Brokers and agents in real estate market must start to think beyond their website for effective and targeted marketing of their services as buying and decision making habits of end users are changing.
As a broker and real estate agent you have a cool website, but believe me it is not enough even though it is drawing good amount of traffic. You must have presence across social media channels as well. Social media enables real estate brokers and agents to reach a much wider audience that can boost your business by promoting your services and generating leads online.
Pew Center Research study says that 40% of users (i.e. your potential buyers) log on to social media accounts through their mobile phones and almost 30% of them log in every day. Isn’t that a phenomenal market open to you? Here I am focusing on top 5 social media sites that help real estate brokers and agents to get maximum exposure online. If you can integrate your real estate business to social networking sites that are in trend, you will be able to attract more business and build authority and relevance.
So let us look at the popular social media websites for real estate agents and brokers which can be gold mines for you when you use it in coherence with your website.
Top Social Media Websites for Real Estates Agents and Brokers
What makes Facebook and Twitter so popular and useful for you? It is the engagement that it draws from the audience and it effectively draws traffic to your website. These websites should be used to promote sales, sharing photographs and community building activities every day.
Social media looks magical but it’s more of a science and each site has its own benefits and unique target audience.
Five Most Popular Social Media Websites for Real Estate Brokers and Agents
Facebook was launched for college students so that they can chat and share photos. But it has evolved into a platform for users across all demographics. The benefit for real estate agents and brokers is that the majority of its customers i.e. buyers of estate in the age group of 29 to 49 are on Facebook they constitute around 82 % to 89% Facebook users. Interestingly 65% of the seller market that age between 50 to 64 years is also on to Facebook.
If you are not on Facebook you won’t be able to reach out to these potential clients. It’s a huge chunk of market. The best part is that Facebook has introduced a number of tools that cater to businesses like creating groups to share content, affordable advertising, business pages, etc. You can share your recent blog post on Facebok, start a discussion about an event, or simply tell your friends about new projects.
Start your business page on Facebook (like Pune Real Estate). Make sure you reach out to your audience and let them know that you are on Facebook. Give them reasons to be on your fan page, engage them with interesting and engaging content. Always follow 80/20 rule, 80% of your posts should be of non-promotional nature and only 20% of your posts should promote your business. Facebook will help you in increasing return visitors to your websites. Advertising on Facebook will also help you to bring a targeted traffic to your website.
Facebook is a marketing wonder for those who use it wisely.
LinkedIn was started as a networking website for professionals to connect with co-workers, colleagues and other professionals. From a tiny website now it has grown into a giant with a quarter billion users worldwide.
LinkedIn is focused around professionals and businesses. So it’s a kind of an exclusive professional website where people speak about their skills, build relations, and build personal and corporate brands. The advantage of getting into LinkedIn is that it can give a polished approach to your business. When people go to your LinkedIn profile they know about your skills, professional background, education and experience. This provides clean platform to display your work and professional resume.
When building your LinkedIn profile make sure that you complete your profile and complete all necessary fields. Provide users with information about you, your past experience. Collect as many testimonials as possible as it will help you to build your trust worthiness. Connect with fellow real estate agents and probable buyers.
Twitter gives you an opportunity to communicate with users in a limit of 140 characters even if you are not connected mutually. As an agent or broker this is a huge plus as you can communicate with people outside your personal and professional network. It doesn’t take a long time to tweet; it is quick so you won’t be spending a lot of time over this. Add a tweet button to your website too so that visitors can easily and quickly share your content, posts and links from your website.
Keep a track of people who are tweeting about their real estate requirement, offer them to help. May be there is a person in your colony who is looking out for a 2BHK apartment on rent and is asking his friends to help with his requirement over tweet. Why not track this user and approach him on same platform i.e. twitter?
Instagram is getting popular every day. It has more users than Twitter but, less than LinkedIn and this number is growing continuously. Instagram is best to show properties to millions of people. You can share real time photos of properties with users over Instagram.
More than 50% users share photos with people while they are online, remember a tool like Instagram is a blessing to real estate agents. Being mobile based you can click and upload photos on Instagram from any mobile device having Instagram app.
YouTube
Youtube is in vogue, in fact it started as a place where teenagers shared their own videos while they were singing to the soundtrack of their favorite songs or funny videos. Now it has become a platform for businesses to attract customers by sharing their videos about work/business.
It is the largest video sharing site in the world and it is second to Google as a search engine. A neatly done video when goes viral can gets millions of views overnight, literally. You don’t have to really go viral to make use of this incredible social channel. You can create your own business channel on YouTube and showcase videos of all your properties.
You can give visitors a place to see a detailed video of your properties when you link YouTube to your website. Make use of analytics offered by YouTube to understand how videos are getting consumed, if on your website or on YouTube, how people are coming to your videos, what keywords are they using while searching, all this information can be of great value while targeting for new customers.
There are many social media sites available but, you need to understand the mechanics of each site and the kind of audience it has. You have to approach each social media channel independently based on your preference and user behavior on each website. This is surely not rocket science but, a science that needs a bit of study and observation.
Having your presence on these five social media channels apart from a good website can help in building your online reputation, increase reach and penetration leading to increased leads and business. In case of any difficulty feel free to get in touch with me, also do not forget to share your experience with social media channels.
Tags: promotion real estate social media
