Gone… the days where potential home buyers open the Real Estate section of the newspaper looking for their next purchase or skim through the yellow pages, looking for a Real Estate agent to help them with the purchase and/or selling process.

Homebuyers are now online looking for the ideal property they can call their own.

You know what this means, don’t you? You MUST be active on social media! The key word here is MUST but along with this “MUST”, you need to also have a strategy and use each social platform to its potential.

1. Posting Etiquette – Instagram

This platform was built so that all its users can share information quickly through pictures and short videos with their followers. Throughout the years just like many platforms, Instagram has evolved and provided more value for its users. This means you should use every bit of it…

This doesn’t mean all you should be doing is posting your listings and open houses, that will soon become boring to your audience, causing them to unfollow your profile.

With Instagram, you can now post content in a variety of ways…

• News Feed (Video) – You can post a 1-minute video into a single post which will show in the news feed of your followers.
• News Feed (Image) – You can an image which will show in the news feed of your followers.
• Story – This section allows you to post short spurts of videos (15 seconds each) or post images.
• #Hashtags – You can use up to 30 hashtags which have to do with your image.

With posting in the news feed, Instagram also allows the posts to be in a carousel setting. This means you can have 10, 1-minute videos or 10 images on one single post.

Hashtags are a great way to gain exposure. You can use up to 30, but the sweet spot is 11-15 hashtags. People can look up hashtags, thus finding your post.

Utilize this to post engagement-focused content as this will inspire conversations from your following, not bore them. It is vital, and I mean vital when marketing or posting content on social media not to appear spammy.

I prefer to follow the 80/20 rule with my updates: 80% of posts should to be customer-centric, personal and educational while 20% being about the business.

It also helps the cause of agents to post about happenings in and around their communities like local charity events, school-related activities or even gas prices (especially when they’re low). This community-mindedness also helps to position you as a thought leader, rather than just a seller.

2. Have A Presence – Facebook

Regardless what anyone might have to say about this platform, Facebook is still the KING of social media. This platform alone has more than 2 billion users. That’s equals to roughly 30% of the world’s population.

With these many active users, this is the platform which you put your dollars to work and invest in paid advertising. Paid advertising isn’t something that should be considered, it is a MUST, especially in the Real Estate industry.

With paid advertising, you’re able to utilize the Balloon Method. The goal is too slowly grow a targeted audience on social media. The larger the audience, the larger your balloon. From this point, you can continue to stay in front of them by target in the following manner:

• Target those who view your videos
• Target those who engage with your page
• Target those who leave you a message
• Then you advertise Lead Magnets to those audience

BIGGER THE BALLOON = MORE SALES

You’ll create content to engage with and stay present in front of those audiences.

3. Be Live – Facebook/Instagram

In addition to running paid advertising, Facebook and Instagram have some other great functions that you should utilize. One of which is Live videos. This function allows you to record a Live video while your audience watches you, making them present in the moment with you. They can even interact with you during the process of being Live.

This is powerful besides running a paid ad for many reasons… (1) it allows your audience to be present in real time with you during the Live process, (2) you can save the Live video and post it to your news feed on Facebook and to your story on Instagram and (3) you can run the Live video recording as an ad afterwards and (4) you can address question/concerns in regard to the information you’re putting out.

Having the ability to turn a previously recorded Live video into an ad is by far the most powerful tool here. You’re automatically going into a paid ad with traction and interaction from your audience. This looks good to new views of your video and will draw them in.

4. Get Involved

The more active you become on social media, the more your audience will start interacting with you and your posts. DO NOT leave them hanging out too dry.

This communication can come in response to an ad, content on your news feed or story from Facebook or Instagram. It’s important for you to respond in a timely manner. Others will see your involvement or the lack of involvement. This will shape the perception they have of you, thus helping them arrive to the decision of working with you or not.

The purpose of a post or ad is to promote engagement, not to ignore it – stay connected.

The best way to ensure this task doesn’t go unattended is to schedule about 10 -15 minutes outside of your business hours to look through any possible messages or comments.

Even though these individuals aren’t necessary considered leads, this is a great opportunity to interact and create a relationship. This will help convert them into a lead. Please, do not overlook this… this is your opportunity to be value added so that you can earn their business and most importantly create advocacy.

5. Stay Within Your 5% Rule

Too often, self-employed professional and business owners try and do too much. What I mean by this is, they want to wear many hats soon to find themselves stepping over dimes to pick up pennies.

Social media marketing is a great skill to understand and even more of a skill to perform. With that said, it will take up a lot of your time to properly run paid ad campaigns and also follow you with those leads.

Learn the process of social media marketing, but don’t hesitate to outsource the task to a professional. Remember, your gift (5%) is within the Real Estate industry, so why would you want marketing to pull you away from that.

Your 5% is what helps generate income for yourself and which allows you to continue doing what you do which is help others.

If you continue marketing for yourself just to save what it will cost you to pay a marketing agency, you may soon find yourself losing more than what it would have initially cost you to hire that agency.

Similar to “For Sale By Owner” vs. hiring a Real Estate professional