Real estate agents can get more likes on Facebook by having killer Facebook Business Pages, full of interesting and engaging content. After looking at some of the more successful Facebook pages out there for real estate agents, I’ve come up with a list of 10 things that I’ve seen a lot of successful agents doing.
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It’s important to note that just because a page has a large number of likes on a page, doesn’t mean that it’s getting a lot of exposure. In years past, the number of likes on a page directly impacted how often your posts showed up in someone’s Facebook News Feed. As the Facebook ecosystem has grown, so have the number of business pages. Simply put, it’s not about the size of your page that counts; it’s how you use it. Use it right, and your chance of having your posts appear in the News Feed are increased significantly.
When it comes to your Facebook Business Page, you have to be more personal and less business-like. I’ll tell you right now that if all you post are about new listings, photos of houses you just sold, and begging for business, you won’t see the type of engagement on your page posts that you’d expect.
So what’s an agent to do? Here are 10 things that you can do now as a real estate agent to get more activity on your Facebook page.
1: Share Useful Tips, Tricks, and Articles
Everyone who has liked your Facebook page knows that you’re in real estate. However, those people are not always looking to buy or sell their home. Thus, posting new listings and information about mortgage rates is really not relevant. Instead, try posting things that are industry adjacent to buying/selling homes. Find a cool article on the Better Homes and Gardens website? Share it out. Going to an art show this weekend. Let others know about it. But please, do not post photos of your newest house listings. It gets old quick.
2: Change Your Cover Image for New Listings
That being said, I know that there is a time and place for posting some of the cooler listings you might have. Instead of doing posts of houses, why not change your cover image with a cool photo of one of those listings? You can even edit the description to have a URL to click for people who are really interested in it.
3: Start Using Instagram
Instagram, while not technically Facebook, is still owned by Facebook. If you truly want to showcase your amazing properties that you currently have listed, then snap away with Instagram. Instagram is one of those ways that you can use to post new listing photos to Facebook. But remember to use this in moderation. For instance, if you take 5 pictures throughout the week of newer listings, only post one of them to your Facebook page.
4: Embrace Vine (and Video in General)
The best things you can post to your Facebook pages are photos and video. Let me clarify that…short video clips. A walking tour of your new listing that is 6 minutes long is not good. Try using an app called Vine. It’s a video app from Twitter that lets you make 6 second long video clips. It’s a fun way to show split second video fragments, automatically stitched together for you. Heck, we even used Vine when we rebranded our company from Promo Labs to OutboundEngine. Social media is about being social so remember that not everything you post has to be strictly professional. Have fun with it and show your personal side.
5: Feature Your News Letters
You put all that work into writing the perfect newsletter, emailed it out, and then it was done. If you filled your newsletter with interesting content then you should give some extra life to it on Facebook. So if you feature your newsletters on your website, share them to your Facebook page. Or, if you’re an OutboundEngine customer, you know that your newsletters will automatically be featured to your Facebook page for you.
6: Do a Like or Caption Contest for Photos
Up until August of 2013, you had to use a 3rd party app in order to do a contest on Facebook. Not the case anymore. The two big changes are that now you can run a contest where people enter by liking your page or a post, and you can have a user enter a contest by commenting on your page or photo. This is a great way to get lots of traffic, page likes, and engagement to specific photos and posts. Just make sure you follow through with the prize you’re offering and let everyone know who the winner is when it’s done.
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7: Get Customer Photo Tags
One of the most annoying things a real estate agent can do is post photos of their new home closings to their pages. Your audience doesn’t know those people and it’s been overdone so much that people know it’s pure self-promotion. That being said, it’s great exposure for your business, so just switch up the game a bit. Ask your customers when they post their new home photos to Facebook to tag you or your business page in the photos. That way, they get to enjoy their photo on their page and you get included in it too.
8: Pay to Promote
Let’s face it. There are a lot of people on Facebook and if all they saw in their New Feeds were posts from businesses, it wouldn’t be as enjoyable. However, Facebook has bills to pay and with that, they’ve introduced cool features to help you promote yourself and your business. When you go to post something on your page (or check out an older post), you’ll see an option to “Boost Post” below the text. Click on there, set your demographics, and for 24 hours, that post will be shown to thousands of people, including everyone who has liked your page. Pretty simple.
9: Post Outside of Business Hours
While it makes sense to post to Facebook when you’re at work, you have to remember that not everyone else is on at that time. Try posting after 7pm, on weekends, and even in the early morning. Figure out what times work best for you and your company. Don’t forget the weekends either.
10: Invite Your Email Contacts and Friends
One of the built-in features of Facebook pages is a tab labeled “Build Audience.” When you’re on your business page, click on this drop down menu to find two nifty features: Invite Email Contacts and Invite Friends. For the first one, simply connect your email account to your page through one of their many options and send out an invite with a personal note. Do this only once. As for the friend invites, feel free to get your like count up from your personal and professional friends.
Whether you have 100 or 10,000 Likes on your page, the more you can get those people to engage with a post (Like, comment, click, share), the more exposure that single post will get to your audience of page fans and their friends. The more creative you get with your posts, the more intriguing they become to people when they show up in their News Feed. Social media is meant to be informative, engaging, and entertaining, so remember to be social and have fun!
What other ways have you used to help boost your Facebook interactions?
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