If you’re preparing to become a real estate broker, you probably have a lot to do before you make your first sale, but don’t forget to prioritize your social media presence. In today’s real estate market, developing your brand on social media is crucial. When it comes to marketing to Millennials, it’s absolutely essential.
Key Takeaways
- Developing a strong social media presence is crucial for branding yourself as a real estate broker, especially when marketing to Millennials.
- Ensure your profile picture is professional and consistent across all platforms, and switch personal accounts to business accounts for access to advanced metrics and advertising options.
- Update all contact information, add relevant real estate experience to LinkedIn, and connect with local real estate leaders and community members.
- Remove any old posts that don’t align with your brand, adjust privacy settings, and begin sharing relevant real estate content to establish industry expertise.
- Conduct an audit of your online presence to ensure all information is appropriate and consistent before launching your real estate career.
Here’s how to audit your social media presence before you become a real estate broker.
Review Your Social Media Before You Become a Real Estate Broker
Social media is one of the most critical ways to brand your real estate business. Here’s what you can do before you become a real estate broker to best set yourself up for success.
1. Choose a Professional Profile Picture
Before you officially become a real estate broker and start earning listings, you’ll want to make sure your profile picture is consistent across all your accounts and that it looks professional and clean. You don’t have to spend a lot of money taking new pictures. Taking a well-lit photo with your smartphone can be sufficient.
2. Change Your Accounts from Personal to Business
Designating your Instagram and Facebook profile as a “business” gives you access to advanced metrics about your audience that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to view. It also allows you to start creating paid advertisements. Paid social media is an important part of developing your brand. It can help you learn what resonates with your audience, and it can help you get your name out there before you’ve made a single sale.
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3. Update Your Contact Information
You want to make sure that other people can easily contact you on virtually every social media platform. While a potential client might choose to message you directly, they might also call, text, email or visit your website. Make sure they can contact you through any of these methods and that all your information is updated and correct.
4. Add Your Real Estate Experience to LinkedIn
Even though you might not feel like an official real estate broker yet, it’s a good idea to update your LinkedIn profile to indicate you’re preparing to get your real estate license. If you have any experience that relates to real estate or sales, make sure you include it on your resume.
5. Connect with Real Estate Leaders and Community Members
Following others in your niche is a great way to start getting your account prepared for your official debut as a real estate broker. Don’t just focus solely on following big name real estate social media accounts (although those are important), but also make sure to follow local leaders and community members in order to establish yourself–and your business–as supportive of your community. Also, make sure to follow local brokers and brokerages you might be want to work with when you start your career.
6. Remove Old Posts That Don’t Fit Your Brand
If you were only using social media for personal reasons before, you might not have given much thought to the message that your posts were sending to your prospective client base. Do an audit of your current posts and consider removing anything negative or divisive (anything political? It’s gotta go). It’s great to inject your own personality into your social media posts, but you also have to make sure that whatever is currently on your profile isn’t something that could turn off prospective clients.
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7. Decide What Should Stay Private and Change Your Settings
If you’re opting to keep separate personal and business social media profiles, then now’s the time to review your personal profile and change your privacy settings. After you’ve changed your settings, log out of each account and search for your name on each platform to double-check that you correctly turned your settings to private.
8. Begin Sharing Relevant Real Estate Content
In order to establish yourself as an industry expert and leader, share relevant real estate news with your audience. When you find content that you think is interesting or would be helpful for others to know, start sharing this content across your platforms. The more helpful you can be, the more value people will find in following your blog or social media pages, potentially increasing your engagement.
9. Conduct an Analysis of Your Online Presence
Once you’ve cleaned up your social media profiles and tweaked them to be appropriate for your new career as a real estate agent, it’s time to double-check that your efforts have been through. Websites like BrandYourself.com allow you to audit all of the information available about you online so that you can see if there are any gaps that you might have missed.
Another option is to Google yourself and evaluate whatever results come up. Make sure you Google yourself from an incognito window (if you use Google Chrome) or erase your cookies before Googling from other websites. You don’t want your search results to be influenced by your previous browsing history.
Bottom Line: Don’t Neglect Social Media
Not only is social media a great way to grow your brand, but it can also be used as a way to generate leads and even complete transactions. Make sure you get off on the right foot when it comes to social media by preparing your profiles before you officially become a real estate broker.
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