Top 3 Questions New Realtors Have About Facebook

Today we the top 3 questions new realtors have about Facebook: 

• Is it better to run an ad or boost a post on Facebook?
• Is it better to post multiple times a day on regular basis or once a day at regular times?
• What are the pros and cons of having a personal and/or business page on Facebook and Instagram?

Christian: [00:00:11] Hola,and welcome to another episode. Today we are talking about the top threequestions new realtors have about Facebook. Do you say realtors or realtor?

Aaron: [00:00:27] Isay realtors.

Christian: [00:00:29] Realtors.So some of the things that we're going to be talking about are the differencebetween running an ad campaign or boosting a post. We're talking about is itbetter to post multiple times a day? And we're also talking about pros and consabout combining personal and regular business pages. A lot of these questionswe've actually gotten asked quite a lot, but today's a special episode becausewe have Melissa Williamson from Melissa Williamson Homes. You can find her onFacebook, and basically, we just asked her hey, what are some questions you orother realtors have about Facebook? And I think she gave us about six of them,and we sort of narrowed it down to the top three that we want to answer for youtoday.

Aaron: [00:01:20] Awesome.And I'm very excited. This is - just to be on all honesty and transparency - werecorded this episode already, but somehow we lost it on LogicPro. So this isround two. It's going to be way better.

Christian: [00:01:30] Whoawhoa whoa. You lost it on LogicPro.

Aaron: [00:01:33] Sowhat you guys just heard was that Christian lost it on-

Christian: [00:01:37] No,no, no, no.

Aaron: [00:01:38] Allright. So anyway, it's going to be twice as good as the first time we recordedthis. So you are in for a treat. Number one, is it better to run an ad or boosta post on Facebook? So does it help to boost a post like a house listing or isit better to run a general ad? And our answer - we'll kind of go back and forthwith this - is it really depends. For example, a boosted post is really goodfor the engagement. Like if you want an open house, it probably is the betteroption to just do a boosted post because you can just get more comments andshares and just want to reach the masses.

Christian: [00:02:13] Right.So it depends- Sorry to interrupt. It depends on your purpose.

Aaron: [00:02:17] Yes,the end goal.

Christian: [00:02:17] Sojust probably start with that, right?

Aaron: [00:02:19] Theend goal. Yes. So for an open house, you already have a house. You just want asmany people as possible to go there, and for something like hey, somebodyyou're selling a house, you probably need to find somebody like within acertain income. You need to find somebody who's actually interested in buyingor selling a house, and so something like gathering an email address or findingout more information or like a market report, I would do like an actual adcampaign for that because you want to target people who are specifically goingto be attracted to that.

Christian: [00:02:53] Yeah,exactly. So again, even going beyond just realtors on Facebook, to answer thatquestion for more of a general audience, like Aaron said, it depends, but itdepends on the purpose and the end goal of what you want to do. So again wewould recommend definitely running ad campaigns for more sophisticated ways totrack and-

Aaron: [00:03:20] What'sthe word you're going-

Christian: [00:03:27] Idon't know. My mind went blank, but to track and to move people through afunnel. If you want to add landing pages and all that stuff to that campaign,definitely go with that Facebook ad campaign. If you want to just create someengagement with a certain post or maybe a certain blog post or something likethat or a house listing, then just boosting a post is definitely the way to go.

Aaron: [00:03:47] Andas I was thinking about that, you kind of hit a keystroke there which is if youhave them doing more than one step, then it probably should be an ad campaign.If you have them doing one thing only, which for an open house is hey, see thisopen house. Go to this open house. A boosted post is probably a good idea forit.

Christian: [00:04:05] Yup.All right. So question number two here. Is it better to post multiple times aday on a regular basis or once a day at regular times?

Aaron: [00:04:18] Whatdo you got there? What do you think?

Christian: [00:04:21] Ithink we made this mistake at the very beginning to really pay attention tothis kind of stuff where you're looking at analytics and trying to figure outwhat day of the week is the best day to post or you should do it on a regularbasis on the exact same time every week and all that. To be honest, I don'tthink any of that stuff really matters. We can look at our insights right nowand see a pretty common thread which is there's a lot of other- For example,for us, other agencies that are posting 25, 30 times a week.

Aaron: [00:05:01] Insaneamount of times.

Christian: [00:05:03] Andthe amount of engagement they get could be - I don't know - like, you know, 30,40, and that's combined with, you know, likes and comments and shares. Whereaswe're posting about 5 to 7 times a week, and we're seen 100 to 200 engagementper week.

Aaron: [00:05:24] Yeah,I'm pulling it up live right now just to give you an idea. We've posted- Now itsays we've posted 57 times this week. That is not correct. We had 52 pictures.So we've posted 6 times this week, and we have 194 engagements this week. Andour next closest person is like 62, and they have people who have posted like18 to 20 times.

Christian: [00:05:47] Right.So again back to the original question, is it better to post multiple times aday on a regular basis or once a day regular times? To be honest, I would dopost- Try to post once a day at whatever time you want, but what I woulddefinitely spend more time and effort is in creating content that people aregoing to like and engage and comment and share with.

Aaron: [00:06:15] Yes

Christian: [00:06:15] Whichis the hardest thing.

Aaron: [00:06:16] Right.So the algorithm- A lot of people give the algorithm a bad rep, but what reallyhappens is it doesn't matter what time of day you post it. I mean, really don'tdo it like 5 am or don't do it like two o'clock in the morning, but everythingelse is fine. And if it's good content, Facebook's going to show that to youraudience, no matter what time it is. Sometimes you're probably scrollingthrough your feed, and you're like hey, this is a great post, and it looks likeit was posted yesterday.

Christian: [00:06:42] Right.

Aaron: [00:06:42] SoI don't know. Definitely look at your insights. That's what we made a mistakeon in the beginning. Look at your insights and make sure that you're actually-Make sure you're posting consistently. So whatever that may be.

Christian: [00:06:57] That'sreally low volume but-

Aaron: [00:07:00] Letme try one more time.

Christian: [00:07:03] Onemore time. There we go. I think that was a little bit better.

Aaron: [00:07:05] Yeah.So the volume wasn't all the way up. That was a fail. All right. So this is ourfavorite part of the podcast, other than the parts that you heard before andthe parts you'll hear after. This is one of our favorite. The whole podcast isthe best. Anyway, we just like to have fun with you guys, but this is a spotwhere you guys can find out more about what we do which is we are a digitalmarketing agency in Allen, Texas, just north of Dallas, and we want to tell youguys about websites. We talked about this before, and we know summertime iscoming. And you know what comes with summertime, and that is watermelon, ShinerBock, and website design. So as you're thinking, you're sitting in bed late atnight. You're playing around, scrolling on Instagram, and you're like why can Inot stop thinking about that stinking website? My website is not mobilefriendly. People go there. They're always complaining or my website has beendown. If those are questions or thoughts that you have, then you need to giveus a call. 214-238-9837 or hello@bitbranding.co. Give us a call. Let us buildyou a new website so that you can be happy and sleep well at night and thendrink those Shiner Bocks even more.

Christian: [00:08:18] Anddon't forget about eating the watermelon.

Aaron: [00:08:19] Yeah.I mean eat the watermelon, but you don't want to eat too much because the seedswill grow in your stomach. We learned that on Rugrats in the 90s.

Christian: [00:08:26] Verygood.

Aaron: [00:08:27] Allright. Well, give me one second because I accidentally close out of this thing,but here, let's close it out here.

Christian: [00:08:37] Allright. Well, that was a great ad.

Aaron: [00:08:39] Thankyou. I should be an ad-

Christian: [00:08:40] Person.

Aaron: [00:08:42] Yeah,I'll do that.

Christian: [00:08:44] Okay.All right. So back to our regularly scheduled programming. Question numberthree from Melissa Williamson, realtor here in Allen, Texas. Allen- Is shebased in Allen?

Aaron: [00:08:53] Ithink she's in The Colony, Frisco area. She is not in Allen, but she's in thearea. She serves Collin County and the Dallas area.

Christian: [00:09:02] Allright. So the third question we have here is what are the pros and cons ofcombining a personal page and business rather than keeping it completelyseparate and having a real estate business page on Instagram and Facebook?Let's see, she says, "For example, I have a lot of friends on personalpages, and I just started out in a business page." Okay, so sort of aloaded question, but basically you want to know if you should do a personalpage or business page on Facebook and Instagram, and what are the pros and consof either using a business or personal page?

Aaron: [00:09:40] Allright. So.

Christian: [00:09:41] Firstthought.

Aaron: [00:09:42] Yeah,so the first thought is that- Yeah, let's go through these. There are probablylike four steps here, but number one is that a personal page is important butit shouldn't be used for mostly business. Your personal page is such that foryour personal life. This is about your kids, your family, whatever you feelcomfortable sharing. It isn't for you to tell everyone about your open houseand that you have a new listing because I don't know about Christian, but Ihave a lot of friends who are realtors on Facebook, and I know that there'sprobably 50 open houses today because everybody posts that. And I havebanner-blindness. I just keeps scrolling through.

Christian: [00:10:18] Right.So I would say the first idea that we have here is yeah, you should have apersonal page, but don't post 90 percent of your content about your business.Once in a while that's fine to do, but you shouldn't have a personal Facebookor personal Instagram page to be posting about your business. That's why they,Instagram and Facebook, both have the ability to do business pages. Now ideanumber two here or point number two is that on a personal page, you will neverbe able to run advertising, boost post, see any type of analytics. So that'sprobably one of the biggest pros of using a business page is the ability to doall those things.

Aaron: [00:11:10] Yes.And I would say also with a business page, outside of the advertising, it'sjust an area where people are going to expect more about the business. So whenthey're going there, they like your page. That's when you can actually postabout the houses and people actually care or be interested in it. You should dothat all the time, but your friends and family would probably get a little bittired of it versus people who are saying hey, I'm actually interested in buyinga house in the next six months. Please show me as many as possible. I want tofind out about this and make a buying decision.

Christian: [00:11:42] Exactly.What else?

Aaron: [00:11:47] Soit says on Instagram and Facebook. I wanted to hit on Instagram page. Dependingon your- I think it's a lot harder for you to have a personal and business pagefor Instagram. You can if you want, but most realtors are single- Like they'rejust- Like they're not Christian and I where we don't have BitBranding, and weboth have our own personal. Most of them are just like Melissa Williamson. Sothe best thing for you to do there is there's no disadvantage to switch yourprofile into a business profile, and just get all those analytics and switchyour Instagram from what you have now. You'll keep all the same followers.Everything like that, and it will actually carry everything over. And you don'thave to start literally from the beginning, and that's what I would do for thebusiness page. So you can advertise on Instagram without having to create awhole new page and be confusing because other than the fact that your first andlast name are there, it just says that you're a realtor. So I mean, I thinkthat can get confusing.

Christian: [00:12:45] Yeah.So yeah, definitely. You don't have to have a personal and business onInstagram. Unless, I mean, unless you have like a really weird side hobby onyour personal life where you collect-

Aaron: [00:12:59] Goats.

Christian: [00:13:01] Imean, that's not weird, but I was going to say like a little pig ears orsomething.

Aaron: [00:13:05] Right.Or you take pictures at these really like controversial Gothic concerts orsomething like that.

Christian: [00:13:12] Yeah.I mean, yeah. I mean, it's still part of your personality, I would guess, youknow, if you're a realtor, but. Yeah, if it's something like that then I wouldtry to keep those separate, but I would definitely encourage to post somepersonal things on your business and humanize the brand because I mean, as arealtor you're literally a person. You're not really a- For us, we'reBitBranding, and so we're constantly trying to to humanize our brand andshowcase ourselves and our faces basically whenever we can.

Aaron: [00:13:46] Onelast thing, if you do- A lot of people confuse this, and I've seen it a lot isthey create a Facebook business page, but all it is is another personal pagethat they add friends to, and that is what they're using as their businesspage. So Christian's like Christian Realtor Homes or whatever, but it's aFacebook personal page, and he just named it the business page. You should notdo that. I think we have a YouTube video on how to create it for a businesspage. Christian looks confused over there, but I've seen a lot of businessesnot create a business page. They just create another personal page and addfriends instead of having people like their page.

Christian: [00:14:27] Soyou're saying that they're creating a profile. You're using the word page onboth.

Aaron: [00:14:33] Okay.So yes, it's a personal profile.

Christian: [00:14:35] Sothey're creating another personal profile and then calling it ChristianRealtor.

Aaron: [00:14:40] Yes.No business page.

Christian: [00:14:40] Okay.Yeah. You need to create a Facebook business page. Yeah. Got it.

Aaron: [00:14:47] Allright. I think that's it for this episode. Any bonuses?

Christian: [00:14:50] No,no bonuses. But yeah, thank you again to Melissa Williamson for coming up withthese questions for us. I think this is something that we'll probably do moreoften in the future because it's easier for us to come up with the content andjust answer your questions, and that way they're still targeted for differentindustries which is what we want to do with this podcast. Again thank you forlistening. If you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoy this format answering afew questions, then let us know on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or send usan e-mail at hello@bitbranding.co.

Aaron: [00:15:27] Allright. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode and share this withyour friend who's a realtor. We know you have a few of them.

Christian: [00:15:36] Yep.