Getting Leads Through Facebook Social Media Segmentation
With Crystal Washington

Crystal Washington directly addresses camera:

Have you ever read a post on Facebook and thought, “Wow, how did they know that this is exactly what I need right now,” then you know the importance of sending and receiving highly relevant and customized information. It’s an important part of your lead generation strategy.

I’m Crystal Washington, a technology strategist and futurist. Let’s take five minutes to talk about how to segment your social media lists so that your customers and prospects get information that is relevant and interesting to them, and you get business.

First, define who you want to reach. Most people are using the spray and pray method— they try to connect with everyone on social media versus clients, prospects, referral partners, and influencers. Who do you want to connect with on social media? Be as specific as possible and include demographic, geographic, and even psychographic characteristics. Be sure to include job titles, if applicable.

You should know who can refer business to you, know who your top clients are and understand your community resources right in your backyard. Make sure you are friends with as many of these key people as possible on Facebook.

Once you define the subsections of people you want to connect with, organize those friends by using the list feature on Facebook. Take a day to go through your friends on Facebook, both your personal and professional pages, and segment them by prospects, first-time homebuyers, financial advisors, influencers and so on. 

Once you do that, you’ll be able to send highly personalized content to those segmented audiences. For example, you can share or create content and set the privacy setting so that only, say, financial advisors can see the information. Or, you may come across an article that first-time homebuyers would be interested in and post that specifically to that list. 

Another idea is to set up Facebook groups relevant to your lists. For example, set up a first-time homebuyer Facebook group and invite all the first-time homebuyers on your list, along with a few mortgage professionals who can answer questions and provide information. Anytime you come across an article that answers a first-time homebuyer’s question, you can share it to that group. 

Another idea is a group for overcoming student loan debt so that graduates can start saving for a home. Don’t be afraid to play the long game. I was Facebook friends with my own REALTOR for four years before hiring her. I was connected to my financial advisor for three. However, they both posted extremely helpful content, so I saw them as industry experts versus sales professionals.

Next, you want to have your content strategy down. Decide on a posting strategy. How often will you post on each social network and/or your blog? If you are part of an organization, who has the ability to post? What types of items will you post on each network. How often will you check each social network to respond to conversations?

There are resources such as alltop.com that features the best blog posts on hundreds of real estate topics. Be a content curator; go to your mortgage lenders and affiliated business partners to see what content they may have that is relevant to share with a section of your Facebook audience. Go to FloridaRealtors.org or Florida Realtors’ Facebook page and share articles with segments of your audience. Other sources include Inman.com, RISMedia.com, REALTrends.com and even Realtor.org. Tag them whenever you repost their content so that they can see you’re spreading their brands as well. They just might reciprocate!

Next, analyze your results by reviewing your website analytics, tallying how often leads contact you, recording how many buyers or sellers you receive as a result of people reading your posts. 

Finally, automate. Once you become comfortable with posting and have tweaked your strategy, use tools like HootSuite or Facebook Pages’ scheduled posting feature to schedule posts for days in advance, then set the timers. You can still post in the moment, but this will ensure consistency. And, it will ensure that you reach each of your audience segments on a regular basis. Pro tip: Facebook will give you fewer views if you post from a third party. But if that’s the only way you can post regularly, that’s better than posting sporadically.

Yes, it takes a little time to go through your thousands of friends to segment them, but once you do, you’ll be much better at nurturing those relationships with content they value.