Social Media Marketing: Facebook Live for Real Estate Pros

Introduction:

Dave: Hello everyone. Welcome to StateListingsInc the home of NewYorkStateMLS and the nationwide MyStateMLS. My name is Dave and today we are going lights, camera, live, digital marketing for real estate. 

Dave: There is a lot we could talk about, so what I wanted to do today was focus a little bit on how Facebook live, virtual tours, virtual open houses, can help you market your business. Then we might dip-in onto some other things real quick, just to talk about editing videos, a lot of stuff that we can go into much deeper in future series. So today I want to talk about those few things, because even those topics we do have a lot to get into, a lot to talk about. 

Question and Answer: 

Dave: So what is digital marketing? We've talked about this numerous times here at the MLS and that's that form of marketing that's going to utilize the internet and online-based technologies, that's going to feature things like search engine optimization, your social media pages, and of course your general online presence.  

Dave: While we're talking about digital marketing in general, the thing that we're gonna focus on today is your social media presence and when it comes to social media, Facebook is going to be number one. There are almost two and a half billion monthly users on Facebook alone, which makes it the most widely used social media platform across the entire country, and what we're wanting to focus on today is Facebook's ability to give you those live-streaming capabilities and the ability to turn those live streams into on-demand videos. So when we're thinking about going live, how we go live with social media, whether we're on Instagram live or we're on Facebook live, going live has certainly been a big part of what we do here at the MLS, what a lot of agents have done the past six months, seven months now, because 2020 has changed the way we sell, there's no denying that covid 19, the coronavirus completely transformed all walks of life, everyone the way they do everything, the way kids are going to school, the way we're buying and selling real estate, everything has changed and that's certainly not going to go away, because now with 2021 just around the corner, virtual tours, virtual open houses are becoming more and more important than ever before and going virtual is really going the distance, some people might think virtual tours are lazy or just not putting in the full effort, because oh the agent doesn't want to do a regular open house, that's actually quite the opposite. Many people actually see using virtual tours, virtual showings, as putting an extra effort and going that extra mile to give a property more exposure, getting it in front of more people and engaging with more people, just based on the nature of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, social media, things like that and additionally what going virtual is going to do and doing these live videos, doing these social media posts, is that's what's going to set you apart from other agents, so that's very very important and that's something for you to remember, because again not only do we market properties on a day-to-day basis, we're also going out and we're marketing ourselves, because yes, we've got the listings that we've got right now, but we need to make sure our name is out there, so that way potential sellers they come to me knowing that I'm the agent that could best represent them because they see all the extra effort that I'm putting forward for the houses that I'm selling. 

Dave: So what we're going to talk about today is going virtual, going live, doing social media, a lot of this stuff I'm going to tie into just Facebook, but a lot of it's going to tie into other social media platforms as well, just because of Facebook again is the number one used platform right now, so that's what a lot of people are using and for a lot of people they already have it, they don't you know, I'm not gonna convince you to join Instagram or get a youtube channel page, we're going to talk about Facebook because pretty much everyone has one. So that's what we're going to focus on today. So when it comes to planning your virtual open house, the first thing of course is just promote, promote, promote, you're going to promote it the same way that you would promote a traditional open house, where you would sit out in the kitchen, wait for people to come in with the clipboard, so the first thing you're going to do, again is just like you'd normally do with a traditional open house, is pick your date and time, but then once you do that make sure you do it well in advance because you're going to want to be able to go ahead and promote it as much as you possibly can and just as you would with a traditional open house. That means things like your emails, social media posts, things like that, and when you do that do not forget the link. 

Dave: So what's great about Facebook is not only do you have the ability to just have your own personal page, but you can also go ahead and create a business page and that gives you the ability to have a simple link to go to that page, so if you're Tom the realtor, you can have Facebook.com forward slash tom the realtor. So you can start posting on your social media posts, I've got a note, virtual open house, come check out this home. Don't forget to visit Facebook.com forward slash tom the realtor, Saturday morning at 10 a.m. One of the options that you can do is, we'll get into it later and it's pinning your posts. So if you want in addition to just having your traditional posts on social media, what you could also do is go live from that house, shoot a quick 30-second clip of you standing in front of the property, you can pin that post to your profile wall and say, hey, I'm outside this house at Mayberry lane. I'm going to be doing a Facebook live, virtual open house, this Saturday make sure you come by, you're not going to want to miss what's behind these doors. That's all you have to do you shoot that video on your phone, you upload it to Facebook and then you can pin that post, you can share it to your personal page as well, directing people to go to your business page and you might convince people to go ahead and share, as well family and friends will want to share it, the homeowner of that property you're selling will go ahead and share it. So you've got these opportunities to go ahead and get some additional exposure on this virtual open house that you may not have normally gotten, which is the traditional one. 

Dave: So now that you've gone ahead and you've promoted your open house, it's on social media, maybe you've also posted to your Instagram page, that quick clip that I just said is hey I'm outside of this house on Mayberry lane. I'm gonna be live on Facebook, make sure you join me at Facebook.com forward slash tom the realtor. That's a short enough clip that I can post that to my Instagram story, I can also post that right to my Instagram posts, that would then be seen by my Instagram followers, who then could then go find that page on Facebook and hopefully see my listing and see my virtual tour there. The best thing to do is make sure you've practiced, make sure you know what you're gonna say. So do some dry runs before going live, you can even practice in your own house, you don't have to be in the house that you're selling, just practice at home. Do some dry runs and what I mean by that is record a walk through of the home and then review it, have your spouse look at it, have a colleague look at it, let them give you notes as to what you should do, know what you want to say, maybe what you want to do is create some bullet points, hit some of the big selling points of the home, the best parts, the best aspects, know what you want to say but don't have a full script, because what can happen is, when you're reading off a script, it's not going to come off as genuine, people are going to be able to tell that you're reading from a script, instead you're going to want to sound conversational, so again we're not being robotic, we're not reading off a script, just hit those key bullet points, talk about that new flooring in the kitchen, talk about those countertops, talk about how they repainted and did new drywall in the bathroom, so it's got that new waterproof drywall on the bathroom. Just know the big points that you want to get across in your Facebook live video, when it's time to do that virtual open house, that virtual showing. 

Dave: All right, It's show time, what are we going to do? Well, the first thing that we want to do before we actually go live is make sure we open up all the doors and turn all the lights on. What I mean by opening the doors is I don't mean the front door and the back door to get into the house. I'm talking about all the doors to get into all of the different rooms, this way this is going to provide you an easy transition as you're walking down the hall, you can just quickly turn in to the first bedroom, go across the hall and turn into the bathroom. This way you're not jiggling handles, trying to get yourself into a room that may have accidentally been locked or anything like that, you can just easily walk through the home fluidly while having that conversation with your potential buyers that are watching you on Facebook live and of course when you go live, make sure you introduce yourself, say your name, the name of your company, give your phone number, that's going to be a great opportunity for you to possibly collect leads, give them your cell phone number, say hey, if you like this house send me a text at 888-769-7657, send me an email at dave@mystateMLS.com. Just make sure you do that, not only do that when you introduce the video and you start the video, but also make sure you do it at the tail end when you close out the video as well, this way it's at top of mind, so as your viewers are watching, they're learning about the property, they've got your information there, so they can always reach out, as well and also thank your viewers for joining you, you're going to be able to see on Facebook live as people are going through watching it, you're going to see when someone joins, you're going to be able to see questions about the property as well and be sure to respond to those questions, respond to them right during Facebook live, encourage viewers to ask those questions, because this is Facebook live there really are no time constraints. You're not limited to just five minutes or three minutes, you can go for as long as you possibly need, especially with an open house, when we do typical open houses where we're sitting in the kitchen with that clipboard, we're usually there for two hours, virtual open houses are probably going to be a little bit different. You're not going to want to sit on your cell phone for two hours, just waiting for someone to view that video. So when you do a Facebook live, virtual showing or a virtual open house, you stick to that time. Keep it 10, 20 minutes, whatever it takes for you to get through the property, but you've got to remember when you're walking through, you've got to remember that these people are not with you physically, so try to walk through the property just as you would if you were an arms length away from the potential buyers. Treat it just like a traditional open house or traditional showing. Walkthrough the entire house, maybe step out in the backyard. Show that shed that's in the back, just show the lay of the land, show everything about the property that you possibly can. 

Dave: And as you go through your virtual showing, your virtual open house, remember to be casual and informative. When you speak with a group of people online, typically do not refer to them as a group, you're going to want to act as if you're just talking with one customer, with your friend, just say you, you could this is a great house. Of course, if someone asks a direct question, you could address them and say, oh I see in the comments, Tom wants to know about those kitchen cabinets, those are solid wood cabinets, those are not laminate. So things like that, so definitely make sure you know as much about the property as you can, so as you're answering those questions you don't come up short-handed or not knowing the answer. So definitely be sure to know as much about the property as you possibly can. 

Dave: I'm going to pull up a demo in a little bit, where when people were watching the video one of the biggest questions they had was what were the taxes, because the listing agent didn't mention it in the video, but had they seen those questions live in the video and they knew the answer they could have gone ahead and answered those questions right then and there. And I mentioned this before and it is do not forget to interact, as people are watching this on Facebook live. Let them go ahead and interact with you, say if you've got questions about this property as we're going through, feel free to comment and I will see that on my screen and I will answer your questions and of course after the Facebook live event is done, as we said before what's great about Facebook live is those live videos are then available for on-demand replays at any time. So even after the Facebook live event is done, someone might not see that video until later that evening and they may have questions, so make sure you're always going back responding to comments and questions on any of your posts, not only for virtual showings but any social media posts that you have. It's really important to engage with those that ask questions or respond to any of your posts, whether it's about a property, maybe you're just posting a funny picture, if someone responds to it, you don't have to necessarily respond but even if you click the like on their comment, just so they know that you're interacting and you're actually there interacting with them, that can certainly go a long way and lastly when it comes to going live on Facebook live, take your time. It's going to go a long way because especially when you're talking if you are speeding through facts about the house, people are not going to be able to digest everything that you're talking about. So please take your time, make sure you're taking your breath, take some breathing room, give yourself some time to get your next thought out, before you're talking about the next thing. So again take your time and the best way to do that is to make sure that you're interacting with the people that are with you in the live event, so just as we are here like I said we're always asking questions, we want your feedback as we go through the presentation and we take our time to look at those questions, answer those questions and the same thing holds true when you're doing a Facebook live. Make sure people are responsive as you go through the property, say all right if you've got any questions about this just let me know, I'm here to answer your questions. 

Dave: So let's talk about some other tips about when you go live on Facebook or any other platform. 

Dave: One of the most important things is going to be landscape view, that's the horizontal view of your cell phone. Typically if you're going to be going on live with Facebook, you're most likely going to be using a cell phone. If you're going live with your laptop, that is certainly going to be quite awkward for you to walk around a house while holding a giant laptop. Tablets, I can see you getting away with it, but again you got to make sure you've got cell phone service or a strong wi-fi connection to do that, whereas, with a cell phone, chances are you've got a mobile service, so you're going to be able to go live with that. So just make sure you've turned that camera sideways, so that way you're getting the widest view possible, if not if you're holding the camera upwards, it's not going to look good on all screens, it's going to look very awkward when people are watching it on their computer and additionally it's just not flattering to a home when you're doing a walkthrough, just the way that these lenses are built and designed. It's going to really make a room or a house look much smaller than it could actually be, just because of the view of the camera. Of course, also make sure you're using that rear facing camera, that's just because of the way cell phones are built, that rear facing camera, the one that faces away from the screen. Not the one that's above and facing you, that's the front facing, you don't want to use that. That rear-facing camera is going to give you the best quality picture, that's usually the lens with the most megapixels, the best picture quality, so make sure you're using that rear-facing camera and of course that also gives you the ability to then be able to see the screen as people ask those questions as they scroll up through your live presentation as you're going live. If you can, bring a camera person, bring a colleague, bring a spouse, bring your teenage child along for the ride and instead of you having to hold the camera yourself, potentially have them go through and walk and follow you through the house, so again if we're not doing Facebook live, maybe we're just going through and we're doing a virtual tour and we're going to talk about the home, this is the perfect opportunity to use a camera person to just follow you along as you walk through the house. This way you can actually interact with the property, so as you tour the kitchen, you can open up the kitchen cabinets, show how large the kitchen cabinets are, show that they've got those quiet closed doors, they don't slam shut, open up the refrigerator, show how big that refrigerator is, interact with the cabinets in the bathroom, open up closet doors, this brings some personality to the home and also again it's showcasing you as a real estate professional, which can really help you expand your business as more potential buyers, more potential sellers see you because we know people could also be looking for an agent to represent them and by being able to put a face to a name and actually see how you present yourself as walking through a home could certainly sell you as their next agent. 

Dave: Next thing you might want to do is, after you post a Facebook live video or you posted a pre-recorded walkthrough video, go ahead and pin that post and what we mean by that is on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. You can have a post be the top post on your page anytime someone comes to it, so if you've got a brand new listing that you just did a walkthrough video of, or you did a virtual open house, you can go ahead and pin that video right to the top of your Facebook page. So when anyone comes to that page, whether they click on it from another link, they get a link from an email, you sent them something in a text if you send them to your Facebook page or your Twitter page that pinned post is going to be the first thing they see when they open up your page and I'm going to show you that in just a little bit as well. Some extra tips is collecting leads. This is super important and this is actually a hurdle that some people had brought up when 2020 came and covid19 came. People were wondering well how can I collect leads from doing all these virtual open houses, doing these Facebook live videos, how am I going to collect leads. So how are we going to collect those leads virtually, well where did where is the clipboard, again we're doing virtual showings, we're doing virtual open houses, there is no sign-in clipboard, so what you've got to do is again, like I said when you close out your video when you introduce yourself at the beginning of your video, give your contact information, introduce yourself, your name, your company, your phone number, your email, if you've got a texting number, if you've got a cell phone that you let people text you at all hours of the day, say for immediate response send me a text at this phone number, give that at the beginning of the video. If you want, do it again in the middle, make sure you do it again at the end of the video. 

Dave: What you're going to want to do is entice viewers to give you their info and how you're going to do that is, say if you want more information if you'd like to email you details about this home, reach out to me and I will send those to you immediately. If it's on Facebook, you could say if you want more information about this property leave your email information in the comments section, I'll send you detailed information about this property, you say if you like this home and would like to know about other homes in this area, let me know, drop your email in the comments section and I'll send you an email right away, or again give your contact information, say you want a detailed showing sheet for this home, send me a text at this phone number, you want to know about other listings in the area, send me a text at this number. So make sure you're enticing your viewers to give you their info by being able to entice them in receiving something by giving you their info. If you don't have any listings right now, but you still want to be able to go on Facebook live, do these types of virtual showings, not a problem at all, what you can do is work with colleagues, ask them if you can give tours of their listings, that way you can still do the same exact stuff that we've talked about, learn about the property, do a pre-walk through, know what you're going to talk about and then give that virtual tour, post it on Facebook, if you've got time on a weekend, schedule a virtual open house. Just like when newer agents start out and they want to work and learn from agents, what are the first things that you do to learn the ropes, you get stuck on open house duty and sitting in the kitchen with the clipboard for two hours, do the same exact thing but be proactive about it, offer yourself up with colleagues and say, hey I just saw you posted that house, do you mind if I swing in and do a virtual showing of it? I'd love to you know show my Facebook friends and my Facebook followers. 

Dave: So go ahead work with colleagues, do tours of their listings, because not only you're going to be able to promote that listing, now you're promoting yourself and with social media, that's very, very important to get your name out there, get your name recognition out there, so certainly go out and do all that you can to get your brand out there. While we're on the topic of Facebook and Facebook live, we can do more than just virtual tours, you can go live from your desk, for those that have been with MyStateMLS for a while now, you know that we did Facebook live events for several months at the beginning of covid 19, the coronavirus and I was going live right from my room, right where I'm sitting right now, every Tuesday and Friday I think it was and I was going live right here at my desk just discussing different topics based around the Corona virus and working remotely and how agents could make that transition smoothly and efficiently and effectively from being at the office, being able to physically meet with customers and clients, to then having to work remotely and you can do the same thing from your desk. So you don't have to just give virtual tours when it comes to going live on Facebook making videos, what you're going to be able to do is, show viewers that you're their expert, whether they're getting ready to sell their home, they're getting ready to buy their home, maybe they're just getting ready to move to a different area, show them that you're their expert no matter what they're looking for. 

Dave: Some different topics, you can write these ones down, you can go ahead and discuss market trends, talk about why it's a good time to buy, why it's a good time to sell, what kind of buyers are coming to your neighborhood, talk about the trends that are happening right there in the service areas that you service. You can also again talk about upcoming open houses, upcoming listings, things like that, maybe you can talk about, hey I'm going to be doing a virtual Facebook live tour of this house tomorrow evening, so make sure you come by back to this page, so you can see that first before anyone else, you can do a screen share of listings, so maybe if you want you can just go ahead and say, I'm going to be sitting at my office today, I'm going to pull up the MLS, we're going to take a look at some of the newest listings that were put on the market while you were sleeping. To me that's a really cool idea, say here's what came up while you were sleeping and you just go through some of the newest listings that have been entered in your area. Another option is interviewing colleagues, maybe you are a traditional, residential listing agent, but you want to talk about commercial listings, so you bring in a commercial agent, you do a skype interview, you do a zoom call and what you can do is you can do a screen share and broadcast that directly to Facebook live and we're going to talk about a little bit of that in just a couple of minutes. So here's here's a list of what you're going to need, this could be things for your Amazon wishlist, holidays are right around the corner, so here are some of the things that you might want to think about getting to make sure that you have the best Facebook live videos, the best cell phone videos when it comes to going live, doing these virtual tours, doing these virtual open houses. If you're doing anything from your desk, make sure you've got a good webcam, if you need one, make sure there's a light, you can buy additional ring lights, if you need to I actually, where I sit at my desk, I use literally is just a desk lamp on a flexible neck that I just turn and point the light at me, microphones can always be good, whether you're going to have a microphone on your desk or if you have a microphone that attaches to your cell phone when you're walking through a house, microphones are always a good idea, as well a good selfie stick and I'm not just talking about the metal one that stretches out like an old school radio antenna, they have special balance selfie sticks that make sure they keep your camera stabilized, also lens attachments would be great as well for a cell phone if you want to get a wide-angle lens to really show off a full room. 

Dave: And what I just did is, I just went ahead and I did a quick search of these things right on Amazon, just to show you that there is a wide range of things that you can do, like I said the first thing is a webcam, some webcams have lights built-in, the webcam that I use for our Facebook lives has a really decent microphone in it, so I don't need an additional microphone, but I always do have one here with me just in case. If you're in a darker room and you don't have good lighting in your office, in your home office, wherever you plan on doing those Facebook lives from your desks, they do have those cameras with the built-in light, that you could also utilize as well, so there's lots of different ones, all different price ranges, so you can certainly find something that fits your budget. If you're going to be doing Facebook live from your cell phone, you're going to be going out to different houses, if you want, you can go the extra step and get a lav mic like these, these just attach to the collar of your shirt and plug right into your cell phone to give you a nice clear tone when it comes to doing those virtual tours, lots of different price ranges, you don't have to buy them, your phone has a built-in microphone, so you don't need one, but if you want to go that extra step and just have nice clear audio and you're not hearing footsteps and things like that as you're walking through the home, echoes, something like that may be a good idea. If you plan on turning your desk into a late-night tv show based around real estate and you want to have a microphone at your desk when you're doing live from the desk videos, you can always get something like this, a good condenser mic on a stand or on an arm will certainly be great, this is, I've got one similar to this one, you'll see it in a video in just a couple of minutes and then next is our selfie stick stabilizer. You've seen these, lots of dj's use these when they go to weddings and stuff now, but what this does is this essentially has built-in stabilization, so as you move your hand left and right, the camera still stays level and right in the center, so it really makes your moving of your camera as you walk through our home look very fluid, very smooth, small investment, but if you're really serious about taking your videos up to the next level and trying to make them look as good as possible, this may be a good starting point. Lastly is lenses, they make a bunch of different lens attachments for cell phones, they usually just clip on, some use magnets, again I've never used one, but they are popular, they are relatively affordable, pretty inexpensive, but if you're shooting a larger house, with larger rooms, using something like this could give you a wide-angle lens view, so you're gonna be able to take in more of what's around you in a single shot., so that's certainly something to think about. 

Dave: So going back to our list, our webcam, with a light if you want one, microphones, a good balanced selfie stick and lens attachments, if you want, you can also get video software and broadcasting software. So what we've used in the past is for when we do our Facebook live, I use a free software called OBS open broadcaster software, you can get at obsproject.com and this allows you to broadcast what you're doing on your screen, whether it's a skype call, a zoom call, or if you're just doing a traditional screen share, this is going to allow you to essentially broadcast that directly to Facebook live. When it comes to editing videos I use Davinci Resolve 16. This is as close as you can get to professional grade video editing software at a zero dollar price tag. I absolutely love that this is a free software, it's incredibly powerful and this is what I use to edit training videos, webinars videos, anything that I do involving the MLS, I now use using Davinci Resolve, again it's a free software and you can get that at blackmagicdesign.com. Lots of the software that I use here for our training, I try to use the most affordable and free is about as affordable as you can get and they're both very professional and look really good for that, so again Davinci Resolve for editing my videos, when it comes to doing Facebook lives I incorporate the OBS studio into my Facebook platform, so what I want to do now before we wrap things up is this actually came up on my Facebook feed today, no joke this morning, so funny that it came up and this is actually a virtual tour that an agent did, was we can see that she did a walkthrough of a home, vacant home and unfortunately you can't hear what she's talking about right now, but one of the things she mentions is this large great room that you see as you walk in, she's talking about the brand new bamboo flooring and she's just talking about the house, what she did is this was actually not a live Facebook video, it looks like what she did is she went in recorded herself walking through the video, because we can see that there's cuts in the video, we can see that there's transitions and after she recorded the video of herself walking through, she then went back to her office and then talked into her microphone discussing this property, so this is a great option too, if you don't want to walk through the property and talk as you're walking through and showing the house, you can go ahead shoot your walk through video, you can stay silent, if you want you can make notes while you're talking, because what you're going to do is, you're then going to take this video, upload it to your computer and you're going to be able to edit it through something like resolve or if you've got Imovie on an Imac or on an apple computer, you can go ahead edit that video with that and then add new dialogue, taking notes from what you said in the video and then having more clear concise thoughts and notes about the property that you can talk about as that video plays. So I just wanted to share this, because I thought it was so funny that this popped up on my feed this morning knowing that I had this webinar today.

Dave: Next thing I wanted to talk about was pinned post and Facebook live videos, so as you can see right now we're looking at the MyStateMLS Facebook page and right at the top what we're gonna see is we've got a pinned post and on it right there on that pinned post is yours truly, talking in a fairly well-lit room and you can see that microphone right there in front of my face doing a Facebook live post and what this post right here is saying, hey, join me every Tuesday and Friday for our remote learning series live on Facebook, so then people, this reminds people to always come in and watch those videos.Additionally, here we can see every Facebook live video that I've done throughout the entire quarantined covid-19, where we had work from home orders here in new york, we can see every different time I was on live, doing lots of different things, again going back to OBS, here's a great example of that. What we did is I used OBS software and I actually was able to go ahead create graphics and I was able to do live interviews with different professionals from different aspects of life, so this one I'm talking with Marissa, who is a life coach and we talked about dealing with stress and she had some great pointers and we're able to do is have this whole conversation and be able to use that software to bounce between herself, myself and just have a nice conversation.

Dave: We also did it with a photographer and we also did it with a counselor as well, you can see we did lots of live different videos, again another one where we talked about mental health and we had live conversations there as well, again this was recorded live, now it's available to be viewed on our Facebook page at any time and then what's also great about these videos is, I can just see how my hair has just grown since quarantine. 

Wrap Up:

Dave: So with that said I'm gonna wrap things up. Again we had a lot to talk about today, Facebook live, going live, there are certainly a lot of things that we could talk about, but I wanted to just give that real beginner course on how you can start going live and what you can use with Facebook live, whether you're giving a tour of a home, you're going to be talking from your desk, just talking about what's coming out soon, there are so many different opportunities and now is the best time for you to embrace this new technology and get your business, your brand out there. If you have any questions at all please feel free to give me a call at 888-769-7657. You can also email me at dave@mystatemls.com. Until then, have a great day.