Are real estate Facebook Pages necessary? Have they lost their power? Are they even worth having anymore? Here's the deal:
Everyone’s on Facebook, right? Okay, not everyone, but there’s no disputing that Facebook is a social media giant that packs a powerful punch. Does that mean you should have a Facebook business page for your real estate business?
A few years ago, that answer would have been a resounding yes. But Facebook business pages have lost their clout and there’s debate over whether or not they hold any value in today’s market. Still, there advantages to weigh against the disadvantages of maintaining real estate Facebook pages.
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Brand Awareness
Your number one reason for establishing real estate Facebook pages is to create brand awareness. Use a professional profile image, design a cover image with your logo and catchphrase, pop in your contact info, and allow your brand to expand on the social network through posts, and more importantly, through engagement.
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Ratings, Reviews, and Testimonials
Real estate Facebook pages are a perfect place to invite clients to rate your service, post reviews, and share testimonials.
Testimonials are a robust resource in marketing. People want to know what your customers are saying. Word of mouth advertising is the cheapest and most highly regarded form of marketing your business.
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Visibility on Real Estate Facebook Pages
Unless you point a visitor directly to your Facebook business page, your page may be difficult for viewers to find. It used to be that when someone liked a post on your page, that post would then be shared on that person’s page for their friends to see. The more likes your page received, the more often your page would be displayed. Such is not the case anymore. In fact, with Facebook’s recent algorithm changes, only a teensy tiny percentage of posts are actually seen, and are shown to an even smaller percentage of viewers.
However, Facebook does offer a search feature. If a viewer types “Real Estate Agent” into the Facebook search, they’ll find a statistic similar to: 91,502 people are talking about this. Below that statistic are lists of groups pertaining to real estate. But when a viewer types the words “real estate agent” into the search bar and then hits return or enter, the first results on the page are for real estate agents in the area. Boom.
Furthermore, when a business page is set up correctly with contact information, Facebook makes it easier than ever for prospects to contact you with the tap of a finger without ever leaving the Facebook app.
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Social Sharing
Your Facebook page is a perfect place to share links to your blog posts, youtube videos, or fun and funky memes pertaining to your industry that might provoke those all mighty likes and shares. Although not as powerful as organic search results, every page view supports the goal of website traffic. For this reason, if not for any other, your Facebook page is a great way to let your fans and followers know you’ve got new goodies to offer.
If you don't have a real estate Facebook page where you stir up activity, you've got no chance whatsoever of another person sharing your page's posts. You've nipped that social sharing in the bud.
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Scheduling
Facebook also allows for the scheduling of posts, so you don’t need to manually post things you want published at a future date. Scheduling allows you to publish to your page any day or time you choose, so you can publish consistently every day of the week, all year round - even when you’re not on your smartphone or computer.
Facebook Live
Holy notifications, Bat Man! Facebook live has taken the social scene to all new levels! From static posts to instant broadcasting, Facebook Live allows you to invite your audience to join in on live streaming - and Facebook is beyond generous with its Facebook Live notifications.
What’s even better is that you can see who is watching and read viewer comments as they roll in under a rainbow of floating hearts and thumbs up. Facebook live is a new way to create a buzz in the right here and right now, whether you’re at a fun event, showing an open house, providing value with useful information, speaking at a seminar, sharing your vacation fun, or just sending out a general, “What’s up?”.
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Facebook Insights
A fabulous way to begin your tracking and measuring is with Facebook Insights. Find out who likes your page, how often your page is visited, where your audience is coming from, which days or times of day are more popular, and which of your posts are the most powerful. Learning to gauge your traffic is crucial to your marketing endeavors.
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Facebook Advertising
There’s a lot of “to-do” being done over pay-per-click advertising, what it should cost, and where it should be deployed.
Over-all, Facebook advertising is not as fruitful as Google Ads for one reason. On Facebook the ads are displayed at chosen days and times to a particular demographic area, but that doesn’t mean people are necessarily looking for you, your product, or your service. Many Facebook clicks are spawned solely from curiosity with no intent to buy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the investment.
Facebook ads do produce some results, especially if you understand how to zero in on your desired audience with demographic targeting. And, it can be less expensive than advertising with the Google powerhouse. It may be the perfect place to get your feet wet in learning PPC marketing.
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Facebook’s Integration with Instagram
Advertising on Instagram is easier than ever, just because Facebook is its daddy. You can create Instagram ads simultaneously with your Facebook ads to reach an even broader range of prospects.
As an added perk, you'll have access to Instagram insights.
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SEO Boost
Facebook has a ton of pull in the search engines. Search queries for a person or page often show Facebook in the top results. Even if you’re not actively posting or engaging on Facebook, the act of setting up a business page with your contact information could get you in front of viewers faster.
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There’s Nothing to Lose
Look. Take ten minutes to create a page. There’s zero investment. It costs nothing. Nada. Zilch. Ultimately, aside from that ten minutes invested in setting your page up, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. By setting your page up, you’re allowing your business to be one of the thousands found on Facebook through Facebook search. You’re making it easy peasy for prospects to get in touch with you with minimal effort. You’ll pull a little extra weight in the search engines, and have the opportunity to explore insights. And if you’re super zealous, you can jump right in with engagement by posting images, videos, links, polls, and live broadcasts.
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What NOT to Do:
It’s unreasonable to believe that if you make a post to Facebook, you’re going to get a mad rush of clients banging down your door. You may stir up a bit of traffic, but you certainly shouldn’t put all of your marketing eggs in the Facebook basket.
You probably won’t win over any viewers by posting listing after listing after listing without ever sharing anything your viewers can actually use. Instead, publish a combination of threads from your marketing fabric - links to community pages, to real estate specific articles, and hyperlocal content. Mix those in with videos, statistics, fun memes, and other items of interest. And then throw in a listing or two here and there.
Instead, Facebook Pages should be a supplement to your well-crafted real estate website, your regularly published real estate blog, and your presence on other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Summing it Up:
Will real estate Facebook pages make you rich and famous? Likely not. But since it doesn’t cost a single thing to create a business page, it seems almost silly not to. If nothing else, create the page with your contact info, then leave it be. This way, if someone searches for real estate agents in your area, you have a chance of being found. For the most impact, share quality material viewers can use and may even share. Don’t expect page likes to propel your page to popularity, but actively engage with the fans who show interest. One lucrative lead makes it worth while.
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