As any agent knows, real estate is a people business. Forming local contacts is the key to finding new clients and developing your business. Networking can be an effective way to connect with others in the community and to forge new relationships. Traditional places to network include chambers of commerce, philanthropic organizations, places of worship and business networking organizations.
Social media can be a very effective way to complement conventional networking channels. It can help strengthen existing relationships and form new ones. Social media can be a very useful way to maintain contact even when you are not meeting in person and to share information that provides value to your network. In other words, social media can become an extension of your traditional networking methods.
It is very easy to get started marketing your real estate business on social media. So, let’s get signed up and jump in!
Step One: Connect with Related Professionals
Throughout the course of their professional career, a real estate agent will work with a variety of other professionals. Each of these professionals represent someone who could potentially refer clients to the agent and likewise someone whom the agent could refer clients to. Of course, it’s not all about referring clients, but that can be a benefit of a healthy, active network.
The types of professionals a real estate agent should likely connect with are:
• Clients
• Friends
• Other Agents
• Mortgage professionals
• Lawyers
• Appraisers
• Insurance professionals
• Home stagers
• Interior designers
• Home inspectors
• Corporate relocation representatives
• Surveyors
• Movers
• Local financial professionals
• Trade professionals
• Other professional contacts
Step Two: Share Your Listings
Since you have a fiduciary responsibility to your sellers, it is important to gather the most exposure to their homes. By all means post a new listing on social media. Be sure to include a photo, a brief description of the home, and describe what makes it unique. If the status or price of a home changes, post it again and mention the change. However, don’t post listings too frequently or your network may consider it spam.
Step Three: Think Local
Your network isn't only interested in seeing the homes you are representing, but they would like to know more about the market you serve. For this reason, for every one listing you post on social media, you should post at least five to seven items of local interest. Real estate is local, so help your network learn more about what makes your local market special. This will strengthen your image as a local expert and even existing residents in your market will probably be interested to hear about the town they live in.
Step Four: Include Your Clients
Social media is about interacting with people and strengthening relationships. Your clients are an existing part of your business network and it is a great idea to include them in your social media sphere of influence. When you gain a new client, reach out to them on social media and request to connect.
You can also take this further and include your clients in your posts. For example, when a buyer or seller you represent closes on their home, you could ask their permission take a photo of them by the sold sign or the in front of the house and post it on social media. By tagging the client’s user ID, your post will show up in the feed of the people they are connected to – thus, expanding your visibility!
Step Five: Post Consistently
Your network wants to know what to expect from their relationship with you, so posting consistently is important. There are two parts to this concept. First, you post a consistent number of items on a consistent basis. Second, you should post about a consistent set of topics.
Step Six: Use Hashtags:
Hastags provide a method to categorize the content of a tweet to that it can be more easily found in searches. A hashtag is formatted with a pound sign (‘#’) followed by word or phrase without spaces. For an example, a hashtag that categorizes a tweet as relating to the outdoors might be formatted as “#outdoors” and inserted anywhere in the post.
Popular real estate hashtags include:
#apartments
#broker
#cre - commercial real estate
#dreamhome
#foreclosure
#forsale
#home
#homeinspection
#homesforsale
#housing
#justlisted
#milliondollarlisting
#mortgage
#newhome
#newlistings
#openhouse
#properties
#property
#realestate
#realtor
#realty
#renovated
#rent
#rentals
Step Seven: Review Analytics
The major social media platforms all provide analytics to understand who your audience is and how they’re interacting with your posts. These analytics tools can be very insightful and help you understand which posts are producing the best user engagement. Creating more posts like these should improve your overall engagement in the future.
When reviewing your social analytics, start with looking at how many impressions your posts received. This will show you how much you are being seen and if the umber of impressions appears low, you may want to experiment with posting at different times of day. The next important metric is the number of engagements each post receives. Then you can tailor your future posts to be more like those that receive the highest engagement, Certain engagements, such as sharing your post or commenting on it, will increase your visibility and in turn, increase the post’s impressions.
Social media can be a very effective channel for real estate agents to meet and engage interested people, both in the community and worldwide.The key to success is to develop your profile as an expert In your local market and to share useful information with your followers. Engaging them, without overtly selling, will build a strong relationships that will pay off. When they have the need to buy or sell a home, they will already know an expert!
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