The big question with the latest Facebook update is “will it affect my Real Estate Page?”

If you haven’t heard yet, Facebook has released a fairly big update that aims to reduce the crowding of brand presence on the platform and have it focus on being a platform for personal moments and connection.

Mark Zuckerberg stated:

“One of our big focus areas of 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is well spent.

We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together to the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well being and happiness.“ ~ Mark Zuckerberg

This is positive news for friends and family who want to see more content from one another and utilise the platform for interaction with each other. However, for brands and public content posted on pages this could have negative impacts.

What does this mean for Pages and public content?

Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.

“As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.” ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Is it all bad for Real Estate Agents?

The bad news for brands and real estate agents alike who have a facebook presence is the potential drop in awareness and exposure of their posts. Posts will gain popularity and appear more frequently on news feeds based on their received engagement and interaction. For example, posts that receive more comments and likes will appear as having greater engagement and will make its way to the top of followers news feeds while posts with fewer actions will decline in presence or not appear at all in news feeds.

How to adjust to the news feed change

This sounds like bad news but think of it as an opportunity for business owners. The steps you can take include utilising our professional service and:

Engaging in conversations

You know from your success in Real Estate that communication with clients is key to success. Build connection with your clients through communication and make conversation happen! Better than posting content on a regular basis is conversation. Showing that you are actively engaged in your clients activities and care for their opinion makes a world of difference, update or no update.

Sharing your content

Share your content onto your personal page! Yes, you may want to keep these separate but sharing your content will improve its engagement.

Video Content

Better than a link or an image, videos are powerful tools to advertise your business and engage your audience. Consider making your property listing updates as videos or creating a regular agent video channel on platforms such as Youtube.

Facebook Ads

With the update many businesses are seeing the benefit of Facebook advertisements. Advertisements can reach an audience that you are seeking to expose your brand to and you can increase awareness of your content.

With the update there is big change in how businesses grow brand awareness and engagement in their content but if anything, it is for the better as it promotes communication and connectivity with your clients. As well, successful Real Estate Agents will not be dependent solely on the traffic generated on Facebook as they can adopt Email Marketing, Responsive Websites, Digital Property Brochures and more.

Want to expand your digital presence? Get in touch with us on 02 9057 8040 to know more!