By Emily Dugal, Digital Marketing Manager 

Facebook comes more naturally for some than for others. Facebook just recently celebrated its 13th birthday and for my generation we’ve grown up with it. I myself have had Facebook for 11 years. Since I was 15 years old. But when you think about it, it’s still new to a lot of people. And it’s the first platform of it’s kind to spread across multiple generations. When I first got Facebook it was only used by people in college and high school. It wasn’t until I was in college that my mother and other parents started using it as well. That being said I have to remind myself that some people don’t know the difference between a newsfeed and a wall. Or what boost and reach are. In this blog post I am going to break these things down into simpler definitions for those of you who are still wrapping your head around the world as it is on Facebook.

Note: All the bolded words are given simple definition at the bottom of the page for you to use as a quick reference in the future!

Firstly, the difference between a Facebook PROFILE and a Business PAGE. Your Facebook Profile is your personal profile where you have “Friends.” That’s not to say that you shouldn’t connect with your fellow agents or former and current clients. It also doesn't mean you can’t share real estate related content on your Facebook profile but your Facebook TIMELINE (where your posts live and your info and profile picture are displayed) shouldn’t be drowned with real estate. It should be a place where you can show you’re a human. It’s a place where you put pictures of your dog or your excitement about the Patriots Super Bowl win!

Your Business page is where you have Followers. It should be the platform where you post your real estate content, your housing reports, your listings and open houses. And it is from your business page that you SHARE to your personal profile. You can still have a personality on your business page! Post a picture of your dog sitting in one of the offices or of you with some fellow agents at the Awards Ceremony. Be a human. As Katie Lance says Facebook is a place where you get people to know, like, and trust you and you need to be human to do those things.

I’ve had agents ask me “Okay so if I post something, everyone following me is going to see it, right?” If only it were that easy. Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean they are going to see all your posts. Facebook uses an algorithm (as do Twitter and Instagram) that personalizes everyones News Feed (the Facebook homepage where the posts of those you follow and are friends with appear). According to Mark Zuckerberg, co -founder of Facebook, each of us gets exposed to more than 1,500 stories a day but only sees about 100 stories day on our News Feed. There is so much out there that you would otherwise get bombarded with content and Facebook wants to tailor your New Feed to the stuff that is going to be most interesting and relevant to you. I won't get too much into how the algorithm works because it’s changing all the time and it’s very complicated. Lots of smart tech guys over at Facebook who are way smarter than we could imagine (if you ever seen the movie the Social Network you know the type I’m talking about and if you haven't seen it go watch it! Strangely enough one day it’ll be considered ‘Historical’).

If not everyone sees your post then how do you know how many people are seeing it and who those people are? Well when it comes to your personal Facebook profile there’s no way of knowing how many people have seen your post, you only know whose engaged with your post (like, commented or shared are considered engagement). On your business page you’ll be able to see how many people you’ve reached. Reach is the number of unique users who saw your content. There are different types of reach (page, post, organic, paid, and viral) but for the sake of keeping this post to the more basic aspects (and based on the questions I get the most) we are going to focus on post reach. You can’t tell specifically who saw your post in terms of followers but if you look into your insights tab where it’ll give you the demographics of those who your page is reaching (male, female, age, and location).

Although having a high reach is good, engagement is also very important. Sure.

you want people see your post but you also want people to engage with it. People see a lot of things on Facebook but they don't engage with a lot of what they see. Engagement is a like (now called reactions as they’ve added love, wow, sad, funny, and mad), a comment, or a share. Also, keep in mind that you have to give to get. Interact with your followers. Like and comment on their content, don’t go through your News Feed liking everything though as it can easily come off as spammy so be intentional. If someone comments on one of your posts reply or like it.

So what can you do to increase your reach and engagement? You can boost. Boosting is paying a fee to get your post more exposure. You can only boost posts on your business page which just another reason you should have and maintain a business page. When you boost something you can decide how much you want to spend but there are limits on how little you can spend, for example you can’t boost for 10 days and only spend $1. You can also dictate how long you want your boost to run and audience demographics (gender, age, location). I suggest boosting posts that are promoting you, your listings, your website or videos.

I know Facebook can seem daunting to some as there is so much going on and so many different ways you can do things. And to add to all the it’s constantly changing! Hopefully this layout will help clear up some of the questions you have. Please feel free to reach out to me at any time to meet and go over any questions you have about Facebook or any other social media platform! I’m here to help!

Emily Dugal: EmilyDugal@LeadingEdgeAgents.com

Definitions

Facebook Profile - Your personal page where all your headshot, cover photo, info about you, and where you Timeline is displayed. This is where you connect with friends.

Facebook Timeline - Where your posts and things you share are displayed

Facebook Business Page - Similar to a Facebook profile it is where you brand yourself. People follow your business page and you post content related to Real Estate which you can then share to your personal page

Share - Posting from one page or profile on Facebook to another page or profile on Facebook

News Feed - The Facebook “homepage” where you see the posts of those you are friends with and follow. Using algorithms Facebook tailors this to you

Algorithm - What Facebook uses to decide what shows on your news feed based on past behaviors

News Feed - Where you see the posts of people you are friends with and pages you follow. What you see is personalized to you based on an algorithm.

News Feed - Where you see the posts of people you are friend with and pages you follow. What you see is personalized to you based on an algorithm.

Reach - The number of unique users who saw your content. This information is only available on a business page

Engagement - Likes (reactions also include funny, love, sad and mad), comments and shares

Boost - Boosting is paying a fee to get your post more exposure. Only available on Business Page