Social media is a great influencer of consumers’ purchasing power. The most important benefit of social platforms in branding is building trust and demonstrating your expertise. Trust is a cornerstone in customer relationships from the first purchase onward. Without trust, the relationship will easily crumble once a new business trend arises. In real estate, trust is crucial as customers make the life-altering decision to buy or sell a property. Your job as an agent and online real estate business owner is to build that trust. Social media can do that for you.
Social media has become the playing field in establishing brands. These platforms are where businesses can interact and engage with the target audience in a more personal manner. You build trust by giving useful data and answering or providing solutions to concerns about their real estate journey.
Here are seven ways to demonstrate your experience and expertise on social media:
1. Express Leadership Abilities
Your real estate brand credibility depends on what you can provide your customers and targets alike. As you grow your audience, they will come to rely on your expertise. Do not ruin the trust given to you “so far” by grabbing opportunities for a quick sell of service without any added value. Your social media accounts should inform, engage and ignite inquiries. It is also better to obtain honest reviews that you can answer and learn from. Leadership abilities extend to knowing, initiating inquiries, and providing concrete solutions. As a brand, you as the real estate agent should lead people to find their dream homes, sell properties with minimum complication, or be able to solve issues and help them in any way, whether staging a house, maintenance, or remodeling.
2. Exercise Transparency
This is a tough pursuit to establish trust. Business owners are hesitant about transparency and showing personality on social media. Most still value their privacy and being transparent is a breach. But times have changed as digital reality enables people to connect. Your real estate business must embrace this by getting involved and conversing with targets, humanizing your business. Studies show 77% of customers will purchase from an enterprise with an owner using social media. Also, 82% say they trust a business more. Consumers want to connect with brands and their owners.
3. Accountability
Openly connecting on social platforms and motivating interactions with followers and targets guarantees a specific level of responsibility on your part. Responsibility to provide the right information as well as excellent service. Being an accountable and responsible social media user, you ensure customers and followers that you are true to your word in providing excellent real estate services and added value, including customer service.
4. Fast Communication
Social Media platforms allow for messages to be passed from customer to business faster. Customers can reach you, and you can respond more expeditiously. Words get out on these platforms how businesses behave. If you are attentive to your customers and targets, you will be a valued brand that is responsive and available. People value attention and quick responses because they value how time is spent with businesses.
5. Social Advocacy
Being part of a community puts you on the spot to do something to make the community better. Social advocacy obtains trust and strengthens expertise in the business owner’s community. Your beliefs and integrating these into how you act in the community put you better positioned with customers and targets. The more you show advocacy and responsibility to them, the more they will value doing business with you as a real estate agent and as a brand.
6. Fun & Interactive Connectivity
As you grow your followers on social media, you want to continuously engage with them through your postings, trivia, and giveaways. Entertaining your followers on social platforms is like having an open house; you showcase the house, the possibilities and keep them entertained. One example of an interactive engagement is taking a poll on the best video you’ve made, and the first five voters will get a prize.
7. Initiate User-Generated Content
This is related to social advocacy and interactive engagement. Encouraging customers and followers to share, be heard, and supply their own content is fun, engaging, and gives you perspective on your future clients. Consumers like knowing other people’s experiences before taking the plunge themselves. So, ask your previous clients for reviews and feedback in a fun way, such as posting pictures and videos of the homes you helped them buy or sell. Another fun and user-generated way is to ask followers to post the links of your content that they found most useful, whether they acquired your services or not.
Social media is not about selling your services blatantly but about building trust in your brand and your expertise in your real estate niche. Of course, it is good if you can convert followers to active clients. But if that will be the drive, it will not sell well to followers on first impression. They might get the impression you are just in it for the fast buck and not nurturing relationships. Trust is built over time and through constant effort. It can’t be earned overnight. Your expertise is directly related to it.
Top Five Social Media Platforms for Real Estate Agents
You don’t have to be on all social media platforms to show your expertise. In fact, it is better to be discerning which platforms will serve your objectives well. Here is the top five SocMed that you can opt for to maximize your reach and help in your SE ranking:
- Facebook — This platform has risen from finding friends to business networking and marketing. Remember that your page is for business and not personal. Your posts should be visually appealing with relevant text content. High-quality pictures and videos will attract more attention to your real estate business page.
- Instagram — Hashtags are the key to success on Instagram. It was designed to post images and content more dynamically. Visual images have more impact with appropriate hashtags to reach your target.
- LinkedIn — LinkedIn is more for professionals. It is the best platform to network with other real estate agents, brokerages, and of course, clients. Update your personal profile and design a page for your business too. In addition, you can post articles to show your expertise on real estate topics, such as current trends on housing in your area.
- Twitter — This has always been a digital marketing platform where you post snippets of your blogs and other text content as well as videos and images. It is ideal for linking content from other sources. Hashtags should be fully utilized on Twitter too.
- Zillow — Zillow is a must for real estate agents. MLSs are available here, and a clients’ go-to-platform to look for an agent. Another cool feature of Zillow is the forum where you can increase awareness for your brand and express authority and expertise in answering questions. Membership to the platform is crucial to your branding goals.
Expertise and professionalism shine through social media platforms. Choose which platform to use wisely. Do not be pressured to be in all, instead opt for 2 to 3 that you can manage and persevere. Continuous posting on social media attracts followers and target leads that are directed to your original site. Get creative and show target leads and followers what you offer, professionalism, expertise, and experience.
