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.