Inside Track
CRSs say social media is a business necessity even though measuring return on investment can be challenging.
By Cheryl Winokur Munk
Emily Medvec, CRS, estimates 30 percent of her business comes from her social networking efforts. She believes the time she spends on Twitter, Facebook and her blog communicating with prospective customers and clients is far more valuable than gambling that someone will show up at a three-hour open house.
Social media builds long-term relationships, says Medvec, an associate broker with Keller Williams Realty in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thats where my business always comes from.
TRACKING SUCCESS
Its important to have some way to measure how social media is working for your business. Even if you cant point to specific sales, you can track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns in other ways, using any number of free online analytics tools. Here are a few of them:
- Facebook Insights finds anonymized demographic data about your audience and how many people are viewing and responding to your posts, provided you have at least 30 page likes.
- Google Analytics helps evaluate visitor traffic across ads and videos, websites and social tools, and tablets and smartphones.
- TweetReach gathers intelligence about who is talking about what youve shared on Twitter, how many people saw it and who.
- Social Mention monitors scores of social media outlets, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg and Google, allowing you to track and measure your social media effectiveness.
More and more real estate professionals are using social media personally and professionally to connect with clients and prospects. Seventy percent of REALTORS® say they have had a website for at least five years, 12 percent say they have a real estate blog and 56 percent of members report they are using social media, according to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 2013 Member Profile. One thing many in the field struggle with, however, is how to measure the return on their investment.
Its not necessarily tangible. You cant necessarily track someone interacting with an agents page and then punching his credit card number into a website to buy a house. That transaction is completely different than going from Facebook to an e-commerce site, says Gaby Piazza, vice president of sales and service at Likeable Local, a Manhattan-based company that helps small businesses manage social media.
Certified residential specialists measure ROI in a number of different ways. Like Medvec, Kay Hunt, CRS, a broker with Realty Pro Inc. in Vancouver, Washington, keeps careful track of all referrals and can attribute about 16 percent of her completed home sales last year to her social media efforts, up from about 8 percent in 2012. While only a small percentage of her business, Hunt believes its worth the maximum 20 minutes or so a day she devotes to developing her public persona and engaging in conversations with clients and prospects to foster relationships.
Other CRSs use various free online analytics tools (see sidebar) to track their effectiveness at building brand awareness or bolstering referrals through social media. Jeffrey Costello, CRS, for instance, knows that people have learned about open houses from his Facebook page and attended them. The co-leader of Costello & Costello Real Estate Group, a team within Keller Williams Realty in Bellevue, Washington, can also point to at least one sale hes made from a Facebook listing.
A delicate balance
THE HIDDEN COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA
You may not be budgeting money to spend on social media, but there’s still a price. “It’s going to cost you time, if you’re going to do it effectively,” says Gaby Piazza, vice president of sales and service at Likeable Local, a Manhattan-based company that helps small businesses manage their social media presence. Consider these tips:
- Make sure to post things that are relevant to you as an individual, or your business not extraneous information such as what you ate for breakfast.
- Don’t over-promote your listings or people will tune you out.
- Have a thorough social media plan so you’re using your time most effectively.
- Seek outside help from a marketing firm that specializes in social media.
To be sure, it is a juggling act to maintain a solid social media presence and not spend inordinate amounts of time to the detriment of business. For Costello, the answer was to hire a full-time marketing person whose primary job is to post on Facebook, edit and publish a WordPress blog and disseminate information on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. I just dont have the time to do it and run a successful real estate business, Costello says.
Other CRSs prefer to go it alone, carefully balancing their social media activities with other daily tasks, squeezing in time while in line at the grocery store, bank or DMV. It doesnt have to take up your whole day, nor should it, says Hunt.
Bill Lublin, CRS, a licensed real estate broker who owns a seven-office Century 21 firm in Philadelphia, understands that not all CRSs like social media in the same way that not everyone likes dark chocolate. But hes a big proponent, now that he receives more referrals from consumers and real estate professionals around the country than he ever did before social media. If youre not at the party, you never get the opportunity to sing Happy Birthday.
The Council of Residential Specialists offers a course to help CRSs get the most out of social media. More information about the course is available on the CRS website.
