This article will show you how to use Facebook for real estate – everything you need to know about Facebook profiles, pages, chat, groups, ads, retargeting and more!

Facebook Marketing Elements Overview

Here are all of the ways that you can market your real estate business on Facebook.

  • Personal Facebook Profile
  • Facebook Business Page
  • Facebook Groups
  • Facebook Chat
  • Facebook Advertising
  • Facebook Retargeting

Now, let’s discuss each of these in detail and break all of this down, so you can start working Facebook as a lead generator for your real estate business, shall we?

Personal Facebook Profile

Your personal Facebook Profile is your main account. This is the one that you log into every day, see what your friends are up to, and post comments on.

What most people don’t realize about their Facebook news feed is that it shows news based on an advanced algorithm – So you will only see what Facebook deems to be important. This means that there are some posts that will make it to the top of your news feed and some that you will never see.

How Does Facebook Determine What Posts Are Shown In The Newsfeed?

Have you ever felt like Facebook only shows posts from the same 15 people over and over again? It’s because they are. If you aren’t engaging with a wide variety of people on a daily basis, then Facebook will stop showing those people in your newsfeed (and you won’t show up in theirs either). Eek!

There are hundreds, if not thousands of factors that Facebook takes into consideration when it decides that to show and what not to show, but here are the top 4.

  1. Have people found your posts to be interesting in the past? Facebook buries posts that are boring.
  2. How recent is the update that you just posted? Facebook buries older posts.
  3. What type of post was it? Video, photo, link, or text? Facebook loves video and hates text.
  4. Which people have engaged with your previous posts in the past? Facebook will hide your posts from people that don’t find you valuable.

So if you want to show up in more people’s news feeds, then you need to start working the Facebook algorithm in your favor. I’ve listed a few advanced strategies below to help you build more authority over time.

Facebook Profile Marketing Strategies

  • Comment on 25 posts a day from 25 different Facebook profiles
  • Like and reply to everyone who comments on your posts
  • Have everyone on your team (or a group of friends) comment on your posts immediately
  • Go back to old posts that were extremely popular, and comment, so everyone gets notified
  • To meet and greet your leads offline, invite them to lunch, coffee, events, festivals, and more!
  • Add lots of local friends, because Facebook is more likely to show posts among mutual friends

Facebook Business Page

Your Facebook Page is your business’s account. This is the one that has all of your contact information and business posts. To be frank, Facebook pages get very little engagement on Facebook because the algorithm is pay-to-play. On average, only one out of every 60 followers will ever see a post that emanates from your business page.

No One Ever Sees My Business Page Posts, So Can’t I Just Post From My Personal Page Instead?

The answer is no. It’s against Facebook’s Terms of Service to use a personal profile for commerce. I know that Realtors® do it all the time, but if you decide to do it too, you do so at your own risk. If someone reports you, Facebook has every right to shut down your entire account. Moving forward, do whatever you think is best, but consider yourself warned.

Facebook Advertising: How To Get Your Business Posts Seen On Facebook

Okay, so as I mentioned before, the Facebook business model is pay-to-play. So if you want to get your business posts seen on Facebook, you need to pay for advertising. I know paying for reach isn’t ideal, but once the Facebook Business Page died, the greatest advertising platform on the planet was born. It beats every other method because you can target specific demographics with laser focus.

Facebook Advertising beats every other method because you can target specific demographics with laser focus. Want to target female employees of Amazon under the age of 35 who make over $100,000 a year? Done. What about male homeowners who have been in their current home for 6 years and who are likely to move? Done. Want to target homeowners within a one-mile radius of your open house on Sunday? No problem. No other platform on earth offers this kind of focus or flexibility on Earth.  It’s unreal.

Facebook Retargeting: How To Re-Engage With Your Leads

Facebook Retargeting is a method of advertising that allows you to re-engage with people who have engaged with your business at some point in your sales funnel. Have you ever gone to Nordstrom.com and looked a pair of shoes, but didn’t buy them, and that same pair of shoes follows you all around the internet? That’s retargeting in action.

Facebook allows you to retarget your database, visitors of your website, your sphere, people who have watched your videos, and more. And if you have a list of expireds, FSBOs, or vendors, you can retarget them too!

Facebook Groups

What are Facebook Groups?

In regards to Facebook Groups, you have two options. You can start your own group or you can join other people’s groups.

If you want to be the digital mayor of your community, I always recommend that you start a Facebook Group for your real estate farm. This is a golden opportunity to be a leader in your community and provide tons of value to your constituents on a regular basis. If that doesn’t move you to action, perhaps this will… If you don’t start a Facebook Group for your community first, a competitor in your market will. So let’s get crackin’!

I also recommend that you join other people’s Facebook Groups as well – as many as you can. This will give you a general overview of what’s happening in your communities on a daily basis. Consider it a way to keep one ear on the ground as to what people in your community want, need, like, love, and are irritated by. This insider knowledge is more valuable than gold. Not only will it allow you to be a better expert on your neighborhood, you can also demonstrate your expertise daily by writing blog posts that fulfill all of their needs!

Are there complaints about the construction on Main Street? Write a blog post that tells your community what they are building, why it will benefit them, and when the construction will be over. These are the questions that people are Googling and asking each other. Why not provide a solution, so it can be found on Google or in the Facebook Group that you manage?

Facebook Group Topics

When you’re starting a Facebook Group, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Make sure that your group title and topic have longevity and relevancy for years to come. Also, you can create a group around a community, interest, or brand – But I recommend starting with your community first. Once you master that, you can start creating other groups. Finally, I’ve also listed a few other things to keep in mind as well.

You can create a Facebook Group by location:

  • Your city
  • Community
  • Neighborhood
  • Real Estate Farm

Or you can create a Facebook group by interest:

  • New construction
  • First time home buyers
  • Neighborhood watch
  • Garage sales
  • Hobbies
  • Community Moms
  • Book clubs
  • Happy Hours
  • Foodies

How To Get People Into Your Facebook Group

  • Create a list on your personal Facebook page of all the people who live in your community, then post an update about your new Facebook Group, and make sure that only those people on the list see it
  • Join as many local Facebook Groups as you can, then post links to your Facebook Group ( as long as the Group allows it)
  • Talk about your Facebook Group Constantly
  • Ask your HOA to send a mass email inviting your neighborhood into your Facebook Group
  • Send a link to your group via email
  • Hold a community event, then ask people to join the group in person
  • To make it easy for people to remember, buy a domain name and forward it to your Group’s url

How To Use Facebook Groups For Real Estate Marketing

  • Be active and helpful in other Facebook Groups
  • Talk about things that are helpful 80% of the time
  • Promote your business 20% of the time
  • Post pictures of all the cool (and crazy) things that happen on the job, people love that stuff!
  • Search for and respond to everyone in the group(s) that have real estate questions
  • Conduct market research just by listening to the conversations that are happening in your group, then turn all of these conversations into blog post ideas.

 

Facebook Chat

Facebook Chat is a direct messaging service where you can chat with someone privately, in real-time, on Facebook. You can invite one person to chat with you or a group of people to chat with you. And no one else can see that conversation, except the people on that chat. Chatting is great when you want to have a more in-depth conversation with someone in a more private setting.

One of the coolest tricks about the Facebook chat system is that the sender is notified when the reader has seen your message. This makes it really hard for people to ignore your messages and creates an obligation for people to reply back. For this reason, sometimes it’s better to send a message to someone via chat than it is over a text message.

As far as using Facebook Chat for daily marketing, I recommend that you send a message to everyone on their birthday. It’s the perfect excuse to contact people out of the blue and catch up on old times. Hopefully, you’ll get a few referrals in the process!

Where to Find Great Content To Increase Engagement

Posts with the most engagement get the most reach on Facebook. So if you want to be seen by more people, you need to post things that will entice people to comment, react, and share.

Here are my favorite content sources:

  • Post Planner
  • Twitter Lists
  • Feedly
  • Local Reporters
  • Inman
  • Other Facebook Groups
  • Facebook Live Streams
  • Facebook Events Pages
  • Buzz Sumo
  • Upworthy
  • Viral Nova

What Kinds Of Content Should You Realtors® Post On Facebook?

  • Your favorite vendor referrals
  • What’s happening locally
  • Fun Things to do
  • Hot local businesses
  • Cute pets in need of a good home
  • Your blog posts

Topics To Stay Away From At All Costs

There are some posts that will get you a ton of attention and engagement on Facebook, but will alienate and repel people in real life. Remember, you’re using social media for business, not for fun. So keep your private convictions to yourself. I know it’s tempting, but if you comment on the latest election, you’ve literally just blocked half of your audience from ever doing business with you. Yikes!

Refrain from posting, reacting, sharing, or commenting on any of the following topics:

  • Religion
  • Politics
  • Rants
  • Your bad days
  • Bad news

How To Scale Your Facebook Marketing

First and foremost, start off slow. Then once you get the hang of it all, scale up with the following in mind.

  • You can only scale through viable systems
  • Random acts of social media won’t get you anywhere
  • Use a daily social media marketing plan
  • Don’t get sucked into the Facebook News Feed
  • Time Block for social media lead generation, to ensure that it gets done daily

Why You Should Never Use An Auto-Scheduler

Never use an auto-scheduler to post on your behalf. First and foremost, it’s not authentic. But second, Facebook will penalize you in the news feed for doing so. We’ve seen a marked difference when we post to Facebook directly vs when we use an automated posting system – like MeetEdgar, Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.

If you can’t post in real-time, just use the scheduler on Facebook instead. I know this can be a real pain, but if you want to get more reach on Facebook, you have to play by their rules.

Your Posts Have To Come From You

Most real estate agents are busy, so naturally, they want to outsource all of their social media to an admin. You may be tempted to do so, but don’t. Your social media posts need to come from you.

Social media is inherently social and when you post via an admin or auto-scheduler, it comes off as really inauthentic and disingenuous. Your audience can spot it from a mile away, and no one will want to engage with you as a result. So make sure that you are controlling your own Facebook pages, chats, and groups. Your admins and team members can help you manage it, but the actual posts really do need to come from you.

How To Tell If You’re Doing It Right

If you’ve implemented all of the above, over time, you’ll start to see results. People will start messaging you and asking you for help with their own homes or refer a friend. There are lots of agents that are using Facebook marketing to generate hundreds of leads on a weekly basis. It will take a little bit of time, but once you hit your stride, you’ll know it!

Are You A #CommunityInfluencer?

Finally, if you’re a Community Influencer® who’s getting results, I’d love to feature you on the show! It’s an amazing way to give back (and easily attract the most amazing referral partners around the world). Please click here to apply to be a guest on the Real Real Estate Agent Show!