10 Ways Real Estate Agents Create Deeper Engagement on Facebook
I always wonder if what I post on Facebook is interesting and useful to others. I know that much, not all, of what I read is not useful and interesting.
Real estate agents using Facebook make that observation often. Assess your social media presence. Consider everything you do on Facebook part of an overall engagement strategy. What makes engagement useful and interesting? Remind yourself that what works for you on other people’s pages are good indicators for what will work for your friends and fans on your Facebook pages.
Here are 10 tips for real estate agent Facebook engagement success:
- Go deep, not wide with your social media presence. Recent studies report deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance. Real estate agents new to social media often make the mistake of setting up profiles at every social media platform they read about or hear about in technology classes. There are three platforms that real estate agents can use in tandem to maximize their exposure: Facebook, LinkedIn and one or more consumer-facing real estate social sites – Trulia Voices, Zillow Discussions, and Yahoo! Answers. Add additional platforms as time permits.
- Define your Facebook niche. If you are using Facebook to build your business, Unfriend all of the Realtors on your profile page and concentrate your personal engagement strategy on your friends and family and start a Facebook Fan Page. Invite your sphere of influence, past clients and customers, and perhaps some Realtors from out of the area who may be a good source of referral business. Find fan pages and groups where there is good, solid engagement among real estate professionals and visit those pages regularly. If you don’t want to Unfriend all your fellow Realtors, learn to live with the fact that your Facebook time is not dollar productive and have fun in the social media sandbox. There may be educational value that outweighs income needs.
- Work with a strategy and specific engagement plan. Time block social media engagement. Work without distractions. See the following as an example of a one-hour daily engagement plan.
- Make your blog your social media center of gravity. If you have a blog, use the links in Facebook. Develop a blog business plan and consider your content carefully. Ask your readers and peers for feedback.
- Resist the urge to automate your posts. Content aggregation tools are the fashion du jour at Facebook. Automatic posts from Twitter leave pages with small, 140-character-or-less messages. Frequent users of Twitter display a boring list of text with no visual appeal.
- Use quotations sparingly. Some Facebook pages look like Quotation City. Original thought trumps quotations. Occasional insight by masters may offer food for contemplative thought, but turning over six inches of prime social media real estate to the combined talent and wisdom of Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and Ronald Regan is sheer overkill and very shallow engagement. There are exceptions to every rule. There is a real estate agent in Sierra Vista, AZ, who quotes Law of Attraction entity Abraham in a thoughtful, consistent, and inspirational manner … I am drawn to her page regularly. It is the short, staccato, mishmash of quotations I urge agents to avoid.
- Make your Fan Page reader-centric. Are you selling a product or service? Writing a book? How many of your posts are ads and how many reflect serious needs, interests, and concern of the people who are reading the page? How do you relate to a page that is 100% advertising? This type of engagement is very shallow and highly gratuitous.
- Study the pages you like. What works for you when you travel pages on Facebook? When something works, take a closer look and consider why the page works. Is it what the author says? Does the author share information that helps you grow? Is there a measure of inspiration on the page?
- Mix content liberally. Learn how to use simple video links and share music. Share links from articles and blog posts you like. Use the “Share” link liberally to post other people’s useful or inspirational content on your own page … and thank them for sharing in the comment section under their post. Do NOT share your branded content on other people’s pages.
- Make at least two connections on other people’s pages for each measure of engagement on your page. Reciprocal engagement invites more visitors to your pages. Visit your friends’ pages and leave comments, click the Like link, and leave some tracks. Let your friends know you were there!
View more presentations from Frances Flynn Thorsen.
Engage often.
Engage thoughtfully.
Egage authentically.
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Comments
Well said. It blows my mind that agents new to FB rush out to get all their competitors as friends. Most give very little thought to a well thought out social media strategy
Fran,
Worth mentioning is that Facebook retains the right to terminate a personal profile if they feel it is being used for unsolicited commercial communication.
We wrote in more detail here Does Exposing Business Content To ‘Facebook Friends’ Constitute Spam?
[ http://kineticknowledge.com/blog/social-networking/exposing-business-blog-content-to-facebook-friends ]
Chris
Kinetic Knowledge
Fran, Thanks for the great information regarding Facebook. My resolution for the New Year is to be much more pro-active in social media in my business. I am changing my web site to a blog and intend to make it the center of my social media as you suggest.
great post as usual .. thanks .. you just gave me a few more ideas to play with
Nice tips, Frances. I especially like the point of making your blog the center of gravity, as well as the point on resisting the urge to automate posts. I can’t say enough about how I make an initial connection with someone in one of the “outposts” (Facebook, LI, YT, etc.), only to click through the profile on their outpost to find nothing but marketing pitches or worse, a content aggregator.
I love it, though, when I click through on occasion to find a blog where I can learn more about the individual and gain insight to her/his values, interests and passions. That, for me, is when the connection gets solidified.
Thanks for sharing these points.
Mel Aclaro
I think I’ve seen something like this before, but still a good read. I’ve noticed a few offices make profile pages instead of fan pages. I’m not sure why that is. The irony is that it’s fellow KW offices. At any rate I have my fan page up and I think I’m heading in the right direction with it. I’d also like to make a custom fan page at some point, which is basically a simplified version of a website, which I would also like to redo in the near future.
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