facebook marketing

Real Estate Agents!! Whatever you do, don’t automate!

Say what?

Automate? Automate what? Where?

There are very few “laws” of social media marketing. Well really, there aren’t any “laws”, just perceived do’s and don’ts.

Today I’m going to tell you the one, single, law for real estate agents who use Facebook for lead generation.

Ready?

Here it is.

Do not automate the posting of your real estate listings to Facebook.

Ever.

Let’s look at your two options….

First of all, posting your listings on your Facebook personal profile is breeding ground for getting your profile shut down, closed out, deleted, by Facebook.

It’s blatantly against their terms of use.

Say what? You’ve never known anyone who has had their profile deleted by Facebook? You say you are too small and inconsequential and Facebook won’t notice?

Ok, aside from the fact that you are breaking your word… yes, you lied. When you signed up to use Facebook you agreed to their terms of use, so if you are ok with lying, so be it. There isn’t anything I can do to change that and quite frankly, if you are going to lie about something so small, I guarantee, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with than listing automation on Facebook.

Clock — Image courtesy of [Stoonn] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Now, aside from the whole lying issue, don’t fool yourself. Facebook looks at the little guy. They check to see if you are using your personal profile for business. People you are connected with may report you. Who knows how they’ll find out, they will. Eventually. When they find out (it’s not a matter of if, it’s when), they won’t give you any warning. You’ll lose everything… all your photos, all your friends and connections, all your work to build a network.

Why on earth would you put your efforts into something that will be deleted? Oh, wait. You’ve never seen Facebook delete a profile? Does it help that I have? That I know, personally, three profiles that were deleted because they were blatantly using their profile for business? Additionally, I know, through my networks, of 4 others who have had profiles deleted. Both in the real estate industry and outside of it. Profiles. I’m not talking about pages, I’m talking about personal profiles. All that work, gone.

Me, little ole me, someone who doesn’t have a massive network, knows 7 people who have had to deal with their unfortunate choice to “game” Facebook’s terms of service. I’m one user out of millions. I guarantee, there are more. Many more.

Ok, so you get the whole “no posting listings on your Facebook personal profile” thing. You intend to have them automatically posted to your Facebook business page.

That’s ok, right?

Well, yes . . . and no.

Yes, it’s within Facebook’s terms of service. You won’t have your page shut down for doing that.

However, what is your goal for your Facebook page? Is it to just have yet another place to “syndicate” your listings – so your sellers are happy you are advertising on Facebook?

It is?

What a waste.

Really. It’s a waste to use your Facebook business page like that.

Your Facebook business page has so much potential as a lead generating tool for your real estate business. Maximize that potential!

Instead of automating your listings, schedule them to post, but do it this way…

Pick a listing
Pick a feature
Upload a photo of said feature to Facebook
Ask a question from your prospects about the feature
Include a link to the listing IDX
Schedule the posting for high use period
Rinse. Repeat.

Do five to ten listings at once. With the scheduling feature, you can have days or weeks of listings ready to go, within about 30 minutes of your time.

You’ll also have created an engagement focused post – promoting your listings (making your sellers happy) and encouraging engagement and feedback from your prospects, which generates more leads (making you happy).

Ok – now do you see why automating the posting of your real estate listings isn’t a good thing, even if it’s allowed by Facebook? I totally and completely understand the need to leverage your time. Believe me, I do. I think that is probably one of the number on things real estate agents deal with.

However, real estate listing automation doesn’t truly leverage your time as it brings you no results. Leverage your time like I showed you above and you will see results.

Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert and close Facebook leads.

The number one reason your real estate Facebook page isn’t getting any engagement or bringing in any leads is because you aren’t posting on it.

The number two reason your real estate Facebook page isn’t getting any engagement or bringing in any leads is because when you are posting, you are posting either your listings or, you are posting content that is totally irrelevant and confusing to your prospects.

That’s why.

The reality is that 99% of real estate agents with a Facebook business page simply are not posting anything. They create the page, post once or twice, and then stop.

Maybe they’ll even post once a month or so.

I’m not real sure what they are expecting and I’m not sure why they stop. It’s probably a multitude of things really.

Even at that, do you know what they are posting? They are posting “ads” for their “services”. They are posting links to their listings.

Come on people.

Think about your Facebook business page like a cocktail party. If you yell out that you are a real estate agent at the beginning of the party, how on earth will that help you? No one really knows you, no on really cares. Listen to conversations and provide your expertise, don’t stuff it down their throats.

If you yell out in the middle of the party that you have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, town home in the downtown area, look, here are the pictures, what do you think that is going to help you do? You’ve just eliminated anyone who wants a condo, a single family home, out in the suburbs, on a ranch, whatever.

If your Facebook business page is like a cocktail party, you have got to mingle. Mingle a lot. Mingle often.

This translates like this:

Post to your page daily. At minimum.

Um, yup. You have to post content at least every single day, ideally at least three times a day.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that two to three times a week is good. There are some businesses focusing on selling Facebook status updates to real estate agents and they are discouraging posting more than three times a week. Know what this tells me? Tells me that said service doesn’t know much about Facebook OR real estate except that real estate agents are looking for content and they want a piece of agent commissions. They aren’t there to solve the problem for real estate agents, they are there to capture a piece of the pie from real estate agents.

Respond. Engage.

When someone “likes” something you post, thank them! When someone “comments” on something you post, respond to them! When someone “shares” something you post, comment on their share, on their page or profile.

Check this daily. Engage daily.

Don’t blatantly sell or promote every time you post.

The worst mistake you can make. Selling you, advertising a house, pushing your services in their face. The consumer does not care. They don’t. Keep sales and promotional posts down to one out of five, at minimum. This means you post interesting stuff four times then post a listing or sell your services.

It also means that you don’t just post a “hey look at my new listing” link. You post something interesting about your listing. You engage the prospects to talk about your listing.

Don’t post content that isn’t relevant.

Some “gooroo” somewhere is telling real estate agents to post anything and everything. Just post. Oh my gosh. Someone needs to pop that “gooroo” in the mouth.

Seriously? Your business page is about real estate. Keep it there. It is not about knitting, or sky diving, or football. It’s about real estate. I mean come on, do you go to a camping page to learn about tennis shoes? Do you go to a cycling page to learn about social media?

Your prospects are coming there for you to answer their questions about homeownership. Answer them. Give them content that focuses on homeownership. You’ve got a huge wide world to post on: from the buying or selling process to home maintenance to credit repair to remodeling to decorating to insurance needs. Get what I’m saying? You’ve got so much content that is important, valuable, and usable for the consumer that you don’t need to saturate your page with irrelevant content.