Welcome to another episode of Fireside with Facebook!
In this episode Scott Shapiro from Facebook’s Real Estate Group introduces their newly published guide for agents titled Real Estate Professionals Guide to Success. This whitepaper provides statistics about buyer and seller behavior and offers suggestions on how agents can think about using social media to better connect with their audience. Scott also discusses Facebook usage stats and how the platform is being used not only as a social connection tool, but also as a search engine.
Please click here to download Facebook’s Real Estate Professionals Guide To Success.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose, keeping it real listeners receive a special discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh, gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show.
Okay, welcome everyone 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, we have our newest series, which is titled fireside with Facebook. Now what we’ve done is teamed up with the real estate team at Facebook to produce regular episodes designed to help agents better use Facebook and their entire product suite. And we have Scott Shapiro who is a senior client partner at Facebook with us as our our regular guest. Let me tell and our co host, I should really call him a co host. Let me tell you, that’s a step up from a guest for sure. Let me tell you a little bit about Scott. Yeah, you’re welcome. 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 business forward. Now in addition to the client partner role, Scott also serves as the industry relations liaison between Facebook 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. He is the real estate guy. Now prior to joining Facebook, Scott was a sales executive ABC, where he participated in sales advisory roles acting as a consultant for both digital and sports teams. Scott, welcome, once again to keeping a real, this is our second fireside chat. And we are beyond excited to have you on the show.
Scott Shapiro 2:26
Likewise, DJ, I look forward to these I think, one you know, I enjoy our conversations. And I think because we have conversations complete agents feel that you know, they’re not being lectured. But rather just participating in a conversation frankly, about how we can empower them to do better things on on our platforms reach their business objectives and goals better. So always love being part of the episodes that we put together.
D.J. Paris 2:53
Yeah, thank you. And this is such a so important to our audience. Because in fact, just prior to this call, I was talking to an agent, and a prospective agent, an agent who works in another company that was thinking about joining our firm. And he this comes up all the time. And he said, What do you guys do to help me with my facebook marketing? And I said, Well, I said actually funny you say that. So then I said, By the way, we just started this new series. So this is an from our listeners, the biggest question that we get with respect to marketing has to do with social media is how do I how do I better promote myself on Instagram and Facebook specifically to either attract more buyers or sellers to me? Or to promote my existing clients, you know, listings? How do I actually use it in a way that makes sense? Should I be, you know, advertising? Should I be boosting? Should I just be doing organic? Should I be doing everything? Should I have a business page? Do everything on my personal? There’s so many questions. And I love that we’re going to be unpacking these throughout this entire series.
Scott Shapiro 3:55
Yes, it’s, it’s a great reminder for us, we know it every day. This is what we get up to do at Facebook every day for our team. But it’s really great the way you frame that. We know it intrinsically. But it’s really great to have the validation that we’re hearing it from a leader such as yourself in the space, and really excited to unpack the content that you and I have been talking about. Because I think end of the series, the goal should be that if somebody listens to these in sequence, that they will get those questions answered. And that’s really what we’re excited about. We’re really putting our foot forward this year, to be more active in the marketplace so that they that the ecosystem hears from Facebook directly versus, you know, there are a lot of folks who know how to do it, and they’re wonderful, but I think there’s nothing better than frankly hearing it from us since we live, breathe and eat the platform.
D.J. Paris 4:44
Absolutely. And we’re so excited that there is a team that is able to have these regular communications and that you’re willing to take time out of your your busy work schedule to do it. It’s a real honor for us to have you and we’re excited. So I know that you your team had recently published as a guide for real estate agents, which is so great, because I’ve read through it multiple times, and it’s the most recent version of the guide, it’s from June, which is called the real estate professionals Guide to Success. And we’re going to be going through that over several episodes in detail. But can you talk a little bit about what this guide is? And why agents should should be, you know, reading and viewing it?
Scott Shapiro 5:23
Yes, absolutely. So this was about a six month process. I think one of the things that we’ve realized is that we have a vast array of expertise in the real estate industry on our platform. So we see it from people who really understand how to optimize Facebook and Instagram, to be a fantastic lead generation and demand generation platform, to agents to your point who really struggle with the basics of what do I do? Yeah, what we realized, probably at the beginning of the year, we had an internal conversation is, you know, have we provided tools? Have we provided resources for the industry to answer those questions? And the answer overwhelmingly was kind of sort of, but not really. And so myself and a couple of others on the team, were working with our marketing team, our comms team put together a guide, we and we’ve really sat down and thought about this from the standpoint of the local agent or broker or property manager. This isn’t basically digital speak, this is common sense speak, to help the agent or the help the broker, help the property manager, the end user who’s a local SMB, understand how to use our platform better think we feel it’s incumbent upon us to speak with a first party voice. This is the first of a couple of different things that we’ll be doing over the course of the next six months, back to your introduction to answer those questions that the industry has.
D.J. Paris 6:43
Yeah, that’s, that’s so welcomed, and you know, better who better to hear hear it from then from the company itself. There are many, many guides that individuals have put together or other organizations about how to best use the Facebook suite of tools for real estate purposes. But to actually get the data directly from from the mothership, so to speak is really, really exciting. And this week, so just everyone who is either viewing or listening, we are going to be this will be available in if you’re listening to this episode, it’s in the show notes. If you’re viewing this live, we’ll put a link to it on the Facebook page. By the way, everyone should follow us on Facebook to which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod, we’ll have the guide there along with all the episodes that we’re doing with Scott. But Todd, can you talk a little bit more about the guide. And, and, you know, I know we’re not going to get into specific detail, but sort of why it was created and and who it’s for.
Scott Shapiro 7:40
Sure, it is for an end local professional and SMB, who is in real estate. So as I think about it, it’s the broker who might be thinking about using media on Facebook and Instagram. It’s the agent thinking about using Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising. It’s also for property managers, we understand that, you know, obviously, this speaks more to for sale side. But we also have a large group of folks, property managers who are also involved in advertising on our platform, and making sure that you know, even if it’s a local mortgage officer who’s in real estate or a title officer, you know, however you think about being a local SMB being the ce o CMO, CTO, the CEO of your business, sure, this guide is really designed for anybody who you know, thinks about it. In the terms of you know, I’m a local business. It’s a complex series of platforms. I know it’s successful, but I don’t quite know, maybe all of the things I need to do. And frankly, also, we wanted to ship some consumer insights in reports. So I think people intrinsically know that Facebook is an important channel and beyond that, we wanted to ground it with some facts. We also want to do some demystifying of the platform there. Again, to your point, TJ, one of the things that I see when I, prior to COVID, when we go out to large conferences is a lot of questions. And a lot of well, I heard this is this right? And so we have a little section about myth busting just so that it’s clear on what should you do. And that’s really the goal of the guide, is to really empower that local end user who’s the basically, they run their own business and they’re in real estate, and how can they take advantage of our tools to get that success?
D.J. Paris 9:23
The myth busting is really a neat part about this guide, because there are so many, you know, rumored sort of ideas about about how Facebook promotes organic posts versus paid. What’s the difference between boosting versus creating a traditional ad account with ads? You know, how does the the lead forms work on the ads? Many of our listeners probably aren’t even that familiar with with the lead forms, which are the lead ads I guess, we should say, which are a newer addition to the advertising platform which which I was made aware of months months ago, and I started using it in our own recruiting efforts to try to attract agents to our office. And it worked incredibly well. And thankfully, I was able to get some really good information directly from Facebook about it. And we’ll be able to share stuff like that here as well, which is very, very exciting, because I think there’s so many parts of Facebook that I mean, agents know, you know, how to do status updates, how to promote a listing, probably, you know, through an organic post, but then the question is, what should I do next? And so I’m excited to actually have those conversations to to, you know, to train and teach the agents how to best use it.
Scott Shapiro 10:36
And one of the things we did in the guide, and there there’s more forthcoming, which we will cover is the difference between doing the self serve and using a partner, and why do you use a partner, maybe you should use a partner? Sure, I think as you unpack the idea of the complexity of the platform, versus using somebody who has developed technology built upon Facebook’s platform, specifically for real estate, I think that’s really an important delineation. And our teams have worked really closely with certain companies over the past couple of years to make sure that those tools really aligned to best practices. So again, one of the things we want to make sure of is that every dollar spent every penny spent, leads to the business outcome that you put that hard earned money into. And so there’s a section about that. And it’s our first foray into kind of talking more about partners, what you should look for, and what you should think about. Because oftentimes, what we find is performance by a partner is far superior to then what you can do unless you are an absolute ninja on the platter, and I know a couple, but they’re a dime a dozen as far as really being able to get deeply involved in our tools and really complex. So that’s something else that we’ll probably want to touch on and help to help the folks aligned to.
D.J. Paris 11:53
Yeah, I received an email earlier today. So I had I put I was telling Scott, before we started, I put it or I forgot Scott, I think I said this, I’ve had such a crazy day, I have my head is still spinning. But yesterday, yesterday, I put an offer on a property, and we’re hoping that it goes through. And so just today I got an email unrelated to the transaction, but the that somebody on the MLS, another realtor, I put myself in isn’t my own client. So they don’t know that I’m a realtor. But they sent me an email through an automated system through the MLS that says, Hey, I saw you’re interested in this. And it’s called reverse prospecting. And it’s a function of the particular MLS that we have here in Chicago. But then this particular realtor said, Oh, I’ve got this other listing you should be looking at, and so that I thought that was pretty cool. And so I’ve been getting some of these emails over the last, you know, few days, because I was really interested in this one property, and they probably track that to some degree inside of our local MLS. And it made me really think about how hyper specific you can also get with your advertising and Facebook, you know, I’m on a board for a nonprofit. And we have a very specific group of people that we want to get our message out to, if there’s a geographic component to it, there’s a demographic component to it. And what I love so much about Facebook, and this is such a cool thing that I bet most Realtors either don’t know how to do or maybe don’t even know as possible, is you have the ability to, you know, to dictate who you’re targeting in your advertising, of course, always being compliant with Fair Housing guidelines. But there are ways to do that. And Facebook has made it actually pretty easy to learn those steps or to find a partner that can do it for you. And it is so cool that you can get that that granular and actually find exactly people who might be interested in your services or
Scott Shapiro 13:48
your listings. Yeah, and I think, you know, to pivot, I think one of the big things that we talk a lot about when I go to conference, do appearances or series such as the one you and I are doing is there there is the idea of social media advertising, I would tell folks take a step back and think about it this way, which is be a mobile marketing master first. Yes. And Facebook and Instagram, among others fit into that mold. So the reason why is you know, and this is sort of the opening salvo to what we talked about in the guide, which is your consumers are on mobile. You know, it’s the most personal and ubiquitous device with its ever been designed. I mean, no two phones, you know, if we, if we had 1000 in front of us, no one has the same apps. No one has the same thoughts on you know, the same devices. No one has the same operating systems. It’s so personalized sure that you know, if you think about it, a given anecdotal story, you know, I often at conferences, you know, who would what would you be more concerned about losing your cell phone or your car keys? And inevitably, the entire room with a cell phone? Yeah, right. And part of the fun part is, you know, you can now start your car from your cell phone. So right So I think those are things, DJ that we can kind of dive into and give, you know, as kind of an opening. Some interesting consumer insights for folks that are in the report is kind of that opening salvo. Because it really is. The reason to use Facebook and Instagram as a marketing and communication tool is because they’re mobile first. They’re the primary and largest apps that folks use on their mobile device. And that just allows you to have a universe where you’re reaching and prospecting, reaching current and hopefully future consumers.
D.J. Paris 15:33
And also getting really granular about the products right. So for example, Facebook Live, we’re going to spend time on that specifically to make sure people know how powerful that tool is, and how much Facebook currently is prioritizing live video. They want live video, they, they they show it at, you know, they show it to your to your followers, they want you to use this platform and real estate agents are in such a unique position to be able to use tools like Facebook Live, to be able to showcase listings, to be able to, you know, even, you know, all sorts of all sorts of ways that they can use it. And I know we’ll get into more detail about that in future episodes. But there are so many great tools I’m excited to to go down that path with you.
Scott Shapiro 16:17
Yeah, I think I think the first thing. So one, I think one thing to always realize in real estate is that we are blessed as an industry to have content that people want to engage with. So I work across several verticals that have local focus, serving on a couple of taskforce internally and, you know, verticals that have really, really localized in users, it’s hard, it’s harder for those advertisers break through with their services just based upon the What are you? What are you showing the consumer, you know, if you think about it, you know, things such as live, using the right type of video stories, the right type of marketing message, we’re all watching a bunch of HGTV, it’s no different than sitting on Facebook, or Instagram as a platform. And consuming that same content, it’s no different except you your services and expertise in the listing you may have or may be inquiring about on behalf of a customer, or the star. And I think that’s the thing that, you know, if you kind of ground this back to bait, brilliant basics, it’s your services and your expertise, so your brand. And that allows you to control your narrative to state why you’re important to the process of home buying what you can do for a potential client, whether it’s, you know, selling, and or buying. So you know, buy side sales side. And then simply, if you are an agent that has the listing, and you’re representing a client, they’re really using the listing as the hero. And the thing that people want to inquire about at the same point in time, also stating your expertise. So it’s that way that you can show different sides of the coin. Frankly, there are very few industries that have that type of content that really breaks through on our platform you’ll Automotive is one, obviously gaming, but you know, it’s it’s harder for certain verticals, to really break through with that kind of engaging content that people want to consume. So always know that the power that you have is the content generation, and the way that you can distribute.
D.J. Paris 18:20
Yeah, we’ve had, we’ve do a regular series with a, an Instagram expert, while she’s a social media expert across many different products. But Facebook and Instagram are her two biggest Instagram being her number one. And we talk so much about how to create content that’s useful and valuable to the people you’re looking to, to to influence whether they’re buyers, sellers, renters, investors, or just people that maybe want to help you grow your business, there may be friends and family or your sphere of influence. And we talk a lot about how to create that content. And it isn’t just, you know, posting, hey, here’s my new listing, check it out. And or here’s this open house tour I’m going to do on Facebook Live, which of course is part of the overall strategy of marketing a property or letting everyone know what you’re up to. But there’s also as you were mentioning, like an overarching strategy of, of content creation that you can you can employ, and it doesn’t have to be of super complicated and difficult thing. But you need to know the tools and you need to know when to use the tools for what specific purpose. But as real estate agents, we know so many so much of real estate agents, marketing initiatives happen on social, right. They’re happening on Facebook and Instagram specifically, those are the two big platforms. And so we just couldn’t be more excited to continue this series. But yeah, so what so what else? What else would you like to cover today about the guide?
Scott Shapiro 19:47
I think the first thing is just a top level stats about what we’re seeing both in the industry and on Facebook. And I think that’s a great segue to just give the grounding of why these things matter. So if you ground yourself in why does this matter? Yeah, then deploying the tools becomes sort of the second tier to it. So, you know, one thing we know is that 50% of consumers talk to only one agent before making up their mind on who to work with. So, again, we think about this, as you know, this is a pure, where are consumers? Where are they interacting? And it’s Facebook, and then it’s, it’s Instagram. So making sure you break through. So part of what you want to think about is, why do I want to market? Why do I want to market with a mobile first mindset, it’s that 50%, you know, make that one decision, that one conversation, that one interaction, that’s the decision point. We know that homebuyers, 79% of them are surveyed. They’re using online resourcing at some point in their search. So they’re coming into the they’re coming into the process, we know, really, really educated. However, they need the agent to complete that and have that level of expertise. And then when you think about mobile, just since 2014, so six short years, 76% of millennials look at mobile to search properties. 61% of Gen X, which I’m in. And then you know, we often forget, you know, the use of mobile tools by baby boomers and Silent Generation 35% of baby boomers are actually looking at content, real estate related searches and content either to buy or to sell on mobile. And I think it speaks to the ubiquity, again of the mobile device. And again, the use of Facebook. So when we think about well, only young people, only Millennials are on these devices, only Millennials are using these platforms. That’s absolutely not the case. It’s it is universal. And so I think that’s something that in our research, we wanted to make sure the industry heard. And then frankly, the other thing is that local businesses matter. So eight out of 10 people that were surveyed, this is an E marketer report from a year ago, actually interact with a local business on mobile. So again, you know, Facebook provides Facebook and Instagram provide that conduit that door, you know, you don’t have to have a huge, crazy website, to be able to be on mobile and have a conversation with a consumer. And the other thing that was fascinating to us when we did some research DJ was we get a lot of questions about the Facebook page. Okay, so we know Facebook pages are needed for advertising. But a lot of questions that I get at conferences, as do members of our team is why do I need a page, I have a huge friend network, I’m doing a personal page three and four consumers visit a US Facebook page once a week
D.J. Paris 22:33
for 70 75% of Facebook users in the United States. That is it a Facebook page of a local business at least once a week. That’s an incredible statistic.
Scott Shapiro 22:43
And so as the reason I’m kind of thinking about the math, and we’ll get into this as to how many people are on Facebook each and every day, you know, if you think about it, I believe we have over 220 million people times 75%, you’ll start to do the numbers. It is a huge percentage of folks who use Facebook as a search engine to seek out and find local businesses. And I think a lot of folks, that’s not intuitively how they think about our platforms. But actually outside of Google, our search traffic within Facebook is absolutely astronomically huge, you’d be stunned at some of the numbers. So it’s just another thing to think about. As to you don’t have to be the New York Times real estate section to have a page but you should be providing value, not only the listing, but you know, how do you get in front of them, we’ll talk about why than some of these other things from a content perspective, to provide local expertise. Because again, that’s what the consumer is looking for. That’s why they’re going to that Facebook page. Right
D.J. Paris 23:39
there. Yeah, they’re looking for information there. Maybe they’re looking to read reviews about your business, maybe they’re looking for content, or just an information about, you know, the business. And you know, it’s funny over the years, I’ve been recruiting agents for over about 10 years now. And so I work in a little bit of a different space than a traditional realtor who’s out working with the public, I work with realtors, and I am shocked at how much it has shifted even in the past 10 years of realtors who visit our business page for our real estate company, who then you know, hopefully link out to our external website, which which has all the information they would need to know about joining us. But we have to constantly provide content on Facebook that is targeted to helping them think you know about about us, as a company also help how they grow their business. And we get so much traffic from that. Now, you know, if I was doing all of this on an external website and hoping that I could somehow drive traffic there, I would have to deal with a lot of SEO issues, you know, search engine optimization, I’d be competing with so many other variables and other websites of companies who also want that same traffic. And we sort of forget that Facebook is a central hub for so much of that traffic. And so what we can really start to focus on is our branding and our content is how do we provide such unbelievable content throughout, you know, within a Facebook page, for example, for my business, that it’s going to naturally attract people to me? And then how do I target those people, I want to using some of the other tools, it’s very, very exciting.
Scott Shapiro 25:13
When you and I met, the first place I went to was Facebook, you know, I searched, you know, like, when we were introduced, I was like, Well, I mean, we’ll learn about who he is. And you know, it was there, because, again, you know, you’ve done that content generation, you have that presence. I mean, that’s just one real life example of making a connection to a person through the platform. And I think, again, it, it’s something that we get a lot of questions about, you know, the biggest thing is, the person who you are, when you go out into the community, really is as a business person. And it has been this weird conversation of well, I’ve got friends, and it’s like, but frankly, it limits you from a marketing perspective. I also think it’s a little bit like when you walk into a bar and the record scratches and it goes quite a little bit off the off the rails if you guys have ever seen movie, because again, you know, you as you, you are your business, but your business is what you’re advertising and or promoting. And I think that even from a communication standpoint, and a tracking standpoint, and a lightweight interface to do so many different things. The page is important. We’re talking much more about it, because we’ve seen a need to clarify that narrative. The other narrative that is sometimes missed amongst folks in real estate, you know, we hear a lot of people are leaving Facebook, it’s like very, that’s interesting, because we have 168 million Americans who use it every day. What does that number mean? That’s if you ask the audience of the Superbowl, the Academy Awards, the Grammys, which are the top three usually TV events of the year? Sure. That wouldn’t even come it wouldn’t equate to the total number of people on Facebook each and every day. So again, you know, when we talk about how do we demystify things that you may have heard in the egos system, people are on Facebook, they are still on it. And you know, frankly, 168 million people is certainly a large percentage of the population. 217 million people access Facebook every month on mobile, which is 70% of the entire population. And an hour and 15 minutes is spent on social media every day. And I believe between Facebook and Instagram, of the 75 minutes, we have about 60 minutes spent out on average between the two platforms. So again, these are things just as you and I were talking in prepping for the show, you know, prior to COVID and traveling the country. These are questions we get. And so in the guide, we wanted to make sure they were there. You know, how do you answer that question? I’m hearing such and such from such and such website about Facebook? Well, here it is. I mean, these are stats. And by the way, these are statistics we report in our earnings report. So they’re verifiable. A lot of the studies that we put into the guide come from a marketer, they come from Burrell, they come from media radar, they come from Zillow, they come from a lot of you know, leading verifiable sources. So again, I would say, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff. The part of the guide here is to really provide clarity for you. Should you have these questions? Should you hear something? It’s like, well, you know what, let me access the guide. What is Facebook actually doing? How many people are on Facebook, what you know, how much is being done on the platform. And then the last thing I would say DJ is kind of like to carry on this section. And then I think the one thing I wanted to cover before we sign off today is partners. It’s just that Facebook is also a platform for real estate shopping. So if you look at Facebook, Instagram, and then you look at the other six most popular pop forums online, so YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Snapchat, this doesn’t include tick tock, so just calling that out, but across the other six people are much more likely to buy what they see from our website, and our platforms than others. And what we also found from a study that was done, actually in your neck of the woods is Chicago agent monthly magazine. Sure. 65% of homebuyers say they’re influenced by the posts of their friends. So there is a correlation between activity that’s not necessarily advertising activity, more organic activity of appear set. I’ve seen people you know, especially amongst millennials, they are now right and ready to buy homes. Right? You know, maybe the generation hasn’t been as quick to buy, certainly, you know, the landscapes changing, as they, you know, now are getting into their late 20s and early 30s. Having children. So again, it’s a platform where people are using their time to shop for real estate and I think that’s a very important delineation. If I’m an agent or a broker or property manager to know that, that is a behavior that we see on platform and it’s an important one to distinguish they you know, they One thing we hear a lot of his book, you know, you’re there for your friends and your family posts, but they’re also here as shoppers. And they’re also here as consumers that you should be thinking about reaching.
D.J. Paris 30:10
I will tell you a funny story. I had a, we were out with a friend, my girlfriend and I were out with a friend who had jailbroken their iPhone. And so when you jailbreak your iPhone, you can do all sorts of cool little tricks and tweaks that Apple does not really want you to do. Yeah, so this particular trick, I will share only because it was such a funny a funny thing. So this particular trick removed the advertising from from Instagram. So as little a little tweak that, and the person said, This is great, I don’t have to see any ads, and I can just see the posts, and my girlfriend said I would never install that tweak. And I said why not? She goes I love the ads on Facebook and Instagram. And I said really? And and she I said why is that she goes, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a an advertisement that was had some great creative, had a great video or just great photos. And I have bought so many products i She’s like I cannot tell you how many things I have found through the Facebook platform that I wouldn’t have found elsewhere. And some of these, these numbers really speak to that where you say 168 million Americans use Facebook daily, that is a massive, massive, massive number, right? And then the average person, average US adult is spending over an hour a day on social the average user. So there’s so much there, whether whether you’re advertising or just providing great content through you know, your your Facebook page, or your org, or your personal page, people are on there, they’re looking, and they’re only going to we know that, according to this this study, we know that half of home buyers and sellers are only going to talk to one agent. So what a great way to get in front of people. And you know, I had my initial thought when I was out with this friend who had this tweet, I was like, Well, that’s pretty cool. You don’t have to look at ads, my girlfriend’s like, I would never ever do that I love the ads, because she learned so much. And Facebook is an Instagram are great, because over time they learn about your preferences, and they really start to show you things that they think may make more sense for your particular, you know, interests. And so I think that is so cool.
Scott Shapiro 32:17
Yeah, and I think that you bring up a really interesting point about the merging of advertising and engagement, you know, if I’m starting to see ads that I’m featuring, with that content, that means I’m going to see more real estate content, it gives you the opportunity to break through, you know, there’s a variety of ways and means in which that happens, you know, if you’re happening to look for a certain type of product, and then all of a sudden, you notice you get a lot of that product. It’s because you know, the the platform and the technology built behind it are to drive success, it’s to actually, if you’re showing that you’re raising your hand that you want to see that content, you’re going to see more classic example. As you can see over my shoulder, I’m a diehard soccer fan. And inevitably, every weekend when I’m interacting with more of that content, that’s what I see in my feed, it really does. The design here is to give you more of what you want to see less of what you don’t. And real estate is something that you know, again, because the content is really universal. It’s engaging and when done right can really attractive consumer, people want to watch it and interact with it. The last thing I wanted to leave with just as the opening of the guide that I think is really important. And DJ and I on a on the next episode can really dive into is the idea of self service versus partners. Yeah, one of the things I think is really interesting is that when we started our team a couple of years ago, they’re, you know, in you referenced this question earlier, what do you do as a brokerage? To help me with my Instagram and my Facebook advertising. Our team has worked tirelessly to work with some of the largest brokerage brands in the country, across the world, as well as working more closely with third party technical partners to ensure that, as they’ve wanted to answer that question, what should I do, that we’re at least collaborating with them on the tools that they’re shipping out? So this report covers off on about seven different platforms, mostly brokerage lead, that our team has had a real front row seat to collaboration and working on? I think the it’s important, because I know that sometimes they’re you know, we’ve heard this from realtors that you know, sometimes there’s distrust in first party tools or you’ve had a bad experience. Maybe in the past, when your brokerage rolled out whatever type of tool that they’ve they’ve done. The ones that are listed in this guy that DJ will post really are. These are programs that, you know, our team has had a very very collaborative relationship with the end providers, so whether it’s compass, whether it’s Keller Williams, whether it’s exit Realogy lynda.com REMAX, we’ve been really in the trenches with them to their credit, they’ve wanted our collaboration and help. And so this is the first time that we’ve really come out and talked about, you know, the use of Facebook in a self service model is really, really hard unless you know what you’re doing. The tools can be complex. And if you tell similar to the story we were just talking about, if you start engaging with content that you like, you get more of it. Similarly, if you tell our advertising, you know, machine learning and AI tools, which you want to do, but it’s not the right thing to do the right outcome you want, you won’t get the outcome, you you so desire. Simply put, because if you don’t optimize for the right thing, it won’t do the right thing, you’ve told it, I’m making this up, I want to go get page likes, not that I would ever advocate that. By the way, I’m saying that on the podcast here, that’s not a business outcome that I would recommend working at Facebook and Instagram and knowing what I know about real estate. But if you accidentally self service tool set that we’re gonna go find people to do that, versus thinking about lead generation, demand generation, brand, awareness, all of those things that make up the sales funnel. And so this was the first time we really sat down and said, Look, we’ve worked with these companies very closely. And we need to make sure that agents know about their solution. We are working with a with several really great third party companies. Right now we are working internally to find ways in which we can add to this report coming in the fall or the winter and really call out third parties that we also have a tight collaborative relationship with that we vetted and worked with on their tool sets. So that’s the second part of this, that will be coming. That I think it’s very, very important for agents to know that, you know, I walk the halls of a lot of conferences, and I see the Facebook and the Instagram logo up. I don’t know those companies, I don’t know their tools or solutions. And oftentimes, when you really dig in, it’s not what I would recommend using. So, you know, this is the first step in trying to help agents and brokers understand, really, you know, who to use and why to use them. So more on that to come in the fall from a third party perspective. But I would say when you download the guide, if you’re aligned to any of the brands, and or have a relationship with any of these brands that are listed, I would seriously recommend looking at their toolset because they really have been closely collaborated on with our team to align to best practices for advertising, which DJ and I will get into in subsequent episodes of like, okay, Scott, why are you saying these, we’re going to tell the story subsequently about why, because they aligned to product and best practices that we know drive success.
D.J. Paris 37:43
And that’s so important, because at to Scott’s point, if you are a real estate agent, and you’re looking to employ or have a partner to help you navigate the social landscape with respect to posting or ads or, or content creation, boy you had there is no shortage of people that will title themselves as a social expert, a social media expert. And it is very difficult sometimes to find that right fit and to know exactly what expertise. Some of those, some of those, you know, experts in quotes have, and some of them are very good, and some of them might not be. So what what in this report shows us some of the partnerships where these third party providers are working directly in and are integrated with Facebook, and that Facebook has vetted. So I think that is a such a helpful thing, because so many agents go well, my friend has this friend that’s really great at social, you know, advertising or content creation, should I go with them. And I’m like, I don’t know, I don’t know anything about them. And and anybody can call themselves an expert. So it’s nice to know that there are integrated partners that Facebook has put their stamp of approval on and saying, you know, we trust this company, and they do good work. And so this guide towards the latter part of the guide goes through some of those existing partnerships. And then as Scott mentioned, the future future issues of this guide will go into more detail and even talk about other partnerships.
Scott Shapiro 39:14
Yeah, and I think that, you know, just to kind of put a cap on this particular subject, you know, our job is to make sure that we provide the best solutions for you in the field. There’s no quid pro quo. This is we’ve had a front row seat, the partners have worked really collaboratively with us. They have the right solutions. And it to DJs play, it’s really hard, who to know and I think more on the paid advertising side than the content creation side. Because ultimately, what’s happening a lot is that agents are paying for ad paying for services, and they’re not seeing the results. And that’s not right. That’s not what we want as a platform. That’s certainly definitely not what we want. And it’s not fair to somebody who’s putting their hard earned money. into the marketing of a property or themselves to be taken advantage of. And so I think, you know, it’s amazing the work that we’ve done in the seat we’ve had, and it’s been very collaborative. There’s some amazing and wonderful people who have worked on these programs. In addition, in addition to amazing partners on the third party side, who really, really, really reputable do a lot of great work. So I think the promise that we have to the industry is that we will be more on our front foot and be more declarative about this and put in, you know, hopefully, what we are working towards is a future state where we would have a program for third party companies that would be locally badged and accredited by Facebook, having gone through some sort of vetting process, where everyone who would want to be badged would have that opportunity would have that set playbook. So in other words, it’s not slanted to work towards anybody’s advantages, here are the metrics that we know are best practices, do you meet them? Or do you not, and if you do, then there would be some sort of accreditation program. So that, again, you know, similar to these port partners, you would know who to use, there are 1000s of them, you know, I don’t envision a world where we have 1000s, I envision a world where we really work collaboratively with the best, the most thoughtful, and the people who are really are trying to do right by either their own network of agents or the clients that they that they work with. So more on that to come and excited to talk more about that in the future. But I will say in the guide, if you happen to be an agent who is aligned to one of these brands, and you haven’t used their advertising tools, I would definitely give it a try. I think the one thing we hear overwhelmingly is when agents make that shift from self serve, we’ll talk about the myth of boosting in a future episode, when you get beyond that, and you start doing really great advertising on platform with a partner or a great UI, it makes all the difference in the world.
D.J. Paris 41:50
It does. And there you know, Facebook’s intention is they want you to continue to use the platform, whether it’s through organic posting, or through paid advertising, they want you using their platform because they know that it works. And we know that the vast, a huge chunk of the country is on it regularly. So what we’re going to continue to do in these series is start to unpack in more detail about specifically how you as the agent or the or the brokerage starts to think about how do we conduct ourselves on social, what are the ways in which we create content that is engaging to our audience, I will tell you with our own podcast, I spent a tremendous amount of time with Scott ever talking about website creation before we started, and I build I build all of our websites for our company which which is fun for me. But it’s a definitely a difficult job. And I read recently rebuilt our are keeping it real podcast website. And I think it looks great, and it looks good. And I spent a lot of time on it. I’m really proud of it. However, the vast majority of people who interact with us either downloaded our episodes through whatever app they’re using, which is great. Or they they watch our videos on Facebook or you know, comment there, that is where most of our engagement happens. As much as I would love to say, I built this amazing website and everyone shows up and they love it. We very rarely get a whole lot of feedback on our website, because everyone’s on social. So this is such a wonderful opportunity as agents to start to think about what is your presence? Like? How do you increase your your reach and engagement? And how do you get more people who want what you offer to know about your services. And so we’re gonna go through everything from really from A to Z over the time that we have with Scott. But I think this is a great place to wrap up. So I will encourage everyone, if you are listening to this as an audio episode, it should there should be a link in your notes to to see this particular this report. If you’re on our Facebook site, it’ll be right there. So you shouldn’t have any problem finding it, read through it. And then we’re going to go through in more detail in future episodes exactly how to start implementing some of the these data points into your practice. Scott, yeah. Any any any final thoughts to wrap up?
Scott Shapiro 44:19
No, just we’re we are very excited for the report. The report is really one in a series of steps that we’re going to take be more active in the industry this year. DJ and I were talking the reason he and I were talking about websites is that we’re working on our first external website at Facebook for business slash real estate website, where things such as this report case studies, strategies, videos, basically a hub for when you have a question. And again, you hear from a lot of different sources. We should have a place where you can go a destination where you can have a lot of those questions answered. So hopefully within the month that will launch we’re we’ve worked really hard on it and we’re super close to getting there. right over the hill. And then again, like what I said earlier, the partner program, there are other things that we really want to be on our front foot, to make sure that you hear from us as much as possible. And again, we have amazing ambassadors and amazing people who’ve done amazing things on our platform. But we also want to make sure you hear it directly from us since we live and breathe. And, you know, we’re, you know, this is the world that we live in each and every day, both Facebook and Instagram and messenger, but also real estate. So making sure that you know, you as our end partner, have an access point to us through things such as the guide, and the website, the podcast, obviously, with TJ and other things that we’re hoping to bring to market in the next probably six, six to seven months.
D.J. Paris 45:47
It’s very exciting. So for everyone who is listening, if for some reason you don’t see a link to this guide, find us on Facebook, you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod, send us a message, say I can’t find the guide, I want to see it or you can send it through our website, which is keeping it real pod.com I want to make sure everybody sees this. It’s a quick it’s read, but it is a great read, because it really helps set the stage for how important social or how relevant and important social is right now. And how agents can start to think about gosh, now where am I currently in my social marketing strategy, or my stay in touch strategy or retention strategy with my existing clients. And maybe you could start thinking about steps that you can take and we’re gonna go into those steps in more detail. So we’re going to make sure that everyone has access to this guide. Like I said, reach out to us if you don’t see it, or can’t find it, we’ll make sure we get it in your hands. But Scott, thank you once again for for this time. We are so excited for this this partnership we were big, big huge fans, you are the reason why we have grown our podcast Facebook is has been such so integral to us that we are excited to be able to to help agents, you know with with that content. And I’ll also ask everybody before, before I sign off that remind everyone to please tell a friend that’s the best way you can continue to support our show. Think about one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from fireside chats with Scott about Facebook or any of the other guests we have and just share the share the podcast with them that that helps us we we have been very fortunate that our listeners are so generous that they’re willing to do that, please continue to do that. And also continue to to just you know, follow us and also read this guide. I can’t say it enough read this Real Estate Guide. So we’re gonna get this to them. And Scott, we will I will see you on the next episode. So thank you so much.
Scott Shapiro 47:50
My pleasure. Thanks as always DJ, really appreciate the time
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
