Thursday, April 21, 2016

Using Social Media For Real Estate Professionals

The blog post Using Social Media For Real Estate Professionals Read more on: MDIMS

It's a common belief that all any real estate business needs is a website and - BOOM - you will have a thriving business. If you have top rankings for your site for keywords for your field of expertise, yes, it will help tremendously on the amount of leads that your Real Estate business will bring in. However, in today's day and age, if you don't have a social media presence you are missing a lot of potential clients.

Social Media For Real Estate Professionals

Depending on your Real Estate profession will make a difference on which social media platforms will perform best for your business. For instance FaceBook, it works well for Real Estate agents. For Real Estate investors trying to find motivated sellers - not so much. We have found that FaceBook does work well for investors that are selling Lease Options.

If you have read a few of our posts you will know that we are big fans of Video Marketing. You can check out our previous post on Video Marketing Here. YouTube videos work for any type of Real Estate business, and also help your potential clients to connect with you more on a personal level if they are able to see your face.

Twitter is another platform that works well for all types of Real Estate Business'. With twitter you can grow your following by tweeting and retweeting tweets that are relevant to your business, then occasionally tweet about your Real Estate services.

There are two major things that we look at on how social media can help grow your business.

  1.  It helps build your brand. It makes your business more recognizable across the web. Building your brand and connecting all of these sites together will also help your website rankings as well.
  2. With a lot of these social properties you can also get them ranked in Google as well. This helps establish more trust and makes you stand  out from your competition by appearing to be more of an authority. Think about it, if they see you everywhere they go on the internet don't you think that will influence their decisions?

Don't just take our word for it. Here is a video by another company that explains in detail how great Social Media is -

We agree with everything in the video EXCEPT that it's free. While the platform itself might be free it will either cost you to have someone do the posting for you, or, it will cost you your time to get it done.

So how do you go about using Social Media in your marketing efforts? Realtor.com made a post about using social media. Although their post is geared more towards Realtors, any Real Estate business can put these tips into practice to help grow their business (actually these are good tips for any service based company):

7 Tips to Grow Your Real Estate Company Using Social Media

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1. Listen first and never stop listening

Before your first tweet, search Twitter for people talking about your company and your competitors. Search using words that your prospective customers would say as well. For example, realtors should use Twitter and Facebook to search for people using the words “looking for a realtor” or “need to find a good house” in your town. You’ll be surprised how many people are already looking for you.

2. Don’t tell your customers to “Like” you and “Follow” you, tell them why and how they should

Everywhere you turn, you see “Like us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter”. Huh? Why? How? Give your customers a reason to connect with you on social networks, answering the question “What’s in it for me?” and then make it incredibly easy to do so. Note the difference between these two calls to action: “Like our page on Facebook” vs. “Get answers to your real estate questions on our Facebook page.”

3. Be authentic

Your customers don’t want to read impersonal posts about the importance of keeping in touch with their REALTOR®. Instead, be human and be yourself. Are you sponsoring a Little League team in your town? Share it with your fans! Know a few real estate jokes? Tell them! Imagine how much positive feedback you would get if you asked: “Why didn’t the hipster realtor show the oceanside mansion? – It was too current.” Write posts that show your company’s personality and watch your online community begin to engage and grow.

4. Why ask questions?

Wondering why nobody’s responding to your posts on Facebook? It’s probably because you’re not asking questions. Social media is about engagement and having a conversation, not about self-promotion. If a realtor posts on Facebook, “Come in and see what’s on the market today,” nobody will comment and nobody will call to make an appointment. If that realtor posts a question as simple as “What’s your favorite shutter style?” people will be more likely to comment online and engage with the company. Better yet, if the realtor asks “What’s the best part about home shopping?” think of the number of people who will comment on the post and bring attention to the company.

5. Surprise and delight your customers

Want to bring more attention to your company’s social media pages and become more likeable over all? Learn ways to surprise and delight your customers on a regular basis. Offer contests and raffles or encourage your community to join the conversation for a chance to win local gift cards that show off a town’s personality. Remember, free is like magic and a delighted customer will share their experience with friends and family.

6. Share pictures and videos to tell stories

People love photos. The biggest reason Facebook went from zero to 1 billion users in nearly 10 years (yes, Facebook will be celebrating its tenth year this February!) is photos. Photos and videos tell stories about you in ways a text alone cannot. You don’t need a big production budget, either. Use your smartphone to take pictures and short videos of customers and cool things around town. Then upload them directly to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. A picture of a young couple in front of their new home is Facebook gold. Try a video featuring testimonials from your happy customers! A picture really is worth a thousand words – and a video is worth a thousand pictures. Continue Reading The Full Article Here...

There it is again - the use of Video! We especially like that saying "a video is worth a thousand pictures"!

If you are attempting to handle all of your Social Media marketing on your own, you will probably want to do a little investigating first as to which platforms will work best for you. Once you figure that out you will probably only want to focus on 1 to 3 at most. Any more that that will be to much for you to handle.

Placester.com made a really long post worth reading about advanced marketing techniques for your Real Estate business, here is a small portion from it that we found important to this post:

How to Take Your Real Estate Social Media Strategy to the Next Level

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Optimization Tips to Use

Your website needs constant love (a.k.a. maintenance) to ensure it operates the way it should — generating the traffic and leads you desire. The same goes for your social media accounts. No facet of your profiles and posts should go overlooked, as nearly every element of your presence can be optimized. The core areas to focus on for optimization include:

  • Header and profile images: It’s not enough to publish your headshot and a randomly selected listing photo atop your social media business pages. You need to ensure they include calls to action (like text overlay with your phone number, website URL, and email address), have an appealing design, and are relevant to your business (a shot of your office or most recently sold home for sale could work).
  • Posting frequency: Posting midday on Facebook may not also work well for Google+ or Instagram, so you should develop a real estate social media marketing schedule for each channel that aligns with the days and times during which you get the most traction.
  • Add company information: Prospective clients need to know how to get in touch with you, so include important company information (and links to your site’s about page) in your profiles. This should be the first task you take care of when starting your social media accounts, but since your business details might change over time, check on your profiles every once in a while to make sure they’re up-to-date.
  • Block spam accounts: A considerable portion of the social media world is made up of spam accounts. On Twitter, for instance, roughly 10% of all accounts are spam. Just being associated with these “users” — like allowing them to retweet, favorite, and share your content — can harm your online reputation, so weed out any of these fake accounts by reporting and blocking them. Social networks who identify these types of profiles are pretty good about deleting and banning them.
  • Always include links: Certain social networks, like Instagram, don’t offer linking capabilities across the board, but wherever possible, include a link to your website and content. You could get 100 shares for a single post on Facebook that offers a few home buying tips, but without a link that leads to your site, you’re missing out on an opportunity for generating and nurturing leads.

Continue Reading Here...

There is no denying how important Social Media is to your business. If you aren't currently using it - you need to be, or get passed up by your competition.

If you need any help with your Social Media efforts, building of a website or getting it found in the searches, be sure and check us out for all of your Real Estate SEO Service needs :)

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