HOW TO PUT YOUR REAL ESTATE FACEBOOK PAGE ON AUTO PILOT

Updating your Real Estate Facebook Page on a regular basis is key to increasing audience engagement and awareness about your business.

When it comes to posting there are two schools of thought: Strategically post on your Facebook page 3-5 times a day, or post randomly whenever you have the time to login to Facebook.

Although, did you know there is a way to systematize and optimize your Facebook posts without spending a whole day on Facebook? This way you can spend more time on building your business and closing deals.

Before you start to schedule posts, it is important to be aware of optimal publishing times to ensure your fans are seeing content. Here is a quick guide to help you discover when is the best time to post on Facebook.

HOW DO YOU PUT YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE ON AUTO-PILOT?

There are two ways to automate posts on Facebook:

  1. You can use Facebook’s pre-scheduling feature or
  2. You can use 3rd party apps.

The Facebook Scheduling Tool

Facebook’s pre-scheduling tool allows you to set posts to publish at a later date and time. The tool corresponds to your default timezone, so it looks as if you posted manually. You can post as often as you need for a given period of time, for example a week in advance to a month!

While you can pre-schedule most post types, not everything can be scheduled. You can only schedule status posts, videos and photos. You won’t be able to batch schedule photo albums, Facebook events, questions, offers and milestones.

Here is how to use Facebook scheduler:

  1. Choose the type of post you want to create (ex: Status,Photo/Video) at the top of your Page’s Timeline
  2. Type in your content or post update. Don’t forget your links or call to action!
  3. Click the Schedule icon at bottom left
  4. Choose the date and time you want the post to appear
  5. Click “Schedule”

 

If you need to go back and edit your queued posts: On the Admin toolbar, click the “Activity” tab and then select “Scheduled Posts” on the left sidebar. Here you’ll see a list of all your upcoming posts and can edit the date, time and content of any post.

Third Party Scheduling Apps

If you want something more robust than the internal Facebook tool, apps such as Hootsuite, Post Planner and BufferApp are designed to help page admins with scheduling and managing social media posts.

Other benefits of 3rd party apps:

  • You can schedule updates on other social media sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn, in addition to Facebook
  • You can schedule bulk posts by just utilizing a .csv file. Here’s an inside look on how you can do that using the Hootsuite app.

Managing your Facebook page is not time-consuming if you just put it on auto-pilot!

If you have any questions about scheduling your posts on Facebook, I’d love to help you. Just leave a comment below.

Want to learn how to use Facebook to get a consistent source of leads online?  Sign up for my FREE video series FB Real Estate Pro and get instant access to three free videos!

EVEN MORE WAYS TO GET LEADS USING FACEBOOK FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS

Facebook isn’t just a powerful platform to let your audience know what’s going on in your own real estate business, it’s also a great way to generate leads and convert those leads into buyers.

Here are a few simple tips and tricks to help get even more out of your Facebook community.

Create targeted/compelling content

Facebook’s algorithm considers content quality when deciding what to show in news feeds. Over time, Facebook continually edits this algorithm to ensure that Pages show only content that truly matter to fans, while weeding out spam or link-baits. It’s up to you to make your content engaging and relevant to fans.

But what will make your content valuable to fans?

  1. Content comes in many forms, including status posts, shared links, videos and photos or graphics. Recently, there has been a trend toward sharing content beyond text such as engaging visuals including poster quotes and fun, interesting photos.  Include graphics in your content mix.
  2. Make sure you include an interesting description on your shared content, website links and videos. Use words that will make people want to click.
  3. To break up content, it is also good to share a few causal posts about your personal experience with real estate. This could also be news that is relevant to pop culture or includes a bit of humor. Only do this once in a while, but make sure to add it to your content mix.
  4. People love to read about real-life stories. Post stories and photos about your personal experience as a realtor, the places you’ve visited and the interesting activities or events you may attend. Be human!
  5. Write posts that encourage engagement from your audience. Amazing photos are nothing without a clear call to action

Other great tips:

  • Plan out your posts in advance, to avoid writers block or missing a day.
  • Make a calendar of posts to help you organize the different types of posts. This is also something you could share and have other people help with your social media posting.
  • Map out the optimal times your fans are on Facebook. Utilize Facebook Insights for this. Posting around 3-4 posts a day ideal to avoid flooding your fans’ News Feeds.
  • You can use Facebook’s pre-scheduling function to set up future posts in one sitting.
  • Follow other brand pages relevant to your business (and are also followed by your fans).

GET MORE PEOPLE TO CONTACT YOU

Use Facebook to make your phone ring! Here are 5 examples of offers to post that could entice people to talk with you:

  1. Free financial analysis for FSBOs.
  2. Host a Facebook Events Q&A forum about your listings/ expertise.
  3. Free 30-minute call on financing and mortgage consultation
  4. Offer discounts and minor fees waived from your listings
  5. Host a referrals contests: Give away something for every referred lead that will set an appointment with you.

These are all great lead-generating activities. Just make sure you have set up a system to capture contact information and move these leads through your sales funnel. Keeping your list updated with current info is important!

UTILIZE FACEBOOK EVENTS FOR OPEN HOUSES

Facebook Events are a powerful tool to increase awareness about your events. Tip: Set up your Facebook events at least 3 weeks before the event itself. This will allow time for people to ask questions, prepare and check schedules.

Here are a few More tips:

  1. Lay the ground rules on the Event description. Unless the house has been vacated, most professional open houses will require guests to sign a logbook and show a driver’s license. Spell out any special instructions like this on the Event listing.
  2. Enlist the neighbors. It’s a great idea to make friends with the neighbors, or at least introduce yourself. It goes without saying that the neighbors are better sales people than you! They can give the best testimony why they chose to live in the area, and create a warmer welcome for potential buyers. Let neighbors know about events.
  3. Run Facebook Ads for the event to increase attendance and awareness.Events are better promoted if they are highlighted on the Facebook News Feed. With a small budget, you can set a short campaign to optimize your promotional efforts for the event. (See: Geo-targeting for Facebook Ads below)
  4. Document the event. Take photos and notes. This way you can use it as content for other marketing efforts. Consider having the event professionally recorded, but be sure to let your guests know before hand that there will be cameras rolling during the event.

USE GEO-TARGETED FACEBOOK ADS

Geo-targeting is often underutilized in Facebook, because many people think it’s hard to do. However, it’s actually pretty easy!

So what is Geo-targeting? It’s a special feature of ads that allow you to target audiences by location when running Facebook Ads. This is especially helpful since your business is in a particular city and you want your ads to attract the people within a certain distance of that location.

Facebook finds people to target through users’ IP address whenever they are online and the addresses users indicate in their profile information.

When creating ads, you can set Geo-targeting based on the following information:

  • Everywhere (Global)
  • Country
  • State/Province
  • City
  • ZIP Code

You can also include a wider scope to your ads, like a certain mile radius of your target location. Leverage this to your advantage.

BRANDING GUIDELINES FOR YOUR REAL ESTATE FACEBOOK PAGE

Building your brand should be one of the greatest goals of your Facebook Page. In this blog post, I’ll give you 5 basic branding guidelines for your Facebook page.

These guidelines will help your Facebook Page attract fans and drive traffic to your site.

BRANDING GUIDELINE #1 – BUILD YOUR ASSET TOOLKIT

Set your Facebook Page easily using an Asset Toolkit! It is a set of files to help you update and populate your Facebook Page.

Create a separate file folder in your hard drive or cloud storage for all files related to branding – as you shall be using them consistently.

Your asset toolkit should contain more or less the following:

  • Messaging for the About Section

Make sure the following properly filled out:

– Business Name
– Address
– Business Hours
– Phone
– Company Mission Statement
– Services
– Email Address

Additional Action items:

– Create 3 Taglines for your company
– Create a short description that is a brief summary of your business. The character limit is 155.
– Create a long description that includes keywords for your business along with the services you offer such as real estate listings, brokerage services, real estate investing, etc.

  • Timeline Cover Images
  • Profile Image
  • Facebook App Images

BRANDING GUIDELINE #2 – SELECT THE BEST PROFILE IMAGE

Your profile image is the first thing your fans will remember, aside from the company name in all areas of Facebook – including chat boxes, embedded Facebook badges sidebars, and news feed. This is how your company is being branded.

How to select the best profile photo?

Due its small dimensions: 160 x 160 pixels, you should select an image that best utilizes the space available. Commonly, it could be either your company logo or your own professionally-taken photo.

Page profile pictures are square and display at 160 x 160 pixels on your Page.
The image file you upload must be at least 180 x 180 pixels.

Make sure your profile photo stands out in the news feed by adding a colored square around your photo or including your business name along with a headshot image.

BRANDING GUIDELINE #3 – OPTIMIZE YOUR COVER PHOTO AS A SALES TOOL!

The cover photo is a large, rectangular image found at the top of your page. Due to its prominence, it is important to give your audience a cover photo with a lasting impression.

What does it take to have a great cover photo?

  • Use a Call to Action
  • Showcase Rooms from Your Listings
  • Share Your Charitable Causes

How do you optimize your cover photo?

On the image description, include a Call to Action and link to your website. This will help drive more traffic to your website and/or social sites.

Remember that Facebook favors cover images with less text, so make use of the image description and comment field accordingly.

Include your CTA as part of the cover photo design.

Cover Photo specs:

Cover photos should be:

  • clear
  • high resolution image file
  • 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall

Note: If you upload images less than these dimensions, it will be stretched to fit the container.

BRANDING GUIDELINE #4 – GET A CUSTOMIZED TIMELINE URL

A customized URL, also called a vanity URL is another feature you can customize for branding. It should be the same as your Facebook page name.

For example, the name of my Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/JenSmithSocial

To create your own vanity URL:

Admin Panel > Settings > Page Info > Edit Facebook Web Address

BRANDING GUIDELINE #5 – CREATE FACEBOOK APP THUMBNAILS

You can create Facebook App thumbnails to connect all your branding elements together.

Thumbnail image sizes are 111 x 74 pixels.

For all these graphic requirements, you can ask your designer to do it for you or you can do it yourself using FREE tools like PicMonkey or Canva.

If you have any questions, I’d love to help you answer them. Just leave a comment below.

Want to learn how to use Facebook to get a consistent source of leads online?  Sign up for my FREE video series FB Real Estate Pro and get instant access to three free videos!

12 FACEBOOK FACTS & FIGURES FOR YOUR REAL ESTATE BUSINESS

Numbers don’t lie. They play an important role in everyday life, more so, in business. By knowing the right statistics, you’ll prevent making quick business decisions that you might regret in the future.

In this blog post, I will present to you 12 Facebook facts & figures that will prove that Facebook is right for your real estate business:

  1. Statistics show that Facebook has 1.2+ billion users (as of February 2014)
  2. There are 751 Million Mobile Users on Facebook
  3. The average Facebook user checks their account five times a day, and typically spends 20 mins a day on Facebook.
  4. 50% of people trust a company’s Facebook page more than their website.
  5. 70% of Facebook users engage with businesses on Facebook.
  6. Facebook users have pressed the “Like” button more than 4.2 billion times.
  7. Facebook users post 30 billion pieces of content every month.
  8. More than 7.5 Million users have promoted a post
  9. 90% of home buyers searched online during their home buying process.
  10. Consumers who engage with a company via Facebook spend 30% morecompared to a customer who does not.
  11. 43% of Americans say that Facebook has a greater impact on their purchasing behavior than any other social network.
  12. Because of its massive user base, you can find your target audience on Facebook. And, 67% of B2C marketers have generated leads via Facebook.

Based on this data, we can conclude that:

  • Facebook is the largest social network on the planet.
  • People are engaged on Facebook.
  • Your leads are on Facebook.

Sources:
Facebook News: September 30, 2013
The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics by Zephoria
2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers via Realtors.org Digital Study

Now, what are you waiting for? Get more leads for your real estate business now by using Facebook!

NEW FACEBOOK ADS CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE BEST PRACTICES

Ready for more changes on Facebook?!  It seems like they are making changes daily now and it’s hard to keep up so this post should break down for you the recent changes regarding the new Facebook ad campaign structure.

The New Facebook Ads Campaign Structure is set to roll out on September 15 and will be made available to 100% of advertisers in the next few weeks.

This change is designed to make advertising efforts easier for advertisers in three words:

  • Organize
  • Optimize
  • Measure

WHAT’S NEW?

Before, Facebook Ads only has a 2-level structure: Campaigns and Ads.

It was in each individual campaigns that advertisers set everything: campaign goals, audience filters, budget and scheduling of ads. The Ads – there are the creatives.

This structure is particularly rigid: as it was difficult to optimize and measure ads effectiveness across different audience demographics and campaigns goals.

HENCE, THE NEW 3-LEVEL STRUCTURE: CAMPAIGN- ADS SETS- ADS.

In this new structure, you can set different campaign goals on Campaign such as branding, site visits or promote offers.

You can set your audience, budget, placements and scheduling in Ad Sets. Under each Ad sets are your Ad creatives.

To better understand, this 3-level structure allows you to:

  • Separate different campaign goals from others
  • Set different audience groups under each campaign
  • Experiment on different Ad creatives under each demographic group.

This gives advertisers a chance to better analyze and understand how each creative content performs in a specific group of people, under each campaign goal.

Facebook has published a guide on how to bring the best out of the new Ads Campaign structure.

CAMPAIGN BEST PRACTICES:

1. Define your campaign goal.

Campaign goals are specific results set by a brand. For example, a local store will have the following objectives:

  • Visits to Website
  • Website Conversions
  • Increase Page Post Engagement
  • Likes your Page
  • Install Apps
  • App Engagement
  • Promote Offers
  • Event Responses
  • Video Views

Thus a goal should be limited to some specific calls to action from a Facebook user.

2. Set up campaigns based on advertising objectives.

You can create different campaigns under each objectives. Here are a sample list of campaigns you can choose from:

3. Set the cap how much you spend across all your campaigns.

You don’t need to worry about over-spending. You can set your budget across campaigns. The Ads will stop as soon as your cap budget is reached.

4. Take note of spending for each of your campaigns.

Use the spending meter to track how much your ads had spent so far. This will let you in the loop of how much your ads costs to run, as well as compare which ad delivers better results over cost-effectiveness.

AD SET BEST PRACTICES

1. Organize ad sets by audience.

Learn to determine your audience by gender, age, location, likes and other demographic data available in the Ads Manager.

This will help you determine which audience group drives better response to your ads. For example: you can and create ad set for people you liked your Page and another for those who haven’t liked your Page yet.

One secret is to keep your Ad Set consistent so that you can easily single out the best performing Ad Sets.

2. Optimize top performing placements.

You can alternately assign one placement in an Ad Set or have multiple placements in a demographic Ad Set so optimize your ad results.

3. Set bidding to maximize performance.

Make sure that your ads have consistent optimization settings to optimize your ads; whether you are bidding for clicks, impressions or reach, your choice depends what your prefer to pay for.

4. Adjust budgets to optimize spend.

Monitor which ads perform better than the rest. Make sure your budget appropriately and equally to all top-performing ad sets.

AD BEST PRACTICES

1. Know which ad types suits your campaign objective.

Select the best types of ads to use such as link ads, photo ads, text ads, app install pages to match the needs of your campaign.

2. Come up with multiple ads to optimize creative.

As much as possible create other ad variations using a creative. For example, an ad creative can be both in form of a image or a video. This allows more optimized delivery.

3. Always monitor to improve performance of a creative.

Always make a point to record results such as number of clicks, impressions as well as rejections. This helps you see the performance of your ads in a user’s view point. Use what you have learned to improve future creatives.

4. Work within the limits of your account.

Every account can hold as much as 1000 campaigns, 1000 ad sets and 5000 ads. This only applies to live campaigns, deleted ones do not count. To better manage and track your campaigns, follow your marketing plan and run a good number of ads that you can manage.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW AD CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE?