Social media is often pushed as a perfect way to connect with potential clients. In real estate, this couldn’t be more true. The struggle is often posting the right content to connect with your followers.
Marki Lemons-Ryhal is listed in the top 10 percent of REALTORS® in the Chicago area. She speaks at conventions and other classes to teach agents the best ways to use social media in their business. As a REALTOR®, Lemons-Ryhal has earned the REALTOR® Achievement Award and The President’s Award from the Chicago Association of REALTORS®.
In the recent Secrets of Top Selling Agents webinar, “The Modern Real Estate Professional’s Guide to Success,” Lemons-Ryhal shared her tips, tools and best practices to help your business boom with social media. As Lemons-Ryhal says, now is the time to begin planning your content so you’ll have a successful 2020.
Finding Content Inspiration
Lemons-Ryhal recommends the website wave.video to guide you in planning content for each day. For example, if you wanted to post something on Tuesday, you could view the calendar on wave.video and see that it’s both Taco Tuesday and Topic Tuesday. Lemons-Ryhal says that viewers could use Topic Tuesday to ask their followers “What is your most pressing real estate question?” You can also sync this calendar into your business calendar by visiting wave.video/calendar so you can set up reminders and have content ideas throughout the year.
Another site that releases content ideas is Socially Sorted. Donna Moritz, who runs the page, sends an email and releases a blog post before the start of a new month. Each of these contains videos, gifs, and more that you can use for content ideas. Lemons-Ryhal says the only drawback is you’re not able to import these into your calendar as you would with wave.video.
As you look through any idea calendar, you’ll likely see days or content that doesn’t apply to you. Rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, Lemons-Ryhal suggests only picking days that will resonate with your sphere of influence. Keep your clients in mind and post things that could be important to them. Overall, the goal is to promote interaction and engagement with your followers to start building familiarity and introducing yourself as an expert.
Creating Your Schedule
Once you have your content ideas, you should fill in your holidays and social media days, and schedule content based on them. Lemons-Ryhal also recommends looking for themes that can help guide your content each month. For example, March is National Credit Education Month. This could be a great opportunity to create some focused pieces to help educate your followers about how to financially prepare to buy a home. Other companies will likely be doing the same thing, which will allow you to piggyback off of holiday buzz when promoting your own content.
You can also use social media to create face-to-face opportunities. Lemons-Ryhal talks about two of her agents who partnered with a local lender to sponsor an ice cream event on National Ice Cream Day. The agents were able to interact with 50 people who came to the local parlor for free ice cream, all while promoting it on social media. To do this yourself, Lemons-Ryhal suggests thinking of 3-4 holidays that will resonate with followers and trying to work with a sponsor to create an event to engage with community members and help build your client base.
In addition to creating content, Lemons-Ryhal reminds viewers that they should come up with or research hashtags associated with holidays or events. Not only this, but it’s also a good idea to think of who you could connect with or mention in each of your posts. For example, when thinking about the ice cream event, Lemons-Ryhal says those social posts needed to mention the bank or lender, the ice cream parlor and any businesses in the area who could promote the event on their pages. You would also want to include the hashtags for the day and those popular in the location.
Setting Goals
Lemons-Ryhal states that it’s also necessary to set goals for your social profiles. This includes keeping track of your followers and planning how much you expect this number to increase. As a result of using social media mindfully and consistently, your social media reach should be steadily growing. At the beginning of the year, decide how many followers you want to have each month, and plan your content to make sure you’re able to meet those numbers. This can mean messaging new connections or getting involved in more conversations about local topics or the holidays you’ve chosen to post about.
Next week, check back for Lemons-Ryhal’s top social media tools to make your posts look consistent and professional. In the meantime, to learn more of Lemons-Ryhal’s tips or to watch the recording of her webinar, join the Secrets of Top Selling Agents Facebook Group here. For more free real estate education, including best practices, visit the Secrets of Top Selling Agents website.
Joe Sesso is an author and national speaker for Homes.com. For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com.
