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Facebook has changed the world in many ways. It’s revolutionized the way we communicate with our friends and families. Not to say that they were the first social network ever, but they have ultimately become the most prominent network – and one of the most successful tech start-ups in history. They’ve made some tremendous strides over the past few years, adding new tools to enhance the ability for both brands and individuals to share content, but recently, they’ve kicked things up a notch with the introduction of live streaming video.

Live streaming offers a few exciting options. Firstly, it allows the host to receive comments and feedback simultaneously, facilitating a conversation. Secondly, it delivers notifications to all your followers/fans that you’re going live. This is huge. Lastly, it archives your live content. The significance of that feature is that if – for example – if a builder were to host a live walkthrough of a home, or facilitate a conversation with the staff at a Presentation Centre, they can easily share the video after the fact for potential homebuyers who may be interested in the same community.

This new feature could become an extremely valuable tool for agencies and realtors to keep in their toolbox, as it takes a lot of the costs and third party headaches often associated with live streaming away. All you have to worry about is delivering the best content possible. Evidently, as Mark Zuckerberg is demonstrating with his live chat with astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station, the platform’s possibilities are truly endless.

Facebook ads are an invaluable tool for any advertiser to have in their arsenal; however, it’s not ideal in every situation. Dependant on your project/client goals and the depth of available content, ads may draw an audience, but fail to convert properly. Facebook recently rolled out a fantastic solution, Lead Ads. These ads allow users to quickly and easily register without having to leave the Facebook platform – or even their timeline. This ensures that you’re capitalizing on initial interest, and not allowing any potential confusion on the website to sway the registration decision.

The ads feature a call-to-action button, which – when pushed – opens up a full-screen, pre-filled form. As the user is already logged in, the application knows their email, name, and location. There’s also the ability to add additional fields if you require more info. Once completed, the user can either visit the website or just close the form and continue their Facebook experience. This method does have the drawback of generating a lower click through rate, as users are only directed to the website once they sign up. Before setting up a Lead Ad campaign, ensure the potential results fit into your defined measures of success. At this point, the ads cannot be integrated into your 3rd party lead management system, meaning you’ll have to develop your process for gathering and inputting the sign-ups. They can be acquired under the publisher tools on your page, and downloaded as a CSV file.

The ads are currently only available for users who use Power Editor to create and monitor their ads, which means that it’s really for more advanced users at this stage. As well, carousel ads aren’t available with this feature; however, our contact at Facebook has noted that this is something that advertisers can look forward to soon. Early results from our campaigns – and case studies available from Facebook – show a very promising cost per conversion. It will be exciting to see how Lead Ads will affect advertisers, and clients, as it becomes more of a go-to ad unit on the platform.

It’s no secret that the landscape of social media has become increasingly visual. So – not surprisingly – Instagram has become a behemoth, with a community of more than 400 million active users. When it sold to Facebook back in late 2012, advertisers were excited about the potential for advertising; unfortunately, the gradual rollout of advertising has only been available to large brands, and at an extremely premium price. This was, in essence, to help create some order around how to implement targeted advertising without turning off the user base. Well, Facebook officially announced that it was opening up the platform to all of its current advertisers, regardless of size.

Built right into the current Facebook advertising platform, brands and marketers can now simply select their connected Instagram account as one of the assets when creating their new ads. The ads, which are specifically targeted and appear in a users Instagram timeline, allows the use of a ‘learn more’ button (or similar call to action) and also supports both video (15 seconds) and multi-image carousel ads. Users can then click the call to action button to visit the brand/product online – a feature that wasn’t previously available.

It remains to be seen if this move will open a floodgate of Instagram advertising, and how users will ultimately interact with the ads on the platform, but it does present some interesting new opportunities for brands and agencies to reach new audiences with clever marketing. It will likely also prove to be a great way for builders – and realtors alike – to market new homes to potential buyers.