Digitally advertising on Facebook requires a Facebook business page.
If you don’t already have a Facebook business page set up, the idea of building one may seem intimidating. It’s actually pretty easy! I’ll show you how to set one up in the listed below.
If you have already set up your Facebook business page, this is a great opportunity to do a quick review of the page’s settings and make sure it’s optimized to be found by your target market.
What do I Need to Set-up my Facebook Business Page?
The step-by-step process is below, but let’s start with what information to have on hand to make the process of setting up your Facebook business page go smoothly.
1. A name for your page. The name you choose could be your business name, or any name or keywords that people would use to search for your real estate business. If you just use your first name and last name, consider including the words Realtor or Real Estate Agent, and the city or area you serve.
2. A blurb about your business (meaning: you). This will appear on the “About” tab of your Page. Keep this description to two or three very brief paragraphs is best.
Psst… this blog post is available as a printable PDF!
DOWNLOAD: STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTION PDFThe Ultimate Guide to Your OptimizedRealtor Facebook Business Page
3. Your headshot, for the profile photo. A professional headshot would be ideal, like the photo used on your business card or your marketing material,.as this provides brand recognition. This will crop to a square, so if you have a few to choose from, pick one that will lend itself to being displayed as a square.
4. A cover photo. The cover photo is one of the most important pieces on your Facebook business page, because it’s so prominent. It’s often the first thing the viewer notices. To save time, you could upload a photo of a property you sold, or a scenic stock photo of the city or area you serve. The size of a Facebook cover photo is 828 x 315 pixels but when viewed on mobile it displays at 640 x 360 pixels,. This means you should be careful not to put text right out to either edge of your cover photo, or it won’t appear on Facebook for mobile.
An even better solution is to create a graphic that includes your branding. It can still be the photo I mentioned above, but you can overlay your logo, your brokerage logo and/or some text. I’ve outlined the steps including a video demo on how to create a custom Facebook cover photo for free, in this blog post.
5. A username – which becomes your Facebook page URL. Many agents try to obtain the same username across all their social media accounts like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for consistent brand recognition.
For example: facebook.com/janesmithrealtor and twitter.com/janesmithrealtor and instagram.com/janesmithrealtor. If your name isn’t very common (and therefore the usernames are likely to be available), it could be your name + city, or your name + “realtor”, or your name + your brokerage name (i.e. “remax”).
To make yourself stand out from the crowd, and to make your social media channels easily found, I recommend using a descriptor keyword in addition to your name for your business social media accounts. A descriptor keyword would be like “realtor” or “remax” as mentioned above.
Pro Tip: Don’t invite your Facebook friends to like your page until you’re fully done with setup.
Now that you’ve gathered all the necessary pieces to build your Facebook business page, here are your steps to create your Facebook Business Page:
Step 1. Create your page. Click to get directly to the Create a Page section of Facebook.
Note that you need a personal Facebook profile to create and manage a Facebook business page. If you don’t have a personal account, you’ll have to create one. You can do that very quickly here.
Step 2. Choose “Company, Organization or Institution” or “Local Business or Place”.
Most agents choose “Company, Organization or Institution”.
If you have a physical office with a lot of visitors (like a storefront would), choose “Local Business or Place”. This will prompt you for your address, hours that you’re open, etc.
Step 3. Choose a category for your business.
If you’ve chosen “Local Business or Place” you can choose “Real Estate” as your category.
If you’ve chosen ” Company, Organization or Institution,” then you can choose “Company”.
Step 4. Enter your business name.
Click Get Started
You’ll be brought to the blank canvas that is your new Facebook business page.
Yup, there’s a lot of steps! Download them as a PDF if you want!
Step 5. Add your profile photo (preferably the professional photo used in your marketing collateral, discussed earlier in this article).
Step 6. Add your cover photo.
Step 7. Choose the call to action button that you are encouraging people to click when they visit your Facebook business page.
Step 8. Add your page to your shortcuts.
These shortcuts appear on your personal Facebook profile home page / news feed as shown here:
Step 9. Fill out the About tab. Click on About.
At minimum:
– choose a username (your Facebook page’s URL)
– enter your phone # and website address
– enter the blurb about your business
Step 10. Set your Preferred Page Audience.
Facebook says, “When you select a preferred Page audience, anyone can find your Page, but we’ll do our best to put it in front of the people who matter to you most.”
Click on Manage Tabs.
Click on Preferred Page Audience, and then Set Preferred Page Audience.
Congratulations! Your page is now set up and live.
Bonus Step 11. Let others manage your business page, too.
If you have an assistant or anyone else you want to assist you with your Facebook Business Page, you can add them from the Page Roles tab. (Reminder, click Manage Tab, then Page Roles.)
Before you invite anyone to like your page, or add a Facebook like box to your website, please post once or twice. Ideally, you should also schedule reminders to post on your Facebook Business Page at least once a week so that your page remains fresh and will have some organic reach beyond any paid advertising.
Pro tip: use a variety of content on your page.
What is your target audience interested in?
What links would they click on or images would the like or share?
How can you educate your target audience on one of the biggest decisions of their lives—purchasing a home from you!
Content that educates your target audience will help them trust you further and may assist in their decision-making process.
Once your page is dressed up and ready to mingle, invite other Facebook users to like the page. You have two ways to invite people to like your page:
#1. Invite your Facebook friends *who are your target market*. It can be tempting to quickly increase your page likes by inviting a bunch of friends that you know will click “like,” but who are not your ideal clients (like your mother?).
As your page likes grow, Facebook will recommend your page based on who likes you and who else they like. For example, if you are a Vancouver Realtor and half of your page likes are from people who don’t even live in or around Vancouver, you could be hurting the reach your page will get.
To invite your friends to like your page, search by name, then click invite.
#2. Invite anyone who likes your posts to like your page. Facebook can display your posts in the newsfeed of people who don’t already “like” your page and they can like the post, without liking your page.
Here’s how to invite someone who has liked your post, to like your page.
Find the post that has been liked and click on the likes.
You can see in the screenshot below that Cortney already “Liked” this page, but Eileen can be invited.
You now have a Facebook business page, ready to welcome new fans to your real estate business. You can now use organic social media posting to draw attention to yourself, or you can advertise your listings on Facebook.