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.
Are You Getting Reach On Your Page?
Today, I’m going to share with you a little secret. I know we’re all really frustrated with the whole reaHch thing and the fact that Facebook doesn’t show our posts to our page likes; to the people who want to see our posts.
There are all kinds of reasons for that. Pros and cons. We can like it or hate it. It doesn’t matter. It is what it is, however, it’s not just a pay to play platform. There are posts that you can actually put out right now on your Facebook business page that Facebook loves and your users love them.
Guess what? They’re pushing them out. I’m going to talk about those today. I’m going to tell you which ones they are, how to leverage them. All that jazz.
Let me know if this is a struggle for you, that you’re not getting any reach on your posts, that you’re not getting your stuffed pushed out. Is that a struggle for you?
I’m imagining it is for a lot of people, but I want to make sure that I’m really helping you with something that’s going to make a difference for you. Here’s why it matters if your regular posts, not your sales pitches, not your want people to do something, but here’s why it’s essential that you get your posts out.
Why Is That So Important?
Here’s why it’s important. I have a client that is a member of Leads and Leverage and she was sharing something with me.
I shared with her how to run listing ads, listing ads that get responses, etc. She has a page that she has been nurturing, creating and building over the last several months doing everything that I have been teaching her to do.
She’s been building up that page and has almost 3000 targeted page likes in her community. These are people who are interested in living there or who already lived there. She has a really active page and has been doing everything I’ve been saying to do for almost the last year. I think it’s been the last year. Just about. It’s about 10 months.
I said okay. You are ready. Let’s start running some of your listings. Start running some of your listings out there. She put a listing ad out the way I showed her how to do it.
Her brokerage also put a listing ad out. They posted a listing ad just like she did to their page as well. Her brokerage got two clicks on the listing ad. Two clicks that actually clicked through to the listing.
She got 498 clicks and 13 opt ins. In other words, for the exact same ad, but from a page that Facebook loves, that the fans love, that is doing really well, has a really good reputation on Facebook and her fans, she got almost 500 link clicks to her listing. They got to see her listing, to do everything.
We’re actually tweaking the conversion because there wasn’t a required opt in. Those were optional opt ins.
She got opt ins. Her brokerage got two link clicks. Yeah. It matters. You can pretend that oh, I’ll just pay for ads. I’m not going to really invest time in my page. I’m just going to pay for ads and then when I run them, I’ll just pay to get them out there.
Facebook is not pushing out your ads if your page is not attractive to them, if they’re not liking it.
I would really love you to hear me when I say your normal, everyday, boring, dull posts shouldn’t be boring and dull, but they matter.
I have two things I want to give you today. The first one is link to the perfect Facebook posting schedule for real estate agents. It is the perfect schedule. The timing schedule. I tell you exactly what kind of post to put out. It’s just a single one page calendar for the month. Download it here.
The other piece to this, the other thing that I wanted to make sure you know. I am going to share a post with you.. It’s already put together. It’s already being used. It’s already working. All you have to do is CLICK HERE and our Facebook messenger bot #RIBBIT will message a PDF of the post to you immediately via Messenger.
Where To Start
Here’s where we’re going to start. The posts that are doing really well right now, let me just let you know they’re all engagement focused posts. Okay? These are all posts meant to engage people.
We are not selling something. We’re not going to have an opt in call to action in them. We’re not going to try and get people to do something to get it. That’s not the goal. The goal is engagement.
Facebook is looking at reach and engagement. Here’s the thing. Facebook wants certain kinds of posts, for you to post certain kinds of posts to give you the reach. They also want you to get certain amounts of engagements so that they keep pushing out the reach. I know. It’s this like every loving circle. Hamster wheel. Right?
What’s funny is, some posts, they’ll get a whole bunch of reach out, but you won’t get a lot of engagement on. Other posts, you won’t get a lot of reach out, but you’ll get a lot of engagement on. Funny thing is, is you got to have a balance of all of these because you’ve got to have good reach and you’ve got to have good engagement. Overall, not per post. Overall.
If you’ll notice, remember that story that I told you at the very beginning? Four hundred and ninety-eight link clicks on the same exact ad versus two from her brokerage.
Your page matters. It matters. It is you in a virtual realm. It matters that you invest relational time into your page. You will build an amazing business. You will build an amazing pipeline. This is worth it.
Local Photos
All right. The first kind. The first one. This one, it’s so obvious, but people, I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re thinking about this, but there is a trick to how you do it. The first one is local photos. Local photos. There’s actually two ways that you can do local photos.
The first way is the absolute easiest way. Go on Facebook and go find local photographers who have posted great photos on their business page that you can just click the share button and share it over to your page. Okay? That’s the easiest way to do it.
Some of you have areas where you’ve got a billion photographers. I think everybody with an iPhone thinks they’re a photographer. Not really, but everybody with a camera kind of thinks they’re a photographer. Kind of like everybody’s a realtor. Same kind of thing.
Anyway, so we have a ton of budding and really good photographers in our area. A lot of them have Facebook business pages. A lot of them share photos on their Facebook business pages.
Find the most popular ones that you can determine and share those. Share one a day.
The Trick To Engaging Posts
Now, here’s the trick.
You have to say something engaging. You can’t just click share and leave it. When you click share to your page, say something about it. Why did you pick that photo? Why are you sharing that photo? What do you love about that photo? What does it remind you of? How does it make you feel?
Say something and ask a question. You want engagement. You want people to click like on it. You want them to comment on it. You want them to share it from your page. You need engagements. People really resonate with local photos, local things.
Now, you can do it a couple different ways. We’re in an area that has just a ton of natural beauty. There’s lots and lots and lots of those kind of photos in our area.
The second piece to this is going down memory lane. There are some great groups that are public that you can share photos from. If it’s not a public group, you can’t share it from it.
You just click share. You do not download the photo. That is stealing. You do not take it and upload it on your page by itself. That is stealing.
Not only that, you’re actually losing out on the Facebook juice that that photo has already gotten when you steal the photo and upload it yourself. I am going to say that over and over again. If you did not take the photo, you are a thief if you take it and upload it yourself. Period.
If you did not take it yourself, if you do not have it in writing that you have permission to use it for business, because it’s on your business page, then you’re stealing. It does not have to have a copyright signature or anything.
The minute something is created, whether it’s written, photographed, however it’s created, the minute it is created it’s automatically assumed copyright. That is the law. Do not steal photos.
Click the share button. It’s actually in your best interest to click the share button anyway because you get the Facebook juju and you can tag the page that you’re sharing it from, so you get their audience as well, and you get their good will. It’s all good.
You need to say something about the photo and you need to actually ask questions.
The other way to do this, if you’d really like to have your own photos. It’s not quite as powerful but still really good.
Take Pictures
Go out and take pictures.
Go and use this little guy, your phone, and take pictures. If you think you’re a sucky photographer, then go hire a budding photographer that’s at your local high school and pay them $200 to go take 300 photos for you, 400 photos for you.
Have them go nuts. Tell them you want the most creative things they can find, different areas. Give them ideas. Have them take photos for you. You buy them all from them. You own them all and then you can use them. Use local photos. The shared kind and the kind you own. Both of those.
Viral Posts
The next thing, viral posts and general. Those are things that comes across your feed and it’s the guy playing the accordion and all the cows come running on the video, if you have ever seen that one. That one is hilarious.
Have you ever seen the other one where the scuba diver is cleaning the tank of an aquarium? I don’t know if it’s a shark or not, but comes up for a belly rub and does that every single time the guy cleans the tank.Those are viral videos. Those are examples of viral videos. You know that they’re viral videos when the reactions or comments or shares are thousands upon thousands.
The video views are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. That’s a viral post. When you’re watching one of those, you know, when it’s done, and then another one comes up? That’s usually a viral video of some sorts. Sometimes, it’s an ad. You have to check and see the video views to see.
Those viral videos are great to post to your page by sharing. Click the share button because you get some Facebook juice that helps push it out on your page.
Now, you’re probably going but how is that related to real estate? It’s not. It’s related to life. People need a laugh. You are not there to sell on your page.
Do you go out to eat at a restaurant? Well, some of you do. Do you go out to eat at a restaurant and go up to every single table and give out your card and say hey, you looking to buy or sell a house? Do you know anybody who is looking to buy or sell a house? If you would not do that in restaurant, like literally, go to a restaurant and go do that to everybody, why do you think that’s okay to do it on your Facebook business page? It’s not.
You’re trying to build an audience that wants to engage with you, not wants to avoid you. You need to share things you find funny. You need to share things that resonate with you. Viral posts are a great thing to share, a great thing to do that with. You can find video posts. You can find photos.
Some of the best ones that I have found are from the Department of the Interior. They have gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous photos of national parks. These are U.S. national parks all over the country.
You can find beautiful photos that you can share from all over the world. Share them with the idea of revealing a piece of you. Why are you sharing it? What do you like about it? What do you want to know from other people of what they like about it, etc.?
Let’s Recap
Local Photo Posts
All right. The first one was local photos. I told you all the different things. If you don’t know what I said, go back and read that section.
Viral Video Posts
We’ve talked about viral posts, like what kind and how to share. A couple things about viral posts that I should add onto this here.
#1 Video posts are good, however, a way to really leverage a viral post would be to find a viral post that is a picture of some sort or a meme or something because people tend to click like on those and comment on those.
Video posts, they tend to watch the video and not necessarily react. Why do you want one where they click like and comment? You can invite the people who have clicked likes. There’s a way to just go through and click an invite button and invite those people who have clicked like. You can’t do that with video views and you don’t get the video views.
However, you do get the engagement. Facebook looks at it. Viral videos are good because you still get that Facebook juice and that engagement and Facebook likes that.
You want to make sure, if it’s a video, watch it. You want to make sure that your page is family friendly.
#2 If it’s a video that has swearing on it, you want to be very, very, very careful about that, unless that’s just you and that’s what you share everywhere, but people will be watching and listening to these with their kids around, with people who might not want to hear that kind of stuff.
Just be aware you could lose people if you surprise them with any language in a video. Okay? Be careful with that.
Room Posts
This one’s actually kind of amazing. Right now, it’s room posts.
What I mean by that … I’m going to show you a couple ways to find these. You share a room picture. You either upload it yourself if you took the picture or if you own the picture, you purchased it, or you share it from another page, or you share it from a website.
I’ll tell you how to do that in a minute. You share it and you ask a question about the room.
Ask a question. What do you like about this room? If it’s got a feature that you’re like whoa, look at that feature. Is that a yes or a no for you? Things like that. Ask them questions. Always ask questions. Do not make statements. Ask questions. You want people to become invested in whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re doing, you want them to become invested in that post.
It sounds like it’s silly, but you want them to feel like you want them. That’s what you need to do. That’s what is going to create engagement.
For room posts, you can do a number of things.
Number one. You can share from another page. You can go find like HGTV or Elle Decor, or Home Decor, or Houzz, any of the home sites that would share pictures of rooms and then you share that picture over to your page and then you make your own comment on there.
Ask your own question. You can share from a blog post. If there are websites that you follow that you like, that oh gosh I like these, you can just share that article. Same way. You can share the article, pops in the room picture, ask the question.
Number two. You can do something like using Shutterstock too.
Now, be very careful. Do not get pictures for free. All of those free photo sites, well, if they’re really free, if the photos are really royalty free, they’re usually crap and a lot of times people steal from paid sites, put them on royalty sites and you as a user, you are legally liable for any photo you use even if you think it was royalty free.
I strongly suggest that you buy your photos. It’s cheap. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Yeah. There are totally people out there; copyright armies that you’ll get in trouble.
Go to Shutterstock. You could subscribe to their service. It’s 10 photos for $29 a month and you could go find a living room, or a kitchen, or a bathroom, or a patio, or a front porch, whatever and you can share it and say what do you love about this? Oh, is that something you’ve done?
Then, get people to share their photos. Ask them to share. Hey, do you have one to share, etc.? Then, when you get your locals to share their photos, then you can ask them hey, can I share this on the page? Then you get supplied your content. A lot of that stuff.
Those are the three posts that are doing really well right now. The first of them are local photos. The second one is viral posts. The third one are rooms. That’s what’s doing really well right now.
Group Posts
Oh, the other one. I want to talk about are groups.
We have a group that shares photos from our museum, from people who have old photos and they’ll say do you remember when or what this was before what it is now. Things like that.
Those are great and people love to share their I’ve been here longer prowess. I mean, like I know what’s going on. I’ve been in my town for almost 48 years and I don’t remember what things were before and after, but there are people who do.
They love being able to comment and share these posts. Take them down memory lane.
You want to share some of those things. Go to your local museum. Ask them if you can take some pictures and share them. Take pictures of the pictures and share them. You totally could do that, and you would own the pictures. You could do that and it’s such a great way to engage.
I have a question for you.. What post, in the last week, has done really well for you? Comment below. Let me know.
Video Drive of a Subdivision
People love that kind of stuff. Local stuff. Gosh, if you can do local videos of anything anywhere, please, please, please do that. People love that. You own the photos. That is huge
All of a sudden, I shared my Instagram link and it’s getting pushed out crazy and I don’t know why. Well, I’m not sure why. I don’t know what I said. I don’t know what I did, but I said hey, if you want behind the scenes, stuff like that, join me on Instagram.
That’s where I share the random stuff of my life. Literally the random stuff from my life, my business, behind the scenes. I put it out and people are like ching, ching, ching, ching. Joining or clicking to my profile.
If you guys want to do that,here’s my link instagram.com/christinaethridge. If you want to come on, that’s where I share the randomness of my life. The craziness. When my kids are crazy, pets are crazy, whatever. My outdoor office. My indoor office. Working. Whatever.
The Power of Building an Audience Who Has a Relationship With You.
One more thing…I want to talk to you a little about the power of building an audience who has a relationship with you
I know that sounds like a boring title, but so much of the time we don’t want to invest our time into building our page like a local community people love it page. We just want to make it about ourselves and our business. We think that’s going to get us business and it doesn’t. It doesn’t.
Real estate, especially, is all about the relationship. It is all about the relationship, which is why I don’t understand why people think that it’s okay to just have someone else build their page, someone else post on their page, someone else do all that stuff and just run their ads and they have nothing.
They just, just give me the leads that come out. I’m like, is that what you do when you go to an open house? Do you just sit there and not talk and not do anything? Not even sit there. You just open the house and stand outside? I mean, would you do that? Would you outsource it to someone else?
Okay, if you hate doing open houses, you would. All of the stuff that you do, it’s all about the relationship. Well, so is your Facebook business page. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s about the relationship.
It takes time to build it. Just like compound interest, it feels like it’s going to take forever for your retirement account to actually be big enough to live on. Right? At the same time, we’re so distanced from that slow burn, that we don’t realize we’re paying two, three and four times our home cost, the home that we’re buying, by financing it out 30 years.
It’s the same exact thing.
There’s a bad way, because it’s a lot more expensive, and a good way, because it brings us money. Same thing with Facebook. It’s a slow burn. We get business going and it keeps capitalizing, capitalizing, and expanding on itself.
I’ll be diving deeper into this in a future post.
Have Questions?
If you have questions, or need help with anything, please drop it in the comments below. Let me know.
I want to help you move forward, to help you get over the Facebook algorithm hump to start getting your page to bring you in business.
Let’s Go Back to the Beginning
Remember the story I shared at the very beginning from the member of Leads and Leverage. She has spent almost 10 months on her page, working through stuff, and now she’s just rocking it.
She’s able to advertise things and get the results versus her brokerage page, the company advertising the same thing and getting crap results. This is what I want going for you.
This is where I’m taking our Leads and Leverage members. This is where I’m trying to get you so that you are seen above and beyond the noise. Everyone else is going to have to grow out.
The brokerage that got two clicks and she got 498 clicks, the brokerage would have to put out how many hundreds of times more money to get the same kind of results possibly that she got for a much cheaper price because she’s invested in building relationships with people on her page.
I’m showing you how to do it.
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.