Social Media for Real Estate Agents - LinkedIn (Part III)

LinkedIn is probably the best social media channel for testimonials and referrals. Even though little adopted by realtors, LinkedIn presents great opportunities for real estate agents. LinkedIn might not help you directly sell a home, but it will definitely help you create useful relationships.

Recent studies show that more than 70 percent of people would recommend the real estate agent they worked with. LinkedIn helps leverage this potential and makes it so much easier to get back in touch with previous clients. If most agents miss doing one important thing, that is contacting previous clients! The research shows how much those people are ready to recommend the agent, yet agents forget to reconnect with them. A good profile on LinkedIn with a good number of people in the network might be the solution.

Real estate agents can use LinkedIn to get referrals almost effortlessly. A profile on LinkedIn where you add a good presentation of yourself, with all the professional details and a good resume,  will help others discover and contact you. Your LinkedIn profile will help you expand your professional network while making it easier for people interested in your expertise and knowledge of the local real estate market learn more about you and get in touch with you.

One of the biggest strength of LinkedIn is its embedded tool for recommendations. Once you bring in some of your past clients, it is very easy for them to write a good recommendation for you and emphasize your professional qualities. These testimonials and recommendations will help you build your reputation and boost credibility. The recommendations will be posted on both your profile and the person who wrote them so this gives you exposure to your past client's network, increasing the chances for other people to want to work with you. LinkedIn is one of the best social media tools to tap into the power of peer review, the best component of effective marketing.

Here are some good articles and resources on using LinkedIn for real estate:

• How to Use LinkedIn to Boost Your Real Estate Business by Rebekah Radice
• LinkedIn is the "it" place for real estate referrals by Bernice Ross
• 6 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Real Estate Business Network by Keller Williams
• LinkedIn Tips to Build Your Real Estate Business by Esther
• LinkedIn Tips for Realtors by Viveka

It is time to adopt LinkedIn, the social media channel that can best help you capitalize on testimonials and build your referral database. As always, if you are not a realtor but you are looking for a home in the North Myrtle Beach area, give us a call at (888) 249-2100 or visit CENTURY 21 Thomas search page.

Social Media for Real Estate Agents - Pinterest (Part II)

The real estate market is becoming more and more competitive. New people turn real estate agents every day so you have to find ways to stay ahead or else... Social media is one of the new marketing paradigms that can be turned into an extremely powerful strategy, tactic, tool, and everything in between. We have started in our previous blog post to present various  social media channels and tools useful to real estate agents. Today we will talk about Pinterest and how real estate agents can use it to make a difference.

If you want to understand Pinterest you need to understand its three main components: Pins, boards, and repins.

Pins are images that are added to Pinterest via the Pin It button  or uploaded from your computer.

Boards are are sets of pins that real estate agents create, usually around a certain topic (interior design, cleaning and organizing ideas, elegant dinnerware, etc).

Repins means adding to one of your own boards an image you find while browsing other Pinterest accounts. It's very simple: you like the image - you click repin - you choose one of your own boards you want to put it on - it gets displayed on your Pinterest board. Repining is the way to share someone else's image on your own board. But this is also the way someone else can post YOUR images on their boards! This can give real estate agents exponential exposure.

We live in a highly visual world. Don't forget that 80 % of the signals we process are visual. That's probably why Pinterest has gained tremendous success recently and people spend more and more time browsing boards on Pinterest besides catching up gossips on Facebook. When people repin an image from your Pinterest account, that image automatically gets a link back to your board. That makes it a great way to get back links, valuable for SEO and traffic building.

Here is an example of the "Real Estate Tips" board on Century 21 Thomas' Pinterest account:

Also remember that you can add a link to any image you upload on Pinterest so people who click on your image are directed to the destination of that link. So if you post a picture with a great view of one of the properties you handle, you can drive people who click on it to your listing.

The main social media for real estate opportunity with Pinterest is to promote great real estate images of the properties you manage with the goal of having other people repin them on their own boards. This gives you exponential exposure on the internet and increased chances to build traffic to your listing.

In one of our previous blog posts we emphasized how important it is to make sure you use great photography for the properties you list. Now that you have those great pictures, why not use them on Pinterest to capture more attention and traffic to your listings? Re-purposing existing photography is one of the best ways to effectively use Pinterest for real estate.

Good luck with using Pinterest for real estate. Hopefully you found these simple recommendations helpful. As always, if you are not a realtor but you are looking for a home in the North Myrtle Beach area, give us a call at (888) 249-2100 or visit CENTURY 21 Thomas search page.

Social Media for Real Estate Agents - Networking (Part I)

Social media has become an important component of the online marketing mix of every successful business. As a real estate agent, you run your own business and you should not be stranger to strategies, tactics, and tools that can help you become more successful and get ahead of your competitors. We are going to present in this blog post more details about networking.

"It's not what you know but who you know" is as true today as it ever was. Networking and relationships are crucial for any real estate agent. From this perspective, social media is hard to beat. There is nothing more effective for building and nurturing relationships than Facebook, Youtube, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest. Just imagine how much information about your potential clients is at your fingertips on social media.

Social Customer Relationship Management Tools (Social CRM)

With Nimble and you can easily become a networking super star! According to their website, "Nimble automatically pulls your contacts into one place so you can engage them across any channel (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Skype, Phone, Email) in one easy to use interface. Nimble incorporates social

Nimble: Contact Management Reimagined. (C) Nimble.com

listening and engagement tools so you can easily follow conversations and jump in at the right time with the right message. Nimble helps you create potential customers profiles by keeping complex information well organized: you can access in one place all the information about someone's social media accounts and the exchange of messages you have had on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkeIn, all the emails you've sent or received, notes you've made to help you remember important information related to the interaction with that person, etc. Nimble comes with a set or useful widgets and add-ons so you can easily access it through Chrome, Hootsuite, Android or Apple mobile phone and even through Microsoft Office 365. Read this article on Social Media Examiner if you want to learn more about social crm.

Facebook

Facebook is great for leads generation. Many real estate agents are very knowledgeable of Facebook, yet many are still at the beginning of including it into their toolbox. Basically, the best way to generate leads with Facebook is through interaction and creative posts which encourage interaction. Unfortunately Facebook is in a constant state of change and it makes it hard to keep up with it. That doesn't mean it is not worth doing it. You should look at Facebook as an extension of your database and treat it like one and nurture it. Create a content strategy and don't push only real estate posts like your current listings for sale and nothing else. Be creative and find the right balance between selling and create interaction and engagement. Often times the best balance is 60/40 where you post 60 percent of the times messages that are not related to real estate and the other 40 percent of the time you work on the sales process.

Twitter

Twitter is an effective social networking and micro blogging site and it offers a great way to make connections and establish your real estate agent brand. Confined to only 140 characters, Twitter enforces conciseness and sometimes... grammar creativity. Twitter can help you build trust through new connections and strengthen ties to the local community. Start by determining who your target audience is and what content they are eager to consume. Include relevant and newsworthy content along with inspirational and motivational tweets. Promote your next open house and tweet links to your YouTube videos. According to MSB (Maximize Social Business), your tweets should consist of:

• Link to your own blog or website content 20%
• Link to other people’s content 20%
• Talk business or share your own marketing material 20%
• The remaining 40% should consist of personal interaction, small talk, commenting and networking

We will continue our presentation of social media channels for real estate agents so don't be a stranger to this blog. Remember to be authentic on social media. Networking becomes very powerful when developed around trust. Surprise and delight your clients on a regular basis. The secret to successful marketing is simple: be likable! And don't forget: if you are looking for a home in the North Myrtle Beach area, give us a call at (888) 249-2100 or visit CENTURY 21 Thomas search page.