Facebook business page changes to drive more meaningful connections
You may have seen the recent announcement of changes coming down the pike for Facebook. If you operate a business page on Facebook, you need to take a look at this video.
Basically Facebook is giving ZERO weight to business pages that are just spitting out announcements. In essence, you must have engaging content to achieve any rankings and appear on your followers’ newsfeed.
As REALTORS®, we’ve got to stop just making announcements about new listings, price reductions, and even open houses. Forget the fact that most people do not care about those things anymore than they do how many cavities my dentist, Dr Koonce, filled or how many hind ends my gastroenterologist has been in. What people would care more about is seeing Dr. Koonce bringing her new baby in to the office with her while she does some work on a patient. That would create some conversation!
For real estate topics, people are only interested for the hot minute they’re in the market, and beyond that, it’s probably only about the design or how it impacts the value of their home that interests them. We’ve got to do a better job of not just regurgitating content from a magazine or a curbside photo of a new listing. People usually aren’t responding to them, and now Facebook is eliminating that kind of content from our newsfeeds. Hallelujah!
People go to Facebook to have conversations and see things from people they care about. If you have business page, either create content that fosters relationships or stop altogether. Going forward, your audience will have to select “See First” or else your lame announcement content will basically fade away.
Facebook Groups are the new business page. Those members are a captive audience. But do they ALWAYS want to hear your updates? Again, give them what THEY want to see, not what YOU think they want. A wise real estate instructor once said, “To attract a mouse, you need to bait with cheese, not cat food.”
Facebook Live is getting a big boost. People stop in their tracks to watch video, and particularly live feeds. Again, it’s imperative that you interact with your audience. When someone logs on, acknowledge them, engage them with dialogue.
Before posting anything on your business page, ask yourself, “Will the post be thoughtful, conversational or relational?” If not, don’t post it.
As we see this shift to see Facebook as a relationship platform, businesses have a renewed opportunity to make real connections with their audience. Facebook is no longer a content publication platform.
Good luck and start creating better content out there!
