By now you have probably run across one or more social media gurus in your real estate life. You know, the ones that tell you how to use Facebook by posting all sorts of cutesy things. These folks are everywhere and most have never listed or sold a house, but they sure want to tell you how to do your business!

So, I thought I’d write about a few things that you can do that actually have some value and don’t require you to spend a ton of time or money to get results.

First of all, you really do need a Facebook business page. These are different than the Facebook personal profile that you log into when you go to Facebook. They are free and they allow you to post more focused content than you would want to do on your personal profile. Follow this link to learn how: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/set-up-facebook-page

You can use this page to promote your new listing, an open house or even to look for new buyer and seller clients. So, go ahead, follow the link and get it done!

The next thing that I suggest that you do is to create an event from your business page for your open houses. This is essentially an online flyer for any thing that you want people to know about.

You can learn how here: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/set-up-facebook-page

If you are doing this for an open house, you can add a picture of the property, give the event a name such as “Open House 1234 Main Street”, put in the date and time and even fill in some of the details of the home in the description fields.

Once you have done that you can then “Boost” the event so that people can see the event in their newsfeed. The ad can be targeted by zip code, and age range and can be run for a fixed budget over a period of days. I’d suggest running two ads. One targeted in the zip code that the listing is located in and the other in the zip code where the potential buyers currently live.

Here is link that will teach you how to do that: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1519209995047756

Boosting your post is essentially creating a Facebook ad for the event, but you are somewhat limited in your targeting choices. To get more exact targeting, consider running an actual ad. Here is a link that will teach you how: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/860042077457803

By using the Facebook ads manager you can get very precise on your ad targeting such that only the people likely to want to see your ad will see it.

The next piece of advice I have for you is related to lead generation. While you can create ads that send people to a “landing Page” on your website where they can fill in a form to give you their contact info, Facebook Lead Ads do all the heavy work for you. The concept is simple. You decide who should see your ad, you decide what you are going to do to entice people to click on the ad and Facebook will furnish the contact info that they have on anyone who clicks on the ad and allow you to download it later. This method gives you accurate email information for people (no more mickey@MickeyMouse.com responses) but has the disadvantage of you having to manually download a list of leads and then fulfill the promises made by the ad.

So there you have 3 really good Facebook ideas that work and won’t break your budget or your time scheduling. Next time you see one of those “gurus” trying to get you buy into their program just smile and say “no thanks”! You’ve got all the info that you need to make it happen! And you didn’t have to pay them!