- Visibility starts with the right audience, not the right post.
- Context is key, and catering to your audience can be the difference between a successful post and one that goes unnoticed.
- Asking questions and looking for opinions is a great way to increase engagement.
Real estate agents always want to know how to get their Facebook posts seen.
In a nutshell, Facebook posts get seen by being valuable, relevant, inspirational, entertaining and staying contextual.
Test this theory by monitoring your weekly overall reach rather than your individual post reach, which means checking the combined total reach of every post published during any given week.
Keep in mind that, no matter what you do, Facebook is only going to show your posts to three percent of your page likes, at most; that percentage is actually less for most agents since they tend to utilize push marketing, which doesn’t work.
It’s important to remember that, while getting your Facebook posts seen is important, your ultimate goal is to drive people to your website. You want to use Facebook as a way to grow and nurture relationships between you and your target audience so that they eventually see the value you add to their lives.
Following these five tips will not only get your Facebook posts seen, but they’ll show you how to grow an engaged audience.
1. Targeted page likes
Avoid having your paged liked by all your friends, family and real estate colleagues.
These people are not your target audience, nor are they the kind of people who will actively engage in your posts. At the end of the day, Facebook won’t even show your posts to them, which means you have no audience.
Get out of your comfort zone and reach out to interested strangers on Facebook, because — guess what — your three aunts, five cousins and seven friends from high school are probably not going to help your real estate business take off.
Another important thing to remember is that social media users find joy in discovering new things — the excitement literally activates dopamine receptors — so, let people find you.
Running targeted page like ads will help with this.
2. Be relevant and contextual
Your audience needs to want to read what you have to say, so stay current.
Find out what your target audience is interested in. They might not want to read about national housing statistics or comparisons between you and other real estate agents.
Avoid sales pitches and posting about listings or open houses.
Readers want to laugh, feel good and be inspired; people visiting your page want solutions, answers, honesty, authenticity and transparency.
Most residential home buyers are interested in posts related to the following:
- Remodels
- Home tours
- DIYs that increase home value
- Seeing how other people live
- Local information that impacts their home
Giving those content ideas a try will surely generate interest.
3. Post frequently and consistently
Once a week isn’t enough; once a day isn’t enough either.
If you want to establish yourself as a relevant contributor in the Facebook community, you need to post every four hours or so.
You can use a social media scheduling tool — like Meet Edgar — to keep you consistent even when you’re insanely busy.
Remember that content goes stale very quickly on Facebook, and Facebook only pushes your most recent posts out to users.
If you ever feel like you’re posting to much, think about this: I recently learned that a known real estate social media monitoring vendor was telling agents that posting more than three times per week would get them flagged as spam by Facebook. This has never been true, yet people believed it.
That is a perfect example of why you need to take control of your business by knowing how to use Facebook to your advantage.
It is the best online lead generation source available to you today.
4. Be inviting
Simply posting links isn’t always enough to create engagement.
Say something about the link, share your thoughts and ask for opinions. Some people love a chance to discuss their thoughts, but they need to be asked.
Also, don’t forget to answer back; you wouldn’t believe how many agents ignore comments. Not answering an engaged page visitor is not only rude, but it’s bad for business, too.
Facebook is just another way for customers to reach you — like a phone call, a walk-in or an email — and you should always be ready with a polite response or a knowledgeable answer.
5. Be aware of which posts lead to increased engagement
If a post is getting extra attention, boost it out to your target audience (excluding your page likes) via Power Editor.
While this helps your overall reach, you shouldn’t boost everything. Instead, wait about 48 hours to see what people have reacted to. Note the kind of engagement your post had rather than how much reach it had.
A good idea would be boost one post with high engagement each week.
Check out this episode of the #RIBBET show to learn more.
Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert, and close Facebook leads.
