Build your Facebook audience: 3 strategies for real estate agents
When it comes to social media, Facebook continues to be the biggest show in town. It’s a great place to build your brand, get the word out about your listings, and connect with other businesses.
But in order for you to see a return on your investment of time and energy, you probably need to extend your reach beyond your immediate family and friends (though it is nice that your Mom “likes” all of your posts).
You need leads. You need more exposure on your listings. You need introductions to new clients. You need brand ambassadors.
In short, you need an audience.
And building an audience on Facebook really isn’t that complicated, but it does require three basic things: perseverance, consistency, and intentionality.
Perseverance
Be careful not to confuse simple with easy. Everyone would have a huge organic audience on Facebook if this were a 15 minute task. As with a lot of things in life, you get out of your investment what you put in.
You’re going to need to be in this for the long haul, so don’t give up when your follower count doesn’t seem to be moving for a while.
You may gain lots of exposure one week, lose folks the next, then recover two weeks later. That’s the nature of social media.
There’s no silver bullet strategy, no one thing that will instantly make you successful. But there are actionable, tangible things you can do to build your audience (we’ll get to that later).
So persevere, keep at it, make adjustments.
Consistency
Would you shop at a store that stocked only one kind of shirt? No pants, no suits, no blouses,… just that one shirt. And they get one of those shirts in every two weeks? Would you keep going to that store? Would you recommend it to other people? Of course not.
Think about your Facebook Page the same way. Provide value to your followers consistently.
Post quality content on a regular basis, and try to vary the kinds of content you post. Try cycling through photo posts, links posts, and videos to match your audience’s interests. These audience-building tactics help draw people to your brand and listings, and they’ll be more likely to mention you to friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
A good way to post content consistently is to automate some of your posts to Facebook. Try using Paradym to automatically post your latest property stories (this should also help free you up to respond to comments and follow up with leads on Facebook).
Intentionality
Here are a few practical things any agent or broker can do to build an audience.
Do this today:
1. First things first. Set up a Facebook Page to showcase your business on Facebook. This opens up advertising opportunities, as well as providing you with data on how many views your Page is getting, new follower information, and engagement stats. To learn more, check out our blog, “7 reasons real estate agents should use a Facebook business Page”.
2. Suggest your Page to your existing contacts. Use the “Suggest Page to Email Contacts” feature on your Page to upload your email contacts to Facebook.
3. Review all of your business cards, and invite those people to like your Page, too.
4. Try your hand at advertising! “Promote your Page” with a paid ad campaign to generate Page likes and build brand awareness.
Start doing this consistently:
1. Regularly review your posts for any comments, likes, or shares. Communicate with the people who are engaging with your content.
2. If you’re not getting a lot of interaction with your posts, speak up! Find friends, comment on their posts, and find positive ways to join their conversations.
3. Become the “digital mayor” of your town, the online, go-to, local information source for prospective home buyers and sellers. And use your Facebook Page as your communication hub.
Build today
Stick with it, be consistent, and be intentional.
Remember, there’s no silver bullet solution for building your audience. But you need to build an audience, so don’t wait to get started.
Pick one or two things from the lists above to put into practice, and reach out to us on Facebook to let us know how it’s going!
