Using IFTTT and RSS Feeds for Value Add Posts in Hyperlocal Facebook Strategies

Those of you who know me know I’m very into tech and systems and internet lead generation, and I build of course around all of those things. So whenever I find a really cool new tool that doesn’t take away value of what I do, for example, search engine optimization, I’m not looking for the next quick thing that’s going to just blast my product, my blogs and things like that out there, and not get any SEO value. I’m looking for things that I can use that will better add to the overall strategy of what I’m trying to do.

One of the things that I’ve recently done is I’ve taken on a geographic farm for my Las Vegas Real EstateBusiness, and we are working Summerlin in the Las Vegas community. It’s a large community. It’s 40,000 homes currently and it’s going to be 80,000 homes at the end of its build. It takes up the entire northwest to southwest area of our valley. It’s quite a massive area.

My strategy in September was to start targeting Summerlin. We’re now number one organically for a large amount of long tail keywords including just Summerlin real estate agent. We’ve really taken on these social media strategy in addition to our search engine rankings, and creating relationships, and providing value, and getting to know the Summerlin home owners, the Summerlin area, and we’re really strategically working that for business.

One of the things that I’ve recently discovered in social media and Facebook pages is that what people are looking for is value. They don’t want to be spammed with call me for your real estate services. They want items of value. If they’re in a community like Summerlin they want to know what’s happening in Summerlin. Tell me about the new mall that’s coming in, tell me about construction I need to be aware of, tell me about the market values, tell me where it’s a good place to eat, where should my kids play, what’s happening in the local school.

I’ve been manually,  for the last three months,  posting about local events that are happening in Summerlin. This is my Summelin community page here. We’re going to come back to this in a minute. I’ve been really focusing on Summerlin, things to do in Summerlin, just whatever is happening there. I knew there had to be a way to come up with information that’s easier.

The first thing I did was put myself on a Google alert, and I’ve been getting emails every day from Google on what’s happening in Summerlin and I’ve been taking and posting these, post manually. Well I went back to my old ifttt.com tool and that’s here www.IFTTT.com.  I have used this a while back but never really got into the potential possibilities of what it has to offer. So I got to playing around with it the other day and I found this really cool thing and I promised a video so I’m going to share.

What we’re going to do with this is basically we’re going to use this in a variety of ways. But let’s first talk about the Google alert. What I want you to do is just go to google.com/alerts, google.com/alerts. You’re going to use a variety of search queries. In this particular case we’re going to use Summerlin events. This could be Palo Verde High School, which is the main high school in Summerlin. That can be a particular search. You can build this around whatever you want to build this around. But let’s just say we want to know all the events, Summerlin events, what’s happening in Summerlin.

We type this in. Google is going to then send us results on what is happening in Summerlin around Summerlin events. Now, before I was just sending these to myself in an email. Now I’ve recently found a better way to do it using ifttt.com so that it feeds automatically and I don’t have to do anything.

The first thing you’re going to do is say, “Do I want Google to send me everything? Do I want it just to send me news?” You can see how it changes here. That takes out your blog results. I don’t know if I would do that. That’s something that’s up to you. I want it to just send me blogs? I want to just send me video? So maybe you’re just look to adding just a bunch more video to your social media page. I want it only to send me discussions, things that are happening out there in message boards and chats and things like that, or just the information on books, which that might be good if you had a book club or something like that.

Let’s just say we’re going to set this to everything for now. You can choose the language, you can choose the region. I only want to know things that are happening in Nevada about Summerlin. The reason you might do this is, I’m sorry the United States, is because there could be a Summerlin in Canada, there could be a Summerlin somewhere else. You’re trying to eliminate that.

How often? Now this is important. I made a mistake the other day and I set up a very general search about Las Vegas. The search was just a search query, it was just Las Vegas, and I said feed this to Twitter every time anything happens in Las Vegas. Well that was dumb, because what I didn’t know was happening for two days and everybody was getting blasted every second with something happening in Las Vegas. Thanks to a friend who alerted me that that was happening. So make sure you check this after the fact and make sure that they’re not getting too much, because you don’t want to be excessive, and you might need to narrow down your search if you’re getting too much information.

So you’re going to choose so I just want this to feed once a day, or I want it to do it as it happens. That’s what I had done with the Las Vegas search. If you do that make sure you check and make sure you’re not getting too many results. Or once a week depending on what you’re doing. In this case I’m going to do it as it happens.

How many results? Only the best? Or all? Now all, you’re going to get a bunch of really cool other stuff that has to do with Summerlin. But be warned, it’s going to be more excessive and you might get a competing realtor, you might get news about another real estate agent. If you choose everything it’s going to be, there’s going to be a lot more. I kind of like the everything for this particular search because then I’m going to get the craft fairs, and the golf tournaments, and everything else that’s happening in Summerlin. I’m going to go and go with everything. But I’m going to go check and make sure how excessive that is once I start feeding this.

Then deliver to…. This is where you can choose an email to send it to, but in this case you want to choose feed. Choose feed, we’re going to send this an RSS feed. Then you’re going to hit create alert. Now you’re going to have a list of all your alerts here. Here is all of your feeds. What you’re going to need to do now is go down to the feed you just set up, and in this case we did Summerlin events, take that where that little feed icon is, right-click and copy link address, copy link address.

Now I want you to go back into ifttt account and we’re going to go and set this up. Go to create a recipe, IF THIS. Now you’ve already set up your social media channels on here, so you already have your Facebook page set up in here, you already have your Twitter set up in here, you have everything. In my case I happen to have multiple accounts because I need one for the All Star Agent Network, and one for Twitter and one for Summerlin, and so I’ve different accounts. But in this case I’ve already set all this up.

I’m going to go down and say if this, if RSS feed, which is ‘ IF FEED ‘. Now you can choose a new feed item or you can even get more particular. If you click this “new feed item matches” you can put in a keyword. I want this feed to be about Summerlin events but only if it’s about golf. So you can really take this down and narrow this down and get into really good value specifics, which I just love.

In this particular case I want to use all of my Summerlin events, so I’m going to go to New Feed Item. On your feed url go ahead now and just paste that url that we had copied a minute ago from the feed. That’s all you’re doing. A minute ago we copied it, now you’re going to paste it, create trigger. Now we have if this RSS feed then that. Click that and you’re going to go down here to your Facebook pages.

Now you can do this with a group but it only works as far as I can tell if you have an open group. My closed groups, it’s not feeding to.  I’ve not done the investigation, but I’m assuming it’s because those are all closed groups and it can’t feed into them, but I’m not 100% sure if that’s the case. But it is working on all my pages. I’m still playing around with the groups.

You can have it create a status message, you can have it create a link post, and you can have it create a photo. Now photos can only be good if you’re feeding Instagram or you’re feeding certain things like that, you might want those photos to go to an album, or if you’re feeding your listings in from an RSS feed, you might want those to go to a photo.

The difference between the status message and a link is a status message is going to have the live link in it but it’s not going to attach that preview of the link. My experience is that a plain status message gets more views than an attached link. I think it’s because Facebook’s algorithms say that if it’s a status message create more views than if it’s a link. Again, I do not know that for a fact. I only know about my own experience that a status message on a Facebook page or on my personal page gets more views and traction than a link post or a photo.

In my case I’m using and I’m testing and measuring this, but in my case I’m using create a status message. Now you have to create a status message. Here is what I’m doing. I’m putting “Here’s what’s …” Actually I’m not going to put it all caps. “Here’s what is happening in Summerlin.”

Now if this was here’s what’s happening in golf in Summerlin, here’s what’s happening in dinning in Summerlin I would change that. In my case this is all Summerlin events. So here is what’s happening in Summerlin. You could just put Summerlin events, whatever you want there.

Now you go up to this little plus sign and you have to select an ingredient. So what in that RSS feed do I want to show up in this post? I’m using the title of the post and then you click “Add Ingredients” and then you have to include the link. So I’m adding the post link and that’s called entry url. I’m doing the title and the url in mine. That’s just what I’ve chosen to do. Then you can put down your little blurb, and this is going to show up in every single post. I’m going to put “Provided by your friends, and Summerlin residents, The Ballen Group Real Estate Team at Keller Williams Realty, Las Vegas, Summerlin.” Then I’m going to put, “Let us WOW you! 702-604-7739.”

I play around with that. You take a look at it and decide what you want your blurb to be. I saved a bunch of blurbs so I can just copy and paste them really quick off my spreadsheet and put in whatever is appropriate here. If this was luxury, if this was short sales, depending what this feed is I might change “Provided by your friends and short sales specialists,” “Provided by your friends in real estate.” It just depends on what I’m going to put there. Then I’m going to put create action. And it’s going to say okay.

So if this, your feed from the Google alerts, then post to Facebook messages. It’s got your description here. You click “Create Recipe.” The next time something feeds ifttt this, it will then trigger your recipe and it will launch. Make sure you come back and check this in the next couple of hours on your Facebook page, or your Twitter page, or whatever you’re feeding to and make sure it’s not excessive. Excessive would be my biggest concern, if it’s just too much.

Now I want to show you a couple other really quick cool things that I found also this morning I was messing around with. I went to my local paper. This is our Las Vegas Sun.com. They have a page in here about Summerlin because it’s a large master plan community. Down here they have an RSS feed. Today I was able to set up a recipe that said if this, if this RSS feed about Summerlin news, then post to the Facebook page.

If you play around with your search you might be surprised how many websites there are out there that have RSS feeds that would be appropriate to your local Facebook page. Maybe your high school has a blog. If they do, that blog has an RSS feed, and you want it to feed in there. A medical facility, a local community center, anything that could possibly … a home owners association that might have an RSS feed, restaurant reviews about that area, anything that would have an RSS feed, this would be appropriate for your search engine.

I set that up today and I’m in here messing with the Summerlin magazine today and here is what it looks like. At the end here is the post, so posted by ifttt on my Summerlin page, what’s happening in Summerlin Las Vegas, commercial real estate sectors looking up, and here is the link now that will take them to that article. This post provided by The Ballen Group an award winning team in Summerlin, Las Vegas. That’s it. That’s how you use a combination of RSS feeds and Google alerts to provide value to your hyper local community page.

Thank you so much again. We appreciate your referrals in Las Vegas. If you want to know more about online marketing and SEO and these type of strategies go to theballenmethod.com, follow my blog at loriballen.com to get all the free stuff and tips and information that I post daily. If you are a real estate agent be sure today to join theallstaragentnetwork.com for referrals. That’s at www.theallstaragentnetwork.com. This is Lori Ballen with purpose, passion and a plan. Have a great day.

This is The Ballen Method….

Identifying a niche that you’d like to specialize in. Then, choosing an audience that is appropriate for that niche. Choosing a product and a message that is appealing for that specific audience. Then, over a period of time, with time on task, disciplined consistency we dominate the search engines. For a desired keyword or set of keywords using press releases, blog posts, classified ads, social media, video, and of course fantastic updated fresh content for your website. Then, also we tie in lead cultivation, which we master. All of these things tied together make up The Ballen Method.