Today, I’m going to talk to you about something that is still going on. I started writing about this and teaching about this five years ago. Not kidding. Five years ago in September I wrote a post about your Facebook personal profile versus your business page.

Which one works better?

Which one should you be using?

Which one gets you more leads?

Guess what? This is still something that you guys are struggling with today. We’re going to talk about that today. Which one is actually going to help you build your business better? Is there one that’s better than the other, etc.

If you’re using a business page or a personal profile for your business or both, tell me about that.

I’ve seen agents say things like, “You know what? I actually get more leads or more engagement and more reach, or whatever the heck on my personal profile.”

Your Personal Profile Is Not Your Page

Please note it is a profile. It is not a page. When you say the word page, people think you’re talking about like a business page. It is your profile. It is about you as an individual.

So our profile is really great for people that we already know. That’s how we use … Our profile is an extension of us. So it’s personal. It’s meant for going deeper with people that you already know. It’s meant for sharing your check ins around town, your zany personality, your crazy passions about things.

The fact that you went and saw The Avengers yesterday. I did that. My husband actually tagged me in that post, but it’s meant for that kind of personal stuff. It’s meant for actually taking pictures of your food. I know people are like, don’t want to do that, but that’s what it’s meant for.

So it is meant for everything personal. It’s meant to share stuff that’s personal about you, etc. Here’s the piece right if you do it right way, without the smarmy pushing, stop selling on it because two things.

Tip #1

Number one, if you do it right, if you use your personal profile the right way, you’re going to get business from it. If you’re not getting business from your personal profile, you’re not doing it right. You’re not engaged with people. You’re not using it as an extension of yourself.

Tip #2

Two: if you’re pushing sales on it, you’re breaking Facebook terms of service, and I know there’s a lot of people were like, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m getting away with it. So and so’s getting away with it, blah, blah, blah.”

Just know Facebook is coming after you, because they have Facebook business pages for a reason. They want our profiles to be personal. They want our business pages to be whatever we want them to be, but so that we can run ads, so just know that.

Know that if you’re building your real estate, AKA your real estate business on your personal profile and you’re breaking Facebook’s terms of service, it’s going to actually hurt you in the long run, in a big way, because you’ll be spending all this time and money and energy and getting nothing from it, so you should be getting leads.

Not just leads, but you should be developing relationships and going deeper with people on your personal profile. Period. Plain and simple. If you are not, number one, you’re either not connected to enough people that you know.

Tip #3

Number three, you’re probably not actually revealing who you are or doing anything on it. You’ve just got the profile sitting out there and it’s not doing anything. Guys, this is kind of a no brainer to use. Your personal profile is one of those. It’s your no brainer, it’s where you’re … it’s your networking event.

It’s like going to a BNI event only it’s better, because you’re involved in people’s lives and you’re having conversations with people on it.

So you want to make sure that you are absolutely sharing. Share that you’re at different events, but don’t share it from a business-y perspective.

Share it from a … I don’t know. Let’s give an example here on your personal profile. If you’re at a real estate conference, let’s say you go to a RE/MAX convention or Keller/Williams family reunion or Coldwell Banker convention or whatever, and you’re at the convention, you’re at the conference and you kind of want to show people that you’re here, you’re expanding your knowledge, you’re getting better, but you don’t want to say it like that, because people don’t care about that.

What you could do is just say … say something more along the lines of, “Hey, I’m a Realtor and I go to these conferences. What’s your industry? And do you go to conferences too?”

That’s a way to share that. Share the adventures that you’re having while you’re at the conference. Share the different things you’re doing. If you’re trying new food … A lot of you know one of my favorite things is sushi and wine. So every time I go anywhere, I’m always looking for good wine tastings and I’m always looking for good sushi. So I share that, you know?

Why are you in Phoenix, Christina? Oh, I’m here for a conference on XYZ. But because they’re talking to me because I found a sushi place that I like. So you’re making connections on your personal profile with people through connections you have in common.

Your Personal Profile Is Meant For People You Already Know

That’s what your personal profile is. It is not direct business. It is indirect business. It is building relationships with people in a way that you already know. Your profile has meant for people that you already know.

Here’s a few things about your profile. It is not indexable. What do I mean? It means that Google is not going to index it. They’re not going to spider, they’re not going to rub out like they do your website.

They’re not going to index your personal profile, so if people are doing searches on Google, they’re not going to find your personal profile through Google, okay, through any keyword searches or anything like that.

You’re not able to leverage any audiences or any ability to advertise using your personal profile. You have to have a business page to do this. You have to have a business page to be indexable.

So in other words, if you want to target ads to anybody who’s commented on any of your posts or watched any of your videos, you cannot do that if you’re doing it all on your personal profile.

Those are audiences that are really great to target through retargeting, so that’s really great.

Also, your profile requires that you actually know people before you connect with them, and here’s what I mean by that because I realize I am connected with people that I’ve never met in real life. However, there is a connection with them already. They’re requesting to be my friend or I’m requesting to be their friend because of a connection that we already have.

In other words, we already know about each other. So in some way, whether it’s because I attended a conference like they did or I met them here locally or they’re in a show that I’ve gone to because that’s, that’s another side passion, performing arts, or I met them at a wine tasting, you know, somehow I have a connection with them.

It’s A One on One Personal Connection

Okay, so I am limited on my personal profile by my own personal connections made and like literally it’s a one on one or this person introduces me to this person.

It is a one on one slow progress. It’s also where people see parts of your life, a lot more of your life, etc. and you should let them in, but that’s the difference. That’s a profile versus a page.

Now a page. The page is … number one, it’s indexable. Okay, that’s absolutely. If people Google your business, they’re going to find your page. If they Google different keywords that you’re using through posts and updates on your page and you’re interacting that with your website, guess what? You’re going to pop up at the top of Google.

You are able to advertise. You can advertise to all of the different audiences. You can advertise to all kinds of different people. You can target people who have visited your website, target people who have emailed, like giving you their email address, et cetera.

You can do all kinds of targeting that way and you want that leverage. It’s a powerful, powerful leverage, so you’re going to need a business page. Also, business pages don’t require any type of connection. You don’t have to know them from Adam.

In fact, if you want to grow your business, if you want to physically grow your business and you want to scale and you want to get bigger, you must have a business page. A Facebook business page.

Your personal profile will keep you going. It’s the referral-only type thing. Your business page expands your sphere. It gets more people into your pipeline that would never have gotten into your pipeline otherwise. So if you want to scale your business, absolutely you have to have a Facebook business page. It’s that simple. I mean, the difference is that simple.

Your Business Page

So here’s the thing, your business page? It’s networking. It’s a way of networking and how to meet more people. It’s really powerful. But here’s where a lot of agents are like, “Well, okay. I don’t want to manage both. I don’t want to have to put stuff on both profile and page.” Well, you’re going to have to do that. You’re just going to have to get over that.

But here’s the other thing, what you do on your page, you do want to share lots of things about the lifestyle in your area, on your page.

You can also tag your personal profile in your page posts, so you get exposure on both.

You can take up a page post and share to your personal profile so you get exposure on both, but you need to have that local lifestyle-focused content so that when people come to your page, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I do want to connect with them. Yeah, they’re not really just pushing crap at me, they actually want to help me.”

What Do You Put On Your Business Page?

You want people to know that and one of the things that I see a lot of people struggling with is what to put on their page and also how to get people to react to it.

I see a lot of pages that have the Realtor name, real estate agent, brokerage, etc. and you know, I’ve seen a huge increase just in the last three or four months in ads in my own feed from Realtors like that and I’m like, why would I want to connect with you?

I mean, aside from the fact that I like what people are doing on their pages to like to watch do that as a local, why would I want to connect with you because you’ve done nothing to give me anything of value.

No. Offering a home value is not value. No, offering a free home staging consultation is not value.

Guys, what’s value? Value is when you teach people about the lifestyle, when you educate them about the area, when you give them an insider’s peek to certain neighborhoods, etc.

Let people know about what life is like where you live and work. Let them know that. Give them value in that regard.

There’s a lot of different elements here so you do want your personal profile, but that is for people you’re already connected with. That is for your personal stuff. That is for where you can share elements of your business, but you have to share it in a personal way.

Your business page, if you physically want to grow, if you want to expand your business, you must have a Facebook business page, because that is how you meet your unmes.

That is how you get people connected to you that would have no other reason to connect to you. So it’s really important that you have both and that you’re engaged in both and that you are meeting people through both.

If you have any other questions, let me know. Comment below.

I want to help you as you move forward in building your real estate business and you’ll want to take advantage of Facebook as quickly and as much as possible before it becomes cost prohibitive because yes, it will.