Research by Postling reveals that nearly 80% of real estate agents are using Facebook to market their properties and grow their businesses. With more than 1.15 billion active users, Facebook can connect you with loads of potential clients and help you service your existing customers.
By integrating Facebook in your marketing mix, you can increase your visibility, and grow and cultivate a robust community of prospective buyers and sellers. You can also use this powerful medium to promote your listings, market open houses and notify other agents and the public about price drops and additional incentives.
Pretty cool, right?
Here are 5 Facebook tips for real estate agents:
1. Create a strategy
Just like the other areas of your real estate business, you need a plan for your Facebook activities. Here are a couple of points to include:
- Purpose: Never jump on a social media platform without delineating a purpose. If you sell real estate and are thinking about creating a Facebook presence, why are you doing so? What will Facebook do for you? These are critical questions/
- Time management: Make sure to budget the time you want to spend on the medium, for example, fifteen minutes in the morning or 15 minutes after lunch. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer are great for automating your social media postings and save time.
- Goals: Do nothing without clear goals. No goals = likely failure. Your Facebook goals should touch on the level of interaction you hope to see and the size of the community you hope to build. All goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound).
2. Connect with potential clients
You can use Facebook to make a faster and a more personal connection with the people you meet. Instead of sending out emails or handing out business cards, you can connect with them on Facebook and then invite them to your business page. To get started:
- Upload your email database to Facebook once every quarter and then use the message feature to invite everyone to connect.
- Create a separate business page on Facebook on which you can post business-related and relevant articles, links to blogs posts as well as photos and ads for your listings.
3. Engage constantly and consistently
Gone are the days when you could send one monthly newsletter to keep your network updated on your business. The social media has opened doors to stay updated on an ongoing basis. Use Facebook to engage and inform your clients about all real estate business related activities. As part of your engagement strategy:
- Share photos: Photos are gold on Facebook. Your posts should ALWAYS include an image. Reams of data show that posts with images get far more engagement and traction. Real estate is a visual game. You should also post videos of your listing
- Share opinion/information: People want brands to HELP them. Provide links to a relevant article, piece of data or photos of real estate properties you have sold recently.
- ‘Like’ status updates: Reach out to your fans and followers and makeyour presence felt through likes and thoughtful comments, where appropriate.
4. Integrate Facebook into your marketing strategy
You can integrate Facebook with your other real estate marketing activities, for example:
- Share links of your blog posts: if you blog regularly, share the link on your page. Th
- Add Facebook button to your website: This will give your site visitors the ability to follow you on Facebook. You can also add the Facebook button to your email signature and just about any marketing collateral you send to your clients.
- Integrate Facebook with email marketing: You can use Facebook app to send out monthly newsletters to your clients. Newsletters sent through email can get stuck in spam filters. Using the Facebook app, you can ensure all your network is getting your content. You can also integrate email signup forms onto your Facebook page.
- Buy ads to increase your reach and the size of your community. More than 75% of fans to brand pages come via ads. Facebook ads are a solid way to grow your community. They can be hyper targeted to your specific buyer personas.
5. Keep it professional
Be careful of what you post because everybody on Facebook is a potential client. Any politically incorrect picture or post can cause severe damage to your brand. To maintain a professional image:
- Pay close attention to the brand you are creating with your posts and comments.
- Use Facebook’s privacy settings to specify what content different sets of friends are able to see.
- Keep all posts positive and informative and use Facebook to educate and spread awareness about the real estate market.
Good luck!
Yes I too have the same point of view, social media is the best way to get increase a real estate business. Now most of the people are using social media sites like Facebook and twitter and they are very active on these sites. The only thing needed is to have a good network on these sites and regular work on improving the profile can help a lot.
It has certainly changed the way homes are sold. Thanks for stopping by!
Social media has become a powerful entity in any business.Social media is a great technique by which you can get more traffic and business for your website.As a agent, you already know that being on social media platforms, such as Twitter, is very important to your online presence. Anyway great tips!
I do also share the same sentiments. When you’re in a social media, you may reach many potential customers/clients if you have the right strategies.
When setting up facebook page as a realtor do I set up under a brand name or local business? not sure which one to use.
Thanks!!
Thanks Mary – you can do either but I would suggest local business
These are excellent tips! When it comes to marketing, I agree that connecting with clients consistently and having an integrated marketing strategy will help to set your company apart from other Realtors within the market. Thanks for sharing!