In the ever-changing world of business marketing, it’s challenging to feel like you’re doing enough. This is especially true of social media marketing. What once required just a basic email newsletter now requires involvement on countless social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr and Pinterest. These channels sometimes leave us feeling overwhelmed, but they’re the key to elevating our marketing in today’s digital world.
It’s important to recognize that just like any business, each social media platform has a specific use, and your voice and message should harness the strength of each accordingly. For example, Facebook is a great place to post about events and local news, whereas Instagram’s Stories feature (photos or short video clips arranged sequentially that users can quickly tap through) is a great way to quickly and easily highlight different properties. You can even include a link to your website or specific properties. YouTube is a great vehicle to spotlight property videos, as well as additional video content to be used on your other social media platforms.
As you develop your social media presence, remember the 80/20 rule and try to keep your content 80 percent personal or special interest, and 20 percent real estate. By doing so, the audience has a chance to connect with you, not just the real estate side of you. Marketing with social media can be a daunting task—especially on multiple platforms—but these general rules will get you started:
- Be yourself, even when it’s messy. Done is better than perfect.
- Use video. We all hate being on camera, but show yourself.
- Be a local expert. The more you know, the better.
- Post good and fair replies to your base often.
- Use pictures and polls to engage your audience and encourage responses.
- When listing or showing, take pictures and record video of interesting things.
- Include local and regional stories and news.
- Limit or omit religious, political or hot-button topics.
- Stay professional. Your social media channels are where most people will look to get a sense of who you are. Your digital imprint matters.
- Post regularly and make sure the content is relevant.
- Use a multi-platform posting service like Hootsuite to schedule posts in advance.
- Have fun!
Just as time-blocking for prospecting, training, hiring and managing should be part of your non-negotiables, you should also block time for social media marketing. And be sure your posts are regular and relevant. Just sending blast emails to your database on listings and closings isn’t enough. There’s great information all over the internet, and you can even leverage programs such as RISMedia’s ACESocial to automate the process. If you run a team, have team members contribute to your team pages, too. Scheduling in advance is a great idea, as well, as it will be one less thing on your agenda for the day.
Keeping all these things in mind can aid you in elevating your marketing, now and in the future.
Nearly three decades of real estate experience—including 15 years of coaching with Verl Workman—has made Jim Knowlton one of the top agents in the country and one of the most popular coaches on the Workman Success Systems’ team. In addition to serving as director of Coaching for Workman Success Systems, Knowlton also owned and managed several real estate franchises, earned numerous awards for his performance and continues to lead a Keller Williams Mega Agent team in New Hampshire today. Contact him at Jim@WorkmanSuccessSystems.com. For more information, please visit www.workmansuccesssystems.com.
