Issue #19 | 11.13.2013 | 240,213 members

The Top 3 Social Media Sites for Your Real Estate Business

The majority of real estate agents now have a presence on social media and rightly so. Over 70 percent of home buyers and sellers are regularly using social media and are constantly connected to these sites whether at home or on-the-go.

Using social media, when done correctly, gives you the opportunity to find and be found by new leads, grow your referral base, build your brand, and increase conversions.

Here are the top social sites for real estate agents, and how you can use them to your benefit.

Facebook is the king of social media and gives agents the best ROI.
Over 15 million businesses have set up shop on Facebook, including hundreds of thousands of real estate agents. Over one billion people interact with these businesses, liking and commenting an average of 3.2 billion times every day. In today’s ever-evolving business atmosphere, these social interactions translate to genuine leads and referral traffic.

Creating a Facebook business page is completely free and grants you access to the most modern tools to get connected to clients. You can easily add apps and services that help you market your services and exponentially expand your business. These include an Agent Profile, Featured Listings and Home Search. You can drive traffic to your page in a myriad of ways with real estate ads, promoted posts and sweepstakes.

Twitter is second largest social media networking site and connects you to savvy home shoppers.
With over 500 million users posting 340 million tweets per day, Twitter claims the #2 spot. While a longshot from Facebook’s 1.11 billion registered users, you can nevertheless leverage the platform to connect with new leads.

The central driver on Twitter is the ‘tweet,’ a 140-character or less real-time status update that serves as a micro-blog of sorts. People on Twitter use the site to search for news, updates, and topics of interest to them. Tweet the latest housing market news, post shortened URLs (ex: bitly links) for your listings, and network with local consumers. Incorporate hashtags to make your tweets searchable, such as #realestate, #yourcity, or #forsale.

YouTube is a valuable social site that helps you communicate your message via videos.

YouTube, a top video sharing site, logs 800 million unique users a month. According to NAR, more than half of home shoppers have used YouTube to view video tours.

Upload videos for your listings and services, then add several tags that allow your videos to be easily found. Keep your videos brief (under 2 minutes) to keep your viewers’ attention. Post your videos on your other social sites to increase their exposure.

These social media platforms give you endless ways to meet leads that turn into clients. Give your business a boost by using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to your advantage.

How are you using these sites to your advantage? Sound off in the Social Agent Group on Facebook!