Applying the following online exposure concepts will help you distinguish yourself from the overcrowded sea of real estate agents, generate a plethora of high-quality leads based on your Internet presence (and not your marketing budget), reduce your advertising costs, help demonstrate your value to potential clients, create additional points of contact with your sphere of influence, and meaningfully keep in touch with past clients.
1. Boost your professional reviews on as many lead-generating sites as possible.
You’ll want to start by focusing on Zillow, Trulia, Yelp, Google Plus and your Facebook business page.
If you don’t have a dedicated Facebook page for your real estate team or yourself as a salesperson, you’re behind the ball. (No, I’m not referring to your broker’s Facebook page; I mean yours!) Reach out to your past clients and customers and ask them to leave a favorable recommendation for you or your team on at least one of the sites above. Also, ask them to “check in” to your business on Facebook. This makes for a great touch that’s advantageous to both you and your client.
Online reviews are becoming more important in the new age of a trillion options and apps, and you can expect this trend to expand tremendously.
2. Maintain relevant Twitter and Instagram posts.
Try to avoid oversaturating your timeline with the same cookie-cutter tactics that most agents utilize. Be sure to display your expertise in your market with original photos and imaginative content. Only share real estate-related information that you find so fascinating that you stopped what you were doing to experience the article personally. Trust me — if you don’t find the information that you share personally intriguing, then it probably isn’t attractive enough for you to regurgitate.
Implement an identity for your brand that you can fuse with your social media accounts and that resonates with your audience. Show why you are the readily available expert, not the salesperson that people unfollow.
3. Curate engaging updates on LinkedIn and strategically share those posts in relevant groups.
If you’re a blogger, this is an excellent way to copy and paste your most recent blog post to a vast community of readers who may be interested in what you have to say. You can see exactly how many people have viewed your update and the type of reach you were able to garner.
Remember, this is your professional profile, not a personal Tumblr blog, so keep the posts business-related and real-estate-focused. You’d be surprised by how many corporate leaders will consider you an expert and start following your feeds — or even request to be connected.
4. Google the top-producing real estate agents in your area.
Scroll through the first five pages of results and make sure you have an updated profile on every website where you find a top producer. If the customers can’t find you, you don’t exist to them.
This one step can drastically increase your exposure; it shouldn’t be overlooked. If you Google yourself and the only results are personal Facebook pages of people that share your name, you have some work to do.
5. Snap away on Homesnap.
If you haven’t been introduced to this app yet, you are definitely missing out. Homesnap is a free app that increases your market exposure by allowing you to take photos of listed and off-market properties throughout your neighborhood. Clients using the app are only exposed to the agents who snap pictures in the communities they are exploring. You can’t purchase your way into an ad next to the homes like most portals.
Potential clients are immediately connected to you when they submit an inquiry. If you don’t snap in the area, you’re not a part of that equation.
6. Create informative YouTube videos jam-packed with content that addresses your particular market’s specific needs and desires.
If you can’t come up with compelling and innovative ideas, start by asking new home communities if you can showcase their neighborhoods on your channel to generate additional exposure for their properties. The worst thing they can do is decline, but how many people in our industry object to free advertising?
If done properly, you can quickly become the perceived new home expert in your area and potentially parlay your efforts into generating listings from independent new home developers.
Adrian Provost is a luxury real estate broker at Provost International Realty.
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