Social media is a great way to keep in contact with your community, but you need to make sure that your Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts are representing you in the best possible light, that they are current and you are using them – they’re pointless if your last post was in August 2015.
So, if you have a bit of time on your hands during the coronavirus-induced slowdown, this installment in my COVID Recovery Series: Five Activities to Focus On will take you through social media to help make sure you’re presenting the right image to the world.
1. Check out your personal page. Tidy up all the details. Check your photos and make sure they’re attracting, not detracting from, your brand. Edit your bio, your mantra, and make sure you have some type of mission or purpose on there. Edit your history and make sure you only put things up that you are proud of.
Facebook is the new Google and people use both to check you out before you come into their home. They will form opinions based on what they see, so it’s really important that you tidy this up.
2. Check your business page for the same material – bio, photos, mission etc. Make sure all your friends are invited to your business page. While many of them might not be able to support you in your business, for example, they live in another state or country, or don’t know of any properties for sale at the moment, they will add to your likes, comments and shares, which is going to make your posts reach a lot further and they may be able to refer you to someone from their community.
3. Work on your reviews on your business page. Make sure you get your clients to give you a review. I actually do this when I’m with my clients: I say will you do me a favour before I leave? Step by step I go onto my Facebook business page and the reviews sections and I show them exactly how to leave a review. I step away from the table and let them write one. That’s the only way I get reviews, because if I didn’t do that, I just wouldn’t get them – mainly because people don’t get around to it.
If you’re struggling to get reviews, or you just need to get some up and running, ask your family, friends and people you know, such as colleagues, to write a character reference on your reviews. It doesn’t have to be about your business or about you having done anything for them, it can be them just saying what a great person you are and how you’re trustworthy and ethical, and how much they appreciate you. That’s going to be a tremendous benefit.
Continually work on your reviews. This is one of the things that people don’t think about and never get done and this slowdown gives you a prime opportunity to do it.
4. Schedule posts. Facebook is just like your CRM and can be used to schedule posts well in advance. This does take a bit of time and effort, but time is what we have at the moment. So, sit down and schedule the rest of the year’s posts. Yes, you are still going to have to post ad hoc, but in the meantime, you can book:
- seasonal posts – Christmas messages, Easter, Mother’s Day, Australia Day, for example
- campaign posts
- blogs
- invitations
- vouchers
- testimonials
- listings
- solds
- editorials
- news
- helpful hints
- top tips
There’s a lot of things that can be researched and scheduled well in advance and it’s a job you won’t have to do later.
If it seems a bit daunting, break it down. Decide how many posts you want, then go from there. I recommend having at least one post per day. That means that if you scheduled three each week, on the days you don’t have any posts booked you can just post something personal – perhaps you’ve just grabbed a coffee from your favorite local place, you’ve taken the dog for a walk, or are admiring the view from a local park or home that you have open. Those things work really, really well and help keep you in the newsfeed.
5. Create a “like us” ad. You want to generate as many likes as you possibly can for your business page. Ideally the people you want to like your page are people who will potentially do business with you, so you want to target the ad and boost it in your patch/post code for people who you know like real estate or have property or mortgages or whatever criteria lead people to being home owners. Facebook can take you through the steps.
Keep the ad simple. All you say is, “would you like to receive top tips, helpful hints, news on real estate, editorials, blogs, updates on the area?” You could even include competitions and vouchers. It may be hard to believe, but you will get a lot of people liking your page because there’s no barrier to entry. It’s just a click and they like it and you have then built your database accordingly. It doesn’t cost much, you can do $10, $20 a week, whatever you can afford. We have one running, that hasn’t even been going for a year and we’ve got over 1000 likes on our Facebook page just from that “like” ad.
I’ve specifically looked at Facebook here, but you should also review any other social media/online platform where you have a profile. If you want to know more about using social media to build your profile and business, register for my upcoming FREE half-day Real Estate Brilliance webinar.
