facebook strategy

Do You Need More Likes on Your Facebook Page? Find out what the 2 things real estate agents should NEVER do and why they should never do them

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

Many agents fail to realize they are chasing the wrong metrics on their Facebook business page.

So if you’ve created your real estate Facebook business page you’re probably thinking now what?

Oh yes!

Now let’s get some likes! Let me see … “I can ask a few of my friends, some of my family and every single real estate agent I can find.

Next think I’ll do is I’m going to give and take some ‘Facebook love.’ I’ll like their page and they like mine. That will help me! That will help them!”

This is exactly how every single real estate agent acts on Facebook. Every – Single – One.

Surprise, surprise. This is not exclusive to real estate agents. It’s in every single industry. After you’ve asked every single one of your colleagues and after you’ve “shared your Facebook love” in every Facebook group you can find, what next?

Oh yeah! You get a message from someone offering you 1,000 likes for $50. What a bargain!

Let’s do it! And then you go and join a “like exchange” group. It’s free! That’s even better. Let’s all go like each other’s pages!

Just. Stop.

You are literally ruining your Facebook page. RUINING it. If you’ve done (or are doing) any of these things, you have absolutely set yourself up for failure with your page.

Is it any wonder real estate agents are not generating any leads from Facebook? When they go into it with that attitude and way of thinking that “likes” are important and that “who knows, maybe everyone who likes my page might know someone who could use my services.”

They go into it with that mindset that is incongruous with actually generating any leads.

Please.

You’ll get better results putting a classified ad of a home for sale in Remotesville, New Mexico in the “pets available” section of the New York Times. Seriously.

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Never Do These Two Things

If you want your Facebook page to actually generate leads for you, to really be valuable to you, you will never do these two things:

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Never Ask Your Colleagues to Like Your Page

* You will never ask your colleagues to like your page. In fact, you’ll guard your page religiously and make sure never to promote it in groups (or anywhere for that matter) that are not comprised of your targeted niche. It’ll bother you when other agents “like” your page.

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Never Buy Likes

* You will never “buy” likes. Never not ever. I’m not talking about Facebook ads. I’m talking about those opportunities where you can pay $50 for 1,000 likes. Things like that.

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Want to know the “why”?

Here it is, but it’ll mean something to you only if you want to generate leads on Facebook. If you’d rather just be part of the party and never close a sale, this information isn’t for you.

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Here are three big reasons that fake likes cost you money.

Lots of it. All of the untargeted, non-niched likes you have negatively affect your page.

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#1 You’ll Capture Fake Likes

First of all, when your goal is to capture a lead, you’ll hit that goal head on — meaning while simultaneously capturing the “like” you’ll also capture the email. All of these fake likes (and yes, they are FAKE, even if they are real people) are not interested in your services and will not take the time to give you their email address.

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You should be running a minimum of 2:1

For every 20 likes on your page, you should easily be picking up 10 email addresses — that they willingly give you! I’ve got clients running 1:0.8, meaning for every 10 likes they get, they are getting eight quality email addresses.

That’s one reason. It’s a major one if you know the power of effective email marketing. But then, many of the “bigwig experts” in our industry are lamenting that email is dead.

If you believe that, I’ve got a waterfront property in Iowa to sell you. Do you agree with them? Have you tested it? Have you given it a true effort (and not with the canned email crap you get in your CRM)?

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#2 Last Actor Algorithm

Another reason? Are you completely unaware of the whole hullabaloo going around about how “no one” sees your page posts in their feed? Hmm? The algorithm is called Last Actor (it is not EdgeRank and never has been — that is an industry-made-up term, not a Facebook-created term and it’s no longer in play).

What is Last Actor? It means that when I, as an individual, on my personal profile, interact with people or pages,

Facebook keeps track of this. Facebook wants to keep showing me what I’m interested in. So Facebook keeps track of the last 50 interactions I’ve had, and runs its algorithm according to my tastes. Which means if I haven’t interacted with your page in my last 50 interactions, I won’t see updates from your page.

Now, you may be thinking, that’s OK! Those people who have liked my page and haven’t interacted with me don’t need to see my updates. My page still looks good because of the likes, right?

Nope.

There is another algorithm when it comes to pages. Facebook distributes a page post to a small amount of its page likes. Usually around 1 to 5 percent. If (or when) any of those likes engage in some way (like, comment, share, click through) with that post, Facebook increases the percent of your page likes that post is distributed to.

If no one engages, Facebook reduces the initial “test” percent.

It’s bad when your likes don’t engage with your posts. Really bad.

If you’ve got any amount of untargeted, non-niche likes on your page you can bet they won’t be interacting with you.

They aren’t interested in what you are giving them. When they don’t interact Facebook decides that your content is worthless and doesn’t distribute your content any further.

Not a good place to be in.

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#3 Boosting Your Posts in a Shotgun Approach

Oh, but I know what you are thinking! I’ll just boost my posts! And that leads me to the third reason. Are you willing to pay money to boost your posts in a shotgun approach? You are? Great. Spend your $5 or $10. Waste your money.

Your boost will hit, maybe, another 5 to 10 percent of your likes. Again, it’s like running a classified ad in a newspaper. You are throwing out money and hoping it will stick to someone.

Anyone.

The absolute beauty about Facebook is how insanely targeted you can market your business. It’s incredibly cheap and yet it’s highly targeted and offers an amazing return on investment if you haven’t screwed it up.

If you know what you are doing you can make sure your ads target only people who are likely to use your services.

If you keep buying or acquiring likes that are irrelevant to you your ability to target will completely disappear.

Seriously.

Think about it this way: If you could spend $50 to bring in 100-125 qualified leads, would you?

You’d still have to nurture those leads as some are farther out than others. Or you could spend $50 to boost your posts and bring in zero leads.

Yes, I said zero.

When you are advertising randomly, the results are dreadful at best.

So here it is. You have to make your choice.

Do you follow the herd and do what the herd is doing?
Or do you do what will make your page effective.
Do you do what will bring in leads to your real estate business?
Do you stand out from the crowd?
Be a sheeple or a steeple, the choice is yours.

What other tips do you have for social media marketing and Facebook marketing for real estate agents?

As new real estate startups might slow, which are most promising in your view?

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Featured Download:

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

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by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Do you approach Facebook real estate lead generation strategically or tactically? Throw away the tactics and focus on the right strategies today!

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

You need an implementation strategy

Do you approach Facebook lead generation tactically or strategically? When it comes to using Facebook for your real estate business, too many times real estate agents focus on tactics without having a strategy in place?.

We focus on things like:

Trying to increase your reach
Trying to find the perfect post that gets engagement
Trying to find the best ad to run
Trying to find the best time to post on your page
Trying to build a community on your page

Best ads, perfect post, best times and reach, these are all Facebook tactics. They are not a strategic plan. In fact, for most of these, they aren’t even a good tactic to use within a strategic plan.

They are tactics that are a useless waste of time and energy and result in little to nothing, most especially over the long term.

Best ads, perfect post, best times and reach are all Facebook tactics — not a strategic plan.

Here’s what I mean:

I see real estate agents asking for help with their social media strategy, and then the ensuing discussion revolves around when to post, how often to post, where to post, etc.

I see them focusing on comments, post likes and shares and getting frustrated when their posts aren’t getting the engagement and reach reach they think they should be.

Stop making noise, start building a business.

I find them focusing on creating an ad they can run for a few days to bring in leads, only to end up frustrated when they get likes on their ad, but no viable leads.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. – Sun Tzu

When you focus on tactics without a strategy, you are creating noise, throwing away money and wasting your time. It truly is “the noise before defeat.”

In regards to business, too many times people focus on tactics without having a proper overall strategy in place. Utilizing SEO, social media or blogging are all tactics. These tactics can be extremely valuable when in the hands of the right craftsman, but not so effective without an overall strategy behind them. – David Brim

So before you jump on the industry bandwagon of using Facebook for real estate lead generation, get yourself a strategy first, not just an “I want leads” thought, but a real strategy. An implementation strategy.

You need to know how Facebook lead generation is going to fit in to your overall lead generation strategy for your real estate business.

A strategy has tactics involved, very specific tactics, strategically used to move you forward to your end goal.

Develop this strategic plan, and you’ll get leads from Facebook.

To develop a strategy, you need to know some specifics first:

Who you are going to target: And no, focusing on “everyone” because you “just never know” doesn’t work.

What you are going to say to them: You need to speak in their language, not the language of the industry.

What you want them to do: Yes, you’ve got to guide them, very specifically, to and through the step you want them to take.

When you are going to reach them: This isn’t just about running an ad on the weekends versus weekdays. It’s about knowing the season of life they are in, the season of the year it is, etc.

Where you want them to go:

You need to have a specific direction they should go.

Why you are doing this: If all you think about is “I want leads,” you’re going to fail. It’s much more than that.

Why they would want to do it: Yes, you’ve got to have a reason that resonates.

And finally, you get into the how (which is where most real estate agents start and why most agents fail); how do you implement your strategy?

This is where some of the tactics being thrown about come into play.

A tactic is only as good as the strategy behind it. Without a strategy, tactics are worthless.

Want more? Check out episode No. 52 of The #RIBBIT Show. I dive into this in the eight minute episode.

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

Think Facebook Page Likes Don’t Matter? Think Again. The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Page Likes, Exclusively For Real Estate Agents

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

Are you making this major mistake?

As agents, we tend to think that if we like each other’s Facebook business pages, we will close more deals, but this is false.

Personal profiles should be used to cultivate relationships with people you have met and business pages should be used as funnels for unmet prospects

Did you know?

Disengaged or disinterested followers devalue your Facebook business page.

I see this all the time: real estate agents exchanging Facebook business page likes with one another.

Every time I see it, I just want to scream from the rooftops, “You’re killing your Facebook lead generation.”

I just want to scream from the rooftops,

You’re killing your Facebook lead generation

.
But alas, we have this theoretical idea that — somehow, some way, in some form or another — if we go around patting each other’s backs on Facebook, it will bring more closings to the closing table.

When I do say something, I always get responses that seem to make sense — at least on the surface — but if anyone digs just a tiny bit below the surface, they fall apart.

Those responses include:

More exposure is good for my business.

I want to be available for referrals.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page.

These are just a few of the plethora of reasons why real estate agents engage in “like” exchanges.

Let’s hit each response, shall we?

I want to be available for referrals

I have never understood why real estate agents spend more time focusing on staying connected with colleagues and hoping to get potential referrals than they do on consistently exposing their services to real prospects.

Why on earth are we spending 80 percent of our energy connecting with sources who will bring in less than 5 percent of our closings in any given year? Why, indeed.

I also question how adding a real estate agent to your real estate business page — a page that you are (hopefully) providing valuable, relevant content on, for your particular target market — is going to make you available for referrals from agents all over.

First of all, the page isn’t relevant to the agent in another market, so they aren’t going to stay involved in your page.

Their disengagement means anything you post won’t be showing up in their Facebook news feed, which ultimately defeats your intended purpose — referrals from said agent.

There are much better ways to stay connected with colleagues around the country — ways that will give you more referrals.

Here’s another thing: The more disengaged your page “likes” are, the more Facebook penalizes you and makes it even harder for you to get your content into the news feeds of your page fans who are real prospects. It’s all part of the algorithm.

FACT

The more disengaged your page likes are, the more Facebook penalizes you.

Last, but not least, when it comes time to “pay to play” — otherwise known as running ads — you are going to be wasting a whole lot of money putting ads in front of people who will never use your services.

Would you add colleagues from around the country to your snail-mail campaigns focused toward homebuyers or sellers in your local market?

If you would, you’re wasting copious amounts of money on something that will never give you a return (and if it does it’s a crazy, ridiculously small return) and need some serious targeting and marketing help.

More exposure is good for my business

Really? How so? Can you track this statement? Can you back it with statistical data?

In my over 20 years in real estate, I have yet to get actual, statistical data from a single agent on this. They’ll spout its truth, but they don’t have any evidence to prove it.

You see, it’s just the old way of thinking that’s always been theoretical because it sounds right on the surface.

But the problem is, the statement is ambiguous. What constitutes exposure? What is the content? Who is the audience? What does “good” mean?

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in, and we’ve translated to mean that more exposure equals more business.

We know it takes seven to 13 touches before our message sinks in — but is all exposure good?

Even if it is true — does that mean all exposure is good?

Here’s where most agents fall by the wayside and tend to be more stubborn than realistic. To get the exposure theory to work for you, you must be exposing the right content to the right audience.

If exposure is good, it must be the right exposure — and the right exposure is a prospect who want to buy or sell. A real estate agent in another market is not that prospect.

Let’s look at this from another perspective — that of Facebook. We’ve all heard that Facebook is now a pay-to-play platform. That means if you are a business and you want to make sales, you are going to have to invest in the platform — both in time and money.

You aren’t going to get a whole lot of focused, free exposure anymore. In other words, all this time you are spending getting your colleagues around the country to like your business page is not helping you at all in any way, shape or form. Period.

You’ve got to have your Facebook business page set up for real estate lead generation — not for exposure — and you’ve got to be engaging in lead generation-focused activities.

In fact, if you’ve been collecting likes that aren’t interested in your content, you’ve devalued your Facebook business page — drastically.

And you’ve locked yourself into a box — a box that you’ll be constantly working to get out of (which is futile), once you realize you could be getting actual leads if you understood how Facebook works.

But a top agent I asked said to move all agents to my business page

This one kills me. Agents go to conferences and conventions and revere the agents who are on these panels. They revere them because they are making the big bucks doing a trillion and one transactions each year.

Although I firmly believe in doing what is working and not reinventing the wheel, you’ve got to make sure that what is being touted as working is truly working.

Without getting into specifics, my team has closed more transactions than 99 percent of the agents on these top agent panels.

One thing I excel at is lead generation and conversion, and I’m a tyrant when it comes to digging deep and doing what actually works. We look at statistical, empirical data — not anecdotal gut feelings.

These agents have no idea how to use Facebook. They don’t know how to generate real estate leads from their Facebook business pages, nor do they understand how to cultivate more referrals from colleagues around the country using Facebook.

If they did, they would know that their business pages are funnels for unmet prospects, and their personal profiles are cultivators for “met” relationships.

Business pages are funnels for unmet prospects; personal profiles are for met relationships.

In other words, connect with colleagues on your personal profile and use lists to keep them organized. Use your Facebook business page to drive leads into your capture points.

So what should you stop doing?

You must (I can’t emphasize must enough) stop exchanging Facebook business page likes with your colleagues.

If you want to grow your business, and you wish to take advantage of the No. 1 lead generation resource available to you today, then you’ve got to take the time to understand how Facebook works for real estate lead generation.

There is more to Facebook lead generation than just stopping this practice, but this is the biggest mistake I see agents making. And I thought it’s about time I started addressing it. I even go as far as to say that asking people to like your page is a big fat no-no.

As I was writing this article, I realized I was making one big assumption about you — that the reason you are using Facebook is because you want to close more transactions.

If that is your goal — then you need to think about and analyze what you are doing on Facebook. Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

Don’t just follow the crowd because, quite frankly, the crowd doesn’t know what it is doing.

My question for you is: Have you been out there exchanging page likes with other agents? Are you going to change that and do something that works to bring more closings to the table? Do you disagree?

If so, please share with me why — and as you now know, I like real data behind statements, not feel-good anecdotal sharing of gut beliefs.

Featured Download:

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