10 Hacks to Double Your Real Estate Leads with Social Media
Want more listings? ? ? ?
I see a lot of real estate agents missing out on the potential of social media and they are mainly all doing the same thing.
The easiest way to gain a massive competitive edge is simply to, not do what everyone else is. In this article, I focus on social media marketing for real estate agents.
Every real estate business in your local market is competing for the attention of the same people. A lot of realtors are not using social to their full advantage.
90 percent of home buyers use the internet in their search. So, it’s likely that any half intelligent seller is going to choose an agent with a decent online presence.
First, things first. I need to stamp this massive mistake real estate agents make. Don’t just post listings on your social page, one after another. It’s the fastest way to stop people from liking your page and returning to it
??? Listings overload!! ???
1. LinkedIn Lead Generation
If you know how to use LinkedIn effectively, you can find the contact details of 95% of home sellers.
You can use this in a number of ways, to target for sale by owners properties, or seller leads from home opens, or developers.
Not to mention, setting appointments with every mortgage broker, divorce lawyer, accountant, restaurant owner, and anyone else in your “patch” that would come across listing opportunities.
If you optimise your LinkedIn effectively, your profile will be among the top 2-3% in your industry. Most of your competitors will have a version of their CV on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the quickest way to build a database for email marketing, Facebook ads and to grow your followers on other channels like YouTube and Instagram.
Get onto this lead generation goldmine now, before LinkedIn tighten up their restrictions.
? Has anyone used LinkedIn successfully for real estate? (let us know in the comments).
2. Google My Business
This is quite possibly the lowest hanging fruit for real estate agents, and it’s still untapped. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, open up a new tab and search:
“real estate agent near me.”
More than likely a map will pop up, and you’ll see a list of real estate agents near you. Now that the map is open, grab and pull it over your home.
To get started you simply need to head over to Google.com/business and set up your account. Once you log into your verified account, you can add photos, link to videos and even make weekly posts.
3. Blog (local/community)
Posting quality information on your own blog is one of the best ways to grow your online following. In general, your content should be informative and focus on what your target market is interested in learning about.
Provide neighbourhood guides that give insights into the best restaurants, parks, and things to do in an area that you have a lot of properties.
As you know, marketing the neighbourhood is just as important to making a sale as marketing a house.
Other posts can serve to guide people through the most common issues of being a homeowner: renovations, taxes, school districts, insurance, and so on.
4. Video ?
In order for you to connect with buyers, you need to be present on social media and on the platforms where buyers are searching.
Help your leads through their customer journey, for example:
- Use social media to answer questions. These can be customer service questions, home buying questions and connect with those located near where your listings are.
- Share other content you have. Video tours of places available, blog posts and the latest in home buying in your area are all types of content you can use to nurture leads.
Content builds trust while establishing you and your business as useful, authoritative industry resources.
Ray White shares and retweets lots of relevant video content. Research shows that 82% of users watch video content on Twitter and that adding video to a tweet gives you a 28% boost in engagement.
73 percent of homeowners prefer realtors who promote their offerings through video
5. YouTube Channel
Nelson Alexander was ranked first for YouTube engagement.
They’ve had over 1.5 million views since starting the YouTube channel in 2013.
Note the:
- Clear and sophisticated branding.
- High-quality video production.
- A variety of different videos on offer including listing videos, guided listing tours, vendor interviews, auction footage, auctioneer and office profiles.
- Constantly uploading new videos (several times daily).
- Videos are optimised for mobile viewing.
- Sharing of YouTube content on Twitter.
6. Online/YouTube Show
Everyone in real estate is talking about video but few are doing it, and even fewer are doing it well.
Gary Peer Real Estate in Melbourne are leading the way with their weekly show called GPTV.
With 150 episodes under their belt, business partners Gary Peer and Phillip Kingston deliver a weekly show full of property news, auction results, market updates and general community news in roughly 15 minutes.
To date, GPTV has collectively received over 48,000 views on Youtube.
7. Podcast
An excellent example of a real estate Podcast is John McGrath, Tom Panos & Troy Malcolm’s Million Dollar Agent.
Further reading: Check out the 10 best podcasts for real estate agents
8. Go Live
Using Facebook or Instagram to do live, virtual open houses is going to be a monumental move.
I expect multiple people to email me over the next 24 months to say they sold a house to someone who was watching on Facebook instead of going to a traditional viewing.
Where social media comes into play is that you can easily craft daily content about a home and the 10–20 mile radius around the area where you plan to sell property.
9. Re-target
Have you have ever gone shopping for a pair of shoes, a camera, or some other item on Amazon, and then you started seeing ads for that exact product follow you around the internet?
That’s because you didn’t buy it or you didn’t go through the checkout process. That means you have experienced re-targeting.
When 70% of sellers say they would definitely use the same real estate agent again, and yet only 25% of them actually do use the agent they previously worked with!
If you want a solid, consistent real estate business, you absolutely must have a way to continue to deepen your relationships with your closed clients.
Over 60% of all agent business is directly attributed to referrals and repeat business. Facebook is a great way to stay in front of your database and very inexpensive too.
About 80 percent of what they had read online the night before. So you as a real estate agent and your website might fall into that statistic if you’re not using retargeting to bring those consumers back.
If you don’t remind them that they were on your website and that you do, in fact, have the solution to their problem, then you may have just lost a potential customer forever.
Niam Leeson knows the drill ???
10. Killer Content
Avoid creating text-only posts; at the very least, include some pictures. For more impact, create videos about your houses for sale.
Consider following the 80/20 rule.
Which means that about 80% of your posts should be informative and 20% should be promoting your services or listings.
Ray White has approx 8,000 followers on Twitter and a similar number on Facebook and shares news, current events and videos.
All Ray White’s posts contain large high-quality images which research says get 5x more engagement than regular text posts.
There you have it, my 10 hacks. Who’s doing these?
Real Estate Professionals:
I’m going to be doing a follow up article and looking for contributors. Let me know what has worked for you in the comments below and there’s a good chance you’ll be featured in the follow-up article.
As always, I appreciate your attention more than you can imagine.
Webinar Recording:
Myself and the legendary real estate trainer Glen Twiddle discuss How to Make $1 Million as a Real Estate Agent in 2018.
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Nathanial Bibby is the Managing Director of Bibby Consulting Group – Australia’s #1 LinkedIn training courses and LinkedIn lead generation agency.
