By now you’ve heard that the ongoing spat between Big Tech (Facebook in particular) and the Australian government has resulted in Mr Zuckerberg pulling all Australian news content off Facebook. It’s a pretty drastic move that wasn’t really communicated, and as would be expected its left content producers, marketers and of course news agencies reeling.
Go to any news outlet Facebook page, from the Brisbane Times to The ABC, and you’ll see all posts have been scrubbed and it’s just a blank page. You’ll see a message saying “the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted”.
A lot of other pages have also been affected, from Government bodies to the Facebook Australia page itself. Most importantly for us in the real estate industry, both the Domain and the Realestate.com.au page have been taken down. Have a look for yourself here, there’s no content at all available, any information, listings or adverts have been taken down.
Even if you try and share a link from REA or Domain on your own Facebook page, you’ll encounter a message stating “This post can’t be shared. In response to Australia government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news pages in Australia. Globally the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted.”
How To Be Prepared for Changes Like This
All these changes have only come into effect on 18 February 2021. It’s too early to say where everything is headed, or whether the REA and Domain pages will come back online. Facebook seem pretty determined about sticking to this, so we might have to just accept this is the way things are now.
At The Henry Wong Team®, this shouldn’t really effect how we market our properties and the reach we can get. We’ve designed a real estate marketing framework called ‘Your Next Chapter’ which helps us reduce our reliance on the main real estate portals. Here’s how we’ve managed to do that:
Fully Optimised Website
We have an immaculately designed and SEO-optimised website that ranks well in Google. All of our listings go up on our website as well as on the real estate portals. We’ll be able to share the links to these listings on Facebook, rather than the main portal listings which are now prohibited.
Large Social Media Followings
Over the years we’ve built up large and engaged followings on social media platforms, particularly on Facebook where we have over 10,000 followers. This means we’re not reliant on Domain or REA to share our listings. We can share the listing link from our website, and it’ll get exposure and traction from our followers, who will visit the link if interested and even share it on to their own contacts.
Engaging and Informative Content
The Henry Wong Team® produces informative, educational and engaging content for our followers on a weekly basis. This content is well received, and we personally engage with followers who react to it. This means when we share something, people notice it. They trust us as a source of information, and that trust is going to be transferred to our real estate listings that we share.
We like challenges here, and while the decision by Facebook isn’t perfect for real estate marketing, we can still make it work when it comes to marketing your property. Ask us how now.
