Social Media 101 for Estate Agents

Social Media and Social Networking; they're done in many of the same places, but they're very different. To understand this difference in simple terms, don't concern yourself with the word "Social".

Media broadcasts messages and content.
Networking involves interaction and relationship building.

Put the word 'social' back and there is a fundamental interdependency between them. Anyone serious about promoting their business online should work at both, but for the purposes of agents starting out or those who have met with limited success thus far, lets look at some basic ways of using Social Media. The Networking side of things takes time to develop and is much more in-depth than one blog post can cover.

Conventional advertising uses media with established audiences, whereas Social Media spreads messages and content by way of people responding to, sharing or expressing an interest (a Like) for content with others they are connected with.

You can use Social Media to promote your services and your properties, but it is important to do this on people's own terms rather than yours. What I mean by this is you are unlikely to find legions of advocates happy to pass on messages about what a great estate agent you are or how wonderful your latest listings are blindly, yet this is the approach that many are taking. The key to using Social Media effectively is for the content to have relevancy to the person who encounters it.

Consider the ways in which a typical homebuyer may want to use a site like Facebook to share details of a property:

• To encourage their partner to go and view the property
• To seek advice and validation from parents or knowledgeable friends on what they think of a property and it's price
• To tell friends how excited they are that they've found somewhere nice
• To tell friends that they're selling their property

Your involvement can be relatively minor in all of this, but minor changes to your own website can encourage these sorts of interactions and help people to share your properties in whatever manner they feel is appropriate. This will become increasingly important as personal e-mail usage continues to decline and the use of social tools on mobiles increase in popularity. Understand that Social Media has a role in helping you to sell houses without you needing to be the one doing the selling part.

For your own services, Social Media is about providing compelling communications, ordinarily in the form of a blog. There is enormous apathy for self-interested, salesy content promoted on social networks and many companies are slowly embracing the idea that their Social Media efforts need to be less hand to mouth to be effective. Writing a blog and sharing it on Twitter may not result directly in a valuation appointment, but it might result in someone who follows your blog, shares your posts and, over time, grows to appreciate your company in ways that you have always struggled to convey in the "About Us" section of your website. The amount of web based research that home movers do has increased dramatically in recent years and although there is plenty of media coverage over the property market on a national or regional scale, there is less on a local basis. Think of your blog posts in much the same way as those articles you used to do for the front page of the local property supplement. Consider ways in which your posts will influence potential customers by making them:

• Locally focussed
• Insight driven
• Current and objective
• Entertaining if appropriate

If your content is relevant and engaging, then you will find it is shared, but Facebook posts and Tweets quickly fade into history. Therefore, don't look on Likes and Retweets as the only measure of success. Good advice to home movers can form part of the content on your website or blog for a long time and still be relevant to visitors.

Recommendations themselves are also an important thing to promote using Social Media and as I have written about previously, consider ways in which you can encourage positive reviews and comments to be published independently online.

Social Media is not a promotional panacea and don't get caught up in the hype. If you're going to do it properly, then it is not a task for the office junior just because he or she is a 'Digital Native'. Creating compelling communications requires professional involvement for any media, Social Media is no different in this respect and something that I'm working on for a number of agents. The quality of the content that you produce and the relevancy of that content to your audience is what will primarily dictate whether Social Media provides a return on investment for your business.

Comments

[Michael]

I hate to admit it as an agent, but I think we could all learn a lot from @tepilo (Sarah Beeny) on Twitter - she seems to be doing a great job and uses this to good effect.

[Daniel Hare]

Yes Michael, I've written about Tepilo's PR and social media strategy previously. Their focus on providing help and advice is one that many agents should take note of.