Tag Archives: engagement

The Massive Facebook Changes and How They Impact Real Estate Agents

January 13, 2018 by Digital Marketing

The changes from Facebook continue to come thick and fast – but if you’ve been paying attention, they shouldn’t really be surprising.

Facebook’s goal from the outset has been to connect individuals and communities and while businesses have been able to hijack the Facebook algorithm to enhance their own marketing in an organic fashion, those days are fast coming to an end.

The latest changes to the Facebook algorithm are going to mean that businesses will need to pay to play to really see any sort of profitable results.

These changes come in response to “….feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.” As stated by Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post on January 12th 2018

As a result Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm is going to prioritize content that comes from your friends, family and communities and will limit the public (aka business, brand and media) content filling up your feed.

So what does this mean for real estate agents who’ve begun to use Facebook to reach their market with greater frequency and engagement than ever before?

It means we’re all going to have to pay to play to get decent results and reach – but that should come as no surprise, it’s been on the cards for a very long time and we all knew (or at least should have known) the honeymoon wouldn’t last.

But there will be princes and paupers when it comes to paying to play as well.

Those who are still producing ads and content that are all about them, that are focused on self serving goals rather than connecting with the community and creating authentic connections with their market are going to lose out. Facebook’s relevance algorithm will limit your reach even when you’re paying for it.

So what does this all come back to? Authenticity – being a real human being, even on your business page and in your ads, in your content.

Remember, it’s the number 1 rule of advertising on Facebook……

 

 

Make sure you’re creating content that encourages community and connection.

Facebook Lives are a wonderful way to do this as when you’re doing live video, you’re authentic, warts and all and you’ll also get a helping hand from Facebook as Live receives a bit of a boost to help reach more of your audience and engage them.

It’s now more important than ever to be a real human being on Facebook – not only will it increase your reach, by being human, you’ll create connection and engagement, create community and in so doing you’ll increase your results and your return on investment.

It’s time to be real.

Likes! Oh Vanity be thy name!

May 16, 2017 by Digital Marketing

Okay okay, so waxing lyrical is probably not going to endear me to too many people. Most of us hated Shakespeare in high school and those of us that didn’t are probably rolling their eyes!

The only defense I have is that I’m a father and as such, bad puns, dad-jokes and misappropriated 500 year old references are my birthright! (See what I did there?)

But lets get into the nitty gritty, LIKES! Everybody likes them (sorry, that wasn’t intentional), but the biggest problem is that they actually don’t do anything in a business sense – at least not in the way most people are using them.

They’re what most marketers call a vanity metric – it looks good, but it really doesn’t mean much in terms of sales and profit. Lets face it, if we’re spending money, or time on Facebook in business, then we MUST see a return on that investment.

Adding insult to injury is that in order to get your content seen by as many people as possible, you’ve actually got to spend money to do it these days. (Have you ever noticed how your content only gets seen organically by 15-20% of the people who’ve liked your page?)

To get it seen by everyone, you’ve got to boost the post and shell out some coin and in return you get likes, shares and comments on your post……but no sales, no profit.

Its frustrating isn’t it?

The reason behind this is that a boosted post is designed to reach an “Engagement Audience” – this is an audience that has been optimized by Facebook to be full of people who are most likely to Like, Comment and Share your content……..not necessarily take action that leads to sales or profit.

This is one of the most common frustrations I see day to day working with clients, they are boosting posts but aren’t getting sales and its because they don’t understand this key audience optimization by Facebook.

There is a solution however, but first it requires a shift in your strategic thinking. The likes, comments, shares aren’t the end goal, sales are – getting the engagement is just the first step along the road to getting the sales and building an audience that loves your product or service.

Facebook has provided us with one of the greatest marketing tools in history (fair warning, I say that A LOT and I mean it every single time).

We’ve all heard the cliche` “Actions speak louder than words” – on Facebook, actions are everything. By liking, commenting or sharing your post a person has taken an action that identifies them as an interested party – a potential customer for you.

This is a wonderful thing – it definitely beats mass marketing efforts to everybody and spending a ridiculous amount of money. Using that boost you’ve just had a whole bunch of people identify themselves as a potential client because of the way they interacted with your content!

That’s huge!

What is even bigger, is that through your ads manager, Facebook allows you to create a custom audience based off these actions so that you can then specifically target these potential clients with your ads.

So the boosted post that got likes, comments and shares but was ultimately frustrating because it didn’t generate sales – just became a vital asset in your marketing matrix. Its the first step in any good Facebook marketing funnel – it allows your potential clients, the people most interested in what you do or sell, to put their hand up and say “Hey! I’m interested!”

Now all you have to do, is put together an amazing offer and get it in front of them!

 

If you’d like to learn how to get more likes and turn your likes into profit, join John Hellaby on Friday night at 7.30pm AEST for a FREE webinar! Register at: http://webinar.fbmcharity.com.au/