Create A Facebook Page for Your Listing
Facebook is one of the most popular places online, so it’s the place to be if you want to be in front of people. Of the many ways to use Facebook for advertising your business and your listings, creating a Facebook Page for your listing is a way to stand out with your sellers. It shows your sellers just one of the ways that you are working to get their home sold.
Because this is a Business Page, we can run ads for the listing, create events (like an open house), do Facebook live, and more. When we have multiple business pages, we can cross-promote from other pages, and we can promote our own Business Page from the listing page.
How-To
Click “Create A Page” – Choose “Local Business or Place” fill in the address – Make the name either the address, or, you may want to use a descriptive title, like “Beautiful Lake-Front Living” – Real Estate Category – Then follow the rest of the steps – Add to favorites just to make it easily accessible from your left sidebar – Choose preferred audience, usually you’ll optimize geographically, but you may want to choose demographically for a different strategy. Add rich descriptions, video, virtual tour, website or squeeze page link. You can change any of these things any time.
When you finish creating the Page, add a cover photo and a profile photo. Consider your state real estate laws when you decide what to do for the photos. You can make a great image for both the cover photo and the profile photo on Canva.com. Use the correct template for a Facebook Page cover photo so you get the optimal size. You can add your logo, make a collage, or get creative in any number of ways. You should add the equal housing logo, as well.
About Images: In today's fast-paced internet world, images are of utmost importance. Make sure your photos of the home are of professional quality. Take the time to choose images for your marketing that are captivating and that stand out. Pay attention that your images tell a story as much as your verbiage.
Add a photo album with as many photos as you have of the home, with descriptors on each photo. Because most people are looking for photos first, you can “pin” the photo album to the top of the page.
Add a Button. This is the main call to action. Shop Now, Learn More…whatever you think is a good call to action. Create a squeeze page and use the link here. Or link to your listing page.
Extra Value
Remember, if you’re taking the time to set up a page, make sure you add as much content as possible to make it a rich page. Today’s buyers are looking for a lifestyle as much as a house. You can search for articles about the neighborhood and community and add them in the posts on the page. Look for anything that people would like to know about living in that neighborhood or community. Some examples:
- 10 Best Restaurants in X Community, (Yelp, Tripadvisor, Zagat, local magazines)
- Best Parks in X
- The Best Hidden Gems in X
- Things to do in X Community
- Articles about Schools
If you think of something unique about the community but can’t find any articles, that’s a great opportunity to write a blog post about it and drive traffic to your blog. Add your own photos of the neighborhood and community to your blog post, making sure a great photo is the lead photo when you post the link to the listing page.
Invite friends to “like” this page. Share it in a Facebook Group you belong to. Encourage your homeowner to invite people to like the page and share in a Facebook group. Create listing pages and “train” your sellers to share them instead of the typical Zillow ad, or whatever they are used to using. Why should the big syndicators get all the looks and shares?!
Bonus Tips
When you create an open house event, encourage visitors to “check in” to the event and reward them with a drawing for a gift card. When people check in to the event, their Facebook friends see it. It’s also a great way to collect more contact information. Visitors to an open house have in essence raised their hand to say, “I’m interested in buying a house.”
Cross-promote the page, the open house event, and any post from this listing page from your own Business Page. Share any of the individual posts from the listing page. This is a good and subtle way to promote the page. More people are probably interested in articles like “the best restaurants in X” than they are in the actual listing. The post you share will show that it is from your page, and some people will go to see what the page is all about.
Remember, anyone who notices can be a future homebuyer or homeseller. We’re always marketing OURSELVES.
After the Home Sells
You can do several things after the home is sold, but you want to make sure that you signify that it is sold, and that you don’t violate the new owner’s wishes. You can mark it as SOLD, you can unpublish it, or you can change the title to something like “Single-Family Home in X Neighborhood”. I prefer the last option because it stays on Facebook, showing our team as the neighborhood experts.
Bonus: I also leave all our YouTube videos up, but take out the address and put similar terms as above ^^ in the title. I add them to a neighborhood or community Playlist too. It all keeps building a library of content that shows our team as the neighborhood real estate experts!