How social media should look like for a real estate agent

There’s one factor puts social media and real estate on the same stage: people. Real estate has always been a people business. Despite proliferation of technologies in real estate space, the business is still driven by relationship. Trust and human connection drives the business among other things. And that’s what makes social media indispensable for the industry.

As a real estate agent, you should not look at social media as just another marketing channel. It’s a place where you can build connections. Make new acquaintances. Accrue trust. And with a strategic approach, even close deals worth millions of dollars.

There’s enough data and research to back these statements.69 percent of real estate agents say that they use Facebook because it works for them. A research by New American suggests that 82% of high-income real estate agents (who earn over $100,000 per year) are more likely to have a YouTube account. Moreover, one-third of high-income agents have also more than 1,000 friends on Facebook.

 

 

Needless to say, social media works. Even for real estate agents. All you need to do is to learn how to use it. Not all real estate agents who relied on social media succeeded. It’s not because social media doesn’t work. If you try holding a wrench from a wrong end, you have already made a big mistake. No matter how good the wrench was. The same goes for a real estate agent’s social media assets.

In this blog post, we share actionable tips to increase your social media footprints.

#1 Get a Facebook Page and Instagram Business Account

It’s tempting to not spend few minutes and use your personal social media account to sell. Having a dedicated Facebook business page as a real estate agent can work wonders for you. You should even link it with your Instagram profile to create Instagram business account.

This also gives you access to the Instagram analytics. Instagram, for most industries, is giving the highest organic engagement. Being a visual platform, there’s an incentive to be there. You can share video and images of your listings. Share interiors of your listings.

 

 

#2 Answer the most pressing questions

A real estate agent’s job is not specifically to close deals. You get asked tons of questions every day. As a real estate agent, your job is to answer to them clearly, with transparency, and make the deal lucrative for your client, the property owner, and for yourself. By answering questions of your customers, you will gain their trust--the first step to closing a deal.

How can you do that? You can hold AMA (ask me anything) session on Facebook live video. Ask people to send their questions regarding buying or selling a property in the comment box. And then you can answer them on your Facebook live video. You can try this on other social channels like Instagram and YouTube if you have a good audience there.

Pro Tip: You can use the live video recordings as webinars too.

#3 Share 360 degree pics or videos

It wasn’t possible a few years back. But it’s now! You can create a walk through of your property listings. Just with a small social media marketing budget, you can reach thousands of people. And all it takes is a few minute. Imagine taking all those prospects through the listing one by one!

 

 

#4 Add review and services

People’s opinion naturally sways towards online reviews--whether it’s while buying a product on Amazon or while deciding a company to work for (Remember, Glassdoor?). It goes in real estate industry too. And more so

 

 

A review page along with services section on your Facebook page, you can build trust. The next time someone sees your lead gen Facebook ad, they would want to visit your Facebook business page and assess you based on reviews. By adding services, you also let your users know what you can offer to them.

You can even enhance the impact by showing client testimonials--it can be a plain image with customers’ words or a video where your client narrates how you have helped them.

#5 Share your own details: Home, team, a new deal, a new client, and much more

People really want to know who is the person they are doing business with. The more someone know you, the more they can trust. To execute this on social media, you can share those moments of your life that will make you authentic before your audience.

 

 

You can share posts related to new partnerships you have made. You can share posts of your recent family vacation. Although many profess against it, you shouldn’t shy away from posting some personal content--that’s what social media is all about, isn’t it?

Apart from this, you can even add news, events, and all the new listings that you add in your portfolio.