The Future of Facebook for Real Estate: 2021

If this year hasn’t made you want to shut down your personal Facebook account, we don’t know what will. But the reality is, if you’re a small business, marketer, or advertiser, you don’t have that luxury, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. So, here’s what you need to know about the future of Facebook for real estate and how to conduct business on the platform in 2021. 

The Breakup of Facebook

While the future of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is still somewhat unknown, one of the major impacts we see the breakup having on small businesses would come in the advertising space. 

Facebook and Instagram advertising works together cohesively and allows for one ad spend, distributed (if you choose) to both platforms. The breakup of these platforms would likely cost advertisers more money and make the process a little more cumbersome. 

The Facebook advertising platform is also pretty robust and something Instagram inherited and integrated into their platform without having to do much on their own. This would likely create some issues for the platform and Instagram advertising if such a breakup were to happen. 

Other nuances like story sharing and pushing posts to and from each platform would likely come into play as well. Regardless, the breakup process is one that will likely take years to unravel, so in the short term, advertisers will likely not see much impact on their businesses.

The Future is Video

“Create shared experiences and a sense of belonging through video.” This is Facebook’s video mission statement. 

If you remember back to a couple of weeks ago, when we shared about the new feeds popping up on Facebook, you might remember that they all support video content. In fact, there are several feeds that are primarily for video content like the WATCH and LIVE video feed. 

So, when Facebook says the future is video, we believe them. Our question to you is, how will you adapt your content strategy in 2021 to align with the future of content?

The Future of Multiple Feeds

Have you noticed all the new feeds in your Facebook app? My guess is probably not, but you may have noticed the facelift Facebook made a couple of months back.

Those layout changes largely supported the move to multiple feeds. With the main feed overcrowded, the platform had to create more space for individual content, business content, and advertisers, and they did this by creating multiple feeds. 

Now users will see: 

• 3 main news feeds (home, favorites, recent)
• Group Feed
• Watch Feed
• Live Feed
• Gaming Feed
• Pages Feed
• Hashtag Feeds
• Stories (FB & IG) + Reels (IG)
• Search Pages

So as a business, it’s important to know where your posts are going and how people can consume your content right? There are 4 main places your business content shows up: the Newsfeed, Pages, Watch Feed, and Stories (if selected).

And if the newsfeed is overcrowded, it would make sense why your business page engagement is on the decline…right? So, what can you do about it?

1) Create more video content
2) Share your content
3) Remind people to follow your page
4) Use stories
5) Use hashtags
6) Run paid ads on the platform
7) Diversify your social media presence across multiple platforms

The Future of Advertising

In 2021, there are some important numbers to take note of and those include where advertising dollars are being spent. Here’s what we can tell you. Advertising spend in the Facebook feed is on the decline, while advertising spend on stories is on the rise. This should give you a good inclination of where to spend your ad budget and time creating content in 2021.

We also know that more advertisers are spending their ad dollars on video content, which we don’t anticipate changing anytime soon. 

Are you ready to up your Facebook marketing game in the New Year? If the answer is yes, click here to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today. Or, to catch up on our latest blog on how to put together your 2021 digital marketing plan, click here.