In this video I’m going to share with you the biggest mistakes I still see agents and brokers making over on Facebook in 2021.
Hey everybody, Katie Lance here, founder and CEO of Katie Lance Consulting, the Get Social Smart Academy and author of the book, Get Social Smart. It’s episode 242 of the Get Social Smart Show and today I’m going to share with you three of the biggest mistakes I still see agents and brokers making over on Facebook.
Mistake number one, posting and running. Okay, you guys, I still see this happening even in 2021. Right? You’ve got a new listing. You’ve got a new open house. You’ve got something new that you want to share. So what do you do? You pop on Facebook and you post, you kind of like spam all your friends and family, and then you bail because you’re busy. I get it. However don’t post and run, right? It’s often like imagine going to a party and you’re in a crowd full of people and all of a sudden you start yelling.
I have a new listing and then you just like run out of the party. Okay. We would never do that, but that’s kind of what happens when you post and run. So quick tip and I recommend this, not just for Facebook. This works actually really well for Instagram. Also, before you post something, take two or three minutes to scroll through your feed, to like comment and engage with at least a few people. Don’t be a drive-by liker and I’ll just jump on and like 20 things. But take a few minutes to engage. Look at your notification, respond to some comments, maybe from a post that you did a couple of days ago, then post whatever it is. You’re. If you’re going to post then take another minute or two to scroll through. Again, if it’s someone’s birthday, you might be leaving them a comment. You know, we’re still by happy birthday, spend a few minutes on the platform that is a trigger to Facebook, that you are active on the platform, and you are more likely to have your content seen by more and more people than just posting and running.
So this applies to your personal profile, but it also plays to your business page. You know, one of the things that I really love about the new format with Facebook and we don’t quite have this yet, I am pretty certain you’re going to get it soon. But what I love about Facebook right now in 2021 is you can toggle between your personal profile and your business page, which means as a business page, you can like other pages. So why not look at some of your local businesses, your local chamber of commerce, some of your fever, local businesses, and like them as your business page. And then you can step, spend a few minutes liking, commenting, and interacting with those pages as your page, right? So it’s one small way to get your content seen in front of more people, but don’t post and run. Let’s take number two on unrealistic expectation with ads.
Okay, I see this all the time. Now don’t get me wrong. Facebook ads definitely work. And we have done, you know, lots of videos and trainings about Facebook ads over the years. However, when it comes to real estate, especially here in the U S Facebook ads are limited. So because of fair housing and a number of other things, it is really limited to who you can target. Now, you can still target to some custom audiences. You can still target within a specific zip code, but I often find that there are some really unrealistic expectation when it comes to ads. I hear this all the time. You know, an agent I’ll spend a hundred dollars or $20 or $5, and then they’ll get a couple extra likes, maybe a couple of leads, but the leads aren’t really that great. So I think it’s important to put the proper expectations in place.
And I have to tell you that the ads that we see that tend to perform the best are people who are, who are running ads, uh, consistently for long periods of time. So just like your content, right? It’s not just post and run. It’s not just one post here and then nothing for two weeks. It’s the same thing with ads and the challenges. I know a lot of you just run an ad when you’re doing a listing, but it’s better to run ads longer term. So maybe you’re running an ad that is generating traffic to your website, or maybe you’re running ads, uh, where you are generating leads for, you know, a CMA. And then you sprinkle in some ads for listing. So having long-term strategy, that’s my biggest piece of advice. You don’t have to necessarily spend tens of thousands of dollars, but you do need to have kind of a, uh, a realistic expectation of what you can get from your ads.
And what I would also say is the ads that tend to perform best in my opinion, are ads that are tied to great content, specifically video content. So I know you guys have heard me talk about this idea of creating unique content, video content. That’s in your voice, that has your opinion, that has your personality, especially, uh, educational or informative video, things like who pays for what or how to, you know, how to, um, how to buy your first home or mistakes. First time home buyers are making or how to find the lender, all of that video content. It’s a great way to take that content. You can put that up on Facebook and then you can retarget people. Who’ve already watched your videos and there’s lots of different advertising opportunities available for people who’ve already seen your content and you already are somewhat familiar to them versus them just seeing an ad blindly in their news.
So it’s important. We don’t have those unrealistic expectations was take number three is not doing Facebook live. Now I know for a lot of us, the thought of going live and broadcasting is terrifying for a lot of people. And let’s be honest here the first time or two that you go live on Facebook. I can tell you right now, what’s going to happen. You’re going to look at your phone. You’re going to wonder what button to push. You’re going to hit a button. And then there’s going to be kind of that awkward 10 seconds where you’re not quite sure if you’re live, guess what you’re live. Uh, and then you’ll have a few people log in and you’ll be nervous and you won’t really be sure what you’re doing. And then you’ll finish that Facebook live and you’ll think to yourself, oh my gosh, that was awful.
Why did I ever do that? But guess what? The more you do it, the easier it gets and still in 2021, in my opinion, Facebook live is by far still the highest performing type of content, which means Facebook live to date really gets the more likes, the most comments the most, and generally generates the most business. The reason for that is Facebook live tends to spark a conversation, right? What happens when you go live on Facebook, whether it’s on your personal profile or your business page is your Facebook live kind of sends out a notification to a small percentage of people who like your page or who you are friends with. When people start to tune in the longer that you go live, and the more you have people interacting with you, the more your Facebook live gets seen by more and more people. And so what we find is that the agents and brokers who are really able to leverage Facebook live, who are able to promote it in advance, engage with people live on that Facebook live, and then promote that replay.
Maybe you send that replay, link out to your email database. Maybe you share the replay over on LinkedIn or your other platforms. Facebook live is a great way to interact with people, to connect with people and ultimately to generate business from Facebook. We see a lot of agents doing virtual open houses. We saw that at the beginning of COVID and we still see that in a big, big way. So that’s a great opportunity. You might do a weekly or monthly Facebook live about the market and any kind of timely information typically works really well over on Facebook live. Okay. I would love to hear from you, what is your biggest question? When it comes to Facebook? Let me know in the comments below, and if you’re listening to this going, okay, I need to get a handle, not just on Facebook, but maybe on a lot of what I have going on with social media.
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