It’s a fact: Home Staging is not an Online Business!
You’re having dates with your customers to discuss new projects. You’re connecting with your dream clients and as time goes by – and the accent is on „time“ – you build trust and a relationship, because of your close personal contact. You’re creating Flyers and you’re visiting Real Estate Agents to introduce your business. You’re in a constant acquisition modus and what happens now?… Yep! Nothing!
And that’s exactly the moment when online marketing is in the game. It offers a wonderful chance to continuously create and grow visibility in your local market, connect with people, and network with your dream clients.
Facebook is still the No. 1 online tool when it comes to creating strong visibility for your business.
And the first step to your visibility is your Facebook business page.
A really well-organized and professional business page on Facebook (and Instagram) is a perfect help for your business and: it’s free! It doesn’t cost anything!
With each post, you publish you can smoothly direct your visitors and followers to your website. This will push the number of your website visitors, your traffic and I tell you: Google loooooves it!
But it also means that you have to post regularly.
On Google and on Facebook people are searching for information about companies, products, and services. With your regular posts, you show up as an Expert, build excitement for you and for your Home Staging business, and trust in your expertise.
So continue reading and I’ll explain what you need for a really professional Facebook business page.
#1 The information and content that a good business page on Facebook needs
Before you can even create your business page on Facebook you need to have a personal profile. This is the account that you create when you register the first time on Facebook. You can create only 1 personal profile and a personal profile always need a „clear name“, which means your own name f.ex. Patty Pillar. Once you’ve registered and your personal profile is active you can create as many business pages as you want.
Please take care that the name for your business page on Facebook is exactly the name of your domain or the name that you always use in your business outside of Facebook. This has a huge impact on your visibility and makes you recognizable for your followers, your customers, and Facebook!
That’s why I always recommend creating all your Social Media accounts straight away when founding your business. No matter if you use them or not. But this way you can save your name on all platforms.
Now, what’s the difference between your personal profile and your business page? The secret lays in the functions.
On your personal profile, you can connect with your friends, find new friends, and network, or just follow them. And that sweet, funny algorithm of Facebook loves humans, not pages. You see, your personal profile is important for your visibility as an entrepreneur. With your personal profile, your reach and your visibility can grow much faster, because we are all more „private“ here. Humans love to interact with humans and prefer to see personal content instead of advertising.
That means you shouldn’t be too promotional on your private profile. You should use your business page for promotion. However, you should use your personal profile also „businesswise“ …but as mentioned moderately.
On your business page, you don’t have that function „friends“. Your friends, your customers, and all of your private and business contacts can „like“ your business page, or can subscribe to it.
Here are the most important steps to your business page on Facebook:
- on your business page, your profile photo is your logo, on your private profile it is a photo of you
- The cover photo on your business page should be professional (no Handy photo) ideally the same photo that you use on your website (Homepage) as a Header picture
- Add a short Bio of your company in the „About“ space
- Fill all the fields with the information needed: your contact data, the URL of your Webseite, and important: your opening hours – when are you available?
- Add a link to your privacy policy page on your website
- Create first posts for your business page:
- Welcome post
- About me – post f.ex.: I’m Patty Pillar and
- 1 – 2 Posts or videos of your projects Projekten, or your training on how you became a professional Home Stager, your motivation why you decided to start a Home Staging business
Important: emotional, amazing, and professional photos!
Now it’s time to get the first „likes“ for your business page. So go back to your private profile.
- create a post: My new Facebook business page published “I’m so amazed to invite you to visit my new Facebook business page and I would be even more amazed if you give it a „like“ – add the link to your FB business page
- or: invite your friends to „follow and like“ your business page with a direct message
The more „likes“ you receive, the more „value“ your business page has for Facebook.
#2 How to boost your visibility as an entrepreneur on Facebook
To promote your business and grow your local visibility I always recommend showing up with some engagement on Facebook. At least 15 to 20 minutes per day.
That doesn’t mean that you should create and share posts and content each day (although that would be great!). Facebook will „looooove“ your activity with the posts of others.
Have you seen some amazing content about Home Staging somewhere? Did you hear a podcast or have you seen an interview with a Home Stager, or a report in a physical Magazine? Great! Share it on your Facebook business page and add a link to this content.
Did you like an announcement of an upcoming regional or local event, f.ex. a Real Estate Event, then you should share it with your group if you think this event might be interesting for the group members. But please note: when you share something in your groups, share it with your personal profile to avoid that your shared content is seen as an advertisement!
But generally, you should share as a company and always be sure that the content is relevant and exciting for your customers. This is a great way to show your expertise and your professionality.
Did you have dinner in a nice restaurant in your local area? Share it on your business page and add a link to that nice place. After that, you can share your post as a private person in your groups again, if you think they would love that information.
Another great and really effective way to boost your visibility is sharing comments on posts of others.
On Facebook, you are the entrepreneur and you represent your business.
If you want to comment on a post, try to be selective. Try to find posts that give a positive feeling because of a nice picture and text. I always try to avoid discussions. For me, it is too annoying to get into a discussion and in the heat of the moment, without think about it you say aka write something that creates a negative feeling.
If someone asks for some help or support f.ex. when looking for a house painter in your local place you can always comment with words like…“I had a very good experience with this house painting company (name)“… and you add the link to the website of this house painting company.
You can also comment on posts of local crafts businesses when they might be interesting for your customers.
Always keep in mind to stay smooth, friendly, helpful, and professional. And within some time you will realize, that these businesses also comment on your posts in a smooth and friendly way. And that’s what it is all about: Interaction!
#3 Visibility & new customers with networking in groups
Similar to LinkedIn and Xing you can join local groups on Facebook. In groups, your chances to find potential customers are quite high and the most amazing thing is: you can connect with them in a very easy way.
Here I have an example for you: As a Home Staging entrepreneur in Düsseldorf, the group “We love Düsseldorf” with about 17.000 members might be a perfect fit. Sure, there are many branches and businesses in there but there are also many private members. You can connect with people that might be interesting and helpful for you and comment on their posts or just by giving them a „Like“.
When I search on Facebook for „Housing market in Düsseldorf“ I receive the results you see here below:
You see, some minutes of research and Facebook leads you to the best fitting groups for you. In my example above all these groups are more close to the topic of Home Staging and therefore much more interesting for me as an entrepreneur.
If these are local or regional groups I always recommend contacting the admin when you want to join the group. Tell the admin who you are and what you do and ask the admin whether it is allowed to share your posts from your business profile f. ex. from your projects. Normally admins don’t like to see that kind of post as they might be advertising. When you talk to the admin tell him that you just share impressions of your work and you will not ask members to buy your services.
#4 ...and here is how it works on Instagram
Instagram is more visual than Facebook and in my opinion, it is an amazing „Must Have“ for a Home Staging entrepreneur. You can show up with all your projects and your creativity in a very visual, emotional way. Home Staging is emotion and there’s no other place in Social Media than on Instagram where you can reach your potential customers with this emotion. With your photos and your stories about your business, you can give an insight or „behind the scenes“ impression, share your personal style, show your step-by-step process when you have a new project. It is such a great tool to create visibility and reach for your business.
For Instagram, you should create a list of Hashtags around the topic „Home Staging“. This list will help you when people are looking for that topic.
On Instagram, you can also create a business account and I highly recommend doing it. Instagram belongs to Facebook. Facebook. So, in your business page settings on Facebook, you should connect your Instagram business account. That will make it easy for you to plan and share your posts on both channels at the same time.
I always use the „Creator Studio“ on Facebook where I create and plan my postings. I add a picture and the text, and maybe the next day I change the text a little bit. When I click on „publish“ I can select „plan my post“ and select day and time when my post should go online. I tell Facebook to publish my post on both platforms at that date and time by activating that 2 little boxes on top with a hook.
This is really time-saving because you don’t need to create a separate post for Instagram from scratch.
For Instagram, I use my Hashtags from a list I have stored in an App like Evernote. I make a copy of the list and after my post is published on Instagram I paste the Hashtags as the first comment under my post.
There is so much more to say, but Instagram will be the „Topic of the Month“ later this year.
If you would like to know what else you can do to boost your visibility I have an amazing free guide for you.
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Thank you so much!
I’m so honored that you’ve spent your valuable time here to read this article.
All the best to you!
XO Iris