How To Get Started On Facebook For Realtors (Step-By-Step)

In this post, I’m going to show you WHY and HOW to build one of the biggest assets (in my opinion) to any real estate business today: a Facebook business page for real estate agents.

The world we live in today is built around community and social proof. And with over 2 billion active users daily, Facebook is the King of the community at this time.

Not only is Facebook a great connector of people, but it also has some pretty amazing tools. Facebook gives these tools to business owners to help gather insight about not only their business but that of their colleagues, and competitors.

When used properly, these tools and insights are the difference makers. Do you want to build a scalable, predictable business that will be around tomorrow? Or do you want to constantly chase business, uncertain how you are going to find that next closing?

If you would rather watch or listen to this content, check out the video or podcast below!

My Facebook Real Estate Business Page

But just so you know how powerful this strategy is here is my Facebook business page. This is what we’ve done over the last year with consistent posting. We started April of 2017 with 1601 Page likes and have increased that to over 3417 today. That has brought much more activity (private messages, comments, post likes, etc., which means more LEADS)! Since implementing consistent posting, we are getting around 5-10 new page likes EVERY day.

Why Create a Facebook Real Estate Business Page

A Sustainable Business

Most agents have different levels of success in real estate but struggle with consistency and growth.  It’s easy to get a real estate license but hard to figure out how you are going to consistently and continually get customers.  Especially after you’ve blasted the news to all your friends and family.

And if you’re here on my blog, then I’m pretty sure you want to develop a sustainable business.  One that grows and ultimately becomes easier over time vs. “grinding it out” year over year.

Today, I’m going to show you four reasons a Facebook business page for real estate agents is imperative. Then, I’ll give you the five steps on How To Create a Facebook business page of your own.

Facebook Insights

With Facebook Insights you can see things like how your Facebook business page is doing month over month for different categories like “Reach” (how many eyeballs are seeing your posts) and “Engagements” (how many people are doing something with your post. Liking, commenting, clicking links, watching videos, etc).

Facebook Ads

One of the best features of a Facebook business page for real estate agents is the ability to run advertisements. For as little as a $1/day, you can start reaching your targeted Sphere of Influence list (my first ad recommendation for new and seasoned agents looking to start running real estate Facebook ads). Further training to be provided on this so stay tuned.

Reviews (Social Proof)

When we started really focusing on increasing our 5-star reviews our jobs became much easier. The majority of people will look you up online and having a bunch of positive reviews builds trust without you having to sell the client on anything.

Spy on Your Competition

Another amazing benefit of a Facebook real estate business page is that you can spy on your competition and get new content ideas. See what’s working for your competitors and recreate it for your business.

After clicking on “Insights”, scroll to the bottom of the page until you see “Pages to Watch”. Select “Add Pages” and type in the name of the page you’d like to monitor.

Choose a few to add so you can see how many total likes they have, how many posts they’ve made this week, what their engagement looks like, and what percentage increase (or decrease) they are having for the last week.

Also, when you click their name Facebook will pop up a box that shows that pages TOP posts for the week and what engagement they received from it. This will guide you to show you which types of posts are most effective and so you can post similar content.

Keep Business And Personal Separate

You want to keep a theme going for each page. Keep personal items on your personal profile and business information on your business page. It’s OK to share posts between the two every so often 1 out of 10, in my opinion, but don’t overdo it!

How To Create a Facebook Real Estate Business Page

Let’s dive right in so we can get your Facebook business page up and running. Follow these five easy steps and you’ll be ready to start posting today!

Step 1: Choose a Classification

If you are a real estate agent, I would recommend you create a Facebook business page with your name (Ex. Kyle Handy). Personal branding will ALWAYS be important, even if/when you build a team/brokerage/etc….).

Think of your activity on Facebook, do you normally follow more people or more businesses? Most people are inclined to like PEOPLE’S pages. Research shows its a 4-to-1 ratio of people that would like a Facebook page with a person’s name on it than that of a business name. Real Estate is a service business, so this is even more true for us.

When building your FIRST brand, I recommend you brand yourself. Choose “Public Figure” to do this. If you wish to brand a business/brokerage/team/etc… you would choose “Local Business”.

Once you’ve mastered a Facebook business page for real estate agents, you can create a second page for your team or brokerage.

Step 2: Complete Basic Information

Facebook will automatically walk you through the following four basic sections to complete the fundamental components of your Facebook business page.

Finish “About” Section

The “About” section will serve as your main 2-3 sentence description for you or your business. Make it descriptive but to the point. Add something that makes you different than your competition. Be sure to include a link to your website where they can learn more about you or your business.

Upload Profile Picture

This will serve as the main visual icon of a Facebook business page for real estate agents. It will appear in search results and when you comment. For personal branding, I use a headshot. The recommended size is 180 x 180 pixels.

Add to “Shortcuts”

Every Facebook user has a vertical navigation bar on the left side of their News Feed. You can click “edit” and add your new Facebook business page here for quick access. Similar to bookmarking a website.

Reach More People

Facebook will automatically ask if you want to start reaching more people by creating ads. I would hold off all ads at this point and start by inviting the people you know first. You wouldn’t have any compelling content on your page at this point for ads to be very effective.

Step 3: Understand the Admin Panel

About Section on Left Hand Column

• Address
  • Simply put your City & State. No need for full address unless you have an office address you meet clients at regularly.
• Username
  • Create a username related to your name and/or brand.
• Add Website URL
  • Add your real estate related website URL.
• Create your “Story”
  • Allows you to add photo and backstory about yourself. Include accomplishments, your philosophy, and why you got into the business.

“Settings” at Top Right

• General
  • Review all the choices to make sure they align with your preferences. BE SURE TO VERIFY YOUR PAGE.
• Post Attribution
  • If you’ll be doing your own social media, set to Post as your name. Again, people like doing business with other people. If you have someone managing your social media, keep as “Post as Your Page”.
• Notifications
  • In the beginning, I kept all notifications on. As my Facebook business page grew, I started to only receive notifications for important updates, like comments, reviews, & mentions.
• Page Roles
  • If you have anyone that is going to help post and manage your new page, add them as an admin or editor here.

Step 4: Create and Curate Content

This is the last step before going PUBLIC with your new Facebook business page. Here is the basic content you should post to get your page rocking!

Cover Photo

This is the large, horizontal image that spans the top of your Facebook Page. The dimensions for this image are 851 x 315 pixels. I use Canva.com to create my Facebook cover photos. They have the correct sizing and templates already available for free.

Posts

I’ll rank posts in order of importance to your page and how Facebook chooses to display them to your audience.

1. Video (when you have an audience, LIVE videos work best)
2. Photo with Caption
3. Link with Caption
4. Event
5. Plain Text Status
6. Location Check-in

The best first post you can do is a welcome video. Thank your audience for visiting and invite them to like your page.  Most of all, inform them of what type of content they can expect to see and why they should like it.

There will be more training on keeping up with content but understand that this isn’t a set it and forget it strategy. You need to consistently post useful (mix informative with fun) content regularly. At a minimum weekly, but daily (or close to daily) is better.

Step 5: Build Your Audience

Now that we have content and your information is filled out, we can start to strategically invite users your page. I recommend you send invites in the following order:

The friends you have already on your personal Facebook profile

On your Facebook business page, click the 3 dots next to “Share” and select “Invite Friends”. Check the friends you want to send invites to. I also check the box to send the invite to Messenger. Be sure to modify the message at the top. You can send 50 invites out WITH a private message at a time. Any more than that and it will only send them a notification to like your page.

Groups

On your Facebook business page, click “Share” and select “Share in a Group”. Share your new page to groups that you frequent regularly and that may already know you.

Customers

On your Facebook business page, click “Share in a Private Message” and type the name of one of your customers or anyone that you may not already be friends with on Facebook. Facebook will find that person and you can send them a private message on why they should like your page.

Once you start to increase your page’s growth, you can monitor vital stats like “Page Likes”, “Post Reach”, and “Overall Engagement”.

Click on “Insights” at the top of your page to see your “Page Summary” which will show you the key stats at a glance for the last 7 days (or last 28 if you change the dropdown up top).

Also, you can select any particular sub-category on the left of the screen to get a more in-depth analysis of any of your key stats.

Next Steps

I hope you now see why a Facebook business page is extremely important in today’s environment.  Yes, it takes work to create and keep up with it.  However, the benefits of staying CONSISTENT with posting and engaging will repay itself multiple times over.  Not only that but unlocking the insights available to you through a Facebook business page will allow you to reach and interact with more of your target audience.

So here is your homework.

• Share this post on Facebook.
• Also, create your brand new Facebook business page and invite my page, Kyle Handy, to like it.
• Finally, go check out my post about Facebook real estate leads and how it will help you connect with more buyers and sellers FAST.
• Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions. Also, let me know if you have any tips your using for your Facebook real estate business page that I left off.