There are many successful real estate professionals who consider the business essentially an old-fashioned one. Even as the marketing world transitions to content marketing and social media marketing, they tend to see the personal, one-on-one touch as all that works for life-altering deals involving vast sums of money.
Can you do without social media marketing?
Certainly, it is possible to ignore social media in your marketing reach, and still make a successful living selling real estate. It’s important to understand, though, that not keeping up erodes your competitiveness. If marketing is about going where your customers are, you do need to pay attention. Nearly all of Britain is on Facebook, and three out of four b2c companies report acquiring business through social media platforms.
You need to be honest with yourself. If you are reluctant to get on social media, is it because you really do not believe that it makes a difference, or is it just that your unfamiliarity with these media puts you off?
Either way, you need to give it a try. It simply too huge an opportunity to pass by without adequate investigation. According to www.austinwyatt.co.uk, lots of people do talk about real estate on social media, after all. You want to be there when it happens. Social media are also the place where real estate agents get together to talk shop.
Making the move to social media does take some preparation
Social marketing isn’t just about putting a couple of your regular ads on Facebook. It’s about coming up with a whole plan to genuinely befriend your audience, and work on what’s best for them. This is the psychology to which these media work. To someone who’s always simply advertised to their audience rather than tried to do what’s best for them, the transition can be very hard to make. Yet, it can be a healthy new approach to practice.
Consider reaching out to different groups of real estate buyers
The profession of real estate agency has always been very siloed. Agents may help a few different kinds of buyers but too often specialize in just one group whether it be real estate investors, homeowners or commercial clients.
The power of social media and the internet enables real estate professionals to reach out and efficiently serve different groups of clients. Creating a real estate investment group on Facebook is a much simpler way to attract and keep investor clients engaged and informed.
Using social media to serve many groups of real estate buyers can also help you diversify your commission income away from trends in the business cycle or residential booms.
First, make sure that you look good everywhere on the Internet
Internet marketing isn’t for amateurs. Everything you do will always be instantly compared to truly professional efforts that are only a click away. Any weakness will show. You need to start with your website, and make it as polished a product as possible. Your Facebook posts will link back to your website, and you’ll need to put something good there to make it worthwhile for your visitors. From your pay-per-click advertising to your presence on Twitter, Pinterest or anything else, you want to put professional content out, and nothing else.
Give them useful information
 Social networks work no differently than real, interpersonal networks. If you want to be popular, you need to give people what they’re looking for. As an example, when people look for homes, they want more than anything else to learn about the neighborhoods that they are in. The want insider tips and insights that they can’t find on regular property websites. If you can give them information about the teachers at the local school, what the air smells like, if there are pretty birds in the sky, if the water tastes good, if there are noisy neighbors or if there’s a shop selling pretty lace, you’ll gain a following. If you are willing to illustrate your points with lots of professional pictures, so much the better. Those pictures will look great on Pinterest, as well.
Use your imagination and work the medium
If you’ve recently made a sale, you could celebrate the client and their moment on Facebook. Would you like to help potential homebuyers test their knowledge of the home buying process? Create a Facebook contest app. Social media work very well with geo-targeting. Look for homes that are likely to appeal to Facebook visitors from specific areas, and use geo-targeted promoted posts to reach them. You need to recognize the strength of each medium and work it.
Don’t forget that Facebook isn’t the only game in town
Twitter, the social network that helps you put out short, bite-sized messages, has turned out to be surprisingly popular. When you put out great, informative tweets that point your followers to useful information, it’s easy to become popular. Twitter is everywhere because unlike Facebook, it helps people take in a lot of information at a glance. It’s easy to pique curiosity with tips, contests, sweepstakes, pictures and a lot more.
When you’re making the transition, you need to watch out for mistakes
 As reluctant as you may be to give social media marketing a try, it’s possible to become too enthusiastic a convert.
Many new businesses trying social media marketing for the first time make terrible faux pas that take them a long time to recover from. They may fail to understand that social posts are not for advertising, for example. Aggressively promoting a business would be inappropriate. Posts are supposed to be about information that have value in and of themselves. It can quickly turn people off to be openly marketed to. Sharing inappropriate posts, being mean to someone who’s critical or sharing personal prejudices can all quickly backfire.
There are plenty of success stories that demonstrate how social media, when done right, can send business soaring. It’s important to learn how it’s done, though. Once you do learn the ropes, there’s a lot of success there to be had.
Laura Williams is a graduate who has recently landed herself a job at a marketing and brand strategy company. A quick learner Laura enjoys writing in her spare time, most recently focusing on marketing topics thanks to inspiration from her job.
