calendar of exactly what kind of post to put out on your page. Download it here.

I want to make sure you’re putting things out that people are interested in, in ways people are interested in them. I think sometimes, we just want to hand over the content to a vendor ot to an assistant or a VA or things like that because we don’t see the value of being the voice on that page.

We think of it as running ads in a newspaper- again, you need to read the first article number one, to really get what I’m saying here, but your Facebook business page is the virtual you. It’s literally you, in virtual form.

Make Your Posts Conversational

So you want to make sure it sounds like you, that the page is having conversations like you would, I mean would you stand around in a room of a whole bunch of people and just say, “New blog post, link” or “National stats, link” or “Home tour, link” or “New listing, link,” would you stand around in real life and actually do that?

That’s what we do on our pages. We just throw up stuff, we think if we put stuff up, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. No, we are supposed to be initiating conversations, or even having “pretend” conversations and I’ll explain what I mean by that.

When you’re someone who is an agent, and you’re in the room and you hear conversations going on, and you have something of value to contribute to the conversation, and it’s open, you can contribute. People liked your page so you can contribute. Do you go “New blog post, link” or, do you say, “Oh that’s interesting, someone else was struggling with that same thing and this was the solution that they found,” or “this is the resource they used” or “you don’t know what to do here?”

I actually know somebody who knows about that, here it is.” Would you be more like that or would you be like, “new listing, new blog post, new home tour.” See what we end up looking like is someone saying, “blah, blah, blah” instead of someone trying to initiate a conversation.

If for example, if people you know are struggling with, let’s say, they’re struggling with the feeling like they’re going to be priced out of, the real estate market because that is going on in our market right now. So they feel like they’re going to be priced out of the real estate market. Are you going to give into that panic and fear by saying, “Yeah, you should buy now” or are you going to educate them?

In the history of my market, every 8 -10 years we have this surge, it’s typically because the surge started in California, this is my market, peoples home value went up, they sold, bailed California and came here. That’s what happens, It’s historic, it happens, everytime. This is the fourth time in my mind, I know that this happened, the third time I’ve dealt with it in real estate.

So not only in my mind, but I also have the stats for this, so this is something I would educate people on. Every single time, our income has caught up to it. It may take a couple of years, we may end up getting priced out, but our income catched up because more jobs, more industry, more etc. Things happen, we grow.

Do we just say, “yeah, you should buy” or, do we educate people and let me know, honestly if they can’t buy right now they might temporarily be pushed out of the market, but this historically, is what’s been happening.

Speak To The Lifestyle About Where You Live

That’s just a really broad example but there are other things, like lifestyle.

Maybe people really aspire to live in a certain neighborhood or live a certain lifestyle, so we’re not going to talk about buying and selling, we’re gonna talk about what it’s like to live in that neighborhood.

Do they have RV’s, do they have ATV’s, do they have swimming pools, etc. whatever they have you need to help people with those lifestyle pieces. If it’s swimming pools, do we need to create a resource list of swimming pool companies or pool guys or resources, what can we help people with?

What can we share about our town or our city or our area that’s lifestyle related. What events, without becoming the activities director, what events would the person you’re trying to reach be interested in?

Those are all local ideas. People like local. Period. Plain and simple, they like local. Take lots of photos.

They also like home tours, DIY’s, remodels, etc.

They’re totally not interested in national stats. National stats mean absolutely nothing to them because they can’t translate them. They have no idea, and if you can’t translate them knowing this is what’s happening nationally, but honestly nationally is meaningless, but I do know in my market, what happens in California does affects us about 18 months later, typically.

So I know that, so I can educate them with what is going on, here is etc, we have like 18-36 months. I can educate people on what’s going on in the market. It helps people know to should I sell now? If I am thinking of selling in the five years, is now the time to sell? Or should I wait five years?

If I’m thinking about buying, if I’m thinking about moving or thinking about investing in a rental, like all of these things, you could just educate people. It’s really, really important that you are educating people, but on a local level and make darn sure you actually understand the stats in your market.

Know The Stats In Your Market

You’ve gotta know, you’ve got to know what the actual sales are, not just the little hotsheet thing your MLS spews out to you. Or the little numbers MLS spews out because honestly, that doesn’t really tell anything.

Like recently, ours came out and people shared them and I’m looking at them going, “Okay, there’s more listings on the market or less listings on the market, higher sales,” but I noticed the days on market had gone up 10% and I’m like “okay,that’s a sign we are starting to see some push back, that we’re starting to see a little bit.”

I would take that and go deeper, not just on the overall thing, because MLS data is beyond our county. It’s everything in the MLS, I would go look by county, and then by towns and then I would look in the price points.

You need to know your market, and if you’re not a numbers person, sorry you have to become a numbers person, you’ve got to know this data, this is how you educate people.It’s not about giving them numbers, it’s about knowing without a doubt that you’ve got 18 months to buy or 36 months to buy. It’s kinda like having a crystal ball in a sense.

Now clearly, you’re not going to know everything perfectly, but if you know your market inside and out, the data, the numbers, you can see the trends, not just what people are showing you, but within nichies, because in every single time there is a depreciating market or down market.

There is always a little a niche,that’s appreciating, always. It could be in down markets, it could be a very specific price range, a very specific investors property, it could be just land, it could be something that’s usually just doing good in down markets.

In up markets, something is usually still pretty tight, so you just have to know the data. You’ve got to know it, you can’t just spew the data. You have to educate based on the data, you need to explain why this is important.

You Need to be YOU on Your Facebook Page

This is where you get their trust on your post, and everything, you need to be YOU on your Facebook page.

You can’t use someone else, you have to know your stuff. There are always fun stuff you can do and I will get into that in a minute. You really need to be teaching people, and if you are teaching people and educating them, guess who is going to look at you and believe you and listen to you when you say, “Zillow estimates are horrible”?

They’re not going to believe you if they don’t already know, like and trust you. They’re not going to, no matter how much data you throw at them, but if they know, like and trust you and they know you’re going to have their back, then guess what? Guess what, you have their back, they’re going to trust you when you say, “Zillow is always off, and here let me give you a real value compared to what Zillow said, let me show it to you.”

So if you want them to like, know and trust you, you have to be educating them all along on everything. Totally all the time. It’s really, really important that you’re doing this.

Review Part 1 of this series!

I give you the page setup checklist, if you go to that post I give it away in that one.

Okay, so I have way more to give, way more to talk to you about, we have to talk about the schedule. What type of things you should be putting up, etc.

The Facebook Posting Schedule

Today is the day for the Facebook posting schedule, you’ll want to grab that because I will be talking about when exactly you should be posting, what you should be posting on there.

Then we really need to talk about your consistency, how hyperlocal you should get, using a third party platform to help you post and about your listings and open houses, etc.

So we are going to talk about all of that today. One of my members asked, “Is it good to do blog posts and link to your website or better to go to a landing page of some sort in order to try to capture email?”

So here is what you want to do, you want to make sure that you are thinking what is the next logical step in the journey. Every blog post you write should have some sort of lead magnet in it, and that is really easy. That is what I call a content upgrade which is really easy to do, in fact, your blog post could actually be put in a PDF form and that could be your content upgrade. You could have an email option there.

Now, when you’re trying to get people to know, like and trust you, you gotta give them value without asking for anything.

When you’re doing a blog post, you need to make sure the post aren’t canned, the posts have value in them and let people know if you’re going to post them on Facebook.

Let people know why they would want to click-through and go to that blog post,

Like why? What problem does it solve for them? What question does it answer for them?

Include a lead magnet (checklist, guide, download, etc.) Things like that; it’s an extra step, but you can get this stuff for free, for nothing. You want to be thinking about that.

Then later in your blog post and anything like that, no, you don’t want to require an email, you just want them to go.

Pixel Your Website Traffic

Another thing about that is, you get the traffic. You can pixile the website traffic, Like for example, the people who watch my Facebook live videos; they are all apart of my video view audience, so I’m not losing anything by giving things away for free, without requiring an opt-in,

I am actually gaining. I am gaining a video view audience, I am gaining relationships with you.

So you need to be thinking about your next logical step in the process, their next logical micro-step.

Build Page Likes On Your Page

Really what you want to be doing is to really communicating with your potential audience. You could build page likes through page like ads, through doing things like this then inviting everyone who likes it to page like it.

Make sure that whatever you’re going to use to build page likes will actually get people to engage, click page likes etc. You really need to be a source of information for people. You need to be a source of translation of information.

There is a lot of information, but if you could currate for people very specific to their problems and what they need, that’s where your value is going to come in, that’s what’s going to be huge for you.

When To Schedule Your Posts

Let’s talk about your schedule. If you don’t have the schedule, the link is right here.

Every single day of the week, you need to have something going out on your page. It should be a minimum of four items, to a maximum of six. This is for real estate pages very specifically.

Again, that’s what the calendar says. You want to have varying types of content. What I mean by varying types, I mean you want to have, if you can, I challenge you, a live stream. Not everyday, but at least once a week, a couple of times if possible. Pre-recorded video, these are yours that you have created.

A photo, a text type post, a link, where you share a link in a post. That’s the tech stuff, that’s the type of stuff. No matter, what has gone on in Facebook history, it has always been, people always excel when they have a variety of types of content.

Okay, so link post, video post, live and pre-recorded, photo post, text only. You want to make sure you have that variety.

Why?

Because if Facebook thinks you’re trying to game the system and thinks your only posting what they want you to do, they have to adjust the algorithm constantly and then people crash.

For example, a couple of years ago when text-only post were push, push out there people would start taking out the pre populated stuff that comes in when put a link in. They would take that out and make it a text-only post.

So Facebook went, “Okay, fine” We’re gonna change this up, we’re gonna do this. Now, what they’re doing in some cases if you put a link in, in your post, they’re giving more reach to the post you allow it to populate with whatever photo is at that link then they are to the people uploading a photo and a link.

If you don’t know what I mean on that, I don’t know how to explain that any better at the moment, but just know if you try to game the system and that’s all you do. You’re going to eat it, it’s not going to work.

What Kind Of Content Do People Want?

Do a variety of things, a variety of types. Okay? That’s number one. Now as far as what kind of content, what do people want? Well your number one key is hyperlocal.

Get your butt out in your town and take photos.

Get your butt out in your town and check-in as your business page at different businesses.

Get your butt out in your town and start meeting business owners. Do videos about their business and etc.

Get your butt out into your town and start involving yourself in different events. I’m not talking about the typical events every single realtor goes to, I am talking about go to wine tastings, go to the pubs that have games, like the world cup. Go and find the best place to watch the world cup.

Go to any local brew stuff, go to a humane society event. If there is a golf event go to that.

Get yourself out of the sphere that every realtor does this thing and go out to the community. Like be out there, share this with people, let people know ahead of time that these events are available even if you’re not going to be there. Celebrate the opening of a new park, you know celebrate with town about a new sculpture or new things the library has.

I am trying to think of stuff right off the top of my head that’s happened in our community recently. All of these types of things be a resource for the lifestyle of your area to help promote the lifestyle, to help promote what it’s like to live there.

Get involved, join a board, join a committee. When you’re out in town at a store, take a quick picture of the store your at or whatever resturant your at, take a picture of the food, take a picture of your meal and share it.

Just say, I had this amazing blah, blah, blah at blah, blah, blah. If it’s horrible, don’t give a horrible review. Just share, maybe you could figure out someone who’d like it. There are places that we don’t like to eat at in our town, because the food is just okay and we don’t like the environment and the service isn’t that great, but there are people we know and love, who absolutely love these places.

So just say, what type of person would like this page? If it’s not for me, I could say, “if you like blah, blah, blah then you would love this place.” That’s the kind of stuff you want to put out on your page. That’s the kind of thing people are looking at, you need to be hyperlocal.

Leverage Content From Other Places

The other thing you could do is leverage other things from other places, so people really like oime tours, they like to look. They are a little more voyeuristic and they want to look inside other people’s houses, remodels, etc. so share those.

They can be from anywhere in the country, but share those, absolutely share those. Give people a reason to want to keep coming back to your page.

There is a Facebook page I absolutely love called “For the Love of Old Houses” and they share old houses, circa 1930 and older. I really like looking at all the pictures they share, etc. It is just fun to look at and do. We don’t have an old house, it’s like 50 years old, so I like to look at those, what are they doing with it, what is the style, etc. I just like to and I’m not buying right now, it’s fun to do that.

Be that resource in your community, be that person who shares that kind of stuff, share quotes, share memes, share things that are related to your community etc.

In our next training we’re going to talk about running ads and getting leads, which build on each other. We are going to talk about follow up, the best ways to follow up.

How to leverage your time, we’re gonna talk about all kinds of things. Why am I talking about all of this? Well, I really want to walk through this. I really want you to have the answers you need to move forward.

In the meantime, I want to make sure that I am going through all of these and giving you the resources, tools and answers to your struggles. If you have any questions whatsoever post them in the comments below.

Featured Download: Access the perfect Facebook posting schedule for real estate agents. It’s the perfect schedule, a single one page calendar of exactly what kind of post to put out on your page. Download it here.