Social media for real estate

Editor's Notes

1. Hello! My name is Marlee Newman. Today I am sharing with you my social media cheat sheet for real estate agents. My goal is for you to leave here feeling more confident about how to use social media for your business and I want you to feel comfortable approaching me as a resource. To start, a little about me. I grew up in Virginia and studied marketing at Virginia Tech. My proudest college accomplishments were graduating third in my class, winning the student leadership award and getting a burger named after me at a local deli near campus. Since graduating in 2013, I’ve worked for a digital marketing agency, I’ve lived in Switzerland, Italy, worked in sales and led hiking and biking vacations across the map. Last year I became a licensed real estate agent in Northern VA with plans to go into business with my mom who has been working as an agent for close to 20 years. At the time, she did not know how to put new paper in here printer… so needless to say, I took the “technical” reigns. Along with this we totally revamped her online presence. Creating a website, CRM system, Facebook page, video marketing campaigns, email newsletters, we tried it all and were able to really drill down to what works best. Shortly after all of this, I move up to the Philly area. After seeing so much success with my moms business I created Social Sauce Marketing. The goal of social sauce is to help small businesses find their “secret sauce” and enhance their online presence with a focus on social media.
2. So, I don’t know how many of you guys feel this way. But this was a quote from one of my clients referring to her experience with social media presentations like this. Social media can be an overwhelming world and can easily be a full time job. I am sure you all have heard the whole list of things you “need to be doing” and tools that are available. The truth is, there are a million tools and strategies out there to market online. In a perfect world you would be using all of them but you are busy selling houses! Like I said, my goal in the next 30 minutes is to leave you with practical tips and tactics to use and NOT leave you dizzyed with information. If you start to feel dizzy please speak up!
3. How do you get started? What steps to follow no matter what platform you are on. 2. Facebook boosts or advertising is a relatively new tool and is incredibly useful for small business owners. I will explain why this is the case. 3. Questions! 4. Goodie bags! It’s not a party without goodie bags, right? I’ve prepared a “digital goodie bag” for you complete with my favorite free online, tools, this presentation and a coupon. I
4. Question: What percentage of your business comes from referrals? Give me a general range out of every 10 clients you have. gives you a direct line of communication to talk to potential and current customers allows you to promptly review and address customer feedback helps you bring traffic back to your website introduces your brand to new audiences enables you to learn more about your audience helps your business show up in search positions your business as modern, current, and relevant
5. Guy Kawasaki is a marketing specialist and venture capitalist. This quote puts social media use into great perspective. Social media allows us to take our network and gather them all in one place in order to amplify our message and spread on of the most effective forms of advertising, word-of-mouth. Our whole network is gathered and we can communicate to them at the same time in order to stay top of mind and spread our messages.
6. Would you get in the car to start driving without knowing where you are headedl? No… you shouldn’t start posting to social without establishing where you are going with it. Planning is often skipped over for time’s sake. You do not have to spend countless hours doing market research but you want to think about your big picture goal so that you are working towards something specific before you dive in. My method for planning is to ask yourself these three questions.
7. What type of person needs your services? Establish your target. Who is in your target market - If you have paper - jot this down. What type of person needs your services. In real estate some of this is defined for us.. You know you want a close geographic location and your target is looking for a house. Do you specialize in buyers or sellers? A certain area? Specific age you focus on? We know that anyone under 20 is most likely not buying a home. Example: Anyone selling a home, located in Main Line Philly area, age 25-60,
8. What questions do you get most often from your clients? MAKE LIST What does this group want? Fears Questions Hesitations Curiosities worries? Examples: What home can I afford? Can I buy a home and sell my current one at the same time? How many homes should I see before making an offer? When can I back out if I change my mind? How quickly can I close? How long will it take to sell my home? Is staging really important? Answerthepublic.com You enter a keyword adn he suggests content ideas based on what people most often search for. This is a great FREE tool. Of course you can also turn to google.
9. Set short and long term goals for yourself. What do you want to accomplish by creating a facebook business page? Example: Short: I want to create a facebook post that drives people to my website straight to my bio with credentials and “contact me page” so they can reach out to me. Long: By next year I want to raise my website views and leads by 25% percent.
10. Ask yourself, am I targeting my target market, am I answering or satisfying a need of my markets and working towards my own goal? These three questions should be guiding your social media strategy through all levels. No matter where you are engaging with an audience.
11. Decide what to say. So we know our target market and we know what they are looking for. How do we answer their questions in a concise and attention grabbing way. Or in other words, what should you be posting or sharing on social?
12. Add stock photo example What do you post to get this message across? You can create your own content or share from other sources on Facebook. These are great rules to dictate that. Visuaal - must be high quality Images are key Quality over quantity - platform is no good if you just post to post BE AUTHENTIC - be human - your personality will differentiate you. Especially in a business liek real esate. It sokay to show this online. Put yourself in their shoes - Would people THANK YOU for this - Dont talk to people talk with them - same goes for offline, right? Be consistent ** Build credibility! Reviews, awards etc. this should always be something you are working on. Collect on facebook and then share everywhere. Do things tell people. Read these and I want you to imagine reading this to a good friend of yours right when you sit down to lunch. Better yet RIGHT when you shake hands and introduce yourself.
13. Catchy image Human voice not a robot Appeal to people’s fear It is short and to the point
14. “How to” appealing to peoples interests Video of person Human
15. Stock photo clihe and not natural
16. We know who we want to reach, what we want to say.. Now how do we reach them? Figure out where your target market is hanging out. Where do you post this to reach the most valuable eyes? Which platforms should you be using is a common question I receive. In a perfect world you could use every platform but you are selling houses and have limited time. There are a ton of platforms. Quality over quantity it is important. facebook ads. Affordable highly targeted and they work! Yes facebook has ___ people but what is really so valuable is the narrowed demographics they are offering. Because you can target a narrow demographic, affordable and reaching up to ____ eyes for just $25. How do you create a great ad? Organic posts - only 4-6% even friends will see. You have to spend ad dollars but fbook has made it successful. Although it is important to keep up with your organic posts just like it is important for a website to be current and look good.
17. You have to choose based on what works the best for you. Every business needs to implement a bit differently. If you are marketing towards a younger crowd instagram might be great for you. From my experience every small business should have a great facebook presence. For these reasons. 1.9 billion Wide age range Facebook boost capability to narrowly target In a perfect world you would be on every platform perfectly managing them but if I was in real estate I would focus my attention to facebook because it is the most widely used and the age range is 18 - 49
18. So what is a facebook boost and what makes it special? Facebook Advertising. So in a perfect world, we think about what we want strategically you create it and boom! Everyone you want to see, sees it… fancy algorithms… Facebook ads allow you to reach a narrowly defined demographic and pay to push this to the top of their news feed. The benefits are - 1.9 million are on here, it is affordable and they are sharing their user data with us to reach who we want to reach.
19. Let’s see how many people. Have you guys ever met someone and had them ask you to sell their house right away and have it go through? It takes time, you are relationship building just online. However, there are parameters you can measure to make sure your efforts are worthwhile and you are improving over time. It is important to decide what you should measure. Some efforts will be long term just like networking ont he ground. Tools: Google analytics Facebook analytics Track and repeat See who opened your post, where they are age, city etc. age, city What day and time of week you are performing best. What types of content performs best What your competition is doing A great metric to use is engagement - engagement is when people perform an action and actually interact with your post.
20. Business page? Personal page is up to you. Creating a business page makes you more searchable online, establishes creditbility, and gives you special business and analytics tool, How many times a week should I post and at what time? Quality over quantity How do I get things seen on facebook? Things are changing rapidly with this platform! Facebook, google all of the major platforms are developing their algorithms so that each of us has a custom tailored newsfeed for our interests and What is a hashtag? Which should I use? Geographic, listing specific, image (#mainlinephilly, #4bedroom, #newhome #homedecor)
21. All the steps and summary Presentation digital “goodie bag” this presentation, a facebook content cheat sheet and updates on client openings if you star your name I will reach out about setting up your page. Give email for top free tools $50 package to set up page and step by step guide for posting a facebook boost.