by Sean Hess (Sean@StAugTeam.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com). Join us on Facebook and Google+.
Why is social media important to real estate?
When I was new to real estate 11 years ago, it was impressed on me that to succeed you simply needed to hand out 10 business cards a day, and ask if the person if they or anyone they knew needed to buy or sell real estate.
That’s it.
Used to be F stood for "Farm," T for "sales Trends," P for "Pending," and G+ for "Grands" (as in "How much in grands do you have to spend on a house?"). Not anymore. Infographic by Quara.
Ten business cards a day, which makes 50 a week, which makes 2600 new contacts a year. And to make $2 million in sales an agent only needs ten sales @ $200,000 each, which is plenty doable in the St. Augustine, Florida, market.
Well, social media is just another way to hand out an (electronic) business card.
The tricky part in real estate is that a “fast” repeat customer defined is a customer who buys or sells only once every two years.
So as a real estate agent I constantly have to keep meeting new people.
But at the same time, my past customers will use me again…but only if I remember to keep in touch with them.
Social media accomplishes both goals…it gets in front of ten people a day, and, it keeps me in touch with my past customers at the same time.
The key, like handing out any type of business card, is to just do it. Every day, every week, every month, for the whole year. I’m doing it now.
That’s it.
Of those 50 cards an agent should hand out every week, maybe only 2 or 3 become appointments. But that’s how an agent will make the ten sales.
The Numbers
As an example, jere’s how we use the social media platform of facebook to help us reach our goals:
St. Augustine Team Realty has around 600 facebook followers. When we make a post about anything, approximately 110 of those 600 people will see it. The minimum is usually 80, the max is usually 150, though we did have one post that hit 250 of our followers.
So that’s about 550 “business cards” right there…because it’s not always the same 110 people, and we get new people every day.
Another way is through an email we send to our past customer and leads list every wek. There are about 1300 people on it. When we sent out a video on our listing at Beachers Lodge recently, 224 people clicked through the email to watch the video. The next weekend about 50 people watched a short little video asking for listings. So it goes up and down, but that’s another 50-250 business cards a week.
And then, you know, we actually hand out business cards. Which reminds me, I need to order some.
What to Post
What to post, and when, and how often, is the real art to this.
The important thing in real estate is that it is always about the customer. What do they want to know? What questions are they asking? What’s in it for them?
So I tailor our posts with those subjects in mind, and we try to keep it an even mix of blog posts, video and images.
And as much as possible I always keep it “unicorns and rainbows,” that is, positive and friendly. This is about the customer, after all.
When done correctly, the customers come through the door for us. There is an art to the balance and the mix of our posts…I am good at determining the balance…and I think that’s why social media has been such a solid sales generator for us.
