BY BILL RISSER,
FIDELITY NATIONAL TITLE
F
acebook continues to dominate amongst
social networks. Over 2 billion users
worldwide are quite tough to beat. For the
real estate industry, Facebook provides an
avenue for Realtors® to stay connected with
their sphere and advertise to specific, targeted audiences
as a lead generation tool.
A significant change announced by Mark Zuckerberg on
January 11th will most likely affect posts from businesses,
brands, and media. In other words - paid advertising.
Zuckerberg said, “...we’ve gotten feedback from our
community that public content - posts from businesses,
brands, and media - is crowding out the personal
moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
Zuckerberg’s goal is to “...make a major change to how we
build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product
teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content
to help you have more meaningful social interactions.”
What does this mean for the real estate industry? Only
time will tell. On the one hand, using Facebook to connect,
build, and strengthen relationships may become more
natural. On the other, Facebook’s revenue is heavily
18 RPCRA.ORG | MAR/APR 2018
dependent on advertising, so it is still essential to
understand how to use the tools Facebook provides for
defining your audience for boosted posts and advertising
campaigns.
First, let’s discuss the difference between boosted posts
and ads. A boosted post’s objective is classified as “page
post engagement,” so Facebook will place your post in
front of those most likely to like, share, or comment as
opposed to driving some other action. In the Ads Manager,
ads can be built to increase brand awareness, drive traffic
to a website, capture leads, and more. Both boosted posts
and ads allow for targeted audiences, but the objective
of a boosted post versus an advertisement can be entirely
different.
Before we look at the targeting Facebook provides, let’s
look at Facebook Custom Audiences. You can upload your
database