As a real estate agent, developing and maintaining a social media presence is incredibly important. It creates a fantastic opportunity to build personal brand while proving expertise in the field.

But it is not without its challenges. Continue reading to learn some helpful tips and strategies to help you get ahead.

Prove You Know Your Area

It has been proven time and time again that the best-performing sales agents are those who are immersed in local life.

Potential customers are more likely to engage with and follow advice from those who they perceive to be the most knowledgeable in their field. Generally, this is an agent who has experience and also specialises in a certain location or suburb.

If you’re looking to engage with prospective customers, demonstrate that you know the area better than any other competitor.

By creating content about things that are happening in your suburb, it shows that you not only know the area, but also care about it. This can include current sales, upcoming builds or projects and community events.

The goal is to show people that you know the suburb better than anyone else.

Turn Questions into Content

Real estate professionals spend a great deal of time talking to potential customers and answering questions. By turning questions into content, you can be proactive by creating helpful and engaging content, while minimising time spent on answering repeated questions again and again.

The types of questions can include:

• the state of the market
• ways to improve home value
• pros and cons of auctions vs private treaty

Questions may come in the form of email, comments, or direct messages from your audience.  You can also create your own questions and answers to pre-emptively get ahead of the market.

Once again, your aim is to prove your market knowledge and local area expertise. By answering questions and engaging with consumers, it also proves that you care about your audience which is vital in developing personal brand.

Share Stories

If you have recently sold a property, why not make a short video explaining how the sale went, what the owners did to improve the appeal of the property and what marketing steps you took to achieve the sale.

For a potential vendor, this is far more interesting and engaging than just another customer review.

Create a Weekly Schedule

Establishing your social media platforms is only the first step, maintaining those platforms to a high standard is the key to long-term success. Abandoned social platforms reflect negatively on a business and may insinuate an inability of a sales agent to remain committed to a task.

Many real estate agents are very time poor and do not have the extra resources to spend on social media. A great way to maintain regular content is to dedicate a portion of time each week to the creation and scheduling of posts.

Most platforms now come with a feature which allows you to schedule over a week’s worth of content at one time, so you can ‘set and forget.’

When starting out, it’s important to have realistic goals that you can stick to. Perhaps aim for 1-2 pieces of content per week, and gradually build from there with the momentum you have created.

There is no right or wrong way to create content, it’s a matter of learning what works for your audience and what kinds of posts get the highest engagement. These kinds of comparisons could include photos vs videos, property marketing trends or different topics.

Interview Other Property Experts

A great way to build your follower base is to tap into the network of other property professionals.

The best way to do this is to invite them into conversation about a specific topic. Some examples of this are asking a mortgage broker some questions about the state of lending at the moment, or asking an auctioneer about the process they go through.

This provides value to your followers, it is also mutually beneficial as both you, and your invited guests, are likely to receive more followers and engagement individually.

Another benefit of creating content with other property experts is that it builds trust with your audience.

By inviting an expert from another field, it demonstrates to the audience that you are not claiming to be an expert on every topic relating to the real estate field. Instead, it shows that you have access to expert knowledge in other areas, which you are willing to find and share.

Developing and maintaining several social media platforms can be a daunting task for many, especially those with limited experience.

However, it can provide long-term benefits to your business if you get a strategy in place and dedicate a small amount of time to it each week.

In order to separate yourself from the competition, a social media presence is vital. With the key tips outlined in this blog, we hope will find yourself flourishing on social media in no time!  Good luck.