Social media is a wonderful thing. You can stay in touch with friends on a daily basis, follow current news stories, and even use it to promote your business. Facebook has become the ideal platform for real estate agents to increase their marketing efforts and make more money. But why Facebook?

The number one reason you need Facebook for your business is reach. Facebook remains the largest social media platform as there are over 1.3 billion members worldwide. You could join every networking group in your area and cold call all day long but still not reach half that amount of people. Tell me where else you have the ability to connect with a billion people? Go ahead. I’ll wait…

Now that we know why you should use Facebook for your real estate business, let’s discuss how to use it. Just having a Facebook account will do nothing for your business. You have to actively engage with your audience. This is much simpler than you may think.

The first step is to create a Facebook business page. According to Facebook’s Terms of Services policy, it is in violation of their policy to create a Facebook profile page for conducting business. You wouldn’t want to use your personal profile anyhow. A Facebook business page has way more benefits than a profile. For example, let’s look at Facebook insights. This is where you can see your hard work and efforts pay off. Not only can you see how many people have ‘liked’ your page, you can see how much reach your posts are actually getting.  Facebook insights helps to see what works and what doesn’t.

Now that you’ve created your business page, you want to give it curb appeal. Make sure to update the profile and cover photo with high quality pictures. I suggest putting a professional head shot as your profile photo. We all know you’re cute but let’s keep the selfies for your personal profile page! The next step is to fill out the ‘about’ section. This is not a resume. Feel free to be yourself and show some personality.

The call to action button is relatively new to Facebook but I highly suggest you add one. There are several options such as ‘Call Now’ or ‘Learn More’. Pick whichever is best for your business. In order for you to optimize the reach in your area, be sure that ‘Similar Page Suggestions’ is checked within your settings. This will enable your business page to be displayed as a page that Facebook users might like.
You’ve finally completed your business page. Now what? It’s time to create some content and post! The million dollar question remains…. “What do I post?” You want to share engaging content. Do not, I repeat, do not solely post listings. While it is great to give your listings exposure, you want to present content your audience actually wants to read. About 20 percent of your content should be business related. The other 80 percent should be entertaining. After all, you don’t want to just sell. The goal is to build relationships with repeat customers. For the business portion, share listings, industry related advice, open house announcements, or whatever you see fit. For the rest, post news articles, funny videos, life hacks, etc. Pay attention to what your followers post and like. I guarantee you that your impressions, shares, and likes will increase exponentially. And if you get brave enough, start writing your own blogs and creating videos to share.

Social media marketing can sometimes be a chore. It takes a lot of trial and error, adjustment, and effort. But you may grow to love it once you start seeing the results! Hard work truly does pay off.

Did you love this blog? Stay tuned for more real estate tips and tricks at the one and only First International Title.