Are you sad like I am that Facebook lists are going away? If so, you better watch this video. As a lot of you know, there was a big announcement that came out fairly recently that said Facebook lists unfortunately are going away, which makes me really, really sad.
For years and years we taught the value of creating private Facebook lists as a way to get really intentional about connecting with your past clients, your current clients, your family, your friends. So now that these are slowly going away, some of you may or may not have access to them anymore on your mobile device. At some point they are turning them off on your desktop. And just like Facebook does with anything, they are slow to roll out changes. So depending on when you watch this video, you may or may not still have access to your Facebook lists.
One of the reasons I always taught the use of Facebook lists was because when you organize your past clients and your current clients into a list, it can help you be really intentional about connecting with people. Because relationships are built with small, tiny interactions over the course of time. And for all of my real estate friends that are out there, you know that’s what it’s all about. Relationships are the name of the game. So lists are going away, now what should you do?
Tip number one. I want you to take an inventory of your past clients. Now if you’ve been in this business a few weeks, a few months, a few years, you probably have a number of clients. So I want you to take an inventory of your clients and I want you to come up with your top 10 A+ client list. So who would be on this top 10 A+ client list? Okay, first of all, it’s somebody who you love. These are people that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I wish all of my clients could be like this!”
So that’s the first person to put on your A+ list. The second type of person are people who have referred you a ton of business over the years. I know from speaking to a lot of you that lots of you have clients like this who just love to give you lots of referrals, they should be on your A+ list. The third type of person on your list should be somebody who’s got a pretty substantial network. So somebody that you know who is maybe pretty well known in their community, or they’re really involved in their school, or they’re just someone who’s very well connected. That should be somebody also on your A+ list. Okay, so that’s tip number one. Take an inventory, create your A+ list. You can write it down, put it on a post it note, white board, whatever you want to do.
Tip number two. Tip number two is now that you have this top 10 list, I want you to go to Facebook and Instagram and I want you to search out these folks. Now, hopefully you’re already connected to them on either one of these platforms. If you’re not, this is a great opportunity to see if they’re on either one of those platforms. Whichever one that they’re on, send them a private message saying something like, “Hey, Susie. I would love to connect with you here on Facebook or here on Instagram. It was great working with you over the last few years, would love to stay in touch here on Facebook, Instagram.” Okay, great. So you’ve connected with them on either one of these platforms.
Now if they’re active on Facebook and you can tell that they’re active on Facebook, one of the tips I’m going to give you is … Again, unfortunately you can’t put them into a list, but what you can do is you can set up your notifications so you actually see them first. So what you’re going to do is go to their Facebook profile and right near that little button that says friends, when you click on that, you can actually set up a notification that you will see their post first. Now you can only do this with really about 5 to 10 people. Facebook kind of limits how many people you can see first and honestly you don’t want to necessarily see everybody first in your feed because then your feed will be cluttered with a bunch of things that maybe you aren’t always interested in.
But let’s say for example, in your top 10 lists, if five of those people are really active on Facebook, go to Facebook, go to their page, put them in your notifications to see them first in your news feed. And what will happen is then when you’re on Facebook, when they have posted something, you will see them at the top of your feed. Now this doesn’t mean that you necessarily click like on everything. You don’t want to be that creepy person. Right, we all know people like this who all of a sudden you post something and they’re literally the first person that clicked like. So don’t do that right away. But as they post things, be intentional. This is a great opportunity for you to see in your news feed that you’re connected to them and that you can wish them a happy birthday or whatever it might be. Right? Okay, so that’s if they’re on Facebook. If they’re on Instagram, you can actually do the same thing, so you can go to their Instagram account and you can set up a notification that you will receive. You will receive a text notification when they post something to Instagram. Same rules apply. Don’t be creepy. Don’t be the first person to like something. But use those tools as a way to stay really engaged with people.
Now the reason why I share those two tips is because you don’t want to do this with all of your clients. I mean, imagine doing this with 100 clients. Your notifications would go crazy. So that’s why it’s really, really important to really hone into your top 10 clients. It might only be your top five past clients. And that’s fine. So who are your top five to 10 past clients, search them out on Facebook and Instagram, and set up those notifications.
You actually might want to put a little reminder in your calendar maybe six months from now to evaluate that top 10 list. And maybe in six months you might decide to add somebody else to that list or take someone off that list and you might change that up from time to time. So it’s a little bit of a work around, but it’s a small thing that can make a really big difference. And again, the whole reason here for doing this isn’t so much about you posting to Facebook or you posting to Instagram, it’s about you being really intentional about seeing the people that you want to keep in touch with and giving you a reason to connect, to engage, to share when appropriate. And as always I always say, hey, when there’s an opportunity, take the online offline. If you see it’s someone’s birthday and they’re in your top 10 list and you saw an Instagram notification, maybe that’s the time to shoot a quick video and send that to them in a text, or to pick up the phone and call them, or send them a birthday card. So those are a few things that can make a big, big difference.
The last tip I want to share that we see some agents doing is that they are taking their clients, especially if they’ve got a really big data base and putting their clients into a private VIP Facebook group. So this isn’t quite the same as a list, but we’ve seen a number of agents, especially in our #GetSocialSmart Academy who have pretty big data bases and they’ve created a private, secret group just for their clients. Now groups work a little bit differently than lists. Right? A group is more of a community or conversation. And so where we see this work really well is if you’ve got a private group for your VIP clients, this can be a place where you let them know about listings first, you let them know about local events first, you let them know about maybe some of your new videos, or resources first. We have some agents who’ve reached out to their community and they’ve set up discounts and special offers for local vendors in town and they share that with their VIP list inside their group.
So those are just a few simple things that can make a little bit of a difference. I’m still sad about Facebook lists. But Mark Zuckerberg, he didn’t call me, he didn’t ask me.
I would love to hear from you. What do you think? Do you have any additional tips that you’d like to share in terms of getting really intentional when it comes to connecting with past clients or current clients? Post those in the comments below.
