Social Reset

If your social media accounts aren’t generating leads for your sphere of influence, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy

By Michelle Huffman

The value of your sphere of influence is shrinking. That’s why you need to invest in effective, ongoing social media marketing, says CRS Matthew Rathbun, Certified CRS Instructor and executive vice president of Coldwell Banker Elite in Virginia.

Here’s the math: The average REALTOR® is 54 years old, so a good chunk of his or her sphere of influence is likely similarly aged. Couple that fact with a recent AARP survey that says 75% of people older than 50 want to stay in their homes indefinitely, and it means your sphere of influence is likely stocked with a lot of great people who won’t buy or sell anytime soon.

You need to restock your sphere, and social media is an ideal way to accomplish this, Rathbun says, yet many agents are squandering its potential.

“A lot of agents are simply duplicating what other people do. I see a lot of this: An agent has a closing and they post a photo online of their buyer or seller holding keys or a sign rider,” Rathbun says. “There’s no story there. What they have done is reduced that client to a trophy to say, ‘I’m still in the business and I’m in the business regularly.’ But why?”

Marki Lemons Ryhal, Certified CRS Instructor, licensed managing broker in Chicago and social media strategist, also sees rote postings as problematic. “Agents are great at posting listings, but we have to get beyond posting a listing. We have to decide on a part of our lives we want to share and we need to share consistently.”

Lemons Ryhal and Rathbun are the experts behind the Council’s new Digital Marketing: Social Media Certification. They’ve seen the good, the bad and everything in between and have found sound, approachable strategies to making social media work for agents.

Be relatable by being genuine

As simple as it sounds, the most effective way to market yourself is to be yourself. “At the end of the day, people want to do business with people,” Lemons Ryhal says. “You have to be willing to share your true authentic self. You have to embrace that.”

Business has a place, but Lemons Ryhal advises an 80/20 split, 80% personal and 20% professional—“secret agents don’t get found,” she jokes—while Rathbun argues that you should mention your job sparingly. Instead, he says, focus on showing parts of your lifestyle and personality that make you relatable and foster your reputation as someone who knows and loves the local community.

Create content that people actually care about

Even with this permission slip to be you, agents may struggle to come up with effective content, especially when their time is crunched. Take a step back and think about what people really want to see. “Most people are looking for a brief escape from the drama of their own day,” Rathbun says. “They come for a single moment of something hopeful, beautiful, engaging or funny, and then they move on.”

Think of a cocktail party, he says. If you rush up to people and talk about your latest listings and closings and proffer market stats, you’re not likely to make friends—especially if the people you’re talking to aren’t currently active in the real estate markets. But if you talk to people about your pets or a recommended restaurant, you will connect. “Be a person online and an agent in your bio,” Rathbun says.

Rathbun posts about taking his dog on camping trips, and asks for recommendations for a new Netflix show. And he talks about doing social good, like his office’s involvement with SPCA.

Along with those “social connector” posts, Lemons Ryhal urges agents to be the “problem solver.” “It starts with understanding the demographics of your community and the demographics of the social platform you’re using, so you can tailor your content accordingly,” she says. “In my market, we have a lot of single-parent purchases. So, on Facebook, I talk about applicable grant programs and 203(k) loans so they know I am a resource in this community.”

Take advantage of video

Video is increasingly poular, yet many agents don’t use it simply out of fear, Lemons Ryhal says. “I am always the shortest, darkest, roundest person in the room with the least amount of hair, but I’m on video almost every day with or without makeup,” she says. “People do not care about how I look if I’m solving their problems.”

Consistency and mastery are key. If you’re going to do video, get ready to commit to a regular posting schedule and invest in improving your content and quality each week.

Social media should be part of a strategy

So you’ve got an engaging, relatable, resourceful online presence that resonates with your target demographic—but you’re only halfway there. Social media cannot exist in a silo; it must be part of a sound strategy with measurable outcomes, namely leads. There are many ways to dig into analytics for your social marketing. Rathbun uses business accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Lemons Ryhal tracks the traffic of her social posts through her bit.ly links.

“I measure everything,” Lemons Ryhal says. “I understand how many people actually view the content that has a link to the landing page. I know how many people actually click on that link. For example, I had a Facebook live video recently and 1,700 people viewed the video, 99 people clicked on the link, and it generated 10 leads with name, address and telephone number.”

This is why strategy is the keystone. Social media marketing doesn’t end with your social account. You need to send the people who engage with your social account somewhere, and that place is important. Rathbun sends them to his website and tracks it through Google Analytics. If they stay less than a minute, then he knows he doesn’t have valuable information on his site.

Lemons Ryhal sends them to customized landing pages, hosted on a number of platforms, including Cloud CMA and Google Forms, with downloadable content tailored to the content in her social post. “On every landing page, I deliver something of value,” she says. As a result, she has added 4,800 contacts to her CRM annually. “So I’ve taken social media as my lead gen, and do it every day.”

Consistency begets mastery, so be consistent with your posts, track them through the entire customer journey, and soon the efficacy of your social program will become very clear.

Michelle Huffman is a freelance writer based in Milwaukee.

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