In this episode, I’m going to share some of my biggest Facebook do’s and don’ts for real estate agents 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 and it is episode 222 of the Get Social Smart show. And today I’m going to share with you some of my biggest do’s and don’ts when it comes to Facebook in 2021.
Number one, be intentional. You’ve got to be intentional. When it comes to your Facebook strategy, I would say without a strategy, you’re just throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. So you’ve got to have a plan. I’m a big believer in time-blocking. Time block, at least five or 10 minutes a day to engage with people and interact and time block 30 to 60 minutes once a week, where you’re going to plan, create maybe even post and schedule some content, but get yourself into a plan. Be intentional.
My next do, number two is you show up daily. You’ve got to show up daily. So if the only time you’re on Facebook is when you have a listing, or an open house, not a whole lot of people are going to pay attention. So you don’t have to be on Facebook 24-7, but show up daily or at least a few times a week. Consistency makes a really, really big difference.
My next do, number three is have a plan. So we talked about time blocking, but you also want to have a plan. So what I encourage you to do is think ahead, right? What do you have coming up? Do you have a listing? Do you have an open house? Maybe you’re new to real estate and you are trying to figure out what type of content to post. Maybe there’s some holidays coming up.
As you look at the calendar. I like to look at the calendar at least three months out and just kind of get a sense of what’s coming out. Then I can get a sense of what type of content I want to schedule, plan or create. And if you’ve watched my other videos, you know that the best type of content to post on Facebook in 2021 is original content content. That’s in your voice, that has your opinion, that has your personality. And the only way that’s going to happen is if you make a plan for it to happen for us, we batch create a lot of our video content, because I know if I’m going to sit down and do my hair and makeup and record one video, I might as well sit down and record like four or five. So get yourself into a schedule. Start to brainstorm the questions that you get asked time and time and time again, and start to think about putting together a plan to creating that unique content each and every week.
All right, let’s get into the don’ts. My first don’t is don’t outsource. I know this is really tempting. I know sometimes when we hear it, when we hear myself, you hear others talk about social media. You think, gosh, I just wish I could have someone do it all for me, it’s really, really tempting. And in other areas of your business, there might be other areas that you outsource or hand off to someone else, but think of social media, especially Facebook as the ultimate dinner party. Imagine having a dinner party with your 10 most important clients. But instead of you being there, you have some marketing company representing you, right? We would never do that, but that’s what happens when we hand off our social media to somebody else.
Now that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of help. Maybe you have an assistant who helps with some of your scheduling or a little bit of your content creation, or maybe you’ve got a great editor who helps with some of your video editing or podcast editing. But don’t forget social media is social. And the content piece of it is important, but equally, especially since real estate is all about relationships is that power of showing up each and every day, at least on a consistent basis.
My next don’t is don’t automate. So not only do you not want to outsource, but you don’t want to push a button and just automate everything. I see this happen quite a lot, where I go on Facebook and I can just tell it’s like, the lights are on, but nobody’s home. Right? And that’s what happens when we automate our content. A lot of times I see agents and brokers sign up for these like automated content feeds, which sounds great in theory. But the problem is a lot of that content is generic. It’s like the same kind of content I see everywhere. And honestly, a lot of times I go to an agent or broker’s Facebook page and it doesn’t matter where they live. If they’re in the United States or the UK or anywhere. A lot of times I see the exact same things. I see listings open houses, links to articles, links to HGTV articles or Inman. And that’s all relevant, but it’s not necessarily personal content. Right? And so that’s where it goes. That’s where the value of putting out your personal content, your personal voice is so important. So we can’t automate that. We don’t want to outsource that.
My last don’t is don’t spam. Nobody wants to be spammed, right? Nobody likes to be sold something, but we all like to buy, right? So Facebook is not the place to jump on your personal profile and say, Hey, I’ve got a new listing, I’ve got a new open house. Look at me. I’m number one, I closed three more deals. It just feels a little spammy right now. We can certainly, uh, brag a little bit. You know, if you’ve got a great client, you just worked with, maybe take a picture of them, or a video with their permission and highlight them and say something like, gosh, I’m so happy for this family. I can’t wait to see what’s next for them. Right? When we can shine the light on others, maybe we shine the light on our clients. When we shine the light on others in our community, we can talk a lot about what we do and bring value without saying, Hey, look at me, right?
So we want to be careful. We don’t want to spam, but this is one of the reasons why we’re a big believer in creating that unique and original content, that content that’s going to serve people. That’s going to be educational and informative. It’s one of the best ways to build that know, like and trust factor and relate-ability factor.
So those are a few big do’s and don’ts. I would love to hear from you. What questions do you have 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 on Facebook and my social media strategy in general, I would love if you would download our free content grid, go to KatieLance.com/content grid. It’s all updated for 2021. So get that, get that downloaded, print that out. That’s going to be a huge help. And if you’re watching this over on YouTube and you enjoy our videos, make sure please hit the subscribe button and the bell button because we have new videos that come out each and every week. All right, guys. Thanks so much. I’ll see you on Facebook. Bye for now.
