Juggling your social media channels takes skill. Be more effective and increase returns with these tips and tools.
By Gwen Moran
Ninety-one percent of REALTORS® use social media, for a variety of reasons. But with the proliferation of sites ranging from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to Google+, YouTube and Instagram, it may seem like keeping up with the latest social media is impossible, let alone finding the time to create profiles and manage content on each site.
Once you understand who youre targeting, youre going to be more effective at what you do, says Rebecca Mountain, founder of Ontario, Canada-based Impetus Social, Inc., a social media and lead generation consultancy. You need to be very certain you know who your customer is and where they are.
Fortunately, there are some effective tools and strategies to keep in mind when youre creating a social media presence.
Narrow Your Focus
There are simply too many social media platforms to participate on all of them effectively, says Atlanta-based Maura Neill, CRS, an agent with RE/MAX Around Atlanta. Instead, narrow your focus to the two to four that prove to be effective for you. Neill teaches social media classes to REALTORS®, and she suggests first mastering one or two platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Then try experimenting with others such as Instagram and Twitter adding them if they work and ditching them if they dont.
Inevitably, at some point in their careers, [REALTORS® have] gone to a social media class and someone has stood in front of them and said, You have to have a Twitter account. You have to have Pinterest boards. You have to have a YouTube channel, Neill says. And its just not true. The key to being successful on social media is to pinpoint the platform your clients are using, and make sure you enjoy using that platform.
| Social media cab be an important tool for any real estate business. Here are the top reasons REALTORS® use these platforms | |
|---|---|
| Easy communication | 45% |
| Promote listings | 47% |
| Free advertising | 51% |
| Visibility and marketing | 64% |
| Building relationships | 70% |
Use Management Tools Wisely
Social media management tools (see sidebar) can display many of your key social media profiles through one dashboard interface. There, you can often update your profiles and schedule posts for future dates. That approach can save you a tremendous amount of time. For example, you may spend one hour Monday and Thursday scheduling posts for the following days. Some management tools even have analytics so you can check to see which platforms and posts are working best for you.
And while this can save time and make posting easier, there are a few caveats. First, Mountain warns that Facebook has algorithms that determine what appears in the feeds of your Facebook friends and people who Like your business page, and it will penalize dashboard posts by making them visible to fewer people. So, its best to update to Facebook directly instead of using a dashboard.
In addition, James Nellis, II, CRS, who leads a team at Keller Williams Capital Properties in Alexandria, Virginia, cautions that you should avoid auto-blasting, which means sending out the same exact content across multiple platforms. Each platform has a unique audience and purpose, so you want to be sure you create content thats specific to the way the users want to interact, he says. He combines content in a way he calls social fusion. Heres how that might play out for a new listing:
- Custom Web Page: Create a website with information about the specific home, including video, special features and other details.
- Blog: Write a blog post about the property, linking back the website.
- Facebook: Post a lifestyle-driven description with a personal message about the home, along with photographs and a link to the website page. If you post this on your business page, you may pay a small fee typically $10 or less to boost the post so it reaches a wider audience.
- Twitter: Tweet about the new listing with a link to your custom page. Use local hashtags a word or phrase preceded by a # which turns it into a hyperlink that collects all other tweets with that hashtag. Tweet again to announce open houses.
- LinkedIn: Post a brief piece about the favorable market conditions in that city or community and announce that you have a new listing in that area.
- Pinterest or Instagram: Post photos of the house and its most attractive features.
- YouTube: Upload a custom video of the home to your professional YouTube channel using the embed code, a link that allows you to share the video within other social media and your blog.
By thinking about the audience for each platform, you can use very similar content to create compelling posts for each audience.
Understand Business vs. Personal
Mountain typically advises starting with Facebook and LinkedIn. She recommends activating both a personal and a business page to ensure that you have appropriate platforms for sharing personal information, which is important, but to not overload your personal page with business-oriented material. She suggests agents follow a 75 percent/25 percent rule. On the personal side, shoot for 75 percent personal information and 25 percent business. On your business page, reverse the proportions.
Test and Track
Neill emphasizes how important it is to track exactly where your leads are coming from. Out of her 54 closings in 2013, 10 came from Facebook, she says.
If youre not getting any leads from social media, you need to change your strategy or stop spending time on something that isnt working and try something else, she says.
Learn more by taking the CRS online course Navigating the Social Media Maze.
