Welcome to another episode of Fireside with Facebook!
In this episode Scott Shapiro from Facebook’s Real Estate Group discusses Stories on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger and how real estate agents should best utilize these tools in their business. We reveal best (and worst) practices for how to increase engagement and reach. Last, Scott advises agents to research how big brands use Stories to gather inspiration for creating your own content.
Also, Facebook just launched their own dedicated website aimed at helping real estate professionals use their tools, Click here to see Facebook’s Real Estate Agent Guide!
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide, and host through the show and today is our regular series called Fireside Chat with Facebook. Now we have teamed up with the real estate team at Facebook to produce episodes designed to help real estate agents better utilize Facebook and their suite of tools like Instagram, WhatsApp, and we have Scott Shapiro from Facebook corporate with us as our guest. Let me tell you a little bit about Scott Scott Shapiro is a senior client partner on the real estate team at Facebook, where he focuses on engaging with key clients and their ecosystem partners to develop marketing solutions and strategies to drive their businesses forward. In addition to the client partner role, Scott also serves as the industry relations liaison between the Facebook real estate sales team and the real estate industry helping to educate agents, brokers and leaders on Facebook’s platforms and best practices. But prior to joining Facebook, Scott was a sales executive at ABC, where he also participated in a sales advisory role acting as a consultant for the digital and the sports teams. Scott, welcome back to keeping it real and our Fireside Chat with Facebook.
Scott Shapiro 1:57
Thanks, CJ. It’s funny, as you’re reading all that I’m like, wow, that’s lengthy, I might have to give you a new edited version to cut that down.
D.J. Paris 2:05
I think it’s really important. Well, I think it’s important for people to hear your background and you know, you had a career prior to to Facebook, we were just talking offline, where today we’re going to be talking about stories and across the Facebook’s suite of tools. And we were asked, as Scott was mentioning at ESPN uses stories and most brands do and so he was actually even referencing some previous previous work around it. So I think it’s important for people to know where you come from and who you are. But most importantly, I think it’s just amazing that Facebook also has a real estate division, and a department specifically around helping agents better use the tools and platform.
Scott Shapiro 2:44
Yeah, no, it’s been great. We’re about three years old. So you know, it’s been a journey. And I think you know, you know, outreach such as what we’re doing through the podcast, through the Facebook Lives, it’s really important because I think we’ve talked about this in the past that there are a lot of source of truth when it comes to our platform. But it’s really hard to understand what is the source of truth. And so we want to be a little bit more on our front foot out in front of things and in front of topics and talking to agents and talking to brokers. Always appreciate the time and the platform that you give us, TJ because it allows us to really, hopefully, you know, drive impact for the folks who are using our platforms, and really demystify some of what you should or shouldn’t do, and or really point out the things that are coming up, such as stories, which is, you know, when you and I aligned on what’s a really interesting topic, it’s this one, because it’s really a monster consumer trend. And as we think about you know how best to drive impact? Well, you want to be where your consumers are. So looking forward to having a good chat with you over the next 45 minutes or so.
D.J. Paris 3:45
Yeah, and I want to also let the listeners know that if you’re not a consumer of Facebook or Instagram stories, I wasn’t either until more recently, where I started noticing people that I follow, were starting to create more content in this in their stories, you know, within Facebook and Instagram. So I said, you know, I always thought oh, stories are just for younger, younger, you know, account account holders or account users. And I thought, well, I’ll check out to see what it is. And I’m actually have become a bit. I don’t want to say addicted isn’t the right word. But I’ve actually become now accustomed to looking at stories even before I now scroll in my feeds. I don’t know if that’s a common trend or not. But because I think it’s quick, it’s easy, it’s digestible, disappears. There’s an urgency to it, there’s an easy to consume aspect of it. And, and I like it because it sort of in some ways does a little bit of the work for me, where I’m just able to see it go on to the next one, the next one, and I’m kind of hooked on them now. So and I’m just I’m a recent convert to stories.
Scott Shapiro 4:45
But I think a couple of things and we’ll get into this one to your point. They’re short. So you know, it’s a snackable moment of content. You know, there are over 1 billion stories shared across our family of absence services every day. You 1 billion, you know, right. So like, you think about it, you know, you and I are and a lot of the audience, if you’re using stories as a plot, for we’re in a very large bucket of people who agree. And I think, you know, frankly, we’re also seeing the brands benefit. And we’ll get into some stats about Sure. Putting your brand front and center in stories is a really great experience to drive awareness to drive intent, and, you know, brand loyalty. So, you know, if we think about you, as a CEO and the CMO of your business, yeah, that’s an interesting place to do so.
D.J. Paris 5:31
And I almost think to just before we get to, we get actually into it, I think stories from from a content creation perspective, are actually a lot, it’s a lot simpler of a process. Now, you might spend more time actually crafting a story than you would a regular post. But I actually think it’s, it’s not number one, it’s easier to consume once it’s posted. But I actually think it’s easier to create. And you’re you’re doing that thing that marketers know, every brand needs to do, which is consistently, you know, touch your client, and you can touch them in very short, simple, easy to create easy to consume ways. And you don’t have to worry as much about engagement, you don’t have to worry as much about how many likes or comments, because you’re just putting this digestible piece of content, you can do it multiple times a day if you want. And, and people do look at these I know I do. I’m looking at stories from people where if I saw a post of theirs, I might not actually read it, I might scroll past, the way that stories is aligned as is now I do see it. And I can always skin if I want to. But it’s so quick and easy. It makes it easy to actually digest other people’s content. So I think it’s a win in a lot of ways. So what we’re actually going to do, and I want our listeners to pay special attention to this, we are actually going to be showing a PowerPoint presentation. So we’re gonna be going over slides. But don’t worry if you’re listening, we’re going to be describing these slides in detail. But I will encourage everyone that is listening that would like to see the presentation to go to our Facebook page. Speaking of Facebook, visit us on Facebook, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And you’ll actually see the live Facebook Live video we did. We’re also create this into a YouTube video as well. So if you’re listening to this on your podcast app, just look in the notes, you should see a link in there for the YouTube link, or the Facebook link as well. So anyway, should I go ahead and pull up our presentation or let’s go for it. I shouldn’t say it’s my is not my presentation, I could never make something look beautiful. So I encourage everyone to just to see what a really nice looking presentation does. Or it looks like to also watch the video. Okay, I’m going to share my screen. Pardon us for a second while we do this.
Scott Shapiro 7:41
technology’s always fun. There we go.
D.J. Paris 7:45
Okay, I’ll Scott, take it away.
Scott Shapiro 7:47
Sure. So why don’t we go on to the very first slide after our title slide, we have people on a slide like you very happy. So we have a phrase that stories can do it. And what that means is that it really harnesses the power of a cultural phenomenon. But it achieves business results. So I think the way to think about this is consumers always go ahead of brands and dictate trends. And so consumers and the fact that they adopted so quickly to these platforms, first through Instagram. And now if you think about stories across the spectrum, of all of our apps and services, stories are really our headline products. So think about it when you open up Facebook, or Instagram, or messenger stories is actually the first thing you see top of the fold. So DJ showing a really interesting slider where we went from a horizontal world in the you know, the priority, you know, the laptop, the laptop, big screen. And now the next slide DJ is going to show is how you can take that same image and put it into your phone. And the thing that’s so interesting, and we were talking about it the other day, internally is phones are getting bigger again, right, we’re getting into phablets. And a lot of this is, you know, the content is really designed to build and to be full screen. And in our environments that the first thing you see, when you open any of our apps, think about what you see across the very, very top eight stories, whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram messenger. So again, we’re leading with it because we see that that’s what consumers want to digest.
D.J. Paris 9:17
Yeah, remember, you know, it’s funny, we’re now filming things in particular for products like stories and whether it’s Instagram, Facebook Messenger WhatsApp, but what’s interesting is we’re now keeping our phones in the in the portrait mode, which is what Scott’s mentioning the up and down mode versus the landscape mode which you know, if you’re creating content for youtube, you’re likely going to want it to be landscape because that’s their native format. But with with with stories, what’s really cool is you don’t have to worry so much about that because and we’re going to look at some statistics in a minute. There’s actually a reason why you don’t have to turn your phone you know in landscape to be able to consume stories or create them.
Scott Shapiro 9:55
It’s also interesting DJ as you’re as you’re talking the stat here for People on the podcast sight is that 82% of visitors to video centric websites actually hold their smartphone in portrait orientation. It’s just natural. I mean, the phone, the way we’ve worked with it, the way the apps are put together, you really hold it in that orientation, and stories. What it does is it fulfills that. So the beautiful thing, and there’s no pun intended in what I’m going to say, it fills the real estate of these bigger beautiful phones, you have the screen area, you have this real wonderful real estate to tell a story to tell a message to the consumer. So want to take advantage of it, I think there’s a sea change that we hope to see happen. And I think it will, in real estate where you know, most of us pull off the MLS, and it’s a horizontal picture of the front of the house. And that’s the listing we’ve traditionally advertised. And I think we had Facebook and Instagram, in particular, we’re thinking about it with our creative shop, how do we transition into the home can still be shown, shown vertically versus horizontally, which is that orientation of what the consumer expects, and wants to see. It’s a
D.J. Paris 11:03
really important point is and I know I don’t want to spend too much time talking about because I’m so interested in this I could talk about this particular thing. Part of it all day is the orientation of the phone. But you’re absolutely right, I’m thinking back are thinking now about how I use my phone. And the only time I turn it to landscape mode is if I’m watching a longer form video on YouTube, or but you’re right, if I’m on Facebook, if I’m on Instagram, or if I’m just on any other app or website, even if it’s a video unless it forces me to turn it, I’m probably going to want to keep that portrait orientation. So that’s really important is Facebook is basically looked at the usability of the of their products, and how do people actually use these? So it brings up a great question is our real estate photography, are they going to adjust as well? And then we now know they’re mostly in landscape mode, real estate professional photos, but maybe it does make sense to also get, you know, portrait mode done for things like this. So
Scott Shapiro 11:57
I hope they do, I think we empirically feel that if we’re going to serve the industry. So if you’re listing on the MLS and how you shoot the home, you want to mirror the use of the where the consumer is. So, you know, I think hopefully, we will see that kind of adaption. And you showed it in the first few slides. And for people on the podcast, this is a DJ showed we’re a laptop, and you know, the image in the laptop, you know, horizontal landscape mode, and then showing that same image but zoomed in showing it in the vertical mode, filling any entire smartphone screen. So we do as an industry need to migrate and make that change. Because again, I think consumers expect it. And so you want to meet the consumer where they are with, with how you interpret the experience for them.
D.J. Paris 12:46
Absolutely, I think we’re so used to also assuming that we know how consumers use their phone, and just just the fact that you know 82 and a half percent of visitors to video centric websites are keeping it in that portrait mode is an amazing statistic, which is what I keep getting stuck on because I’m I’m I’m amazed by that. But as I think back, I’m like, oh, that actually does make sense. Because that’s how I use it as well. So.
Scott Shapiro 13:08
So couple of things. I think it’s really important. And I think these are not surprising statistics. So again, for folks on the podcast versus the Facebook Live. We’re looking at a slide that’s talking about growing up in a mobile first world. I’m the proud dad of a Gen Z soon to be 14 year old. But you know, if we look at stats, 28% of millennials are smartphone only internet users.
D.J. Paris 13:32
I think it’s which means that means they’re not using computers, they’re using their mobile devices. Got it?
Scott Shapiro 13:38
That is correct. And I think again, in some of the things that I’ve talked to people about in the industry and conversations I’ve had, again, think about the biggest phone releases that are coming. I mean, my wife hates to hear this because I keep kind of like knocking on the door. I’m like, you know, Samsung released that note ultra 27 inch screen. Yeah, seven inch screen, right. And that’s because, you know, we’re we’re doing more with our phones, both from a productivity perspective, and from a consumption perspective. So 28% of millennials are only smartphone internet users. But here’s where this is really interesting. While they’re young, while they’re not ready to buy property today, they will be the next generation of homebuyers. It’s Gen Z and 55% of them say they spend more than five hours a day on their mobile devices. So think about this, you know, we’ve migrated away COVID, I think will impact some of the stats we’re seeing. I think obviously with shelter in place and working from home, we’re spending more time on my laptop right now. But I think you know, again, coming out of this, we still use our phones a ton we still you know, it’s funny, we put down the laptop or we have the laptop on the couch and we’re working. And yet we still pick up our cell phone. So just again, you know, a lot of the core through line of the things that DJ and I talked about are mobile first applications and environments and stories is one and I think again, that’s why you see huge consumption numbers by consumers because again, they’re just using their phone and it needs to be in that need. To device similarly to when we think about a TV, right? I mean, you know the reason I’m a huge sports fan as you guys can see if you’re watching on FB Live behind me, I’ve got a bunch of sports memorabilia, we shoot that in in a more horizontal mode. That’s how we we consume it on that device. Flip that we consume content in a vertical world on the cell phone.
D.J. Paris 15:23
Yeah, I’ve noticed this too, with with younger people, especially young, younger children, teenagers also well, is they favor their mobile devices over their their laptop component counterparts. And I I’m always I was always like, I wonder why that’s happening. And it actually reminds me of a funny Facebook story that I this is something that just popped into my mind. But years ago, I remember Mark Zuckerberg relayed the story where he was, I think he was going around the country visiting, I think he was visiting schools, or he was visiting a school. And he asked them about email. And they said, We don’t like we don’t like to use email because it’s too slow. And I remember him, he said, to slow emails pretty instant. He’s like, they said, No, it’s too slow. For us, we need, we need a faster component, which is where messaging, really, you know, he really put it put more focus into that. And we all now know, you know, email is slower than text messaging, it’s not particularly slower, but it’s now just part of our, the way we use our devices is we don’t email as much we use, you know, we use Facebook Messenger, we use tax, we use some of the other messaging platforms. And that’s how we communicate now. And also our phones are faster than us going to our computer, because we always have our phones on us.
Scott Shapiro 16:34
And the processing speeds of the phones have gotten better. So it’s it’s technology keeping up with that comes back to the original point. And where it ties in to the through line on stories is, yes, it’s a cultural phenomenon. And that’s because, again, the consumer got there first. So the consumer decides, right, what we want, you know, from technology back in, you know, I’m a child of the 80s, you know, beta versus VCR, the consumer about VCR, to VCR, one, you know, high def DVRs, versus, you know, blu rays, you know, things of that nature. So, again, you know, you go to where the consumer is, we’re showing a bunch of different screens for folks on the podcast. But the combination here is a messaging of brands, brands on the page versus like people. And so again, you know, people use stories, but brands use stories. And that’s really, I think, if we’re going to take a step back where real estate agents and brokerages have a wonderful opportunity. There’s a great opportunity, I think, to meet people more in this platform than people do. And DJ are going to kind of unpack that a little bit more. But I think that’s teasing out that if you’re not doing stories at a high rate and reaching consumers, both organically and paid, you’re missing out on how and where your consumer spending their time.
D.J. Paris 17:56
That’s very true. And as just myself now I have a lot of real estate agents that I have, that I follow, we have 700 Real estate agents and our own company, we’ve got more than you know, over 20,000 people that really are our regular listeners to the show, almost all of them are real estate agents, a lot of them and we have followed each other. And I actually now thinking I don’t see as many real estate agents utilizing stories as much on either platform, Instagram or Facebook. And so this is a huge opportunity for our listeners to start reaching their audience because like I said, I’m the guy who’s now spending time on on stories, and I’m not even seeing much real estate content on there.
Scott Shapiro 18:35
So yeah, we’re gonna dive into some some things that people should know about when they think about stories, partners, technical partners, advertising, that goes back a couple of weeks to how we talked about partners, DJ, what the quick, what makes a story, obviously, the orientation, we’ve talked about that the vertical nature of it, you know, we call the stitching putting different components together. So static image Video, Short Form, right, it’s 15 seconds on a video, which is great. That’s what we would recommend for feed videos. So like we talk a lot about for real estate agents, don’t make the five minute long drone footage to think that it’s going to work in feed, same as stories. There’s a reason why we cap it at 15 seconds. That’s what the consumer is looking for. And then using creative tools natively, whether they live natively from an organic perspective that you can bring your brand to life and your brand is yourself or the property and then in the advertising space. A lot of the tools are starting to think about overlays and ways to make the story a little bit more engaging. So I’m just thinking through those three things, kind of facilitate the story’s narrative. So let’s move forward to June. So there are a couple of things. Again, so you know, if we go back to why is this a consumer phenomenon? Why does this matter for my real estate business? There are a couple of things that we’re going to walk you through again, for folks on the podcast versus on the live stream. There are six things that we talk through first, it’s full screen, we’ve got To hit that over and over, but it’s immersive. So that’s one of the big things, why fullscreen matters. It’s immersive. It’s ephemeral DJ talked about that, just off camera with me where we were talking about the fact that it is, you know, it’s kind of in the moment, and it has some fun, it has a little bit of a playful nature, it doesn’t need to live forever. I had a friend, a fellow Facebook employee, that a baby, actually, he and his wife both work at Facebook. And you know, the the more fun, ephemeral moments of their daughter’s birth are in stories, the more legacy long term things that they want to go back to a little bit more formal, or back in news feed. So a little bit of a different use case, there fast. We’ve already talked about that. I’m not as you guys know, if you’ve listened a couple of our episodes, brevity is not nice key strike, but stories it is. They’re fun, they can be fun, you don’t have to consistently be so serious, they have a little bit of that playful nature to them. They’re in the moment. So again, because they’re a femoral, you should think about this, we’re trying to tell a story that’s very relevant to today. And then the last thing is they’re engaging in, they’re interactive. So again, whether you’re on the live stream, and you can see these six points or through the podcast, just think of it as you know, it’s full screen. It’s ephemeral, it’s fast, it’s playful, it’s in the moment, and it’s interactive.
D.J. Paris 21:19
And a lot less people a lot less agents are utilizing right now. So it is a wide open space, to where you can make your voice be heard in the short, bite sized, fun and engaging ways.
Scott Shapiro 21:30
Absolutely. So there’s a couple of reasons why content, people prefer stories over feed. This is based on some information that our Facebook IQ team, our research team put together some studies. And this is back in late 2018. So little, you know, the information is a little bit dated, so relevant to the story, no pun intended, again, it’s stories provide information on things I care about information on events. So if we think about, you know, the world about, you know, open homes, and whether that is a virtual open home, which we touched on a couple of weeks ago, or an in person, when shelter in places is hopefully behind us, its relevancy. And that goes back again to that phone ephemeral quick point in the moment. Some people like it for celebrities, again, I think if we’re thinking about the real estate case here, I think it’s you know, your service becomes sort of your personality. I think when we’re talking about most forms of advertising and real estate, the traditional way of putting the listing in, it’s only the listing, you know, here you can add your own voice, you can add your own character, your own expertise, what’s happening in the community, what are the things that you know about? Why should people trust you, over maybe somebody who they haven’t heard from remember, one of the stats TJ and I reviewed a couple of weeks ago is that over 50% of consumers go with the first agent that they have a conversation with. So a way to have a conversation, or at least an introductory conversation is using stories, having a little bit of fun showing your expertise. And again, it allows for people to see from brands that they want to hear from. So again, I think breaking through, especially on the advertising side of DJs point. Agents, in particular are not using stories as much as I think the other types of business, small businesses even are and so it’s a wonderful place to kind of stand out, stand apart and kind of build your own brand. In addition to the listing you may have,
D.J. Paris 23:25
I have a quick little pro tip for everyone who’s a real estate agent listening who is thinking about what kind of content should and I’m certainly, that could be a whole year long conversation about what type of content to put in stories. But I’ll show you I want to just to reveal one that I’ve noticed that agents I mentioned, I haven’t seen a lot of real estate specific content or realtor specific content on stories. But I have seen some and I’ve noticed that I think this is a very effective little tidbit that it certainly works on me. So we know that real estate agents oftentimes work nights and weekends, right, because people oftentimes work during the day, they’re only available to go see properties or do real estate stuff in the evenings and on the weekends. And what I’ve noticed is a lot of the people I do follow when they do post, they’re gonna they post a lot of times after hours, so they might be posting in the evening, they and what they’ll do is they’ll take a picture of themselves in a car that might say something like on my way to show my client a home, or, you know, or a Saturday morning, just heading to the office or have for showings today. And I used to when I first started looking at stories, I was kind of like I don’t really care about what they’re doing in their day. And now that I but I’m not a consumer, I mean, I’m in the industry. And now that I’m thinking about it, it’s actually a brilliant thing to do. Because it it lets people know that you’re working. And it lets people know how dedicated you are to your business. So if you’re wondering, what should I post about? I don’t know that all your content should be, you know, here’s what I’m doing at 645 in the evening for my client, but you know, it’s not a terrible idea. And if we’re wanting to think about branding is think about what kind of what what do you want your image To be What do you want to, you know, to show on social media about how dedicated you are to your business. And stories are a great way to do that. Because you do these little bite sized things oop, just wrapped up my last showing of the day, it’s 10 o’clock, I’m going home, you know, that has impact on the people follow like, wow, this person is really working for their clients. So I think
Scott Shapiro 25:19
the other thing as we move to the next slide, DJ, I think, bouncing on top of that, there are a couple of things. One, I think you can also highlight your local community. So one of the things that we talked a lot about from the Facebook and Instagram perspective over the last couple of months during COVID is, you know, the brand showing brand care showing community care. These are things that people are thirsting for and yearning for. As businesses reopen, as businesses are looking for people to get back out, especially, you know, if we think about people in the service industry, our restaurants, our bars, our coffee shops, or small theaters, or small community theaters, are small stores on Main Street. It’s another really great way of showing your authenticity, showing off more than just a listing. And giving yourself a little bit more of frankly, you know, your own brand and your own voice about what you know about your community into these interactions with the consumer because it’s so much more and will be in it has been been even more so now. So much more than just the listing. It’s what do you what do you what do you know about your town that maybe I don’t or your neighborhood, or the events going on? So it’s important on the screen, actually, and it’s a perfect segue is, across the Facebook family of apps, 1 billion stories are shared each and every day. So if we think about this, it’s another great opportunity to kind of spot morality, and you know, sharing, you know, people in your sphere, pop you using it as an advertising medium, using it as organic medium. And again, just you know, people like to share that content. So I think you can show more of who you are and who your community is, it’s you know, I always think about what’s beyond the listing, you write your expertise, your services, how do our platforms mirror that. So I think it’s just a really great way of connecting those two dots.
D.J. Paris 27:09
And real quickly to I also touch on Scott’s point about highlighting local businesses. Real Estate, of course, is a hyperlocal. Industry. And agents are usually hyperlocal, as well. And what an amazing opportunity right now, as you’re visiting these local businesses that are still open, or maybe they’re looking for, for work, or they just want to, you know, let people know that they’re still around. And right now in Chicago, sadly, we have a lot of businesses that are boarded up that aren’t closed. But because we’ve had some unrest here, a lot of businesses appear to be closed. And I was just thinking, I’ll be heading to my dry cleaner later today to pick up to pick up a suit. And it looks like they’re closed, they are not closed, and what what an easy, simple thing for me to take a screenshot or take a picture with them and say, Hey, for everyone here in River North, you know, this cleaners is still open and tag them, they would be thrilled to do that. And you know, that’s a great way to to so if you’re looking for content, that’s another amazing opportunity right now is highlight and support those local businesses through stories.
Scott Shapiro 28:11
Absolutely. All right. So moving on. So one of the things that I think is really important is, you know, and I think agents are now much more aware of this, as we’ve been out more and more in the industry, but you know, it’s not just Facebook, it’s how do you think about Facebook Messenger and Instagram together? WhatsApp is a little bit still, you know, a different type of platform and environment. But you know, how do you think about all of those together? You know, we have, you know, for stories, over half a billion daily active users across our platform. So the reason I think that that’s so important is again, you know, when we want to reach the consumer, we advertise and we market ourselves because we want to reach the consumer and influence them. So again, it’s thinking about, you know, where are they spending their time, you want to be part of that conversation. And so, you know, thinking through, you know, taking a step back for a moment, just really fast before we move on too far, is, you know, we talked a couple of weeks ago about partners, we talked about, brokerages working really collaboratively with us on paid tools. A lot of them have something called automatic placements, automatic placements, allows your advertising to get into stories. You should ask if you’re interviewing a third party, let’s say you don’t have you don’t work in a brokerage. That is really GE or Keller Williams or whatnot, and you look at a third party, ask them will my advertising be on stories and stories across all of Facebook’s platforms? Not just Instagram, not just Facebook and not just messenger? DJ and I were talking before we came on air about you know, let machine learning determine which stories environment you go to write this thing? Well, it’s only an Instagram thing or it’s only a Facebook thing. Your consumers might be across different forms, different age groups, different things, but they’re still in stories. So let those things Things come to the fore. So I think advice here for people ask about where to stories fit into the advertising tools that my brokerage has given me. Where if you’re on your own, and you’re like, look, you know, I’m getting pitched by a certain technology company, and they talk about being able to do this. Do they put my content in a stories format? Do they have that capability? What is their stance? And if they really haven’t on, they don’t have a good answer. It means that, frankly, their tools are a little bit rudimentary, and they’re not forward thinking. And the reason I bring that up is because everybody should be thinking about this to DJs play earlier. ESPN has stories, Spotify has stories, YouTube has stories, you know, we have stories, it’s a big, big consumer push. So again, just food for thought tips for you, you know, your money is harder, and you should put it with the right people, the right places, to drive consumer outcomes. So just wanted to kind of dovetail on that really quickly. But, um, we’re showing a couple of fun examples, I’m going to kind of pass through this, because again, I’m aware that we’ve got people on the podcast, but I think again, just look at brands that are advertising across stories, look at what you’re seeing from big brands, because usually they’re the leaders. And what I mean by that is, you know, you can, you can follow their lead, you know, it’s always this thing of, you know, with a cell phone, there’s, you know, democracy of content, we talked about it with Facebook Live, just the ability to take a smartphone and produce your own video. So what I would say is you look at some of the brands, that arguing stories, look at brands that are in real estate, some of the biggest brands are using it at scale, you know, think about your realtor.com, Zillow, some and others, but then also look at other brands and think about like, how are they telling their story, no pun intended to get but like, how are they conveying that message? How are they telling it? How are you thinking about it? The other thing, I think that trips people up consistently across our platforms with marketing is, you know, think about what you want the consumer to take away from it. Versus I’ve got this listing I need to sell, right, of course, but what is it you want the consumer to take away from, and that’s where again, I think, stories offers that really unique place similar that we talked about with Facebook Live, to have your own voice. And it’s not just a listing, you can have a listing, you should have your listing, but you can tell a much bigger story there. And DJ, I know you guys think about that a lot with what you do.
D.J. Paris 32:21
We do. And I want to also encourage everyone who has listings in there might think, Okay, well, how do I 15 seconds? How do I, how do I showcase this listing, I would say focus on one cool, super interesting thing about that property and say you guys have to see this. And I mean, assuming you have the permission, of course, have the homeowner go in there and showcase something unique and cool and fun. And that’s something that you can do every single time you have a listing because every home has something neat about it, hopefully, or at least you can find something neat about it. And then you can showcase that. And that also creates fun content.
Scott Shapiro 32:54
Absolutely, absolutely don’t need to boil the ocean, make it short, make it sweet. And frankly, it’s a great way. One of the two examples. For people on the Facebook live right now can see, there’s an advertising example from Nutella one from Orange, which is a European phone company. Both of them, if you see at the bottom of the screen, haven’t seen more button. And when you flip that open, it opens into a Facebook or Instagram lead ad. So again, you can also use stories to do direct response. And most of the examples you see actually will do that. So start again, looking at the advertising playing with a click that See More button. Look at that, all of a sudden stories becomes a lead generation and demand generation platform. Because we have Facebook lead ads, and or Instagram lead ads activated where that prefill is happening. So again, really great for the consumer. But there’s a output you get from the ad from an agent perspective or brokerage perspective of being able to do really great lead generation off of these experiences. It’s not just for the top of the funnel, branding, right? Well, let’s move on. Let’s see what else is next. Aha, speaking of the stages of the funnel, I could have set myself up even better. It’s almost like I looked at the slides before we got on the podcast. So that people are seeing on the live and again if you’re on the podcast is the the standard purchase funnel awareness discovery and purchase. And what we know is that stories inspire that action throughout the consumer journey. So it really can facilitate top to bottom of the funnel to prior examples. Again, I would go back if you’re on the Facebook Live, watch it again, to learn more See More button. If you’re on the podcast go in and start playing around and looking at the brands that are advertising. Majority of them again will have a see more Learn More button so that they can do lead generation. So it’s a great way to drive top of the bottom funnel. 58% of people who have seen something in stories are more interested in the product after they’ve seen it in a story. So again, these are some studies that we’ve run on platforms where we’re seeing stories drive business in packed, it’s not just a fun place to be in at the top of the funnel. So moving forward 45% of respondents prefer stories after becoming aware of new trends. 37% prefer stories for learning about launches of new products or services. So again, we can think about that aware of what’s happening in your town. How do you ship community love back to people, especially after such a difficult time we’ve had when things start opening up, great way to get that awareness play at the very tippity top of the funnel. So in the mid funnel for discovery, 50% of people surveyed said they browse a brand’s website to get more information about seeing their products and stories. So even if we don’t do capturing of lead generation, I know we’ll get into that all the way to the bottom of the funnel in stories, it still can drive people off site to engage with your brand, engage with more content, super, super important. And 30% of the people surveyed, talk to somebody about a product or service that you’re seeing in stories. So again, you know, DJ was talking about finding content, finding people in stories, again, you can be there and that generates the conversation. Well, I saw Scott, the realtor and he services this part of Austin tech. This is interesting enough, I saw that he was out there talking about this brand new coffee shop or the reopening of the dry cleaner, or the reopening of the school year or something important to the community, it just adds a little spice to the overall marketing area for you. And lastly, down to purchase one in two people surveyed said they have visited a website to buy a product as a result of seeing it in stores. So think about that 50% of people surveyed, found that they would actually to the website to actually buy a product if they weren’t using a lead at 31% have gone to a store to buy a product or service after seeing the stories. I know that’s not as applicable for real estate. But it just again shows the power of suggestion the power of being in stories, a power of being in an environment that has a high consumer engagement rate. And so
on the podcast, we have a couple of different examples. And this kind of ties back to what I said before, that stories work across any type of business. So it’s not just for, you know, hit businesses, or beauty or b2b, it’s across all businesses, and certainly real estate fits that mode. Again, I would say look at what some of the leading brands are doing in the space, look at what other brands are doing. You know, look for inspiration elsewhere, see what others are doing. That can also be a great free tool for you to figure out how to do things. And then what’s interesting is on our slide right now, we had a gentleman who is the VP of Marketing integration for Apple, talk about creating stories, yeah, we can’t put a 32nd spot on Instagram. It’s a whole new grammar, they think about short form creative now. And the leading creative people even in our internal organization, we consistently are talking about how to adapt to this new format and how to perfect it. So a lot here to think about, but I think that the net message is shorter, faster, better, make it fun, make it a femoral drive some impact. There’s some things that you know, that you should think about, obviously, creative stickers, fun things, you know, making your own personality shine through ad types. Again, I think the biggest thing here, we talked about was with partners, making sure that their technology enables you to buy advertising across stories. They should have it most of the products that we’ve worked on, and most of the brokerages tools that are offered in our guide that we stand behind have stories as an activation, because we think it’s one of the most important platforms to reach consumers. Again, if you’re talking to a third party, make sure that you know do they offer stories as part of automatic placements. If you’re doing it self serve on your own. Again, just make sure that you know, do stories across all of our platforms, don’t choose one over the other. Let machine learning and algorithms take you to where consumers are spending time. And some key takeaways, again, are just we talked about creative. So what type of messaging are you talking about? ad types, I take it to mean, you have stories, you have video, you have static imagery. But again, when it comes to buying, making sure that your partner whether you’re using a tool provided by your brokerage, or third party offers stories as a platform, if you’re doing it on your own, make sure you collect all three environments. couple of tips really quick, these are much more visual. So if you’re on the podcast, one of the things to just think about is a focal point. Make sure you have a focal point and you tell the consumer what you want them to do. So it could be a picture of the front of the house saying Open House Saturday two to four. So just make sure there’s a focal point it’s something easy remember these things are going at 15 second clips, so try not to make it so confusing for the consumer.
D.J. Paris 39:55
Yeah, one call to action one message is is plenty and you have time to do it focus on one thing. Absolutely
Scott Shapiro 40:05
keep it simple. So ad types, let’s go a little bit deeper into that. So you can try, we can go back. Sorry, that’s okay. No, it’s fine. To go back to go forward, there we go. There we are. So you can do multiple photos and DJ talked about this, like find a bunch of different things in the house, make it a carousel, you know, make it something that’s not just one image, tell a story, right? You’re the you take the consumer on the journey. So you can have the beautiful outside shot, you can have the kitchen shot, you can have the depth shot, if you’re out and you’re trying to tell a story about your community. So let’s say you don’t have a listing, but you want to advertise your expertise in the neighborhood. Don’t just show one thing, show multiple things show multiple restaurants, multiple coffee houses, is there a concert in the park. So use that as just getting more and more content in front of the consumer. And then lastly, the next slide over that we’re going to kind of go through is by you guys have heard me talk about this. It’s something called automatic placements. It’s absolutely key to anything you do across our platforms, because again, it meets the consumer where they are. So I talked so many different times of agents, which is hit this button, either in the tools that are offered or ask if the tools offered good tools have it, you don’t even need to know it, they just do it for you back to the partner conversation. Because again, we want to find consumers no matter where they are. So, you know, again, you don’t want to make human bias and human assumption that, well, I got better performance from Instagram this time. So I should only use Instagram. Well, it could be that the house or the messaging is better suited for Facebook, or automatic placements are machine learning, they’re going to go find the consumers you want based upon the action you want them to take. So again, super important not to be don’t put yourself in a silo when you can have more more more places to get your message out in front of all right. Brand Marketing. No, it’s okay. Same thing. There we go. That’s okay, keep, we’ll keep going. Because I think it’s the same stuff. It’s really for brand marketing, it’s creative, it’s, again, begin with your brand. So you are your brand, you really are your brand. So again, we’ve talked a lot about this, let your personality shine through, be authentic. Make sure that you put messaging that you know, again, put a graphic over it with your name with the firm your with with the hours you you keep, you know, again, it’s really important that you take that moment to brand yourself, you are the focal point of that versus maybe a more direct response environment, which is maybe much more a little bit about the listing. So super important to think about. And as we move forward, ad type should be the same. Again, we talk a lot about carousel, we talk a lot about multiple images. That’s the same for your brand as it is for your direct response advertising. And even if that’s you, you can do different pictures at different locations have different stories by different parts of the community, different stories for different parts of the house. I think that’s an interesting phenomenon. You know, the front of the house only tells one part of the story what is the kitchen? What is the backyard? Does it have a gym? Does it have multiple bedrooms? Does that a sunroom? Does it have an office, all these things that you would do in telling the story of the real estate, you can actually brand yourself by showing that if you happen to be somebody who likes to be in the kitchen and talks about it’s a personality trait, you can talk about your love of cooking, and then look at this great kitchen, wouldn’t you like to be cooking in this kitchen as well? Right? Great way to just tell a bigger story. And then lastly, again, we buy the same way. We use those automatic placements. Let us find those consumers for you. Again, I can’t overstate how that’s a best practice, we talked to the biggest brands in the world about and just because you happen to be a, you know, a realtor on Main Street USA doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be using the same thing. What’s good for Nike and their advertising, what’s efficient will probably work for you too. So just know that this is a big one. Ask those questions. Again, if those partners are saying they know Facebook and Instagram, ask what your stories are, what do you do for stories? And do you do automatic placements? And again, if you get a lot of I’m kind of staring blankly into the camera for the live stream or a lot. Oh, well. So the
D.J. Paris 44:33
answer. So I have my own very, very short automatic placement story. So I do the advertising for our our company when we’re out recruiting looking for agents to join us and I didn’t use automatic placement with my Facebook ads for a very long time because I thought I knew better and I wasn’t sure I thought I know the right time and the right exactly when to serve up these ads and who to serve them to and how to serve them in the most effective way. And I was absolutely wrong. I’ve switched to automatic placements about two years ago. And not only did my engagement increased significantly, but my cost went down because Facebook, Facebook wants you to be successful with their advertising platform or else you’re not going to continue to use it, obviously. So they have created these tools in a way to make everything more efficient, more effective to benefit not only the end user, but also you as well as the business owner. So I couldn’t be a bigger fan of the automat placement, and it makes my job as the marketer a heck of a lot easier, which I appreciate. And it’s guesswork, right? I
Scott Shapiro 45:33
mean, so much of what we think we know, sometimes we don’t, and you can do this for years and years and years. So really quick as we start to wrap up 4 million businesses use stories, ads each and every month. Just to give that reference, you know, we have about 9 million businesses using our tools and our platforms, about 9 million advertisers. So, you know, again, that should show you, we’ve got a lot of open green space to do a lot more in stories. And as an industry, I think we can do much more by it. And it’s a great opportunity, you know, DJ just mentioned it, efficiency, you know, how can we drive a more efficient, cheaper outcome for your business, I mean, that’s a huge goal of ours. And if you can get proficient in stories, that’s one output that you get from being in that environment. And moving ahead, if the inside stories can do it again, you know, I really encourage you. You know, if you’re on live, and you’re watching this, go back, watch some of the creative examples, the best thing you can do, and even if you’re on the podcast versus the Facebook Live is get in the environment, play with it, look, spend time using you know, swipe, see different brands see things that you’ve seen from brands you like you follow sponsored content, which is obviously paid. Are you seeing small businesses use this both for paid and organic? Well, it’s a huge laboratory that you just by using this device can actually do your own field research. The last thing I would say before we kind of conclude with with the slide portion, and if you’re on the podcast is again, you know, really be thoughtful about the fact that this is where your consumer is these platforms. Stories, again, I said it earlier, ESPN, other places, it’s becoming core to how the consumers, you know, take content on their mobile phone. So it’s not a all eventually learned moment, learn it, get to know it doing it will have an instant benefit for your business. And it will have a benefit both organically as well as on the paid side. So it’s not just one or the other, they really sing in the home together. And lastly, again, I’ve said it a couple of times and over the last hour or so. But this is really where you can shine through and show yourself as your own brand as your own expertise. It’s not just about the static listing photo, it really allows you to come alive and tell your story. Again, no pun intended. But that’s how the consumer can really get to know you better. So even if you feel like that photo of the house isn’t great. Oh, you know what, take your phone, go down to Main Street, go talk about to business owners talk about things you’re seeing in your community, great format, experiment, see what lands for you. But net messaging is really get proficient at this, it’s going to be a game changer for you.
D.J. Paris 48:25
Yeah, it’s quick, it’s easy. And it’s a way to demonstrate your values to your consumers. This is what brands do in your brand. A real estate agent is an individual brand. If you’re on a team, you have a team brand. If you work for a company with a brand, you’re part of their brand as well. But Facebook stories and Instagram stories are a way to demonstrate your brand. And so maybe write down your values or your values and then write down what are what are those values that you want your clients to know about your prospective clients. And then think about creating content around that. So if generosity is an important value to you, you want to make sure that people know that you are generous. Now, there’s ways to do that that are subtle and not subtle. But look through Instagram stories and Facebook stories and see how people are are showcasing those values, see what works, what doesn’t work, what you like and what you don’t like, and then start to experiment whether you can create this content quick. It’s easy, it doesn’t live forever, either. So if you do something and it doesn’t get a great response, oh, well, it’s gone. You move on to the next one. And and I think there’s so much of an opportunity here to really showcase who you are as an individual. And not just the brand you are but what are the values behind you? What are you doing, you don’t have to give up all of your privacy to do this, either. This doesn’t have to be come come lounge with me at eight o’clock at night in my living room. This is here’s what I’m all about. And you can showcase that throughout the day. It’s quick. It’s simple. I’m a big fan. So I’m going to actually start to use it ourselves. You’ve inspired me to do it with our own marketing efforts. And I’m embarrassed to say I’m not doing it. So I’m going to be doing this as well. So I want to thank Scott for being on the podcast today, we appreciate his his input. He is a trusted partner. We love Scott and everyone at the Facebook team or with respect to real estate, and we will see everyone on the next episode. And thank you Scott.
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